hamoperator Posted April 16, 2004 Report Share Posted April 16, 2004 Hello everyone, I am new to these forums. Please pardon me if this question has been answered elsewhere, or it is just my ignorance of how the software works. I haven't found an answer searching, and I'm new (less than 24 hrs) using NetMG software. I primarily bought my Sony MD player to transfer old radio shows (Jack Benny, Burns and Allen, etc.) to MiniDisc for playback in the car and on vacation. I have a collection of old shows recorded in MP3 format, most at 32KBS 22Khz sample rate in mono. A typical 30 min show is 6 to 7 MB in size. I added several of these shows to a playlist, noted that they play in Sonic Stage and tried to "check out" to a MD. I immediately get an error message that the file format is unsupported. I found somewhere that 32K sample rate was supported, so I re-encoded the files in Sound Forge to 32KBS and 32Khz. I also tried 44Khz 64KBS encoding as well as WMA encoding. Sonic Stage still says the file format is unsupported. The only way I could make it work was to encode the files as 44Khz .WAV files and then bring them in, a horrible waste of hard disk space, to say the least! Thanks to these forums, I found the method of using Nero to make a drive image and then use Simple Burner, another "workaround" , but it still seems (from what I've read) that I should be able to drop an MP3 file into the playlist and have it encode into ATRAC and transfer to the MiniDisc. Am I missing a step somewhere? Any thoughts would be much appreciated. I'm not a novice to MiniDiscs, having had several older, pre NetMD units, just this software. Thanks in advane. HamO Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mAjEsTiC Posted April 18, 2004 Report Share Posted April 18, 2004 hey and welcome to the forums... :happy: unfortunately Sony's software have quite a few bugs in it and is far from perfect...it sometimes doesn't want to do what it's meant to (kinda like windows imo)...it should allow u to be able to import mp3's into SonicStage and get it to convert it to ATRAC3 and transfer it over to ur MD unit w/o a glitch...but that's in theory..in reality this isn't the case...from time to time SonicStage and OpenMG tend to complain with certain encoding rates of music files but the majority that i've tested worked out fine...u could use Dino's Nero + SimpleBurner trick or try using RealOne's alternative through it's RealPlayer 10 software...and nope ur not missing a step anyware...if the files don't work converting them to .wav using the LAME encoder usually fixes things up...yes i agree it may be a waste of space but it works... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hamoperator Posted April 20, 2004 Author Report Share Posted April 20, 2004 Hey Majestic, thanks for the welcome. I hope I can be a contributor of info as time goes on. I played with various encoding methods and have found combos that work. The real pain, besides the additional time involved, is having to upconvert the files to a higher sample rate and then downconvert to ATRAC. That multiple encoding sure can't help quality much! Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on how you look at it) all of these old shows vary in quality and were encoded in very low sample and bitrates so the quality doesn't seem to take much of a hit. On another note, these are all monaural files. Apparently Sonic Stage re-encodes them to L and R. Is there any way to force the files to be recorded to the NetMD device in mono to save space? I tried setting the 610 to Mono mode, but Sonic Stage over-rode my setting when it transferred the files. Thanks again. HamO PS - any other ham radio operators or Old Time Radio show collectors lurking around these forums? Another PS - I'm pretty impressed with this generation of ATRAC compression. I had one of the earliest MD units at work early on, and the high frequency audio was pretty bad. My portable I bought several years ago was better, and this new Sony 610 unit is really sweet sounding. The ATRAC 4 is much fuller sounding than that original "full (non ATRAC 2 or 4)" professional ATRAC unit that I had 5 years ago. I can hear a bit of high end swishing and grit, but all in all it ain't bad. ATRAC 2 is almost as good as the original source, and it would take quite an ear to hear the difference IMHO. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hamoperator Posted May 10, 2004 Author Report Share Posted May 10, 2004 FYI . . . Sonic Stage V 2.0 will recognize and transfer the lower bitrate mp3 files (22khz, 32kbs) that most of the old radio shows are encoded in. Now I don't have to go thru a lengthy converson process. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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