Like I was saying, the memory stick solution is easily the most expensive. With a 1GB stick you're paying $0.48/MB, which itself is obviously a source of severe wallet pain, and that's not even including the UX50...

The 4GB iPod comes in at about $0.06/MB. Since you can't remove or expand the media anyway, it's fair to use the total price of the iPod (since it *is* the media, basically). The 15GB is actually a much better price at $0.0193/MB, and the best deal is the 40GB at $0.0125/MB, which is precisely equal to minidiscs, which also go at the $0.0125/MB price.

At $0.25 per 650mb CDR, which is roughly $0.0004/MB, the Atrac Discman very easily wins the price contest simply because of cheap media. Of course, you have to carry 50 CDRs to get 40GB of storage.

Eh, in the end it mainly comes down to price versus portability versus how much music you own versus what format its in, so... "whatever works best for you" is the best solution. ;)

Also...
 

What isn't supported about the MS Pro, is it using the Clie as a drive to write to it? My laptop has a built-in MS reader (non-pro), so I wonder if that couldn't be worked around by using an external MS Pro drive.

I'm going to send them some feedback tonight about it so I want to be sure I'm saying the right thing.

ok I am confused... what is the point of MagicGate in MSPRO if it can't read ATRAC3???

Re: Also...
 

The way that DRM works, it's locked to the playback device(s). You have to write to the media while it's in the device it's intended to be used in. If you write to a MG stick on a PC, the file is then only authorized for use with that PC.
Else, you could simply clone the MemoryStick and give it to anyone.

So yes, you have to use the CLIE as a drive.

Anyhow, the problem isn't with the CLIE, but with SonicStage, which doesn't grok MemoryStick PRO, no matter what the device is.

Regards,
--
*Art

Re: Re: Re: Wow...
 

Yes, including inserting your head firmly up (_|_)

The problem isn't with a lack of MagicGate -- the regular MemoryStick Pro has MagicGate. The problem is with SonicStage not recognizing any the other sticks even though they have MG.

This is a known problem, and for 1.5, Sony said support for newer MG devices might be included in a future SonicStage update. It's still a problem with 2.0.6.

--
*Art

Sorry if this has been mentioned, but does the SonicStage 2.0 available from Sony's Connect site actually allow non-Vaio users to burn audio CDs from the tracks you purchased from the site?

It seems like I read somewhere (I think it was in the SS help) that audio CD wasn't supported for non-Vaio PCs. Is this true? I tried to burn an audio CD, but it didn't work for me. However, I was having other locking up problems at the time, so I don't know if the feature is actually disabled.

Anyone have a definitive answer on this?

BTW, I got an e-mail from Sony Connect support saying that the MS Duo cards (not MS Pro Duo) are MagicGate MSes that can be used with SS.

Please be more specific than "it didn't work". What was it that happened?

For what its worth, I can burn audio CDs here, on a home-made PC. The only thing that threw me off the first time is that during the final "Creating CD" process, the bar slowly goes up to almost 60% before the burning actually starts.

Regards,
--
*Art

I just tried to create a CD again from the tracks I bought, in case I was just having major technical difficulties before. It still didn't work. During the time that it is supposedly creating the disc image (before burning it), it does some processing until about 4%, and then it errors writing the first track, saying:

"Failed to write data to the device/media.
Circles"

(Circles is the name of the first ATRAC file.)

I believe in the help they actually say that audio CD burning is disabled if you don't have a Vaio. I didn't want to believe it, so I was asking if anyone else had bought tracks from the Connect store and was successful in burning them to an audio CD.

Since this isn't working, I unfortunately don't have portable access to my purchased tracks unless I buy a regular MS Duo. I'd rather wait for an update that allows MSPros to be recognized. Until then, I'll just count my music purchase as "lost money". :P

Make sure you don't have Nero InCD or Adaptec/Roxio DirectCD running -- that can screw up CD writing software that doesn't temporary disable these. (Roxio DragToDisc is better behaved.)

Also, if you have an Intel motherboard, deinstall Intel Application Accellerator if present, and then make sure that the IDE Channel Properties in the device manager is set to "DMA if available". IAA is nice for HDs, but the buffering can wreak havoc on some CD writing software that expects low level write routines to work (including Veritas BackupExec and Stomp BackupMyPC).

Other than that, I can't say what might help. I can burn ATRAC3 to CD here with SonicStage 2.0.6, but whether I want to is another matter.

Regards,
--
*Art

Thanks for the troubleshooting tips. I checked that the IDE channels had this "DMA if available" setting. I don't think I have either of the CD burning software you mentioned running in the background. Also, I have an AMD motherboard, so I don't know if there's a corresponding feature similar to IAA.

I'm tempted to uninstall SonicStage (I don't know if it's "mini-hangs" are due to the software just being really bloated and slow, or if a fresh reinstall would help it out), but I don't know if I care that much to really debug the problem further. *sigh*