Digital Home Thoughts: Sony Hi-MD Technology - Should It Be On Your To-Buy List?

SonicStage
SonicStage is Sony's equivalent to iTunes - you buy tracks from Sony's Connect service through it, you transfer tracks from CDs into the SonicStage library and you transfer tracks from the library onto the MiniDiscs. SonicStage will also burn an ATRAC, audio or MP3 CD.


Figure 6: Sony's Connect service through SonicStage.

The software is one of two methods of getting pre-recorded music onto a MiniDisc, the other being Simple Burner which I'll look at later. The reason for enforcing the use of an application, rather than allowing you to just drag & drop music tracks onto the player is so that the digital rights can be enforced. Sony use OpenMG as their DRM platform. Tracks purchased from Connect can have limits imposed on how many times you can burn them onto CD. It is also possible to separately limit how many times a track can be transferred onto MiniDisc, although most of the tracks I've bought have unlimited transfers, with the few restricted tracks having high transfer (15) limits. SonicStage employs a check-out/check-in system with transfers, where it keeps count of how many times you've transferred a track onto MD and decrements that count when you transfer the track back off the MD into the computer. One of the enhancements that has been made is that if you format a disc from within SonicStage, it now automatically marks any tracks present on the MD as being checked back in before the disc is formatted.

A really neat feature that I've used a lot since getting the NH1 is that if you've got the player connected via USB to the computer, and you open SonicStage, not only can you control the player from within SonicStage, but the audio comes out of the computer's speakers!

SonicStage, though, is not without its critics and I do number myself as one of them. I recently received an email from Sony announcing a new version (2.3). I duly downloaded and installed the software, only to find that it wouldn't start - I just got Dr Watson errors. I reported this to Sony's technical support but just got an email telling me how to download the software from the Internet. In the end, I managed to solve the problem by downloading version 3 from the US (currently incompatible with the UK Connect service), installing that, uninstalling it and then installing version 2.3 again. I don't know what went wrong but clearly this isn't going to impress consumers, particularly the less technically capable ones.

The other aspect of SonicStage that doesn't seem to work seamlessly is maintaining the DRM database between software upgrades. On the two occasions that I've upgraded SonicStage, the licence between SonicStage and my Sony Connect account has been broken, requiring Sony to reset the account (which they do quite quickly) and then re-download previously purchased tracks, which Sony allow you to do without further charge. Sony handle their side of it quite well, but I would much prefer just being able to install a new version without the added pain. Version 3 is supposed to connect with up to three computers with a single Connect account but I suspect that will just put off the pain until the third upgrade :evil:.

Ripping CDs is quite pain-free - it uses CDDB to get the title and track information and on the 30+ albums I've transferred, this has been very accurate. As the tracks are ripped, they are encoded into ATRAC format according to the bitrate you've specified. Once on the computer, you can then transfer them onto, and off of, the MiniDiscs.


Figure 7: The SonicStage library interface.

SonicStage also gives you track management tools for the MiniDisc side of things. You can delete individual tracks and complete groups. You can rename tracks and groups. You can move tracks from one group to another.


Figure 8: Transfer between SonicStage & Minidisc device.

Simple Burner
For me, this was the best surprise and a really good reason for upgrading to the Hi-MD player. Simple Burner allows you to rip directly from CD to MiniDisc, without storing the files on the computer as well. Like SonicStage, it uses CDDB to get the title and track information. By default, when you put an audio CD into the computer, a small message window pops up to give you a few options, as shown in Figure 9.


Figure 9: Audio CD detected.

Clicking on the first option performs a straightforward complete rip of the CD onto the MiniDisc. While this is happening, another small window is displayed to keep you informed about the progress made. By default, the tracks are placed into a group named after the CD's title.


Figure 10: Simple ripping.

If you want more control over what Simple Burner is doing, you can switch to Standard Mode. This mode works on several levels, but the initial level is very straightforward and aims to transfer the whole CD with the minimum of fuss, as you can see from Figure 11. In this manner, you can edit the artist & title, change the transfer encoding and the disc name of the Minidisc. Clicking on the big red REC button then transfers the whole disc.


Figure 11: Standard mode.

For more control, clicking on the Open button expands the window to give you the track listing for the CD and the content listing for the Minidisc, as shown in Figure 12. Here, you can edit the track names, play tracks, and decide which ones you want to rip. On the Minidisc side, you can manually create a new group, erase tracks and groups, or erase the whole disc if you feel so inclined.


Figure 12: Slightly more complicated Simple Burner.