A couple of weeks ago I visited Sonys service centre in Dublin and within 20 minutes I had my upgraded HD1 and SonicStage v2.3 on CD all for 20.00 (thanks to the lads there!).
The problems started when I got home. The upgrade of SonicStage went smoothly enough, but when I tried to transfer my atrac files to the HD1 it reported that it couldnt find the files, even though it would play the file if I double clicked on it!
Strange!
Let me explain something first I would copy a load of mp3s to my hard drive from CD, encode them to atrac3+ and delete the original mp3s leaving the atrac files on my hard drive. This worked beautifully until the upgrade. I deduced that SonicStage was looking for the original mp3s to transfer to the HD1 instead of the atrac files.
The obvious thing to do was remove everything from the SonicStage library and import just the atrac files. The files I had converted to atrac from original CDs were imported correctly Artist, Album etc., but the files I had converted from mp3 were all tossed into an Imported files album. All 2500 songs!
It makes it a bit difficult to find what Im looking for but once the tracks are transferred to the unit theyre divided up by artist/album as you would expect.
Another problem Ive noted, and this is the more serious one, is a definite hiss from my MDR-EX71s which wasnt there before. At first I thought it was only when playing mp3s (the first tracks I transferred were mp3s) but when I eventually got my atracs back on, the hiss was still there. Its only really noticeable at low volumes with little or no background noise, but its there and I didnt notice it before the upgrade. It wont bother me, Im not an audiophile, atrac3+ @ 64kbps suits me fine but it could upset some people.
On the plus side, mp3 transfer is fast once the files have been imported to SonicStage. Another change you may notice is in the Sound menu - there is a fourth option called Digital Sound Preset which has two options Custom 3 and Custom 4, which follows on from the existing Custom 1 and Custom 2 under the Sound EQ menu. I dont know why it is done this way
To summarise, if your music collection fits onto the hd1 at the moment then dont bother with the upgrade, just leave your PC to convert your music to atrac over night and all is well. If on the other hand you regularly get new CDs full of mp3s and you just cant wait to convert them to atrac or your music collection is so vast that you dont have the disk space to store them as atracs and mp3s then the upgrade may be worth while, but try to listen to an upgraded model to find out if the hiss will bother you.
Let me know if anybody else has noticed a hiss after their upgrade...