Mike.L Posted June 29, 2005 Posted June 29, 2005 Well i was sick of the mess i was making throwing cd's around the house and the lack of regard people have to cd's thinking they can treat them badly. Well not in my house not anymore I bought myself a Mediagate MG 35 and a 200gig hard drive and at the moment im in the process of loading music onto it..... i have at a guess 1000 odd cd's and this will take some time. Im using musicmatch to load them onto my other computer which i run as a server and basic storage off my main PC. Whilst 1 CD takes about 5 mins, ive got about 300 done but its going to take some time to complete this. At this stage in time i have completed enough for a decent trial so i will report back soon with my verdict. At least the wife cant scratch anything anymore :wink:
Administrator StereoNET Posted June 29, 2005 Administrator Posted June 29, 2005 Excuse my ignorance... but the Mediagate... when you "load" them on to the HDD, what format is it in? MP3, WMA etc ? Is it possible to store them as WAV at all?
Mike.L Posted June 29, 2005 Author Posted June 29, 2005 Supported formats For Music - MP3, OGG Vorbis, WAV, WMA (except WMA9 pro.lossless) For Movies - MPEG 1,2,4 (MPG,MPEG,AVI,M2V,DAT,VOB,IFO etc) DivX,XviD (except GMC, QPEL option applied) For Photo - JPG (JPEG) So to answer your question Marc, yeah its possible
Aslan Posted June 29, 2005 Posted June 29, 2005 Dumb question here from someone who to this date has avoided PC music like the plague...........are any of these music formats true hifi quality or are they all compressed?
Mike.L Posted June 30, 2005 Author Posted June 30, 2005 Most of the time its not about compressing the music, rather software 'dropping' information it deems not required as it struggles to process all the information fast enough. Run good software, record at middle of the road speeds on good quality media with a good quality burner and you and i wont notice the difference from an original CD.
Administrator StereoNET Posted June 30, 2005 Administrator Posted June 30, 2005 Thanks el_hefty... WAV to my knowledge is not a lossy or compressed format at all, hence my original question as this is the very reason I have avoided all these wireless media systems etc too. Hmmm.. might go shopping tomorrow now I know that
E.T. Posted July 2, 2005 Posted July 2, 2005 Hey, We bought a MG-35 for the purpose of watching TV shows i have in AVI and that sort of thing, do you know if it is possible to access the MG-35 accross network like you are accessing another computer, so you can copy files to it that way instead of having to plug it in via USB every time you wanna put something on it? Just interested, E.T. -ps i have about 5000 MP3's and i think that it is almost better quality than an audio CD if they are ripped with a DECENT encoder at a high VBR (Varial Bit Rate) percentage. I encode most of mine with LAME encoder, at about 90% VBR which gets in at ~250kbps. All you realy need is 192kbps for your mp3's to sound great, but VBR just hits the nail on the head offering exactly how much the file needs to sound perfect.
Mike.L Posted July 2, 2005 Author Posted July 2, 2005 well copying a cd you wont get better sound, different maybe or equal to but not better. Yes you can network the MG35 if you got it check your manual it has instructions on how to set it up as another site on your network, will work really well if you set this up wireless Ok well ive run it today with around 400 albums loaded and have a had a few issues. Imagine the filing system and accessing it is like a typical file system in windows opening in the same window. So i had roughly 400 loaded in no set order or in no sub directories. First mistake. I found cd 200 (for example) and played it. stopped when ended and paged back to the main file to be thrown back to the top of the list. thats at #1 so cycle all the way back down the files to find the album number 201 i wanted to play next. fairly tedious. What it comes down to i guess is getting the filing system right in the first place whcih will speed everything up. Filing under genre first and formost then alpabetically under genre or 70's 80's 90's under each genre and then alpha... anyway that i thinks the key. No reason one album cant appear 2 or 3 times under slihtly different genre's if your not sure. One good fuction is to be able to pick a whole lot of music under 'playlist' and then hit 'play all' or random to play the chosen selection. but even better would be to install a party mix and an easy listening mix etc that you can just chose and hit random and youll have music for days. Im happy with it so far but with some fine tuning will make it easier to use. Cheers. post edit: should edit my spelling and grammer but ive had a few drinks and couldnt be bothered
E.T. Posted July 4, 2005 Posted July 4, 2005 i have been over and over the manual. it isnt anywhere!!! please help! would you be able to copy the excert down into a board or email me or MSN me or something? i REALLY need to know how to do it. even the PAGE NUMBER in the manual. just to clarify.. i want to be able to copy stuff FROM THE PC accross THE NETWORK onto the MEDIAGATE!... cause i just went thru my manual again, AND the one on the website and i still cant find it. Andrew yeah, i know MP3s arnt better quality, but it sure seems like it
Guest Danthuyer Posted August 8, 2005 Posted August 8, 2005 Unfortunatley you CAN NOT see the media gate from the PC to copy your music accross to it. The only way to copy files to the media gate is via the USB connection You CAN however stream directly from the PC to the Mediagate 35 to listen to your music. If you have setup the mediagate correctly you simply click on the PC icon on the select screen and browse for your music files this way Also and aswell as there is currently a 'sorting' issue with the mediagate in relation to folder/files They are currently looking at an update for us. Hopefully this will be released soon IF you would like to organise your folders a little better then use a nifty little program called 'attribute manager' http://www.miklsoft.com/attrman/ and change all of the file and folder attributes to the same date and time. This will make things a little easier to find
NrG Posted August 13, 2005 Posted August 13, 2005 Hi folks - new to this forum... Just got a mediagate 35 and have got it all happening except getting an external USB drive to be seen by the MG 35. I have a 120gig in the unit and a 200gig in an external USB enclosure which can't be seen from the MG 35. Do I assume that the MG 35 can be a slave to plug into a PC but can't be a master and read an external slave? Any info would be helpful as seems a waste to go and get a 400gig just because the MG 35 can't "see" an external USB drive. Have around 1/2 Terra in DivX's and 80gig in mp3's and wanting to use the MG 35 as the central point for all. Thanks in advance PS - used to be an audio engineer and now doing video production so if I can help with any questions please let me know - regards NrG
E.T. Posted August 13, 2005 Posted August 13, 2005 Yeah im pretty sure it cant master at all... Definately slave If u wanted to use ur mobile caddy u could plug it into a PC and share it... thats all i can think of.
bosereworked Posted August 30, 2005 Posted August 30, 2005 Facts and figures: Standard PC network connection = 100 megabits per second max. (unless using megabit NIC's) USB 2.0 connection speed = up to 480 megabits per second. Networking requires setting up protocols, establishing IP addresses (fixed or assigned), over-riding software firewalls (especially in WinXP) to allow transfer of data (XP can block network communications without informing user, unlike Zonealarm, which always offers a warning and user configuration) und so weiter... Why network? Master or slave? Try Operating system versus BIOS. XP is a full blown OS, which is user configuarable. Perhaps the Mediagate was designed to be a "dumb" terminal, rather than a slave, because it has no OS. It does sound like it is capable of storing masses of data but can its BIOS handle 200 gig? Many late model PC motherboards require a BIOS update if handling a HDD bigger than 137.4 GIG. Alternatively, some high speed PCI Hard Disk controllers overcome this limitation (software driven, overuling the OS). The Mediagates I have seen on the Net speak of 80 GIG hard drives as standard issue. The 120 GIG HDD is OK but the 200 GIG can't be seen... I see a pattern forming here.
Guest Danthuyer Posted September 1, 2005 Posted September 1, 2005 boserworked - you hit the nail on the head. it is a dumb terminsal so to speak as far as networking is concerned (MG 35) Depending on what sort of hardware exaclty airlintek used in this box you could be able to used as a terminal as such and be able to connect to it via the network although you'll have to be skilled in LINUX to do so
bosereworked Posted September 1, 2005 Posted September 1, 2005 Any box with even a rudimentary OS can eventually be made to network (and Linux, in whatever guise, is not rudimentary). My concern is with actual hardware limitations. If NrG were to hook up his 200 GIG hard drive to his PC and get the 'Yep, I see it and read it OK' response, then the hard drive isn't actually wasted. 1/2 a terra of anything is serious storage space, with storage being the operative word. Some questions: Are you using Win XP and, if not, what? USB devices are normally seen from Win XP, but any folders on that device (eg digital camera) must be 'fully shared' by default. Are the folders on your MG 35 already assigned as fully shared? (Did you inadvertantly change this setting?) Does your PC recognise your 200 Gig USB HDD? Can your PC recognise the Mediagate when the extra USB HDD is NOT connected? Is the Mediagate running at its factory default settings? (Remove any BIOS retention battery - warranty permitting) Come back...
Guest Robbo XB Posted September 2, 2005 Posted September 2, 2005 Hi Guys, I'm having trouble downloading the firmware upgrades from the website. The new firmware (MG35_MediaGate_en_1.4.0.upgrade) is there waiting , but I can't get it. Anyone else having problems like this?
Guest Robbo XB Posted September 3, 2005 Posted September 3, 2005 I've got the MG35 running nicely with a 200 Gig hard drive.
Mike.L Posted September 3, 2005 Author Posted September 3, 2005 ditto robbo 200 gig here, and its full 2400 albums. the only issue i have is the filing system, but thats a firmware issue, hopefully the latest update will help.
akroehn Posted September 6, 2005 Posted September 6, 2005 Hi all, Just checking if anyone else is having problems with their unit...? Mine has been doing the following things, which I though were simply firmware issues, but now I'm thinking it's my unit: With firmware 1.3.2: - Files and folders aren't listed alphabetically or numerically... - Playing WMA files - they get cut off at the end, usually around 97%. Most songs you can't hear it cos they fade out anyway, but some it is very noticable on. - ISO's don't play (ie DVD movie ripped with DVD Decrypter to a single ISO file) With firmware 1.4.0: - File and folder issues fixed - WMA issues fixed - ISO's now play - But the unit reboots during music playback (tested with MP3 and WMA) after somewhere between 10 and 60 minutes, it never rebooted with the old firmware... - And my XVID movies (created with FairUse Wizard) are now out of sync with the audio, although smaller XVIDs (less than a few hundred MB) work OK. Can anyone else test their unit for these issues and give me some feedback? I've been talking to the Altech support guys, and the suppliers (Anyware) but none of them will confirm or deny any issues - its just "hmm try this firmware" or "your file names are too long or contain invalid characters"... No matter how many times I ask direct questions like "is this a known fault or not?" I seem to get fobbed off. I've been reluctant to send it back since I use it all the time, and between the 2 firmwares it all works OK, just not at the same time! :-) Which makes me think it's a firmware issue. But if no-one else is having these issues then I guess mine could be dodgy... Thanks all ;-) Andrew BTW - one other useful thing I found is that DivX 6 files play fine, you just have to rename the extension from .divx to .avi - also make sure you don't encode menus as it can't handle them...
Mike.L Posted September 6, 2005 Author Posted September 6, 2005 I havnt upgraded my firmware but hearing that it has sorted out the filing issues i will Report back later
akroehn Posted October 14, 2005 Posted October 14, 2005 Any updates from anyone...? I've worked something else out - ISO's play OK in 1.3.2, but only if you use capital letters in the filename. Eg: DVD_MOVIE.ISO will play DVD movie.iso will not play I thought maybe it had to be in 8.3 format, but it works ok with ISO's that have more than 8 characters in the name, as long as they're in capitals. I tested this by simply renaming a couple of ISO's (created with DVD Decryptor) Hopefully someone else can test their machines for similar issues so we'll all know if they're common problems or not...? :smile:
skymatrix Posted October 18, 2005 Posted October 18, 2005 akroehn... "- And my XVID movies (created with FairUse Wizard) are now out of sync with the audio, although smaller XVIDs (less than a few hundred MB) work OK." I found the solution here is to use VirtualDubMod. (It can be downloaded from "Downloads - AVI Editing tools section" at www.doom9.org). Re-Interleave the DivX/XviD file using a Preload of 96ms with Interleaving also set to 96ms. This is what AutoGK uses by default, and it fixes the av sync problem with Firmware v1.4.0. I haven't bothered to test other values, but these work for me. However these settings do seem to affect how well Windows Media Player (and others), seek using FF/REW, so there may be more universally optimum Interleaving settings to be experimented with. Within VirtualDubMod, (once you've loaded in the avi file), you need to choose "Stream list" from the "Streams" menu. Then "Right-click" the Audio stream, and click "Interleaving". Change both the Preload value (I'd suggest 96ms) and the "Interleaving audio every x ms" (Also try 96ms). Then Re-Save the file using "Save As", BUT make sure you choose "Direct stream copy" for the video mode, so that the file does not get re-encoded! I hope this helps anybody else who, like me, had av sync problems with Firmware v1.4.0. on both the MediaGate MG-25 and MG-35.
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