http://www.ecoustics.com/latest/articles Latest articles, updated every five minutes http://www.ecoustics.com/tl/14406/ Question: I have a portable Sony CD player (D-EJ119), and when I press play the LCD screen just flashes the word hold. Nothing happens, and I can't hear any music. Any ideas? Wed, 28 Jun 2006 11:43:11 -0400 http://www.ecoustics.com/tl/13315/ To those of you who have purchased Sony Walkmans with Sonic Stage 3.1 CD and many other Sony product CD's, There is a big question about rootkits messing up computers. Take it from experience, I've already replaced my hard drive since this NW-E505 MP3 Walkman was purchased for Christmas for my son. I've had nothing but trouble with it since... Mon, 30 Jan 2006 11:40:54 -0500 http://www.ecoustics.com/tl/10538/ Question: I have a Fisher Studio 24 compact disc player and when I put a disc in and push play it says searching ,but then says M-error. What does that mean? What can I do? -submitted by debbie4000 Answer: There's nothing like cryptic error messages to only make matters worse when your device doesn't work. Not only do you need to figure out why it's not working, but you need to take your best guess at what an "M-Error" is. "M-Error" is short for mechanical error. This kind of error is common to devices like CD Players, DVD players, and VCRs. Basically, it can happen to anything with a mechanical system that loads and ejects media. Mechanical errors can be any number of things. In some cases a gear is stuck, in others a part has jammed. Sometimes, a CD is positioned wrong or has fallen off of the carousel, causing the platter to not turn. One way or another, something mechanical is inhibiting the operation of the unit. Without being able to look inside and see what's causing it, that's about the best diagnosis someone can give. I'd be willing to bet there is a busted gear underneath ... Thu, 03 Feb 2005 20:58:57 -0500 http://www.ecoustics.com/tl/10531/ Question: I just bought a Memorex MMP8500 mp3 player for my son. I installed the software, but it does not bring up a Removable Disc Drive for me to use for copying songs from Real Player. Any idea how I can get that RDD to come up? -submitted by gmlarson Answer: As a note for everyone learning to use their MP3 players, not all players will prompt as a removeable disc in Windows, especially when they require a proprietary program to transfer music (Sony's NetMD MiniDisc players for example). The MMP8500 does allow access as a removeable disc drive, which does not require Real Player to transfer songs that are not copy protected. According to Memorex, both the internal memory and external SD/MMC card should be available as disc drives. If you're not seeing the device when connected, here are the possible reasons why: If you're using Windows XP, I would try removing the device driver you installed from the CD, reboot, and reconnect the device. Windows should assign its generic USB Mass Storage driver, and create a Removeable Disc Drive icon in My Computer. Memorex notes that changing the installation path of their software could interfere with ... Wed, 02 Feb 2005 00:22:42 -0500 http://www.ecoustics.com/tl/10475/ Question: My wife has a Sylvania Mp3 player when I download songs it only plays about ten seconds of each song. I'm using windows media player 10. please help -submitted by maf Answer: Many audio products have playback feature known as "intro/scan" mode, or something similar. No doubt you're familiar with other playback modes like repeat and shuffle. "Intro" mode automatically plays the first 5 to 10 seconds of each file to help you locate a particular song on a CD or MP3 player, just like how you would look for a particular song manually. You should be able to find an option to turn this off in the MP3 player's menu. Matt Whitlock - Editor, TechLore.com Thu, 13 Jan 2005 17:20:02 -0500 http://www.ecoustics.com/tl/10387/ Since the introduction of the Compact Disc in the 1980's, digitally encoded audio has become the most popular method of playing audio in history. Today, a new evolution in audio is quickly changing the way the world buys, distributes, and listens to music. This evolution refers to digital compression. A CD holds music in what is known as the Pulse Code Modulation (PCM) format, which is a common method for digitizing analog signals. PCM signals are uncompressed, which means that after the conversion, the resulting digital stream will take up a great deal of space. In fact, CDs stream data off the disc at a rate of 1.41 million bits per second. This means that 30 minutes of audio will take up approximately 318 Megabytes of space, which is simply too large to efficiently store in a computer, load into a portable, or send over the internet. Compression is the process of reducing the size of the digital signal, while still keeping the quality as close as possible to the original source. Throughout the 80's and much of the 90's, there was no great way to accomplish this task at home. Then it happened. The arrival of ... Wed, 29 Dec 2004 16:40:32 -0500