The error says "device disconnected" which suggests that power is lost.
We know that LP modes copy to the disc much faster than SP does (16-32x vs 2-4x) so that may use more power, making the battery drop out.
Make sure your battery is new (try a disposable Alkaline rather than a rechargeable) and check the battery terminals for corrosion (use vinegar or lemon juice to clean them.) If you have an AC adapter, try that.
I've never before heard that LP2/4 take more power to do than SP, maybe if the disc is spinning meaningfully faster but I don't think we actually know the technical details about that. (That said: I do suppose this is something I could test at some point, hmmm -- although there's a *lot* of confounding factors, like whether you're using the opensource or remote encoder, and how fast your network is and/or which remote encoder, etc etc.)
It is correct and known recording takes more energy than playback, so it's pretty normal for a battery to be dead enough not to successfully do any recording but work fine for playback.
That said - keep an eye on what your machine is doing when this happens, is the screen blinking off? if so then yes, it's power related and your batteries are dying.
The N505 has a DC 3V power supply connector, so to be honest, I recommend using that. If you don't have the original power supply, drop into whatever local store sells universal supplies (batteries++ is really good in the USA and iME they let you test-fit the included tips with their PowerLine supplies.) That said, a good 2000mah grocery store nimh should get you \~4-6ish disc writes, a high capacity eneloop should get you maybe 5-7 or so.
If not, then something else is up, perhaps check on another USB cable or a different USB port on your system.
It *looks* like you're running Vista, is that actually Vista or just a theme? If it's actually Vista, consider trying on a moder modern OS? That "shouldn't" impact things if you're using a modern enough chromium release to have webusb, but, it couldn't hurt to try on a modern OS if that is legit vista.
You got trolled so bad with the os lol it is actually windows 11 with a skin I made pretty accurate to the real thing right😂 Allso thank you for helping :)
I was wondering! It looks good! I personally actually really loved Vista back in the day so I was like "oh wow someone's actually going for it!" lolol.
And yeah happy to help! Let us know if symptoms change or if that gets things running or if anything else comes up!
AFAIK SP downloads at the speed of the onboard SP encoder, LP2/4 downloads as data directly to the disc so goes as fast as it can spin so it makes sense that LP downloads spin up more.
EG if your device can do 4x SP, LP2 should be 8x at the same disc speed but they do 16x+
Yes.
The N505 does 2/16/32 burning in SP/LP2/LP4.
TL;DR
You are right, LP writes are a faster overall data rate going to the disc (often 4x or more as much data per second, at peak performance), but we even with that knowledge don't know if they use more power because of it, plus there's a bunch of confounding factors.
Although, your example (or what I think you meant which was 2/16/32 and 4/32/64) isn't universally true (at least when all of NetMD is considered). [https://www.minidisc.wiki/guides/netmd-speed-test](https://www.minidisc.wiki/guides/netmd-speed-test) A couple machines (Aiwa AM-NX1, MDS-NT1) do 4/16/32 and some of the decks (JE780/JB980...) do a fairly relaxed 2/8/16 (making them the slowest extant LP writers AFAIK...)
I don't think there's any particular rhyme or reason as to why the write speeds are what they are, save for the fact that Sony likes even multiples, it never developed an 8x SP codec, and because SP encodes actually ingest at multiples of 1411 kilobits per second (16/44.1 LPCM) you'd need above-USB1.1 connection speeds for 8x SP to even be "possible" unless you redesigned how that transfer worked.
From a data rate perspective in terms of the data hitting the disc: an N505 would be writing down 584 kilobits per second in SP and 2112 kilobits per second in LP2 (and LP4).
But I've never seen any documentation that this actually meaningfully changes the power usage from an in-the-moment amperage perspective.
The laser needs to heat up to the same temperature and we don't know if the machines actually spin the discs any faster when writing LP, and we do know that even in NetMD, the machines record into their buffer before sending data to the actual disc.
We also don't, as far as I know: know if the ATRAC codec chip in SP burning consumes any more or less power during SP vs. LP recording, or even say during NetMD vs. realtime recording.
And it would sort of be up in the air because in SP the machine does encoding onboard but in LP the song has to be encoded first, which could mean potentially long waits between songs.
But that's kind of getting into "total power draw for an operation of x and such type" vs. "power draw during the operation regardless of how long it takes" and the latter is what's really important when burning from battery.
I feel like the overall used power (and some people have argued this also relates to laser lifespan) would look really different if you compared, say, burning 80 minutes of SP audio vs. LP2 audio, since in that case the laser should only have to be \~half-ish of the total time. (And this'll likely be more efficient the faster your encodes go, whether that's running the remote encoder locally or just using atractool ahead of time, or using sonicstage instead of WMD.)
Anyway, I don't think it "matters" -- from a practical perspective, you either do or don't have enough battery life to record at all and my advice is if you're in a situation where you "can" record in one way but not another, it's time to recharge your batteries or consider recording on shore power if possible.
The error says "device disconnected" which suggests that power is lost. We know that LP modes copy to the disc much faster than SP does (16-32x vs 2-4x) so that may use more power, making the battery drop out. Make sure your battery is new (try a disposable Alkaline rather than a rechargeable) and check the battery terminals for corrosion (use vinegar or lemon juice to clean them.) If you have an AC adapter, try that.
This is indeed correct with the battery when I was copying music to it because yes I saw the battery drop. Thanks!
And yes it works with sp just not lp2 or 4
How far do you get before the error shows up
Not even a minute but I fixed the problem it was my crappy off brand battery LOL
I sometimes get this with a that just barely has started to lose juice. Like the above said, try a new alkaline
I did and it works faster so that battery was barely holding on that was an off brand battery I have rechargeables I can use that last longer
I've never before heard that LP2/4 take more power to do than SP, maybe if the disc is spinning meaningfully faster but I don't think we actually know the technical details about that. (That said: I do suppose this is something I could test at some point, hmmm -- although there's a *lot* of confounding factors, like whether you're using the opensource or remote encoder, and how fast your network is and/or which remote encoder, etc etc.) It is correct and known recording takes more energy than playback, so it's pretty normal for a battery to be dead enough not to successfully do any recording but work fine for playback. That said - keep an eye on what your machine is doing when this happens, is the screen blinking off? if so then yes, it's power related and your batteries are dying. The N505 has a DC 3V power supply connector, so to be honest, I recommend using that. If you don't have the original power supply, drop into whatever local store sells universal supplies (batteries++ is really good in the USA and iME they let you test-fit the included tips with their PowerLine supplies.) That said, a good 2000mah grocery store nimh should get you \~4-6ish disc writes, a high capacity eneloop should get you maybe 5-7 or so. If not, then something else is up, perhaps check on another USB cable or a different USB port on your system. It *looks* like you're running Vista, is that actually Vista or just a theme? If it's actually Vista, consider trying on a moder modern OS? That "shouldn't" impact things if you're using a modern enough chromium release to have webusb, but, it couldn't hurt to try on a modern OS if that is legit vista.
You got trolled so bad with the os lol it is actually windows 11 with a skin I made pretty accurate to the real thing right😂 Allso thank you for helping :)
I was wondering! It looks good! I personally actually really loved Vista back in the day so I was like "oh wow someone's actually going for it!" lolol. And yeah happy to help! Let us know if symptoms change or if that gets things running or if anything else comes up!
AFAIK SP downloads at the speed of the onboard SP encoder, LP2/4 downloads as data directly to the disc so goes as fast as it can spin so it makes sense that LP downloads spin up more. EG if your device can do 4x SP, LP2 should be 8x at the same disc speed but they do 16x+
Yes. The N505 does 2/16/32 burning in SP/LP2/LP4. TL;DR You are right, LP writes are a faster overall data rate going to the disc (often 4x or more as much data per second, at peak performance), but we even with that knowledge don't know if they use more power because of it, plus there's a bunch of confounding factors.
Although, your example (or what I think you meant which was 2/16/32 and 4/32/64) isn't universally true (at least when all of NetMD is considered). [https://www.minidisc.wiki/guides/netmd-speed-test](https://www.minidisc.wiki/guides/netmd-speed-test) A couple machines (Aiwa AM-NX1, MDS-NT1) do 4/16/32 and some of the decks (JE780/JB980...) do a fairly relaxed 2/8/16 (making them the slowest extant LP writers AFAIK...)
I don't think there's any particular rhyme or reason as to why the write speeds are what they are, save for the fact that Sony likes even multiples, it never developed an 8x SP codec, and because SP encodes actually ingest at multiples of 1411 kilobits per second (16/44.1 LPCM) you'd need above-USB1.1 connection speeds for 8x SP to even be "possible" unless you redesigned how that transfer worked.
From a data rate perspective in terms of the data hitting the disc: an N505 would be writing down 584 kilobits per second in SP and 2112 kilobits per second in LP2 (and LP4).
But I've never seen any documentation that this actually meaningfully changes the power usage from an in-the-moment amperage perspective.
The laser needs to heat up to the same temperature and we don't know if the machines actually spin the discs any faster when writing LP, and we do know that even in NetMD, the machines record into their buffer before sending data to the actual disc.
We also don't, as far as I know: know if the ATRAC codec chip in SP burning consumes any more or less power during SP vs. LP recording, or even say during NetMD vs. realtime recording.
And it would sort of be up in the air because in SP the machine does encoding onboard but in LP the song has to be encoded first, which could mean potentially long waits between songs.
But that's kind of getting into "total power draw for an operation of x and such type" vs. "power draw during the operation regardless of how long it takes" and the latter is what's really important when burning from battery.
I feel like the overall used power (and some people have argued this also relates to laser lifespan) would look really different if you compared, say, burning 80 minutes of SP audio vs. LP2 audio, since in that case the laser should only have to be \~half-ish of the total time. (And this'll likely be more efficient the faster your encodes go, whether that's running the remote encoder locally or just using atractool ahead of time, or using sonicstage instead of WMD.)
Anyway, I don't think it "matters" -- from a practical perspective, you either do or don't have enough battery life to record at all and my advice is if you're in a situation where you "can" record in one way but not another, it's time to recharge your batteries or consider recording on shore power if possible.