Making a tape or two

Here at That Boarding School Girl apart from being annoyed but not surprised at the Bear Pit that was Wednesday's activity in the House of Commons, I am unwell with a rotten  cold and cough so haven't been out on Thursday, not feeling up to much at all. 

Anyway continuing on a bit from last weeks post, the point behind having the cassette deck wired in was not just to play any old cassettes either pre-recorded on older ones of mine but to also to make new ones.

 As you will see in this picture, I have a portable cassette player aka a "Walkman" although that strictly speaking is a Sony term that while only playing in one direction before the tape stops and you turn it over, does feature Dolby B noise reduction for tapes made with it, a five band equalizer that acts like tone controls  to alter the sound to your tastes and a tape selector for tapes made to play in "Normal" or "Chrome/Metal" positions.

Around it are three tapes I made, one an original and the two Beatles ones I did this week on the Technics cassette deck.

One thing that those not brought up in the tape era won't realize is while a tape has a set playing time that time is not only halved across two sides equally but doesn't necessarily easily fit an album because either one side is longer than the tape's side or as with the Beatles 1962-1966 it is an album that runs for sixty-three minutes which would be too short for a seventy-four or ninety minute tape with lots of minutes of blank tape to get through before the second side and slightly too long for a sixty minute tape.

I decided with that one to remove a couple of songs that were not necessary and move one song to the second side to get it to neatly fit on a that sixty minute tape.

Likewise to get the forty nine minutes per side of the matching 1967-1970 album to a ninety minute tape I deleted a track from each side which left only a minute of blank tape from each of the tape which was very neat!

Project x part XII - simplification

This series of articles dates back to 2015 with the last entry from May of 2018 where we change the amplifier to better quality one.
Unfortunately when I went to put it one a couple of weeks ago the red power indicator came on for a second followed by a deep thud. Subsequent tests show it blew a few fuse and a number of transistors in the power amp.
This was a good time as any to try and simplify matters by adding one of the popular mini hifi components that have been around for the last fifteen or so years that typically comprise of a amplifier with built in cd player and tuner unit.
Denon are a very well respected maker of hifi components whose systems like that are frequent hifi award winners in that category.

The UD-M31 is a typical example of the breed being small , remote control driven with a RDS radio built in that does looks really smart.
There is a small 3.5mm headphone socket on the front that automatically switches out the loud speakers which were optional with model and not supplied .

 Looking at the rear panel you have antenna sockets for AM and FM radio and unlike the latest units two sets of line sockets that comprise of inputs AND outputs which means you can plug in recorders such as a cassette deck or MiniDisc easily and for MiniDisc there is an optical output for recording from cd which was the main digital input connector for them used for recording.
There are the pair of spring clip loud speaker connects right, then left for this units 22 watts per channel RMS which is the same as the previous one and notably higher than the original which will work well with the Wharfdale Delta 30's

 The cassette deck wired in with all its fancy tape tuning and display adjustment has a mechanically operated draw and the ability to insert four second pauses between recordings that helps when using tape searching systems like APSS.
It has a dedicated headphone output with its own volume control for monitoring.

Giving Nipper new teeth

Between Donald Tusk insulting UK politicians which could just be the kerosene to be poured on Brexit with a free match as if we didn't need any more animosity, some good news did emerge on Tuesday regarding one of stories late 2018.

 Canadian record retailer, Sunrise agreed to pay for 100 of HMV UK's stores with closures of 27 least profitable, planning to stock a higher amount of vinyl records which generally have a higher mark up than cds and less at risk from people streaming instead of buying which has been the case with dvd and blu-ray's as much as some such as myself do buy titles that wish to own.
Sunrise in 2017 bought out HMV Canada that was failing and has managed to turn the store group around although like the proposals here, a number were shut in what was a black period for music retail in that country with Sam The Record Man being shut a couple of years before with reduced sales and higher rent charges in places like downtown Toronto.
Great Britain is the second biggest player in popular music and a major one in English language arts in general home of course not just to the vast expanse of London Theatreland but to Pinewood, the UK's Hollywood often use by American owned film companies.
To that extent we absolutely need a shop front for our creative arts where artists can do signings, 'pop up' short performances and places where staff do know and share knowledge about music.
I am and strongly support independent music retailers as until the arrival of HMV in 1992 in this district we had a good number of our own such as the much missed Mike Lloyd Megastores in Stoke City centre, Newcastle under Lyme, Stafford and  Wolverhampton and their encouragement in exploring music set my passion off buying albums.
Most went when firstly supermarkets started selling top sellers off cheaply and then Amazon were selling back catalogue titles for less than they could manage but HMV survived until 2013 and after then  our two branches in Stoke and Wolverhampton still did good business until the recent administration and were where I bought new vinyl albums by bands I liked. 
The staff when I went in twice recently were very friendly, there is something about handling and looking through a rack that's just not the same as going on a web site so I hope this is successful.

Introducing Selena - from christmas of the past

After last weeks excursion into the early nineteen-seventies,  we are going forward into the past here by looking at something I had for Christmas but in nineteen seventy-nine instead which as anyone who lived through that time knows also was turbulent politically.

The cold war was very much still on but for all of that trade with what was the U.S.S.R was fairly common place and ownership of soviet era cars, cameras and electrical goods was popular partially down to price compared with West European and Japanese models but also because being in production for longer they did appeal to traditionalists.
The Vega Selena B212 was unlike anything made by Panasonic, Grundig or Sony in a number of ways such as it featured a wooden cabinet which was unheard off aiding the sound.
You just didn't get that then anywhere else.
An unusually feature was the use of a mechanical rotating Turret that had been a common fixture of televisions featuring VHF reception to change the wavebands which again was unusual for a domestic rather than one designed for radio operators in that it had five short wave bands that typically were used for international broadcasting as  the signals could travel thousands of miles.

The one criticism that could be made was the tuning scale was only marked in a fairly rudimentary way but in terms of sensitivity it was surprisingly good and it did feature a signal strength indicator that could be illuminated.
Frequencies are marked in metres except for FM where they use megahertz
The waveband in use was indicated directly through a cut out on the tuning scale.
That was major appeal to me as listening to short wave transmissions is something I did from an early age so to have it on fairly portable radio - weighing four kilos it is fairly portable and not as light as most of competition was an advantage.

This is the 'gubbins' of it - the main assembly where on the bottom right you can see the turret with its coil packs,on the top  the old school but still good silver hatted transistors because no integrated circuits were used, plus on the far left mains cord connector, D.I.N. connector for monaural record and replay from tape recorders and a earphone socket.
 As well on the turret is the AM antenna and ground connectors although for AM there is a ferrite rod and for FM and shortwave a telescopic antenna built in on the top of the case.
It was relatively inexpensive too so to have something that performed well, looked like a piece of furniture and portable was great.
It was the radio I listened to the Abba concert from Wembley on that Christmas and one reason why I fondly remember having it.

Writing MiniDiscs in 2018!

Okay I got your attention....

 In another week interrupted by events of a medical nature, apart from some reading, I have been reacquainted with something that was a big part of period I was very unwell a good while back to the point I was unable to use my trusty tape recorder because using the controls didn't just feel very painful, they made  my hands shake violently.
Equally I was finding handling records nay even on bad days compact discs difficult which if you are a music lover made you feel ten times worse cos you couldn't enjoy it anymore
I bought what was then a new kind of recorder with small fully protected discs and soft buttons (plus remote) called a MiniDisc recorder and had many of my records and cds put on them so I could play them without risk of me making my illness worse or damaging them.
It also enabled me to make recordings from radio, topping and trimming introductions later on as used to do using splicing tape to make excellent copies to play whenever I was in the mood to.
Anyway I found my portable recorder and set about making a few new discs because although this is 2018, surprisingly the minidisc sounds at least as good as an Mp3, almost as good as a cd on a good machine and there's something nice about having a physical object in your hand to play.

That folks is a ten pack of 74 minute MiniDiscs bought new  to make some new home recordings on.
I've spent the week copying my Rumer and Rolling Stones albums to it which will play on my original bought in 1998 MiniDisc walkman pictured below .

 That, with a high metal content still works as well as it did back then when it used to live in my coat pocked with a couple of spare NiMH rechargable batteries and a few discs sounding superb on my Sennheiser headphones.

Going back to the Seventies

While I'm preparing to be off having packed my case, tote bags and lord knows what else you take and find you really didn't need as much here's this weeks main post, a day earlier.
There are times not least with the more middles life I have I feel that we over complicate things not least compared to how things were in the past where we may of had less options but we just got on with it.
Like today we download things or stream them but there are different places, different formats and you're never quite sure if even an album will playback in the right order as different software works different sometimes having things playing in alphabetical order before now.

It was so much easier when this and it's ilk ruled the home entertainment roost as you just put a record  on and it just played it and if you wanted to hear the latest sounds you just spun the tuning dial and that was it no need for software upgrades and the like.Need to make a personalized selection then the cassette unit would let you do that from any source and play it on the 'Walkman'.
There are times when there's something to be said for keeping it simple.

Typing anew

Here at That Boarding School Girl, I am slowly getting used to working with the Chromebook mentioned on the other blog which isn't what I use here normally but is very handy for quickly checking and posting on various sites.
It's also very quick for posting blogs on although it cannot by design run full blown programs only apps that run through the Chrome Browser.
Because much of my bigger side does things like copy cds to digital files, buys files from places like iTunes plus works with pictures from my digital camera I do have a bit of a need for my Windows Laptop although to be honest a good 95% of what I do can be done at least as well on that Chromebook.

Project X, Part V, playing tapes

Project X is alive and well playing music in Lossy and Lossless forms from my Fiio music players line output from one of Eight micro sd cards as well as from a elderly Toshiba cd player.
I like quite a few people have a good number of cassettes not least pre-recorded ones I bought from the mid 1970's to mid 1990's I moved from cassette based portable listening to MiniDisc and had been thinking of how to play them back on this mini system.

Enter a unused Sony TX 313 mini sized fully functional cassette deck from a MiniDisc system I got from someone who never ever used it so it was still boxed and shrinkwrapped from the late 1990's.
Oddly enough it uses a car type side slot way of loading the tapes into it but unlike car units this does record and has auto tape type sensing to read the extra tabs for type II ('Chrome') and IV (Metal) tapes although the latter are no longer available new plus I seriously doubt it's tape heads really are up to making full advantage of such tapes electrically

The rear has RCA line in and outs, with the out going via a expensive Cambridge Pacific interconnect to the input selector with a maximum of 0.5 volts out depending on the program loudness and the AV bus for Sony mini systems it was sold with for synchronized cd to tape copying.
The unit is blessed with switchable Dolby B noise reduction for proper replay and recording of such tapes plus auto reverse so it can play one  side of the tape and switch by itself to the other. 
According to the specifications it reproduces up to 14khz for type I tapes and 15khz for types II and IV which is decent if not as wide as most full sized hifi cassette decks so the high frequencies will be clear but not quite as extended as the best units can achieve.
It is making an excellent job of replaying my 1980's EMI UK dolbyized Beatles pre-recorded cassettes which were amongst the best sounded tapes manufactured and part of reason I held out so long against the cd as portable listening was and remains a big part of my life and why my Fiio is my 'to go' digital playing device on headphones or connected to this system.
I like high quality portable formats more

The end of play?

One thing a good number of people in my neighbourhood have remarked upon is the quietness of the sidewalk during the local school half-term break this year with seldom a child been seen out of doors in the park, on the sidewalk nor the local stores on their own.
This is particularly noticeable around of the Senior School age group and a number of parents put it to me that there children preferred to play games and socialize online even when they only be a few blocks away to physically venturing out to perform some shared activity together.
I just can't help but wonder how this is likely to effect how as grown ups they will relate to one another in the work place and the wider community, never mind any effects on their health.

Things that could be better

This week while it's raining I'll talk about a few things that annoy me.
Firefox: under the hood it is great and I was a noted proselytizer for in in the mid 2000's when many of us were hacked off with Internet Exploder 6 and 7 but why do you need to keep changing your mind over where to put ones bookmarks?  And what was wrong with that Orange tab on the top left that conveniently put browser functions like download and search history in one spot?
It seems to me you're trying to be Chrome  and while that isn't a bad browser I never felt at home it layout-wise.
That's one reason while on the old desktop I use Pale Moon as it's  a less fussed with lighter version of Firefox I can just get on with.
iTunes: The store is a bit clunky but I much prefer the downloads from it, not least the Mastered For iTunes sort for quality  but why is the ripping utility so slow at converting your cds that it's rare to get much above 6x the speed near the end of the session and often less so copying the cd takes over ten minutes? As crazy as it sounds it's quicker to buy and download the commercial download from the iTunes store complete with artwork. Plus at least when ripping to Aac (M4A) there are times when the version from the same source sounds better in the Store and I rather suspect they've not updated it compared to what they use commercially.
Certainly other programs such as dbPoweramp do a much quicker, accurate and more integrated job of this. Maybe it's corporate pride that prevents them from asking somebody to make a better version that  also does Flac (free lossless) that an increasing bumber of portable players can use.
Freeview: Britishers know all about this, the free to air via antenna tv service we've had since October 30, 2002 but while the idea is good, it suffers from a good number of 'placeholders' typically one hour behind versions of main channels just to keep the slot for the owners while capacity is limited. Platform regulation doesn't extend to such notions as having to use for new channels or lose your slot that might improve programming.
Another issue is HD programming where a number of secondary ITV channels and Channel five are only available via satellite based pay tv while the standard versions are on Freeview. Why should you have to a pay a monthly  premium to watch free commercial channels?

Revolving discs

In what might be the final post in the current series I recently changed another part of my stereo system recently.
I'll save the long story of how this system got put together but as far as amplification went I was having problems going loud with my loud speakers with a Tubed power amplifier and control unit (the bit that selects what you play from) so it was replaced by a much powerful solid state integrated one (in plain speak the control unit bit and power amplifier in one unit)  made by Rotel. The thing about this unit was it didn't have an input designed for a record deck to plugged straight in.

Currently it has a Stanton 681EEE cartridge in it and it need something to make its output much bigger and adjust the sound from the cartridge so it matches that the record was cut with (when you cut a record you reduce the low notes and increase the high ones to reduce surface noise and increase playing time). I had such a unit by Hart Electronics but the output was too high causing distortion and even putting reducers in the output leads didn't quite cure it all as I think it was getting a little distorted in its internal circuits.
As it happened Rotel made a unit specifically for my integrated amplifier and a few similar products whose output matched exactly the sort it's input stage was designed for.

 It needless to say is a perfect visual match for my integrated amplifier.

The unit can handle standard Moving magnet as well as dearer Moving Coil cartridges selected using a switch at the rear. Its previous owner was only selling it cos he had another similar unit so it was spare.
After quickly plugging the wires in and connecting the grounding tag on the record deck to a special connector on the unit, I tried a few records I know well. The obvious thing was the loss of a niggling feeling of harshness in the louder passages where the other unit was close to overloading, sweeter high notes and a better sense of where in a stereo mix the different instruments are located in space.
To be honest, had I of planned to have gotten this amplifier first I'd of gotten this unit straightaway.
It makes listening to records old or new ones such as David Bowie's recent The Next Day that I have on vinyl so much more enjoyable.
I did notice a little hum but that's due to a lead in my head-shell being a bit worn having swapped it out for another one so I've ordered a new headshell and will get cartridge remounted to it.

Caution you may become an O.A.P

First of all I'd like to start this edition of ze blog off by wishing everyone a happy new year and hope your plans do come to fruition.
One thing about new years is it reminds me about getting physically older even if somedays I don't half feel rough just wondering what I'll be like by the point I get into my sixties and that takes me to this weeks subject.
When you get to the point you need a lot of looking after often people move into care homes sometimes by pure choice sometimes because the Local Authority who part fund care having done the math have decided having people coming to you would cost more than you going into care.
Now the UK like many western societies, has an aging population so more folks are requiring care provision which is currently troubling our Politicians. They think they have a plan but the treasury are stalling over paying for it. It is being suggested that money currently given to every pensioner to cover the additional costs of staying warm in our cold winters - a cost that is increasing as energy costs are going through the roof - should only be given to the very poorest of pensioners. The idea being mooted is the money saved would go to pay toward care costs.
One problem I can see straight off is this will require systems and people to assess income levels to determine who gets it and who doesn't so you may not have that much by way of savings. Also in my experience, some people over 65 are still paying their mortgages off and if they have say more than £150 per week coming in it may be they have less disposable income than someone just under that amount who will get additional help.
Is that fair?
One is also inclined to say why is is  that this Winter Fuel Allowance rather like the welfare bill is touchable but Overseas Aid is not particular as many reports do question it's effectiveness in helping the disadvantaged overseas? And would it not make more sense to review the cost from the commitment to Co2 emission restrictions placed on energy providers that are in part pushing up the costs of heating our homes and factories?
If energy prices could be reduced then apart from anything else the cost of the Winter Fuel Allowance might well be more sustainable. And even now pensioners are going short on heat.
I can see this upcoming year being a worrying time for the elderly.

The changing face of computing

I just love this illustration  for the Microsoft Surface tablet that converts to a netbook although one hopes you can tweak the operating system to restore the Start button replace Internet Exploder 10 with Firefox or Chrome and install Foxit PDF reader rather than the bloated Adobe one that nags you every two to three weeks.
In 2012 we expect to keep up to speed with life online so products like this slot much better into our personal lives than old style desk top computers that still may have advantages for some types of work.
Having just visited one forum where this came up, I''ll end by saying online North American English is very prevalent and whatever your feelings around that might be, it's as well to get to grips with it.

Communication breakdown

Getting hot don't you think?
The day got off to good start when my digital set top box that thing that feeds my old school tv decided to expire. I mean I woke up earlier with it still being warm at 4:30AM putting on the BBC's news channel to catch up with the latest G4S disasters, dozed back of to sleep only to wake up at 5:15 to an alternating black screen and white noise from the old built in analogue tuner in the TV itself!
I bought this around late October 2006 when my old STB a Nokia left by ONdigital, the worlds first Digital tv via an antenna company, was liquidated in 2002 and I've a fair idea of what happened. It's most likely to be  power supply issue involved a couple of capacitors that have gone short circuit having leaked. It's a very common problem in consumer electronics as to keep costs down, they use underrated components assuming by time they've failed, you'll sent it to landfill and buy another. I just might unscrew it and have a go fixing it although I found a dirt cheap replacement in a local charity store that's a deadringer for it using the same chassis but just different switches and a marginally different remote.
I'm tempted to look for a FreeviewHD USB adapter for the laptop instead as it can handle 720P pictures. 
Sunday saw a big fibre trunk outage that made using the internet for chat rooms a pain as it was taking over a minute for a few words you typed to come back. From what I read while at work, it covered Devon up to Manchester via Birmingham as as somehow they internet things I'm in Wolverhampton of all places and they'd get their feed from Brum, that's what happened running through midnight Sunday. It's been fine afterwards but after  over a week of well nigh perfect broadband and darn quick uploading, it left me a bit down.
This afternoon I'll watch the Women's soccer on the BBC the first pre Olympic event.

Ziggy Stardust

A few weeks and forty odd years ago an album was issued that became in many respects bigger than the artists own profile dominating the popular music scene for 1972/3.
It's an album almost  every student of any generation feels they have to heard never mind own regardless of what format may be prevailent at the time and it was a major musical and social influence either on me at that time.
Ziggy Stardust is a character - a singer in a rock band - and through him we see his raise to fame and tellingly his burn out that mirrors all too sadly what actually happens in real life. Everybody wants a piece of his pie from the management team, record label  even ultimately, the fans themselves and the artist struggles to "Hang on to yourself" to quote the title of one of the songs featured.
If the Monkees were a made for TV fabrication of a rock group based upon the Beatles, here was in many ways a more credible fabrication for the modern era -  a complete fabrication from individuals persona onward.
If one goes down Heddon Street, London the buildings in the cover shot can be seen although the trash can and K West sign are long gone.
The first single off the album was Starman and I recall the first time I heard that on the radio well being aware from the billboards and older friends of this Bowie character. What got to me about was -and still is - is the sense of detachment, alienation even of the lead character in the lyrics and the unamerican style of singing.
I first had the album on RCA 8 track tape although my brother had the lp and have been through cassette and cd versions.
This album has been re-issued numerous times and unfortunately like most of David Bowie's back catalogue their is no such thing as a really good cd version although on the advice of a friend of mine, Keith H in Ohio, I got the original RCA cds from the mid 1980's which were more listenable than either the thin sounding EMI (US: Ryko) titles from 1990/91 with bonus tracks or Peter Mew's bloated and highly compressed versions from 1999 on EMI (US: Virgin).
In 1990 a boxed edition was issued by EMI with a  72 page booklet with the regular cd
recognizing it's iconic status and this June  two new editions came out.
The cd version is just a straight re-issue of the 11 track album in a card digpack cover which I can't say I really like as packaging preferring Mini Lp style i we're having paper based.
While there is a little compression on it compared to the 1984 RCA, the tonality is spot on and let's be honest here the analogue to digital conversion technology has come an awful lot in 28 years (I can hear the convertors' sound on many older cds) so for the first time ever there is a pretty acceptable in print cd even though I won't be tossing out the RCA.
Secondly and even better news is that there was a new lp lovingly mastered by Ray Staff who used to work at Porky's mastering that many of us feel surpasses the original UK orange RCA lp when it comes to sound quality and dead quiet surfaces. It comes with a audio dvd that will play on a computer or Blue-ray player capable of 96khz/24Bit resolution (most do) offering  both stereo and 5.1 surround sound mixes with bonus tracks which will sound smoother than the regular cd.
Recommended.

Staying connected

For as long as I recall staying connected especially in cyber life has always been a tricky business as I'm sure many of you recall early cellphones were just that phones for use on the move and texting was seen as a near miraculous thing you could use to set up social meets with a written record of who was going where to met with who.
The modern smartphone does more such as offering the ability to view and listen to media and well as messaging or even Email.
As good as they are the one disadvantage is the small screen size an area Apple tackled with it's iPad silly name but essentially a biggish tablet that makes reading online media such as newspapers easier using touch screen technology and 'apps'.
These have been generally quite expensive for the facilities compared with a notebook or budget lap tops which are also kind of portable but overnight Amazon the world online supplier of books and so much more announced an number of new products such as it's latest Kindle Ebook reader.
The one 'wow' product was however the Amazon Fire a tablet a little smaller than Apple's but with a much much lower cost - $199 (UK £130) offering much of the functionality you would expect of a more expensive model.
With a 7 inch two touch screen set in charcoal grey case it's big enough to read websites clearly at normal distances and allow easy following of chatroom sessions - something that can be hard going on a smartphone - and takes many Android apps.
Featured apps for Amazon’s Android Appstore such as Pandora, Twitter, Facebook, and, most notably, Netflix Kindle store, Amazon MP3, and Prime Instant Video. Nearly all of Amazon’s recent news, Amazon Cloud Player, Amazon Cloud Drive, Kindle Cloud Reader, the streaming deals with Fox and NBCUniversal in the states , were in preparation for the Fire.
It seems obvious Amazon are gunning for the iPad's experience although it lakes camera, mic and 3G although frankly most users would be likely to use the built in wifi for series streaming.
Personally I'm very interested having a use to read certain web sites and follow 2 hour chat sessions without wishing to fire up my main energy hungry PC and that price is a killer.

Sansa Personal Music Player

Coming soon is a new personal music player to better integrate with my PC audio needs and increased buying of Downloaded albums.
The history of this integration is a painful one involving buying several years ago a Sony Hi-MD recorder that was meant to enable easy file transfer from cd and downloaded Mp3's but was let down by rubbishy bug ridden software and its inability when connected up to transfer using the original stereo Mindisc standard for compatibility with my home deck with the advantage of automatic track naming which as an R.S.I. survivor would of been a godsend.
Said machine sits gathering dust most days as its own control interface is one of worst ergonomically of any recorder of any type I've ever owned and I struggle to use it with my condition.
Instead I use my Sharp MD portable which sounds really good to play discs recorded on the home deck (a Sony MDS JB940QS) in Stereo (or mono mode) for the best sound quality but to transfer program from PC I need to burn off the content as an audio cd and copy that in real time and then title it up by hand.
I love the format and don't mind a bit of titling but sometimes it would be easier to just transfer the file over to a player and listen to that and with Minidisc generally speaking it's one disc to take out with you for each album you might fancy listening to.
That's where this upcoming Sensa Clip+ player is meant to slot in as it handles Mp3, Wma (Windoze own format), The Open Source Ogg Vorbis as well as the lossless codec Flac which gives full cd quality native. It doesn't do Apples AAC but as I don't use iTunes and its store that's no loss plus with dbPoweramp's batch converter I can convert to Mp3 if someone got me a file in that form.
What it does have going for it is the capacity about 7.36GB after it's file management has taken a bite (or is that byte!) plus the ability to add an extra micro SD type card (up to 16GB) to expand it or slot in a selection of albums ready done for a low price.
If you buy one and for what Amazon are charging it could be just the thing for you I would visit the Sandisk website and download the full manual in American English as the instructions supplied with the player are a bit skimpy.
When you connect it to your computer using a USB to mini USB lead you'll see it as an external device via the usual interface - in Windows 'My Computer'.
Clicking on that to get to 'Internal memory' and then clicking that will get you to the folders when you drag and drop your music to.
I cheated a little and cut and pasted mine to 'Albums' rather than 'Music' as i don't use Windows Media Player and didn't feel liking having to.
If you didn't use Windows Media Player this next bit is critical:
When you have loaded the player use the down key (The one at 'Six o'clock') to go down to 'Folder'. okay that and hunt for 'Albums'. Having found the Album you want, okay that and okay play all for that album.
That way the player finds all the files (songs) in that album in the order you ripped them as the other options are really for those who used Windows Media Player and don't synchronize up right, something I found out the hard way!
The sound quality is very good - the very lowest bass isn't as good as my Minidisc but close lacking the bloatedness often found while the mids and high notes are very smooth on my Sennhesier HD201's driving them well.
If you told your player you lived in North America which I did you defeat that EU inspired obligatory limiter that getting decent sound levels into higher quality less sensitive headphones such as Sennhesier's difficult by cutting out when the voltage goes above a preset level.
Unfortunately the EU bureaucrats didn't understand how loud a pair of headphones go depends on their sensitivity and that varies.Grrr!!!
I find using it pretty intuitive.

Gremlins!

USB sticks. Don'tcha just love them?
Well I did but one drove me crazy last night as the model concerned a 4GB HP branded one corrupted an entire picture album and about 12 others which would of been annoying enough but when you put a lot of time into making the photo opportunity happen is really meh!
What made things more worrying was I'd deleted the pictures on the camera- an aged Pentax 230 that while not as well specified as my Canon Powershot470 does offer a flip to the front display and more intuitive access for the self timer - so that days shot was potentially lost.
Luckily Jess answered a request for practical help suggesting using a recovery program for the cameras CF card (things are not so much deleted permanently as made inaccessible) and putting that on the computer. Eventually I managed it.
All I have to do now is load a newer version of Photosuite (V5) onto the PC as the C:My Documents and Folders photoshop master album has become corrupted and says it won't save although you can save to and from the desktop. And as it said as Photoshop 4 SE existed it wouldn't let me re-install the program from disc!
I'll get a San Disk replacement USB stick later on.

Introducing the Philips 3310/05

Just bought this DVD player from Philips for my Hi-Vi requirements that can be made multi-regional at the press of a few buttons on the handset.
1. Open the tray
2. Press "9879", followed by the desired region code ("0" for all regions/region-free/multi-region)
3. Press "OK"
It has progressive scan on the component outputs and a co-axial audio digital output for PCM or multichannel usage.The images are pin sharp with finely detailed colours.

Sony MZ-E 20 MD Player

Now this takes me back a few years, May 1998 to be exact when I ordered this, a portable MiniDisc player up over the phone demanding delivery before 11AM the next day as I had a works meeting to attend.
It's battery consumption wasn't great - 4 hours max on two AA cells - but it sounded really good on pre-recorded discs such as the Sade title in the picture below or those I recorded myself on the home deck I had bought some 15 months previous.
It still works today!