MP3s and Sony PDAs

Odd. I’ve just splashed out on a Sony PDA that is supposed to play MP3s too.

I’ve figured out how everything works, but don’t read chinese so I can’t address one small issue that’s really pissing me off.

Some, but not all of my MP3s won’t play. It comes back with an error message:

“The memory stick media is write-protected or does not support copyright control, or the track file is corrupted.”

Now if I’ve just reformatted a memory stick from my camera, and it’ll always play some tracks, but never certain others, then the problem shouldn’t be with the media. Or am I missing something?

The tracks play fine using Winamp, so I’m inclined to think there’s no problem there either.

Looking at the problem more closely it seems that most of the tracks I have problems with are those I’ve ripped from my own CDs using Audiograbber. Most of what I’ve downloaded via gnutella seems to work fine.

If the law (I’m assuming we’re talking about US law, as we’re using the Palm OS here) says that I can make copies of CDs I’ve bought for my own personal use then where’s the copyright problem? It seems rather absurd that I can play pirated music, but not the legal stuff.

Any ideas anyone?

I am only guessing:

Could it be the bit rate of the MP3s that you are ripping from Audiograbber? Maybe the Sony device only accepts MP3s with certain bitrate.

I guess this might be a DRM problem - welcome to the 21st century… My 650 with japanese OS works fine (you can copy MP3s directly into the MSAUDIO subdirectory on the MS, use MSIMPORT on the Clie and the MS appears as a drive on your PC), but I read complaints from american users (with english OS of course) who had to use white MSGate and needed to convert each MP3 into ATRAC to play it on their Clie. Maybe some googling will help you…