sfbp

Aha! If the first one (THAT ALREADY WORKED) now fails, something else has gone wrong. You can ignore all of my ramblings. Focus instead on whatever you are using to connect. Question: do you have another MD unit you can try? Sounds to me most likely the MD just upped and died.

Search for posts by Bluecrab here. He's the man for direct defeating of SCMS. Your first CD was not protected. Your second was most likely a second generation CD (made by a legitimate copy from a normal CD by a piece of software that respects the SCMS rules). Also it's possible there are commercial CD's out there similarly protected, but I just haven't seen any myself. I assume from the above that you are gping back and verifying you can still copy from the first CD at the end of all this pallava. You can buy an SCMS stripper, or you can rip the CD's into your PC and get rid of it in software. Finally, some of the CD-MD combo decks will permit an analog copy when the digital copy fails. That's what's happening here. Good luck. Very likely this was intended behaviour.

Very nice review. Even if I did help, I contributed no content. My personal favourite player (for LP2 and other bit rates as well) is the MZ-EH70 which is built like a tank and plays everything flawlessly. It needs the RM-MC40ELK, to make sense of it, however, because it has no screen and few buttons. I love the MZ-RH910's sound, but I have had a fair amount of grief with this model, and so have others. The RH1 is the undisputed best, but it stays in the drawer and gets pulled out for uploads (of LP2 recordings made on a full size MDLP deck), following the trouble I had with the jog lever (and it appears I am not alone in this). The NH700 is good too, just a little bulkier in the pocket. Stephen

Consider the DVP-CX995V, DVP-CX985V, and BDP-CX7000ES (there was supposed to be a BDP-CX960 but it never shipped in quantity as you cannot find one on Ebay). They all play CD's. The last one plays MP3 CD's too, even MP3 DVDs, IIRC. Its list price of $1900 seems to have dropped to a street price (on ebay) of under $600.

That may easily be because DVD Audio is 24-bits, and so is MD.

The only problem with the MZ-1 reported, seems to be, that the ATRAC codec is rather elementary. SCMS and the other protection schemes are now mostly avoidable, at a minimum.

I think he meant, how to get it fixed. 1. send it to Jim 2. buy another, newer model (JE640 my favourite as it does MDLP quite nicely) S

100 cases for 100 decks (just kidding)............?

That's what a DVD Audio disk *is*. I'm sorry, that was wrong. The ripper I used was designed for regular DVD's. On consulting the source of all knowledge (Wikipedia) and then double-checking the disk (it is only my second DVD audio disk and the first one I tried to rip) it seems that the VOB files for a regular DVD video are included. So perhaps you need to find a DVD Audio ripper specifically designed. I see there are several when I googled them just now. Sorry for any confusion. Mind you the result of the rip of the VOB files still sounded pretty good. If you want the really high quality of the DVD audio (AOB files, judging by their sizes) then you need to rip them instead.

And.... I note that it is possible to get the 48khz wav file into Sonic Stage. It may be my imagination but it seemed to me that the non-resampled version sounded better. What's even more interesting is that Sonic Stage actually converted this 48Khz wav file with resampling to Hi-SP (it wouldn't do AAL but that's a different issue, probably more about not being allowed to do something than whether it is technically possible). I just used BeSweet to get the 6 mono wav files instead. Now I am going to try making something with them using Sound Forge 9. Nope, that doesn't work, maybe the "lite" version I got doesn't support multichannel at all - any ideas?

No I don't, as I don't have one. But the circuitry should be there. I am disappointed to hear that you cannot get it to work. If you look at page 32 of the service manual it very clearly shows the keyboard port connected to both I2C clk/data as well as keyboard clk/data. And this is clearly backed up by the wording at http://minidisc.org/...MDS-JB940.html. I have no idea if it's possible to make a signal converter between the Control-A1 and I2C. Maybe there isn't any, it just has to be hooked up. This is a question for Jim Hoggarth. However inspection of the manual doesn't mention PCLink. Weird. This page seems to indicate that both D5C and JB940 should work with PCLink. But I am certain my D5C does not. However the gold-coloured D5C made in Japan actually says "PCLink" on it. But neither does Camron's (I asked him) or mine, they each have that same connector labeled "Keyboard". Conclusion: the Japan-only version differs. The service manual for US/Canada D5C doesn't show any connections for I2C in the way that the JB940 service manual does. If I had to guess I would say you probably need to go BACK to the earliest version of M-Crew, rather than FORWARD to the latest which supports your MDS-PC3 and the combo decks such as MXD-D40. In the final event it may be more about cutting wires in that connector than making extra ones. One more thought: could it be that you have to set to Japanese keyboard? (Page 46 of the user manual)

Sorry by "lossless" i meant lossless compression. Of course I accept there are players that play uncompressed wav (even if it's the PCM-M10 or the ICD-SX750 series). I also challenge whether any PORTABLE will actually give you anything other than worn out batteries, relative to a decent compression such as ATRAC that actually delivers good reconstruction of the sound to headphones. I totally accept that for a hifi system uncompressed is pretty darned good, depending on Fs. However ATRAC compressed 10x at 44.1 (or A3+ 20x) will beat uncompressed at 22.05 any day of the week, IMO. The major advantage of uncompressed (or lossless-->> uncompressed) is that it leads to reliable editing with few digital rounding errors, and also conversion (ditto ditto). If you already have a good sound already recorded, that data rate can be as low as 66kbps (in my personal experience) and still give decent playback. Quality depends much more on how it got there. I've heard plenty of crappy wav files in my time. Stephen

Works fine. Disk arrived today. Try it, let me know where you get stuck. There may be some steps that are quite unnecessary, so I am not going to confuse everyone until you have tried it. Installing BeSweet may or may not be simple. I did it the hard way, but there's probably an easy way.

If you didn't decrypt the tracks (File Conversion Tool) then you will need to reauthenticate the db. This requires access to the internet, as a minimum. If you haven't messed up too much on the Windows partition you may be ok. If you formatted it fresh, you are out of luck. However there is now, or soon, a version of ffmpeg that can convert all your tracks. But it will take you a long time if there are lots of them. In the old days you would have lost the lot.

I truly believe there is no portable (Sony) player now or in the future where you can experience lossless playback. You will hear no difference. Same for automobile. The subtle extras you might get from the sound being uncompressed are guaranteed to be swallowed up by road noise. Sony's ATRAC compression technology (the reason we are all here to begin with) is amazing, and way better than MP3. The other disadvantage of uncompressed playback is that it eats memory. Why carry 160GB (currently not possible anyway) when you can carry 16GB, given the compression factor of ATRAC?

MD can handle 32 or 48 too - just not 88,96, and higher. Generally DVD and TV digital programs put out 48.

If you want to listen to SP on your bookshelf, the best way is to get a CD-MD deck (or another CD-MD bookshelf). Converting **via** uncompressed on your computer will not work well with what Sony supplies (Sonic Stage), you need to use the open software EAC to get good results for the import, in fact. Converting **from** that to SP is a poor process, and only gives you the effect of 132kbps on MD, in terms of quality. Many people (but not all) believe that the "good enough" route is direct from CD to LP2 (132kbps), using SS or SImple Burner. But that doesn't help you, since you can not listen to LP2. Your RH1 would be able to listen to any MP3 without further conversion. But don't bother with the earlier MD revisions, the MP3 support was not very good. Instead of spending (as you say) $$$ on RH1, why not get a bookshelf unit with HiMD? There a couple of good ones made by Onkyo, see link here. The trouble is going to be finding one. Finally, I would suggest to listen to tracks from your computer (the optical out from the PC), but because you say your bookshelf is SP-only, this means probably it does NOT have digital input. There are some later models which do, but all of them after the year 2000 also support LP2, getting over your other problem. Depending on where you live you may be able to get a replacement bookshelf unit for $100 or less. What model do you have at the moment? And the "other colour" of MZ-RH1 is grey, not silver.

That's pretty funny. Those are worth about $10.

Probably Ebay is your best chance. They won't be fake, as there were never any second source (only Sony made them).

Thanks for the tip. I am about to get a DVD Audio (because it happens to be the only version available and is half the price of the CD - they seem to be remaindering them), and would like to have it in CD and/or MD form too.

Maybe if you buckled down and added optical out a la camron, you could advertise it for a small fortune on Ebay!!!

Once or twice I almost bit. I'm a stickler for getting value - and I have mostly managed to get huge discounts on original list price. I had an NH1 in my sights a couple of times but here are the reasons I didn't get it: 1. Special USB connection required. All others (HiMD anyway) with USB are standard 2. 6V powersupply instead of the "standard Sony" 3V. I agree the batteries are the same as RH1. And the Sony supply is hemisphere- (well, AC voltage-) specific. So the ones I found in UK would have the same problem of the charger not working except on my 240V upconverter. The 3V units, at least I can use the more common Sony USA/Canada charger that are fairly easy to get over here. 3. It still requires RM-MC40ELK to use because no screen. Also, I ended up getting one "bare" EH70 and eventually a second with all the trimmings (charge stand in particular which I can obviously use for both), and for player-only I am quite satisfied with these, as they are built like rocks***. The EH70 uses standard AA-battery sidecar, and works with RM-MC40ELK, too. Just my $0.02. *** there's a noticeable advantage to player-only HiMD's. With all the trouble I have seen with 1GB disks, the player only model is absolutely incapable of accidentally generating an uncompleteable write sequence (remember all HiMD is checksummed, encrypted up the wazoo) when it is in your pocket.

Can you actually get into service mode? Stephen

No. This is an adjustment issue which I have surmounted with TWO of these units already. It seems to be quite common for these and 1GB disks. Curiously the firstgen (NH600/700/800/900) "never" (touch wood) seem to fail in this way. Carry on enjoying 60/74/80 min disks formatted at HiMD. But the 1G you are going to need adjustment for.

I just ordered a replacement GP charger with two gumstick batteries. The one I bought 2 years ago has given sterling service but it was a very old lot and the guy wasn't even sure it would work. The only source I could find was online at a retailer in New York. I'm not naming names here, PM me if you want to get one, though I suspect you'll find it easily enough in Google. I checked to see the possible ways of them sending it to me. I opted to pick it up from a drop-shipment place just south of the line (ie in USA). Imagine my surprise when the very nice and helpful salesperson informed me that this order (containing gumstick batteries, although Li ion batteries would apply too) is not allowed to be sent outside of the US of A. Imagine that - some dunderhead at HSA has decided that Canadians are not to be trusted with gumstick batteries because they might be used to make a weapon!?!?!? If the said weapon only ran on AA's, there'd be no problem whatsoever. GMAB.