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Seems we have a terminology disconnect, because I don't quite understand what you mean. ditto Still don't understand what you have done. What do you mean "updated drivers"? There should be nothing to update if you did the install as I tried to explain. What is your evidence that it recognized the player? (I don't doubt it, just trying to understand what you are seeing). Here are the steps you should follow (start with a freshly booted system and no MD plugged into USB): 1. do the "show_hidden_devices" thingy and delete all NetMD drivers you can see. For good measure you might get rid of any driver that currently shows the yellow exclamation mark, too. 2. unpack/extract the NetMD760.zip download into a place you recognize (suggest making a new folder of your own) 3. plug in the NetMD/USB cable. When prompted, tell the installer that you want to specify the files and that you have a disk. Point at the file NetMD760.inf. This should give you exactly ONE choice of file to install from. Choose it. You should be in business. Sorry if this isn't clear but I don't have W7 and NetMD to try this. Someone who did it can probably help. I think you managed to install some old drivers (that override you did sounds suspicious to me). Hope this helps.

They should be in exactly the same place to which you unzipped the downloaded netmd760.inf It may well be that the installer in W7 sees the zip file as just another folder. If so, pointing the installer at the .inf will do just fine. In previous versions of Windows you had to unpack (unzip) the file and then point at the unpacked .inf

The big argument against uncompressed digital media (and why stop at 44.1Khz 1411kbps?) is that it takes space. I have lots of recordings with no more information content in them than 66kbps or 132kbps or 256kbps (depending on source), and to record those at uncompressed CD rates would give me 10x to 20x the storage and backup problem. Instead of fitting in under 100GB, these files would occupy a whole 1TB disk. That's a real pain. But shall we examine the whole compressed vs uncompressed thing for a moment? The choice of 1411kbps is purely arbitrary, and reduces "real" sound to a digital space of a certain dimension. So it is essentially an arbitrary digitization of "real life", just like any digital picture. The aversion to compression surely comes from previous experiments showing that decompression doesn't work well. Yet this is the BASIS for MD and HiMD and FLAC - decompressing sound from disk to audio. Most of the resistance to compression (outside our little MD world) is from the genuinely awful quality of MP3 (which suits the record companies rather well, it happens!). But for me at least, the MD and CD storage means are all about preserving vinyl records in a form that is digital. I only ever got into MD to convert my vinyl and cassettes (the worst medium of all, except that some recordings on cassette were new enough to be quite decent). Things have moved on somewhat, and I really don't believe that I have in my collection a single vinyl record that has more information content than a modern CD any more. That's because most of them were mastered before record companies had access to any of the modern techniques for capturing sound. Meanwhile the companies HAVE made digital versions of most of their important records. You can often tell the ones that they did this to, by the pattern of background noise between tracks and in silences. Modern vinyl may be "the answer" but I still don't think it offers the same flexibility as digitised sound. It may be "uncompressed" but for most applications CD quality and even 66bps knocks the socks off what almost everyone is able (given their equipment and ears) to hear off an analogue system. Sure, you can spend $20,000 on an audiophile cartridge and analogue sound system. 10 years ago one could buy an all-digital system for the same amount. So what? Stephen

Anachronism or not, there's no way 99.9% of all ears can hear the full glory of 1411kbps uncompressed over the noises in 99.9% of all cars. The point raised was that transparant asked for HiMD in the car. Essentially you're saying that compressed music isn't worth having - which we have read before that you believe. But most people here adore MD and HiMD precisely because it is the right combination of size and reproduction quality for their needs. Some even believe that 66kbps can sound great, properly mastered. But taking the request for "Hi-MD in car" as a proxy for "Hi-SP (256kbps Atrac3+) in car, I think you should (but perhaps do not) regard a CD with approximately 6 hours of HiSP music on it as quite a good substitute for the HiMD deck that we will never get out of Sony, or Onkyo. Finally, for the point about archival - why would you ever need to archive 1411Khz music when you can buy the commercial CD? But to archive one's MD recordings and compressed CD recordings seems a worthy objective, especially as it saves CD's and takes less time to copy them (before they decompose) later.

Holy cow! What a price these fetch - scarcity value. One reason not to own an N10, I guess. The N910 does most of the same things and uses NiMH gumstick and/or AA-sidecar.

Oz, we already had this discussion. You don't dispute that the quality of an AtracCD is identical to that of a HiMD, surely? When you make an AtracCD there are no jog issues (bumpy road) because the unit buffers up about 5x as much data on average, due to compression. And making a copy of an AtracCD is trivial especially if you do it ahead of time. However mostly one would simply go back to SS and throw away one if it stopped functioning. I haven't had that problem, yet. The other great thing is that, unlike commercial CD's, noone can or will steal it. Long live Atrac CD! It may even turn out to be a nice archival format - watch this space! Stephen

Not sure what help you need, it should work. I suppose it might be worth following the steps in this post to be absolutely clear that all traces of drivers are gone.

I have made this comment many times! Rush out and get one of the Sony head units which supports AtracCD (before they disappear). Then you can transfer any ATRAC3/ATRAC3+ sound, without modification, to a CD-R. This gets you from 4 to 10 CD's compressed onto a single disk, depending on your bitrate. You can even mix bitrates, and Atrac3 with Atrac3+, just as on a real HiMD. The models I know of that support AtracCD are: CDX-GT510,610,710,810 MEX-BT5000,5100 There are probably some more, but all of the above models except the 810 should be available second hand. You'll have to check the specs of any unit you are proposing to buy, on the Sony support website.

Suggest you download the 64-bit driver (which will be fine for your machine) from And unpack it BEFORE you start Sonic Stage install. Once Sonic Stage install is complete, now you should plug in the MZ-DN430 (with a disk in it, please) and you will have fun getting Windows to recognize that driver you just downloaded, by pointing the Windows USB installer at the new files (the file it will point at is netmd760.inf but it will need .cat and .sys in the same director when you do that). Now you can start Sonic Stage. Do NOT let it convince you to look for and import music. You can do that "later". With any luck at all you should now see the DN430 in Sonic Stage. Good luck!

Ah, we're getting closer. Do you have music files that you generated under SonicStage 3.2? If not, do your best to get rid of all that stuff absolutely. Delete all the files in the directories where any Sonic Stage got installed, for a start. And try to go back to a restore point before you started any of this (hopefully 2-3 days ago, and hopefully you haven't done much else to your registry except trying to install SonicStage). That at least should get rid of any idea that it has a SonicStage installation. If you DO have music files that you care about, things are much more tricky. SonicStage 3.2 is a very old and extremely finicky piece of software, with a lot more restrictions on the content than exist now. Anyhow, to answer your questions, and assuming you don't care about what was there before, simply let it install over the top. I don't understand something. If you really have Home Premium, you should not have a WinXP shell. In any event, NO, don't bother to do anything with the virtual machine.

1. You misstated that you had loaded SonicStage in XP compatibility mode. This is simply not possible in Home Premium. This rules out item #3 as a solution since you are not running the virtual XP machine. 2. Don't forget that the removal of software doesn't really finalize until you shut down a windows machine. So it is critical to reboot after you REMOVE something. Then you may try again 3. The drivers you need for NetMD are in the download section, the very last file to be posted. This includes the files that we describe in the posts (netmd760.*). I am sorry for your pain. Many of us had to wait a year, not 12 hours, to solve this particular problem. Not that this makes things any better for you. You'll get it working. When you say "over the original" do you mean on top of Sony's version from downloading from the Sony website, or do you mean the "original Ultimate" from Avrin, posted here or elsewhere at some time? Clean off your machine of all this SonicStage stuff, reboot, and start over with the files in the download section (click "downloads" at the top of this page). SonicStage is the highlighted listing under Programs, and the NetMD760 is the highlighted listing under Drivers. Hope this helps.

Would you care to amplify that remark? I don't seem to have a problem. The biggest pain appears to be that there's no way of quickly trying a bunch of preprogrammed codes using a code number. Nearly all my devices ended up being programmed by learning each and every command. What I have *not* yet done is to chain them together (which was after all the point of all this) so that SO can point it at the whole mess and "just watch a movie". Most things don't like the power switch the way it comes preprogrammed. I managed to program a DVD region hack into the device by entering a bunch of codes and then replacing them by editing the file. It went through the motions but I am still no closer to having the hack working. I have a strong idea that I just don't know the right codes because several of the (ordinary) buttons that are supposed to be on my (original) remote that the hack requires, are not there. So it goes, I just don't have enough information.

Suggestions: 1: read this thread from the very beginning and try to understand it 2: install Avrin's Sonic Stage Ultimate Version 2 (from our downloads section) over top of your existing Sonic Stage installation. 3. (if you did the above install in Windows XP virtual machine - obviously you have Win7 Pro or Ultimate, or you are misleading yourself and us - see the USB drop down at the top of the screen, and turn on the USB for your NetMD device) 4. If you want to run SonicStage WITHOUT the compatibility mode, install the drivers referenced in this thread as NetMD760.*, and chortle all the way home. This will be much faster and much less hassle than firing up the XP virtual machine every time. (for the technically minded, your x00CA information listed above means that your device is considered to all intents and purposes the same as an MZ-NE410). Welcome to the forums.

Ah, I forgot that if you record analog on a deck that it can be copied digitally to a second deck. Not sure I ever tried this as my goal was always to upload to PC even before there was USB. The PC sound card has no SCMS restrictions at all.

Hmm, is one or the other considered to be "PRO"? Because SCMS should be preventing this connection. THAT sounds like what you have in common with OP. S

... and if you want to play CD's or MP3 CD's you can easily attach a Sony 10-disk changer (recommend the CDX-757MX as it should support MP3 CD's as well as ordinary ones) with no wiring to the car at all.... all connectors go from the changer to the back of the CA790X. Stephen

Sorry Sergio, somehow I missed this. No, I do not own a Qualia. Maybe in my next lifetime......

It's quite possible that Harmony does some funny stuff. Particularly if it routinely TURNS ON (even if already on, so ON-OFF-ON) the coaxial output from the source you use, might explain the triple clicking noises (at the end). I have definitely seen more weirdness with Coax than I have with optical. Jim explained to me (privately) only yesterday that the circuitry to drive the Coax (a transformer, I believe) requires some logic (that has to be chained in series) to drive from the lower level signals generated by most CMOS components on a deck. This could easily be related, IMHO. You might try working without the Harmony remote for a few days, too. Stephen

Just a word (or three) here - I am the owner of an Onkyo TX-SR605, one of the first competitively priced amplifiers to have HDMI and digital input, generally, marketed starting in about 2006. I read up extensively on this before buying a second hand one, since the more current models actually had less connectors and features that I wanted (and also people were dumping them, so I got it "for a song"). One of the faults that many people complained of were these relay-clicking noises (which is what I believe you may be experiencing). Typically this noise corresponds to a digital circuit switching in (or out), with concomitant delay when you change from one source to another. There were actually some fixes made to the firmware of the Onyko (which I duly downloaded) and which were reputed to decrease the number of clicks. In general, I believe such noises are pretty harmless. It's possible there is adjustment to be made. It's also possible that it's something to do with the source that you both hooked them up to. Increasingly people are using digital sources that they didn't have before. As to replacement (if something is terminally wrong anyway), I sort of agree with Philippe. The distinguishing mark of many of these high end decks was the quality of the Digital-to-Analogue circuits. Once you have an amplifier with digital IN, as the digital OUT comes straight off the DSP chip of the MD deck (check the schematic!), the extra money for these high-end units becomes money basically wasted (though I am sure there are some other benefits and you will tell me what they are). Digital signals don't pick up noise, is one reason for preferring any digital connection to analogue. I even compared the sounds made by one deck that has Type-S and one with Type-R for playback on the same MD (since Type-S is a playback enhancement technology) and concluded that, using digital OUT from the deck, there's little or no difference. This fits with Philippe's comment about the 520 being a quite acceptable deck. Jim Hoggarth may care to comment, as he probably knows exactly what these clicks are. I might wonder if there's dust in/around the optical transceivers, but I expect he will have a good explanation of why you get several clicks. Hope this helps. Stephen

Any good with regedit? Try finding this: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Sony Corporation\SonicStage\EMD\HomeURL or this if 64-bit Windows, but you knew that HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Sony Corporation\SonicStage\EMD\HomeURL Just delete the key and all values inside it. Tell us if that helps Stephen

The original link is to a web page which is gone, however it's available here http://web.archive.org/web/20071224163336/http://users.tkk.fi/~jwagner/electr/minidisc-spdif/ I tried editing the first post in this thread but it's not possible because the formatting of posts has changed internally since the board conversion. Stephen

I am not sure that my argument about low voltage being systemic has anything to do with the NH1, since these units use a LiIon battery charging system, which no doubt has quite different charging characteristics. There's special parameters in the firmware NVRAM for both LiIon and NiMH in many of the (newer) units, so probably simply following the procedure for adjustment is the best thing to do. The principle is the same, though - detect a battery is charged by very slight changes in the voltage at its terminals.

I've decided I don't like the automatic title granted me by the post-counting part of the board's software. Please, no more references to "Guru" - it's a bit embarrassing.

People often come on here looking for the battery cases. Here's a listing that many will be very pleased to see. It's for the add-on AA battery case used by most units (the exception being RH10/910 which has a special one of a slightly different size): http://cgi.ebay.com/New-Sony-AA-Battery-Adapter-Minidisc-Players-/150559847150

I have zero experience of NH1, and I doubt it is a good idea for you to send here, given that Jim has all the expertise and understands the problem. It will be new territory for him, but it's really a matter of following the roadmap laid down by Sony. And he's in Yorkshire, which makes a heck of a difference to you (maybe not to someone in Europe) because the post will be quick. And yes, I think many of these strange quirks can be ascribed to low voltage at critical spots. Cleaning contacts helps too.