sfbp

Simply because at the time I had no means of digital playback of anything except CD's. Then, and now, no "proper" (sure I know there are weird exceptions) computer drive for a MD, either. To expand this answer a little bit - I recall making some "WAV" files for recorded sound from old radio programs, and figuring out that I only needed mono, and half the data rate (that's x4 right there). But nothing except the 'puter would play any of it. And nothing except the optical out (from a deck) would get into the computer, so I refused to buy NetMD anything at original retail (later lots of nice second hand stuff). You still cannot get opti out from a portable, which is absurd (to my mind). Proved to be fairly sensible since most of the restrictions on getting stuff FROM MD to CD were not lifted until 2006 (RH1). With HiMD+USB+optical and Amplifier with opti-in, maybe. But nothing like that when I started.

Yup. I wanted to make CD's from my LP collection that went right back to high school days. I only ever got into this because I read about it being the only way to get sound digitized, just about 10 years ago. The other exciting aspect was finding a sound card with digital in and out. Funny, the chip made by the same company in Taiwan (CMI) that made that orange doobry I got last week. And it all finally came true with commonly available and inexpensive amps that have digital IN, to play all this stuff back. But meantime made lots of CD's. Stephen

Because unfortunately most of the software seemed to be about preventing you from doing things that Sony felt might expose it to legal charges of "encouraging copyright breaking". Another way to join two albums, is to modify the Album title to exactly the same as another album. You can use Cut and Past on the fields. Click and release to select, if you know Windows, tricky I admit. Note that unless the ARTIST is the same or (null) then it will have one album of that name for each artist. Again this is easily fixed by tinkering with the artist field for the ALBUM, a list drops down and you magically change ALL the tracks at one time. Hope I'm not being too cryptic. Mess around (carefully) and I think you'll get it. Stephen

I'm (sfbp) more addicted than you are.... no you're not.... am too..... LOL

ok, no problem - wanted to clarify context since your statement directly followed what I wrote. IIRC fragment keys are described in that Sony patent document.

Thanks Adrian. Fixed for the "fragment" problem, or only the libtag-1 problem? Stephen

My $0.02 - if you've not played with a deck, then you should get one. Just as Philippe says. If you were in the UK, you should hang about and get a JE640 which does MDLP, and which should set you back about the same or less on Ebay. However they aren't so common over here. You'd be looking at a 940 which may set you back twice as much (or more). Having said that I still do my LP (ie vinyl) transcriptions via an SP-only 630. This has one important feature that is not on the 520 - a port for a PS/2 style keyboard (which you should be able to pick up for next to nothing if you don't already have one). Look in the completed listings (advanced search) on Ebay, a 630 went for about what you are preparing to pay. Why the 640/940? Because they support MDLP - any NetMD recordings or downloads can be saved by uploading them at x1 out the optical port. Until and unless the folks in Germany get inside NetMD well enough to deal with that problem (getting stuff out via USB on the RH1), those recordings are forever "stuck" on MD. You can buy a new Tascam with this capability but it will set you back a LOT more. What the heck, get your feet wet. It's addictive, we all know that. Stephen PS on the issue of MONO recordings, there is a well documented bug where the volume ends up too low on early decks. I don't think the 520 suffers from this (you might want to check), but the 510 and its predecessor, the commonly available S707, do.

Well, here is as good a place as any. I have just done my first "edit" of an Atrac file, using Sound Forge 9.0. The story went like this. I twice recorded the same opera, once in LPEC STHQ (128kbps) on the ICD-SX750 using line in, and once on HiMD Hi-SP (256kbps) using optical, but from the same satellite (I believe 128kbps AAC or equivalent) source. For comparison purposes. It turned out that I missed the beginning of the second recording (the HiMD one). So I thought, here's a test, splice the first 6 minutes from the LPEC recording into the beginning of the ATRAC recording, and see how it sounds (and what it looks like). Well, I am happy to report that although there appear to be some differences between the two codecs (not unexpected), listening to the spliced passage really seems seamless. And frequency analysis of both looks basically the same up to 16,000 Hz. If I had to pick, I would say the LPEC does a better job as more detail is there. You can hear the words of the singers a little better. OTOH as Jon (A440) pointed out maybe there isn't so much bass in the LPEC compared to HiSP. However, honestly, it doesnt sound that much difference. Both are good, and I think I could probably tell each in a blind test. So all in all, the ICD line seems to be holding up nicely. I was VERY pleased to actually edit ATRAC without converting to WAV and back again. Stephen

Cmon, I want to hear about this. Get tinkering.......! Sony and Onkyo carefully disabled digital out on all known Atrac3+-capable devices (I dunno about Playstation but I think their NAC HD server doesnt read Atrac CD). So I'd be surprised. (added: see p.32 of the manual, as we suspected). My current solution to the mess is playback on the HTPC's USB out into the Xitel MDport DG2, and this seems to get around the problems I had with HDMI-transported sound to my amplifier (I won't bore you since they are probably only MY problems). This allows me to play back my NH900 (or any HiMD) into the amplifier without uploading anything. Meanwhile it seems that over on linux-minidisc someone there finally cracked the on-disk encryption of HiMD files. Yeah, it just makes their efforts to obfuscate and "prevent piracy" seem silly. Perhaps it's more along the lines of "we did our absolute best to make this format unreadable by pirates, so we can't get sued"????

Interesting to hear the confessions of a fellow-sufferer. I actually am underwhelmed by any of the portables that I have (but I admit I got them second hand to makes sure I had just made a valid disk rather than because I want to listen on them) especially using the line out. I suppose if someone could rig a digi-out that might be interesting. But I'm sure noone will ever nick one of my ATRACs lying in the car Yes as you say, it's one way to get Atrac3+ in the car - and very good it is.

What a great idea is the Atrac CD. 700MB of compressed music, suitable for your car. Between 6 and 8 full length albums (or more if you are really stingy with tbe bitrate, I am talking 256kbps here). But they won't play on a PC, unless you are one of those addicts who hooked up his Car headunit like a drive in a PC (yes, it has the right power supplies). You can only see what is on them with the greatest of difficulty and no home unit will play them (though a number of portable CD players are built with ATRAC CD support). Here's the funny part: the disk can be copied. Using Nero I had absolutely no trouble in reproducing an Atrac CD. That's 8 albums in 3 minutes, folks! Perhaps Sony worked out that if everyone actually acquired one of the CD players, that piracy would become rife, as you can now duplicate music about 8-10 times as fast as by copying CDs? Stephen

There's still a problem which will be fixed "real soon now" according the team. Any track which got divided will only upload the first "fragment" ie from the beginning up to the track mark. Just so y'all don't spend tons of time beating heads against brick walls. Since this is the normal mode for me (and I suspect others), to edit into tracks before upload, this may take you by surprise if you are doing more than "just testing". This is not to belittle the mammoth achievement - the game was stuck for the longest time over this decryption. Stephen PS any player will work on the uploaded tracks if you had, as do most, installed OpenMG (a subcomponent of the SonicStage install).

I'm still busy converting tapes to MD (and thence to PCHD) heheh, from a large collection. Some of my best restorations have come from Cassette, believe it or not - there were some excellent tape decks made over the years, though to get in the same class as reel to reel (as used by studios in the 50's and 60's) one had to spend a lot of money on a k7 deck. I still see MD as an intermediate, rather than terminal, form.

Sorry. Atrac Advanced Lossless. You will notice it in SS if you a. import a CD, it's one of the choices (different bit rates but 256K is probably enough) b. right click on WAV files in SS display... lossless compression. I use it because it's half way to regular ATRAC (transfer FROM this format to HiMD or NetMD is fast and reliable-sound) but takes half the space of 1411kHz WAV (PCM) file. Its other nice attribute is that it is NEVER encrypted.

Upload to PCM, then. You can export to WAV if it makes you feel safer, but you won't have the titling metadata in the file any more (WAV predates ID3 tags). Don't forget to de-encrypt as soon as you finished uploading. One more thing, you can't do much with PCM format, it cannot be compressed to AAL (my preference) although you CAN edit it with Sound Forge, which knows about the metadata. In your shoes, I think I would upload to PCM, export to WAV, delete the songs from SS, reimport as WAV files. A trick here is to keep one song so that the folder stays alive, and then delete that 1 (PCM) song and import its WAV file last. This route sounds crazy but it will be the minimum of typing once you get it figured out. I would then burn to CD (using SS if you prefer, or probably better Nero) or even DVD as archive format (do you have a DVD player that will play back WAV files?). THEN and only then would I compress to AAL, which leaves you perfectly set up to transfer them back to MD or HiMD in a hurry any time you choose to get out the ol' MD.

My feeling is that they have already done it with flash and LPEC. I don't think it's likely to go back and revisit MD, all those factories got shut down, is my understanding. SP uploads are a reality with the linux-minidisc project. Not sure if Sony cares enough, because with LPEC you have full drag/drop and no DRM.

How can you revive it, if it's not already dead? George, we all feel about MD the way you do. That's why we're here. But Sony is a company that wants to make money.

I've no idea what you're saying, George. Maybe there's a hidden (coded) message in it, but I don't see one. Have a nice day.

Sad to say this, George: but much as I love MD (w/ huge collection of players, recorders, decks and car gear) Sony has moved on. MP3 is crap but it's a standard. Sony still makes some very nice devices such as the PCM-M10 and ICD-SX750, and believe it or not, have learned from their mistakes by avoiding DRM on these devices, as well as including "compatibility" with MP3, WAV, and drag-drop. Check out some of my recent postings (on my ID under profile, then Recent posts). You may be surprised. I was. Welcome to the forums! Stephen

Thank you Adrian. Minor problem, to be fixed in next release I understand. Only those tracks (or tracklets) that COMMENCE a recorded track will be uploaded. Any track created that starts AFTER a track mark that you make (jargon is "fragment") doesn't work yet. A great achievement though!!! This the breakthrough we have waited for.... Stephen

Asked and answered....?

This is a means to add optical (digital) input to any computer with USB. So now even my laptop can use waverec/audition/cooledit/sound forge to capture the digital emanations without using the infamous (and usually-flawed) line in (on most computers it simply isn't good enough). It has digital output too at 48kHz.

It does seem, that whilst the Xitel-DG2 does output at the proper frequency of 44.1Khz (or 48Khz if that was the source), the 7.1 adapter referred to (which just arrived today) DOES force the output to 48Khz sample rate (I checked because my amp has a readout showing what the input frequency is). I recorded a CD track to an NH600's optical in, and the recording was ok, but I cannot definitively say that it was better/worse than with other devices known to output 44.1kHz. Now I have also tested its ability to record INTO its TOSLink/SPDIF optical socket, and that much works. Again I have no clue if this is being sampled and resampled, and what that does to the quality of the sound. Maybe someone with more knowledge would like to predict?? One more thing: the orange one came with drivers for Windows 7.

I don't have objective scientific data (yet). As to the underlying technology that's a bit outside my ken, at least at the moment. But seems like this LPEC (at least in its 128k or "STHQ" incarnation) may be the latter-day successor to ATRAC. I have no clue whether any ATRAC technology went into it, what I could find on the web seemed to indicate not so. Sony's a big organization, wouldn't be surprising to me that the division that made them is separate - OTOH "ozpeter" produced this brochure listing the PCM-M10 and ICD-SXxx0 series in the same "marketspace", namely sound recording. It records nicely (on the recorder I have), and conversions to and from it seem really good. Yes, I can go to/from WAV and to/from MP3. The only thing I cannot do is to/from OMA except with SoundForge and then it's possible, but one at a time and a wee bit slow (but the result is excellent).