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True. If you really want the NetMD tracks... The only model I am 100% certain allows you to upload out of the optical port from a NetMD disk is the MDS-JE640. There may well be others, but it is the only one that I have touched that does. It's also capable of editing NetMD downloaded tracks, and I am pretty sure most later models are not.

There's a whole bunch of MZ-NH600's in Australia for US $50 (and a whole bunch of goodies). These might be the same source that I bought mine from a while back, and this is a much better price. This unit, as you know includes optical/line in. Search for NH600 and the results are something like this The shipping to the US is only about $35, too. I had a much bigger problem to buy direct, I am thinking he's finally unloading them. The only problem is the charger needed but: 1. it's the same output as most of the other chargers (3V) and you can buy a cheap one in a store and 2. the unit also works off rechargeable AA's and (I think) also USB when connected to PC.

The problem is not going to be 64-bit support, I think. What you have to do is to configure the serial card as one of the ***STANDARD*** serial ports so that relatively old software on the PC side can use it. Depending on exactly what Sony's software division did to implement serial communication you may be ok. Most likely of all is that the handshake lines were not correctly emulated by the original USB dongle that you were trying to use. But it is important to set up the serial card as COM1, IRQ 4, 3F8 port address, and default to the baud rate specified in the manual for the PCLK. All the above settings were built into Windows and any computer that has a serial card on the motherboard, but may have to be specifically set on installation. In particular there is a tendency to allow higher baud (ie transmission) rates on newer equipment whereas there's a good chance that interface operates at 9600 baud. I'm not sure about the parity and stop bits, but these should be clearly specified somewhere in the manual. I would be inclined to try some other device out once you got it (and you could still try this with the existing setup) such as an external modem, to see if you can get some communication software to talk to that modem - thus proving you have the port correctly installed. Another thing would be to try to get said card to work on some other computer first - however of course the other machine will have a serial port already, so you won't be able to set the serial card to those settings if it does. Clear as mud?

Given your requirements (which are completely reasonable) the only thing the RH1 does for you that you cannot do any other way is perfect and fast upload of SP from MD to PC. That's worth having. The download (PC-RH1) isn't exactly transcoded twice. It's coded to LP2 and then the LP2 is blank-padded with 0 bits at the RH1 before writing to disk. You can do the optical in thing, and this should record perfect SP but I haven't tried it since there are so many ways to do that not involving the RH1 and I want to keep it for uploading the recordings I keep making on various units (eg MZ-R91 mono gives 160 mins for lecture presentations). Funny how Apple only dropped the DRM from Itunes only when they won the format war, isn't it?

finally we (I) got there... there is no serial port on your PC. I don't think you will do handshaking properly, as the software to control the MDS PC2 at some level *knows* about the serial port. So - I have read of the USB substitutes for serial port, but unless it emulates the ports that the software is expecting in *every* respect, I predict problems. I recall something of the kind with bluetooth that pretends to be serial port. At the very least you are going to have to run some very careful configuration on that "fake" (USB) serial port. Don't worry about the sound card part until you have that under control. Also running both the optical port and the control (serial) via USB may be asking for trouble - not sure there. I cannot believe that Vista of any flavour is incapable of recognising a real serial (COM) port. That must be just configuration. So I would try replacing one or if necessary both of these USB-based connecting devices, with the real McCoy, if you are able. Good luck!

I see what you mean, I got misled by the talk of USB. Sorry about that. The sound card driver software will have to "turn on" the Toslink i/o before anything can happen, is my belief. I am not sure how the computer interacts with the device if there's no USB connection. That's the part, that even with the manual open in front of me, I do not understand. The Control AII cable - exactly what is it supposed to plug into? And what software on the 'puter is supposed to drive it? If you can figure out how it used to work, the answers to those questions will have to be translated to your new machine. Was there an interface card supplied by Sony? Weird, the docs make no mention of RS232. (added) Ahhh it is starting to make some sense now. Your new computer has probably a 9-pin serial connector, whereas I am thinking maybe the old one had a 25-pin. There is always an issue of handshake lines. A "null modem no handshake" arrangement on the 9-pin is a bit different from that on the 25-pin, and an adapting connector may not relay the right pins properly. Am I getting close? You might want to try an external modem or other serial device on the serial port, whatever it is. My guess is that the software for MD hangs up waiting on the serial port for lack of communication.

Picture still a bit confused, is this a laptop or a desktop machine? Usually you can disable the sound card (I have done so in my Dell Dimension), and plug in a sound card with optical I/O. If a laptop you may be stuck with the external arrangement. The disablement has to be done in the ROM BIOS before the machine boots, though. Getting rid of the Windows devices is sorta irrelevant, as the install for whatever sound card you use will probably do that for you. Din unlock means the signal simply isn't being put out. You should see this without an error message though - when it's working the tip of the optical cable (output) will show red light That's a point - can you do INPUT via optical? Eg play something back and hear it on the PC speakers? That will be a function of the volume control for your sound card and will probably be mapped to something weird, as most people don't even try to do this. I'm also not sure what you mean by "cant get the MD editor to come up on screen". I cannot imagine trying to use anything except Sonic Stage (if only because it's the only thing I have ever used).

Don't take my literal word for it. But the outline of what you might be able to do is there, and the copying as Avrin describes may (or may not) be an essential step. What you probably *dont* want to do (before you get it working again) is to generate a backup (from the SS menu) as I think this overwrites what ever got saved before, and will only restore you to the messed up state you are in. (added) Sorry I read this this morning earlier before rushing out the door, and I missed that you totally reinstalled Windows. What I might do (if I had an extra machine) is to experiment with the whole thing on a setup on another computer before you try doing anything drastic like fixing registry entries. You won't be able to decrypt it as such, but you may (it sounds like you are fairly techie) be able to figure out what changes as you mess with the various pieces. Do you have a backup of Windows itself I wonder? I feel sure Sony has locked it to (all of) a. date/time b. some GUID in the Windows registry c. some specially generated keys that get updated each time you close SonicStage, Stephen

My fear is they are using something called perfect forward secrecy (google it) on the keys themselves. Hope not. But the keys are definitely time-sensitive. Any system restore may mess them up irreversibly. However I think I'm sure that when you restore the keys properly to time X, that the only .OMA files you will lose are the ones encrypted between X and now. However now you will want to get everything you can OUT (ie decrypted) because nothing new will work, if I recall correctly. A long dark tunnel. Step 1 - try to get your system to the point BEFORE that system restore. Then there is at least HOPE for the music before that restore point. You may have to revive the keys, so read everything posted by Avrin here in the last 6 months and try to understand what he says about the keys. I think they're in a hidden folder called OMGRIGHTS. Stephen

One thing that precludes that setup is a laptop. So this is useful info for people in that position, I think. Mind you the cost of a brand new Dell with most of the trimmings is around $350 and a soundcard can be had for $40.

Forget Sonic Stage - can you get access to Nero? Just burn them as an ordinary DATA CD-ROM if you can... the smarts are all in whatever player reads the CD. Good luck!

Quick scan through (and I wish I had one of these!) and I think the answer is probably the sound card. W98 support very spotty for USB. And if a rarity then probably not good drivers for XP etc. 64-bit Vista - most unlikely it will ever work, you're using technology that's 32-bit, from the 16-bit era almost. You may have to emulate 32-bits, or dualboot. However Windows 7 beta seems to work according to 1Kyle, but he wasn't trying anything unusual like your device. You don't say what software, are we talking SonicStage? You **do not want * the original SonicStage or worse still its predecessor. Get Sonic Stage 4.3 and see first if that's it. If not, I would be inclined to send off for a card that I knew works, the terratec Aureon 5.1 is good. I certainly had no luck at all hooking my JE-520 to a the Turtle Beach Montego, even though its predecessor the Santa Cruz worked fine. If you can't find easily, I can give you help when I get back later on. G'luck.

Very interesting...... Let me understand something - you are using USB out on the PC to drive the DM? That's amazing, in this day of overcapacity, overspeed and bloatware. Stephen

I'm definitely interested - however currently seem to have exhausted my appetite for "new" units. Cheers Stephen

Your last statement is only true for files imported from CD WHEN the import format is specified as WAV. Maybe you forgot this. I never knew it... thanks. I've actually taken to importing CD's in Atrac Advanced Lossless, it seems to work quite smoothly and is not encumbered by the OpenMG nonsense where the encryption keys get lost on System Restore. Also saves 50% space on disk, and just as Sony claims, it seems to be (at least approximately) lossless (don't lets get into religion here, guys). However the previous comments about needing to decrypt PCM are indeed true, when the PCM is uploaded from a recording on MD (eg microphone). In this case I title them(either on MD or on PC), export as WAV and now delete from SS and reimport as WAV. This guarantees no further mucking about with the sound and no chance that a crash of SS will lose them for me.

The other point about SP is that it *is* an archive format. You need a deck or an RH1 to get stuff out but eventually you can. LP2 is lossy and you really really don't want to save things in that format. So your decision makes sense. The other clue I got was that LP2 recorded on HiMD format doesn't seem to have Type-S enhancement (based on my ears at least).

LOL. Perfection is only perfect until you see the flaws, close up. Or put another way, we only appreciate the next level of sophistication after we have taken the current one for granted. As I said a few days or more ago, you're hooked. Glad we got you hooked Aha! Gotcha!!!! The 707 doesn't have Type-S playback. Try the same disk in your DN430. I bet it improves hugely. We're "all ears". S

Thanks to you for your tip. This is just to say that SonicStage is alive and well on Windows 7 Beta 32-bit edition. I may try 64-bit later, but I take your word for it. Some oddities: a. I had to manually install the NetMD drivers from pa_audio.zip (from this site I believe) in order to upload NetMD with my RH1. b. When I had done this, the installation wouldn't actually finish until I unplugged the USB connector from the RH1. After that it worked perfectly. So there may be some lingering problems although those could be not to do with W7 but the dual-core machine I am running it on. c. The splash screen for SonicStage (normally blue) was grey. This has me puzzled, since all other applications seem to have the right colours and settings for the onboard video adapter this machine has. If you have an explanation for c. I would be interested - meantime I expect I will eventually track down what's not set right in Windows 7. Stephen

Yup. SP is as close to CD quality as you will ever see. LP2 only sounds decent if a. you have something that transcodes well AND b. the playback is Type-S. For example I can satisfy a. (by experiment) but until I play back on my MXD-D400 which has analogue out into my stereo system the LP2 sound is (relatively) bad (I had my JE640 sitting with the stereo for a very short while until I discovered this). Some tracks don't seem to satisfy a., either. Especially anything which started out life as MP3 (probably?!?) regardless of bit rate. The two encodings seem to "argue" with each other. Sony was accused of deliberately making MP3 sound bad when they first offered it in MD.. I actually think they had to work really hard to get around this one somehow. And that only applies to the "native MP3 playback" on certain HiMD units. I seem to have noticed some strange encoding problems with relatively quiet music such as chamber music, normalised to a room-filling volume. Long held notes seem to be an especial problem. Bluecrab and I have exchanged disks and we may(!?) be able to tell you what is up in this regard. But there's no question, SP is better. And the SP you get from SonicStage doesn't cut it, I expect you will find. There's no codec for SP on your computer, probably something to do with their agreements with Dolby (my guess is Sony obtained some license for something on hardware only, excluding PC's). But you shouldn't be surprised that SP is better. More bits = more definition = clearer sound? Stephen

That's another vote in favour of getting a sound card with opti in and opti out - (I think) most of them have it unblocked, or the ability to turn it off. The Terratec Aureon 5.1 seems to be fine; there is a more expensive 7.1 too. But probably NOT the one that plugs into USB. There you may run into problems if you are simultaneously running SS over USB to the RH1. In fact this may be the problem with DACMagic, unless you have an optical card. The other way to look at this USB issue is that: a. Sony knows that its HiMD support simply won't work on a USB hub (ie HiMD and another device plugged into the same USB controller) b. the transfer of sound data takes up most of the CPU, and there are even some situations where it doesn't work with a super fast processor - ie it is timing dependent, too fast or too slow and you get burnt potatoes instead of music So having 2 USB devices, one HiMD and one some sort of output of sound via USB, is not likely to work, for the same underlying reasons as a. and b.

I think all that is needed is a sound card with optical out. Cost 10-20 pounds. No reliance on D->A in portable MD. There is no way that you can use the USB transmissions designed for Sonic Stage by pushing them instead to DACMagic. The only thing known to drive the USB is Sonic Stage and the transmissions are actually encrypted (**** I think, lol - every time I make one of these assertions, Avrin turns out to know better - pace Avrin *****). However if you hook up your RH1 (or any HiMD device) to USB and play something back from SS, it will show up in the audio stream which can be sent OUT (within reason and any limitations placed by DRM or Microsoft) wherever you like. I am currently listening to (and recording on to my MD deck via optical out) a track from a HiMD using the RH1, just to test this assertion. Note that this absolutely doesn't apply to uploadable NetMD or SP tracks, even on the RH1, as they are played back "traditionally" ie on the MD side only. For that you can use a legacy deck.. but I am sure you know that.

I wuz thinking more like virtual clippers

You might like the N910. I don't own the N10 or the R900 but it is by the accounts I looked at essentially an N10 with a few improvements. Who knows, maybe someone will say they are un-improvements... but I like it.

Is that her name? I thought it was Victoria.........

'tis normal - post to/from UK about 3 days, to/from North Vancouver about 4 days