sfbp

(actually that last was to me, not bob, no matter) Can you write on a disk in ANY way, eg record from linein, or mic, or divide or combine or erase a track? If not then your write head is dead (well, to be accurate the wire to it broken most likely). If you can, then I would next need to be clear about what the last thing you had working. Is this unit new to the computers? Cheers

Sounds like your driver might not be installed? Not sure what the setup for Sharp is.

Obviously you need to get your money back. Can the moderators exercise any sort of sanction on this guy heavtank? Such as banning him and deleting all his content pending an explanation? I am not going to get into this dispute, Chris - that seems to be your mission. Gerbille, very sorry to hear. Was there a reason given for asking more money? If you paid by Paypal there are certain rights, regardless of how you concluded the transaction (ie ebay or non-ebay), but I have a bad feeling that there is some sort of time limitation. This looks bad guys. Has anyone lurking successfully dealt with heavtank, and has his real contact details, for example?

The expensive way: buy an RH1. Don't bother with used, there is a fragility problem with the jog lever, you might as well get a new one, eg from Minidisc Canada The cheap way: get a deck with opti-out, and a soundcard with optical in. You got the bug! Cheers S (added:) you can never upload things that were put there by SS, however you can use SS for titling before upload on recordings made on your 707. If you are going the deck route, get a JE-640 (I think JB-940 is the same or similar) because it appears not to care about editing downloaded tracks; later models do.

Sent you a PM

Ahhhh the svhost.exe problem, I wouldn't wonder look in task manager and see if there is a task taking 99% of CPU? If it's called svchost.exe you need to seriously reexamine what antivirus software you are running including microsofts malware detection tool. You can safely kill it and try again but all sorts of system level services will get stopped. My guess is right now SOMETHING is taking the computer away from you. Are you down to a single NetMD device? Hang in there, we will get you out somehow.... S

I suspect the reason it does it with HiMD is that there are checksums and encryption in the headers, not just the data, or they are linked to the headers by some encryption key. Avrin knows more. Funny thing, I have never noticed it on a live recording, even though other people tell me it is there. You should be happy that writes headers every so often... without them your HiMD sound files on that disk would be worthless. Unlike legacy MD, you cannot TOC-clone a HiMD. Right, aaron?

I instead think it's because everyone including the record companies know all you need is a computer to make an image copy of a disk. I refused to buy into a "CD writing machine" precisely because what is written is sort of arbitrary and the standard is likely to be with the vast, unwashed, cheap majority who buy a 'puter and then figure out they can make disks. Vista, I dunno. Hang on to your XP for now If some copyright police ever descend on Ahead Software's offices, people might start spreading "illegal" old versions of Nero around, heheh. But not once Vista takes over, if it ever does.

You mean the "I'm fragmented so I have to move to the next FAT" noise, like someone scraping snow off the sidewalk?

Agree with green, some used discs will misbehave when you have inserted them. For example I made a recording for 6 hours and the whole time, there was a small noise like a mouse patting its feet on the case No obvious problems on playback, but that could be because the head loads relatively rarely. Unless this **doesn't** happen in another unit (assuming you have one) I might think about retiring that disk.

Start by deleting every "shadow" USB device you can find ("uninstalling"). Don't worry, this is quite safe, because the files are still there and will get reloaded automatically as needed. Detach the RH1, too. For good measure you can delete the non-USB "shadow" devices but I doubt it will help. There may be, like, 50 Many of them may be USB storage devices. Try a reboot and see if they are all still deleted. Plug in the RH1, and the notification tray should pop up a balloon saying "HiMD Walkman" (I am assuming an SP disk in the device - if you have a HiMD disk then the driver isn't even an issue and won't be added in the first place, I think). Now check the USB list. There should be exactly one entry for NetMD, and it should be in regular type (ie not greyed out or shadowed). Double click it, and look at the Driver tab to see what driver files got loaded. There's a button (not a tab) labelled "Driver Details". In the window that pops up it should show only one driver file, NETMD052.SYS, mine has a version number of 1.2.10.08080, copyright Sony Corporation and digitally signed by Microsoft Windows Hardware Compatibility. If anything differs from this description, please post it here. Otherwise you should now be in business. Happy New Year!

I hate to be a kill joy but I reckon the uncapped RH1 combined with Dynamic Normalization was what did my ears in. Having said that, MDC is an ok outfit to deal with, though of course I am in-country so no experience of their handling of customs, exchange etc.

Sounds interesting. I will PM you. The only thing I would say is that I am unlikely every to make an SCMS-protected CD unless Microsoft or Ahead Software make that an unchangeable no-option option Thanks.

I looked at that passage, and it seems like the standard they write in every manual describing SCMS. What I don't see is the part about it switching gears. On page 29 there is the following (darn, Sony, why you have to protect your document from cut and paste!?): My inference from this is (was) that it switches speed from x4 to x1, not that it switches from digital to analogue. But maybe there's more information somewhere that I missed implying the switch to analogue. An interesting test would be to see what happens when you insert a CD known to be protected and try to copy at x1? Furthermore, I can imagine (easily) that a copy via analogue cables is possible if you hook analogue out to analogue in - but you used the word "internal" so I don't think you are suggesting that. I am nervous about doing that anyway as it sounds like the sort of thing that might blow up - and seems to defeat the whole idea of keeping sound digital which avoids what they warn happening with proximity to TV or other source of interference (p. 43). Stephen

I guess my SCMS stripper is: a. my sound card that ignores it for optical input b. Nero which copies discs regardless Never once ran into the problems you describe. Though I always knew I couldn't copy an MD from Toslink to Toslink, and never tried after the first time. I still don't understand how you can tell that the '400 has switched to analog. This story reminds me of me yelling and screaming (yes!) at Thomson who had produced a VCR which automatically read time off the cable and so coped with all manner of perturbations on the clock. The problem showed up with daylight savings, the machine had no idea how to switch and when, getting terminally confused for several days either side of the changeover, even if it had the right dates. Part of this, it must be admitted was because the local time sources (eg KCTS-9 in Seattle) absolutely had no clue about DST either. But the real kicker was this: the factory where they developed and tested all this was in Indianapolis. Guess what? In Indianapolis the clocks never change. So it's hard for me to see what you're talking about because I can't. Sigh. Happy New Year, anyway

Thanks. I couldn't believe that people near me decided it was ok to talk through the first one. I almost strangled someone - but realised the encounter would be recorded for posterity on MD, so sat as still as humanly possible (I fear you can hear me breathing). I did another recording there in non-stealth mode and it came out quite nicely with the BMC-2's clipped to a glass candle holder on the end of a tall stick (ie about 8 ft in the air) well above any audience noise.

Cute. I had no idea that the documented "retry at x1" behaviour was effected by switching circuits. I have never to my knowledge held a copy-protected CD in my hands. Back in the days when I made copy-protected floppy disks (and I think someone referred recently to copy-protected video) the usual trick was to put a bad sector somewhere. This didn't matter to the application because it would avoid that sector, but the copy software would barf on it and stop. Isn't that what's happening in your case? What happens when you copy by pressing the "normal" button? Does it visibly go back and start again?

I wonder if it can be conditioned? I'm sure someone here has ideas on that. I have had good luck with NiMH, but none with Li (I am thinking of laptops, not MD). Supposedly you should discharge the Li battery as far as possible a number of times. Maybe the units are too conservative and need to discharge them to a lower voltage than they are set to; I actually suggested this (in a post) to Avrin, the expert on firmware, but I don't remember hearing a meaningful (to me) response. Someone could perhaps figure this out and build a DIScharger????? The other explanation to all of this is maybe that these are not fakes, but rejects from the manufacturing process. I'm surprised they get labelled first, but that might be the only really dishonest bit - if they simply pinch the labels (or print some extras) and stick em on the ones that fail testing.

Ah, the Double Ophecleide! Maybe we better send someone to record the Diaphone-Dulzian at Atlantic City, heheh. Liverpool Cathedral's isn't even a real 64 but a stopped (gedackt) 32. Luckily or unluckily for most of us there isn't a general problem with organs. However it raises another issue, IMHO. It seems likely that these very low organ tones can cause *physical* vibrations in their environment. It's known that 7Hz is dangerous to humans, so standing next to the D-D for extended periods is liable to do very bad things to you. So, I wonder how much of your observed distortion was some sort of rattling of something in the vicinity. You can observe this effect for example if you put a plastic container (thin) with some paperclips on top of a bass speaker even on the pathetic little speakers we bought for $50 for the computer (awright I know you didn't but I did). Or sometimes "stuff" that is lying around rattles and quite destroys the sound. I'm not saying this was your distortion, just that it might have been. I have a hunch the problems I had recording organs with older equipment might have been similar. A portable such as the RH1 does get rid of a lot of the sources of noise (and electrical interference too!). I mean there are some pretty big sparks potentially flying around as these stops open and close their mouths, too - so anything wired in (as I was back then) to the same circuit as the organ blower, is going to pick some of it up. Certainly I recall hearing stop changes (electronic click, not the noise of the physical stops changing).

I'll post something shortly for you to have a listen. First sample (about 13 megs) Second sample (also about 13MB) Probably won't be able to leave them there for ever..... Let me know what you think. I was amazed because it was the first time I had ever managed to record an organ without silly problems of one sort or another. Stephen

Interesting. I never even thought of using the analog option. Not sure how you do that. I checked yesterday and there is a small supply of MXD-D400 again on Yahoo Japan. Probably a lot of people didn't bother to auction things over Christmas what with postal delays and suchlike, not to mention having a real life

I like my JE-640. It doesn't give me those annoying "trprotect" messages when I try to work with stuff from SonicStage. Later decks do. The creme de la creme is a JB980 if you can find it, since it does Type-S, the 640 does not - so I don't use for playback through stereo. Muchos denarios is the Onkyo line which plays and records HiMD too. But likely new, and likely in the $400+ range. There are NO Sony decks available new except what you can buy in Japan at auction. Another option is a CD-MD combo deck (discussed already) Another option is to be a true blue audiophile and forget about LP2 for deck. Then there are LOTS of choices and almost anything will do. You may want a pre-MDLP combo (to go quickly from CD to MD) and/or an optical sound card (to go x1 from whatever deck optical out to puter), but you might have said you have one of those. Yeah, try to get a deck that has opti-out. I can see you have got the bug HNY

Understood. My reason for the comment was that in all the sounds that I have watched, none of them "dropped dead" at 16K in the way this did. You're very clever to compare to the original, quite beyond me as I don't listen to that stuff - it could have been from 1998 or 1958 for all I knew.

I had absolutely zero problem with my BMC-2's and church organ. The first time I have ever been able to record that without problems.

Are these by any chance much-edited disks? I suppose it could possibly be because the head is moving a lot on some discs not others. If it disappears after you reformat them and put fresh material on, it might be time to find out if the head lateral movement needs greasing. I bet someone else knows far better, I am just guessing. Another thing I wouldn't clean ANY digital head "regularly". I recall this with floppies and I believe it hasn't changed. Clean if/when you suspect trouble. Hope this helps. Stephen