sfbp

You may find some restrictions on editing NetMD tracks on some decks, but that hardly applies to in-car. The other option, as someone higher up this thread rightly point out, is to get the MDX-66XLP. However it requires a Sony Unilink interface. But it's the only changer unit made that plays back LP2 and LP4 (and hence NetMD). There are two ways you can do this: 1. get one of the Sony-built RF- modulators (this is what I did). Sony does a good job, by inserting the RF transmitter in the regular FM signal path (ie its input now becomes your antenna, and the output is where the antenna used to plug into on the head unit). There are several models, no need to buy the one that specifically comes with the MDX-66XLP. 2. get a Sony head unit (there are lots of these around) that does NOT have to have MD capability at all, just the Unilink to support changer.

Yes, you're mad. Everyone here is mad, have to be. Having said that you should get lots of support from us crazies. No, you're not mad. MD still beats the rest by a Scottish mile (whatever that is) and most people here have bought multiple units because they cannot bear the thought that their beloved MD might break down. Having said that: trust only one format - WAV - for keeping. For playback, you will have to come to your own conclusions, but the Atrac formats (at least anything less than 256KAtrac3+) are not for keeping, with the sole exception of the original SP (292kbps). This produces digital sound that is (to the ears) as good as CD, though I am sure we could have an endless debate about other people's ears. But you cannot transfer SP to a computer, save it as SP, and transfer it again to MD as SP, except via extremely circuitous routes - Sony didn't want us to do that. I predict that by the end of the year you will have gone out and got at least one HiMD unit, and that you will have experimented with taking all sorts of sounds off the web, the air, and maybe by microphone. Very good luck to you, and Merry Christmas

the first one of these apparently will ship IF you send all the money in advance, why not send them an email. WizardofOz also bought this adapter, and he too is in La Belle France, so perhaps he can give you advice. Good luck!

I do. It was WAV files (not .OMA PCM's) that I was having trouble with. Same exact message as OP.

I have no idea if this is related, but... I had a similar experience yesterday being unable to transfer WAV files that SS knew about. Solution: get rid of the entries in the catalog, reimport from the same wave files, export/conversion to LP2 on MD goes just fine. Your report makes me nervous that something involving keys is messing up sonicstage. I hardly ever used MP3s, and in this case, not at all. Can someone explain to me exactly what it is that finally disappears on 31st Dec 2008 with the demise of Connect? I would be rather upset if SS has been going out and getting keys updated via some website that is going to disappear permanently. Hoping I don't sound alarmist, because right now I am more suspicious than actually paranoid... (I know, just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they aren't persecuting me.....). Stephen

Hmm, I tend to agree with you about decks. However Sony isn't going to come out with one. As Avrin pointed out elsewhere, you get better more reliable compression with computer. For example the MXD-D400 does a lousy job at x4 with LP2, indicating that the hardware compression is not as good as software compression, at least on high speed. The advantages of NHx00 (x=6,7,8) series are that they store LP2 a lot more densely, and run off AA batteries. Like you, I still like my decks for dealing with sound editing, and particularly for A-to-D of old recordings. But I recognise that the combination of HiMD and computer-wave-editors gives me lots of options to avoid degrading the sound.

Sent PM

If you need to turn up the (digital) gain, there are two ways to do it: 1. use CD to optical out and add some oomph on the input to a MD deck 2. rip the files as WAV (you don't need SS at all to do this, though I do in fact do it this way because it saves typing time). Use a wave editor to normalize them, I recommend 90% rather than 100%, this is based on a limited sample of cases and may not be the best.

1. Why would you willingly involve MP3s on Minidisc? For one thing the encoders are not all the same quality as each other. 2. Where is MP3 creation built into SS? Or do you mean their free-exit-from-Atrac-converter MP3CONVERSIONTOOL.EXE? My point - you are comparing apples to oranges if you insist on using MP3 in one place and Atrac3 in another.

Windows Explorer will NOT recognise an MD disk, although the USB drivers will get loaded. Beware other NetMD devices, they will screw up the RH1's ability to upload MD formatted sound, there is a nice thread here about that. Disregard the above sentence for HiMD audio data, won't matter. Also note that you can put data onto HiMD formatted disks, but efforts to transfer music as a file will fail. (you can sure store such files there but they will NOT be recognized as music). Yes it treats HiMD and MD completely differently. Sounds like your device is defaulted to MD mode. Suggest you change it to HiMD mode. This means that you will see the reverse behaviour. One final note: when you have been inspecting a NetMD (or legacy SP) disk in Sonic Stage, and remove it and replace with a HiMD disk, it can take a long time to recognise the new disk. First it has to unload (di-duh) one driver, then load the other (du-dih) and then can it start looking at headers and reading the directory of music. Forget about Windows explorer for the moment, focus on what you see in Sonic Stage. Hope this helps....

Are you starting with CD's for the modern stuff? The reference to MP3 has me confused. Maybe SS is using the "wrong" encoding if there are multiple "optimized files" in SS, I have seen this. Try deleting everything for one track and reencoding.

Sounds like you have your expectations hooked up backwards. Here's what is supposed to happen. (note that I assume the "mode" of the MD defaults to HiMD, not to MD, this is a setting in the menu under Options->Disc Mode). 1. You plug an empty RH1 into the USB, no sign of life whatever. 2. You unplug the RH1 and put in a disk, the red light flashes for a bit, the curly W lights up, dots flash, and eventually the lights say a. No Disc (and the default you set under Mode) or b. MD SP (even if it's an LP disk) or c. HiMD PCM (even if it's an Atrac3+ disk) as well as a battery icon (hopefully full). If it's b, what follows below may differ somewhat - I am assuming a HiMD disk. If the instrument is plugged into USB while it is playing, nothing happens, although you might hear Windows recognize the USB ("low-high" sound). If you plug it in when not playing, the similar sequence of lights occurs and eventually you see PC-MD, replaced by a line of 7 dots with two big circles at either end. This shows the machine is connected to USB, and you will not be able to operate the controls of the MD (except the square STOP button) until it is disconnected. At this point you should see the directory of a drive in windows, AND Sonic Stage should be able to recognize any music that's on the disk you had in there. Let's assume everything is working, and change disk to one with a different format (If you had a std disk put in a himd disk or viceversa). To do this, you press the STOP button, and the display says "eject disk ok". (if it doesn't right away, be patient, something needs to be written and it may say "System file writing"). When you put in the new disk, watching Sonic Stage's transfer screen, the USB will go down ("high-low") and the message will change from HiMD to NetMD. Also the Windows drive will disappear. Now the USB noise goes "Low-high", and if there is stuff on the disk you will see it. At no point will you gain the ability to manipulate the RH1, it is like having the hold switch on - push a button (except STOP) and you will get the message "PC-MD". Note that even though you might be able to "see" the drive (in Windows) with a HiMD in it, you won't if the disk is NetMD. Even if you can see the drive, it won't do you any good because there is no way to get music to it via the files that you can see. If you investigate, you will find they are things that don't do you any good, like ATDATA06.HMA for example. Also as long as SS is running, you will get access denied to the Windows regardless of its contents (if it is a NetMD disk, there will be no USB drive at all). Does this help? I'd guess you were jumping to the conclusion that you have to see the disk in order to put things on it.

What i mean is: you leave the data where it is; and merely move the catalog information. In some cases this means that, after deletion, unused space is now available in the middle of good data - this is known as fragmentation, and one piece of equipment that will deal with this is the MDS-W1. But the same effect occurs when you copy all the files on an MD to Sonic Stage, format or erase the MD, and then copy back. You will achieve defragmentation, although with all the interaction of different lossy formats, you must be very careful or the sound that ends up back on the MD will not be as good as what was before. Since all decks and the RH1 can actually send real CD-quality digital data (over the optical line or over USB), which is one tiny step away from uncompressed wave files, you will find out (as I did and I am sure many others have) that the least number of potentially damaging transfers is best. Once a sound is compressed (I don't include original ATRAC because ATRAC itself is about perfect, cutting out only things the human ear cannot deal with) then it's best to leave it at that compression. It's ok to downgrade, but there will be horrid surprises any time you change the bitrate of an already compressed signal. Especially if you recompress something that was uncompressed from MP3 or Atrac LP modes. I think this is another reason Sony made it difficult to transfer compressed sound FROM md. They didn't want to deal with the complaints. On that score they did good, because you have to try really hard before you can make crappy sound with any of the MD setups. So the recipe which works is, record in SP (or PCM), upload to WAV file, edit the wave file as much as you like (there should be no artifacts as a result of such editing), and THEN and only then, save to the compressed format of your choice. Typically I save the wav files before that, and burn them to CD when I get too many (or if I really dont want a gazillion CD's put on DVD's where they cannot be played but at least can be recovered from if necessary). After I have a "good" copy on CD then I might send back onto MD for portable or car use, either with SS or perhaps on my CD/MD deck, which does a reasonable job (except for high-speed copying of the LP formats) of making MD's without involving any computer at all. Recording in 256K Atrac3+ is ok, about the same as SP. Recording in MDLP modes (132kbps or less) is basically hopeless, if you want to do anything to manipulate the waveforms. Sorry got into a rather long-winded digression answering a simple question.

I don't understand why that should be any sort of technical restriction. From what I recall MD are FAT file systems, which means that moving files in the catalog doesn't affect their position on disk. Hence the easy ability to edit/move/combine/delete on decks.

Here's where I am puzzled, then. Why can you get 4hr 50 mins (290) on an 80 disk using HiMD whilst only 2hrs 40 (160) using MD mode? The difference in the padding doesn't account for this. I'm sure I read the answer somewhere but this seems like another one of those technological miracles.

You gotta look in the list of driver files for the device. If there are two (netmd052.sys and something else), you are in trouble. Follow avrin's specs carefully to show the unused ("ghost") devices.

??? I bought 2 NH700's, one for $40, one for $70. In the summer there was a firm selling lots of them new in the box for $90. There's one right now at $15 with only 19 hours to go.

Where on earth did you find that information, Avrin, about 23 being equivalent to no change? Sorry about the misinformation, I could never figure out how to get WAV onto a HiMD (I guess you cannot). I guess it is one of those invisible options, since the 1411kbps never appears in the conversion menu - so you have have to use unmodified .oma files in SS. Are there any other restrictions, such as that they must be encrypted?

There's a trick - you *must* put SS into "My Library" view, and while in there must set the menu on the left to view "all tracks". About as hard to find as it gets, because now you have 11,000 (or whatever) tracks, and you have to find your target in all that mess. Wave editors are easier than this. You get to clean things up as you go (trimming, and noise reduction). However when the track is so enormous then you can use SS to break it down. Problem is now you have to export the divided file as a second step. Track-marking is fine; beware the observation I noted a month or two ago, you cannot track mark if you move things around from one group to another on the HiMD. Group ownership appears to be a key restriction on editability of files whilst on the MD, at least for Optically-recorded files (haven't tried that with mic or analog in).

Don't think there are any numerical limitations on anything to do with RH1. Earlier models, not sure. You can still record SP, LP2 and LP4. So no mono, but surely 6 modes is enough to be going on with? I can see Sony's point here.

I don't think it is possible to send 1411kbps PCM **to** any device so far manufactured (that is, using Sonic Stage; LPCM recording of digital signals is (only) possible using optical input at x1). 352 is merely the highest compression mode available under Atrac3+ As to the difference between 132kbps(Atrac3) on MD and 132kbps on HiMD, you've got me. Seems like the latter takes less space (almost HALF!!!) because of some other differences in the way signals are encoded, and also because the disk is used to capacity instead of wasting a bunch (20%?) for backwards-compatibility reasons. Thanks for bringing this to my attention, I never even noticed it. My usual practice is to "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's", so I have used LP2 on NetMD, and 256K on HiMD.

AFAIK any MDLP device will **play** LP2 regardless of where it was created. The only restrictions Sony places are on upload, and (sometimes) editing. The alternative is to buy a minidisc changer - the MDX-66XLP can be controlled by any Sony head unit (that has Sony Unilink), which need not be an MD player to begin with. That way you might be able to migrate the changer to another vehicle down the line. Better get one quick, they seem to be getting fairly few and far between. Mine came from Japan.

Interesting. I didn't actually catch on to the fact the that NH600 and NH700 are both considered "first-generation" especially since I bought a brand new NH600 only this summer. Both of these units support mono.

What is GP? There has been all this conversation about fake batteries and now you mention something that is under 10 bucks. I'm intrigued.....

Actually the NH600D doesnt have ANY input except USB. The NH600 still doesnt have a microphone input. There are TWO NH700's right now on ebay UK. This unit takes mic, line in, and runs off AA batteries.