sfbp

With respect, we know so many simple ways to get around SCMS, this project is kinda moot. 1. Buy a pro model (for around $200?) such as the MDS-E10 2. Get a device like the Behringer Ultramatch Pro 3. Buy a $20 sound card for a PC - the majority of them don't care about SCMS and allow you to disable it, period. The major problem people have with MD these days is the folks who unwisely used NetMD to make LP2 disks (excellent quality, 2-3 CD's per MD) but now have "lost" the original CD (or perhaps never had it except briefly) and want to get the data off the MD. There is almost nothing to fix this problem except playing back at x1. Granted, you will still need to get over the SCMS problem then. But there's no SCMS in the actual ATRAC file, I think. In addition there are so many other pesky restrictions designed to protect Sony a. as a content producer b. against lawsuits like the one over the Betamax that almost finished them off 40 years ago, and we know all of them, that the SCMS is probably the least of them. 20 years ago it may have presented as the most significant stumbling block to copying music. Today, it ain't. Good luck in your quest. Or stick around here to see the real life solution to what I can only guess is the the real life problem. Cheers

Don't forget that any unit minus its OWH is a recipe for disaster. The first attempt to write a track mark, for example, on a recorded MO disk (anything which writes the TOC), or any other *writing* activity will blank the disk (forever, except one can fake a new TOC on another machine of course and thereby recover the audio data). What happens is the laser is switched to 10x power to do the write but not modulated by the OWH. So the disk is erased at that spot, rendering the catalog empty. Very useful for erasing NetMD disks, though, with their unerasable TrProt track flags. So if your OWH is not connected it will be just like the above. I have a feeling you know this; but for the benefit of someone in a year or three reading this...... Stephen

I don't think that the conversion I mention *significantly* degrades the quality. There are many here who will attest that it's really quite hard to demonstrate loss on ATRAC. Certainly not after 1 conversion. Compare that to the approximations made by *analog* microphones, and on the sonic level it matters less than having a common format for all one's "stuff" that sounds decent. Far more telling than any of the things you mention are sound cards which insist on converting everything to 48,000 sampling rate before playback. I'm very glad that you can play ATRAC1 on your PC. However it cannot be edited. ATRAC3+ can, using Sound Forge, AFAIK the only editor which works. They didn't finish that project (QHiMDTransfer), and it is mostly not useful because of the many deficiencies in the "finished" article. Therefore, I don't use it.

Your left-brain assertions are well-heeded. And I unfortunately disagree with them. However, data on a CD frequently doesn't sound as good as the same thing ripped to ATRAC. Go figure.

Atrac3+ is actually a much better codec. The fact that "original SP" seems to give a cleaner sound than an "original CD" is due to some clever tweaks in the design of ATRAC, which actually alters the supposedly 16 bit data off the disk by playing with oversampling just like good CD players do. A combination of upsampling and oversampling, followed by re-coding into ATRAC's logarithmic format. There's little difference (minor transformation) between ATRAC and ATRAC3+ in terms of that - both are 24-bit formats.

That may be, but in practice it doesn't seem to work that well. How else do you explain Sony providing in SS different qualities of ripping?

You're going to end up converting them no matter what, as there is no codec that plays ATRAC1. You may as well allow the software/firmware to give you Atrac3+. If you don't you're likely to end up with something worse. ATRAC is inherently a 24-bit format and I don't think QHiMDTransfer solves that problem when converting to 16-bit wave files (which you can also do with Sonic Stage). They also never solved the problem of tracks that didn't start on a cluster boundary, which may be what you're seeing with the conversion.

Go back to Windows 7 (or whatever), change the setting. Install Windows 10 as a dual boot. Sorry we really don't know much about Vaios.

Fair enough. I checked my usual source for service manuals that we don't have (elektrotanya.com) and there's no sign of it. We look forward to your user review Welcome to our little world!

Sorry, no. This is not an official Sony site, and we don't know very much about the specifics of Vaio computers. You have to get into the ROM BIOS configuration, which you can do with a key sequence. If you get to the "missing operating system" message, hit Ctrl-Alt-Del and try again. The key in decreasing order of likelihood is either <DEL> or <F2> or <F9>. Good luck!

Are you sure? Sounds like it hasn't arrived yet.....

You did well - the last time that happened to me the post broke off (it was my laptop, not a minidisc recorder).

It's the first and most popular download on this site. You will have to turn off signature enforcement for long enough to install it. This is not obvious and involves restarting windows 10

The male socket that goes into the MD unit is known as Mini B, in USB-speak. Micro-B is something else, namely what a lot of phones use.

Keep them in the dark. The ones in the packet are likely to degrade just as fast as the one in your machine, so having hundreds isn't particularly a measure of survivability.

Nah, it will stop working the moment you put the cover on and put it back on the HiFi Stack (just kidding).

So the key question is: does the 470 (with its BD-transplanted heart) record from analogue input or not. If yes, then all is happy and well in the garden. If not, then you've found at least one symptom of the failing drive. Kevin, I'm sure, will have comments.

It took me a while to figure out how LP4 works. I have probably 1000 hours of classical music recorded at LP4 that I use (mostly) to listen to in the car (MD changer = 6 x 5hrs 23m). What you DON`T want to do is to transfer from high-rate ``good`` audio using realtime downconversion. What you must do is to record in real time to the optical input (decks are good but portables will work) so no conversion takes place. That`s about it.

you might want to talk to Kevin (kgallen) - he has a LPM (Laser Power Meter) and is very good at the details of electronics. My first inclination would be to see if you can't adjust the laser. He's done the kind of swap you are talking about, but at the time he didn't have the LPM. Stephen

So - it looks like the 113 is some kind of a bit field, where each bit turns on or off a feature independently of the other. There's a nice example of this over at http://minidisc.org/mzr700_to_mzr900.html As to the magic parameters after 114, your guess is as good as mine. The MZRH1 is much much worse. Luckily for me the jog lever gave up working a long time ago and I cannot get into service mode on the RH1

Looks like someone has mucked up your unit. 113 should be 80. To get no volume limit, you probably want E destination which is by setting 114 to 24. Whoever did this got it backward. Strongly suggest you follow the directions on page 19 in the Service Manual.

Please read the last comment. YOU DON"T WANT 0113 on this unit. Look at 0114.

NetMD or HiMD? If NetMD there IS no checkin - all you're doing is decreasing the transfer count. If it's gone from the PC, it's gone. There are other ways of recovering data from NetMD disks but they are all painful. Even an MZ-RH1 won't do that. Sony designed NetMD as a one way transfer. If HiMD there's a bit more hope but only if you decrypted (unprotected) the files before you sent them to the HiMD device.

One reason you might have trouble with the 3.5mm stereo jack would be if the voltage provided within the unit is too low? What about doing a power adjust on the mainboard?

Nothing for it but to follow carefully the instructions in the post Before then-applying the NETMD760 update from our downloads section. You can certainly start by setting the DISC MODE (on the unit) to HiMD but really that will only mask the problem