sfbp

I'm disappointed that the "wide" remotes don't work, too - I didn't get around to trying that until last night. Back to cell phone h**l. For now I'm just happy I have a simple way to make a CD (many of which I manufactured via MD!) into a MD quickly, and a way to hear LP2 play decently on stereo. The possible loss of DRM keys at some point in the future is more disturbing - I don't really understand why Sonic Stage goes to the internet when problems arise, especially when the site in question (Connect) isn't even there.

Does this apply to the suggestion made to modify a power supply designed for a similar device (GPS)? I never did try it, being somewhat cautious by nature.

Well I was doing it long before I got an RH1, using any deck with digital output into my optical input on the sound card. Even after the RH1 until someone in Russia figured out how to cure the RH1 of uploading SP at x1 only!!!! But agreed the standard MD is still the most convenient, except when I need to capture more than 80 minutes. The only way that problem occurs is recording radio. For that I use my NH600 at 256kbps and mark the tracks before uploading (though doing titling after the upload). So the RH1 uploading isn't really essential. It's very nice though. But I intend to keep it mostly for either a. large volumes of speech recorded on LP2 or mono and b. PCM recordings with a microphone. Sound reasonable?

I almost got there... and gave up. Luckily I had saved almost everything in WAV since the last export to DRM-free .oma files. What I think you have to do, among other things, is to duplicate the registry (as it pertains to SS) and restore the DRM keys if they are there (Avrin has posted on this and hopefully is reading this). The second key step I am sure you have to do is to set yourself back in time to the exact moment (give or take a few hours) when the keys were last valid. There seemed to be some sort of time element embedded into the keys. If you haven't touched any of the file in the sonic stage folder, this may not be a huge problem. The third key step which was also beyond me, is that you have to duplicate your user ID somehow on Windows (eek!). There are utilities out there which map user SID's (you know 500-1-blah blah) to human readable ids. Then you have to be able to log on to that user under Windows. I am pretty sure they used all three elements (time, user id and keys) in the scheme. Very good luck, though I fear you may have a hopeless quest. If you find yourself overwhelmed by .WAV files in future, note that the AAL files produced by compressing them are not key-protected. Mine survived the switch of keys quite nicely. Too bad that you cannot compress directly to that format on import, even though you can from a CD import.

Question: did you involve MD in this process? The main reason I got into minidisc was to save some LP records and recordings like this. At the time putting very much on computer hard drive wasn't an option, and then and now it wasn't/isn't easy to introduce computers to my stereo (One day I will post a picture showing why!) I find that the sound I get from the MD's semi-automatic cleanup as I record is more reliable than analogue in to my computer. But maybe I'm being silly, and this is just me spending money and time on minidiscs when I could and should be finding better ways to capture sound directly into the PC. Opinions welcomed.

Thanks. I was really wondering, since SS is clearly capable of dealing with all these different units, whether one could trick it into putting the CD titles straight onto the MD quickly, followed by some sort of TOC cloning. I suppose one would have to write some sort of software that emulated parts of MD operation. I'm sure Marc (the MD Renderer guy) knows some of this, but if there was a way to put just the titles onto an already recorded MD, but looking up the title info from CDDB. Exactly as SS does right now, but with something to prevent the actual sound data being recorded over top of the sound already there.

That lends a whole new meaning to the words "Digital Rights Management" You know, Mission Impossible, this software will self destruct in 10 years.... 9... 8... 7... ... I just spent the whole of yesterday reviving an 11-year old Windows 95 machine (crazy me) one of my kids had managed to crash. The major stumbling block was the updates they did to the core Windows DLLs to cope with the updates they did to the browsers to cope with the IDIOTS out there attempting to hack people's computers. Humans, what a species. All the hardware technology worked fine including 8 year old tapes and tape drive, ancient CD ROM etc etc. I think Sony's engineering has been pretty darned solid from the very beginning. Cassettes were never as reliable as tape recorders (Sony's original major product) and I am having the most fun I had since I was a teenager playing with Reel to Reel using my various Minidiscs. And being able to zap that persistent whine or hum using computer software - amazing! I'm buying an external MD changer for my car as we speak. At least noone will steal it or the Minidiscs like they did the CD's a few weeks ago. Stephen

Hmm maybe I got the wrong unit after all - but I did want the Type-S playback. SO will kill me if yet another deck appears (I'm up to 4, and one busted one, at the moment). Cheers

Well, I did exactly that cutting and pasting from the same import to SS. But it still takes a while. I just thought you rocket scientists might have figured out a clever way to avoid this. I don't crave it *that* much, as I say LP2 sounds really decent. It's more a matter of convenience, I wanted to make and send someone a disk and label it too - SP transfer with SS takes forever. Cheers

Some restriction on "driver" files *.sys under Vista. Maybe it would work fine but you're not running as administrator and so privilege to load driver files on demand has been zapped?

Here... these are the same ones I bought Good luck.

That's pretty wild. Model numbers please?

Another thing I found - I received what was probably a mostly discharged battery - was that there was green copper compound that was preventing the contact. If you have that, the solution is easy. Get some alcohol or isopropanol and clean it off all the charging contacts on battery and recorder. That's one reason batteries don't charge... high resistance from decomposition fluids/compounds.

Li-ion or NiMH?

While we are still on the subject of gumsticks, I will say that after cooling down, the said NH-14WM went back to its normal size and is now producing much longer play times than since I inherited it about a year ago. Maybe it's when they run right down, some Hydrogen gas is given off on recharge, just like someone suggested.

I cannot find any information for this. I helped my dad purchase one of these the last time I was in England, and he may have finally got around to titling some recordings. But there appeared to be no remote. And the one in the manual doesn't have letter keys included. 1. Does anyone happen to know if the S707 is capable of titling using a remote? The instruction manual shows a horrible procedure involving endless rotating of the AMS knob. 2. If so, which remotes might be compatible? The manual is dated 1998 and I have both an RM-D7M and an RM-D15M which I might send him, available. They both date from machines about that time (JE510 and JE520 respectively). Thanks for any information.

I find that the audio I am getting from Type-S playback of LP2 is good out of all proportion from what I might expect from 132kbps. I don't have a HiMD deck, so I cannot comment on HiMD playback at all, since we all know that portables are subject to rigging of the output, hence all the volume hacks etc. The only thing I use PCM for is live recording. It's very helpful to have a greater dynamic range when you cannot guess or adjust the incoming sound to fill the data bits. (maybe some tech expert will explode this remark, but I think it might be correct).

I am now the proud owner of an MXD-D400. This amazing piece of equipment has many interesting characteristics, some of them downright odd, but the two most important and positive ones (and good reason for anyone who can snap one up to get one) are as follows: 1. The ability to record direct from CD to MDLP (pick SP, LP2 or LP4) at "high" (4x) speed without using a computer 2. The ability (along with only about 3 other deck models ever made) to playback LP2 using Type-S decoding which makes LP2 actually worth listening to on a decent stereo system. As mentioned elsewhere the encoding doesn't have to be done by the machine that has Type-S, just playback. I'm sure that some of the oddities**** will come up one of these days, but for now I would just like to find a way around this technical problem. What I would like to do is to find a way to title such an MD without doing it by hand either with keyboard (the machine doesn't have a PS/2 keyboard socket, but that's no problem, any MD deck that does titling via Keyboard can be used to title LP2 and LP4 even if they cannot play the music tracks), or by SonicStage. It occurs to me that SS or SB can do just what I want by going to CDDB and looking it up. The reason I prefer the deck for the transfer (especially to SP) is that I may want the best quality, which we all know doesn't exist in SS->MD because of codec restrictions (from Dolby) that end up putting "Fake SP" on the target minidisc. But how to get them to title a minidisc? TOC cloning somehow? Has anyone thought of a way? Please, experts, post your thoughts. I know someone here has TWO of these thingies...... Stephen **** the biggest oddity is that one cannot erase a SS-created disk.

Hi Chris. In general the new server (when it is working) is much more responsive than the old. Seamless transition too.... except for the down time. Is there anyone who would like to receive immediate email with information about outage, or perhaps is there some monitoring system that checks to see if that web server is there, that would notify whoever is able to restart the server? Also I see atraclife.org still in your signature. Has it died, or is it just comatose, awaiting a DNS entry? Thanks again for all your behind the scenes work. Stephen

Suppresses emissions from the cable (interference). Very thorough of Sony, many comparable device manufacturers don't bother, I think.

Actually I am sure this was the original battery. As to the LIP-4WM, just like everyone else, mine was identical physically, and a minor variant (one of the ones seen in the other big thread) in the recycling marking. So I still concur with all those who bought one of these, that at least mine is genuine but excess stock.

Interesting. I just had a battery swell on me... for the first time. I have 3 NiMH 14WM gumstick batteries. One came with the MZ-R91, and worked fine for the last 6 months. The other two were from Australia made by a company called Vapex. Guess what? The Sony one was the one which suddenly swelled up during charging today. I got it out no problem, guess I was lucky. Go figure. The Vapex ones were 1/4 of the cost of the Sony one. They work great.

On the contrary, I have bought other obvious fakes (not battery, admittedly) and they didn't work. This one looks and acts like the real thing.

I bought one of the cheap ones, and it looks and acts perfectly fine, to me. I think if a battery has the right characteristics, you can tell. If you can get the right amount of charge out of it, and there is no sign of swelling or discolouration (heating is probably normal) then I wouldn't worry about it. Yeah, the "clone" was very slightly differently marked, looked like different recycling regulations, so intended for a different market. My guess is a lot of these parts are seeping out as excess stock from the real factory where Sony has them made. Sony would probably like to be like De Beers with diamonds, and make sure that no "excess" ever gets out, but I think that is what happens. I just swapped the "clone" battery in after leaving it out for 24 hours, and no problems. Neither it nor the original seems to display any "deviant" behaviour, so if the definition is that they behave to spec, then it is just as genuine as the one that came with the machine.

thanks, I know about that one, was hoping there was a way to clear up "at will" rather than automatically. Stephen