sfbp

Trust me. They exist. The guy is sometimes out of the office, but quite reliable, stuff always seems to arrive.

You can buy one in Australia for $99 including all sorts of accessories, and in USA on Ebay for about $130 though some auctioned items may go for under $100.

Thanks. I read that as fast as I could, and no reference whatever to MD or digital out except something about Congress' attitude (on the last page). But the reference to AHRA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Home_Recording_Act does nicely explain the timing of how SCMS was introduced. Here is the puzzle though: the DECKS have audio out (well, most of them), but the PORTABLE PLAYERS do not. I absolutely fail to see why Sony decided to protect its a** in one case but not in the other. Maybe I'm missing something. This was an interesting read for several other reasons unconnected with MD, thanks again.

I would be very interested to read any details (who, what, when).

Terrific work! Have you just done this? Or..... I was thinking in the car driving home from holiday about the NetMD/RH1 upload thing. Have you tried substituting the NETMD052.SYS driver so that your NH600 loads it? I'm going to try something along those lines as soon as I have a chance. Once again, this is marvellous news, means one can really control the uploading part. Now if I (and maybe 1Kyle) can dig into the whole USB thing, perhaps there's some chance we can do some neat stuff....?

Hmm, I wonder if it's one of these redirected IP's. Probably the forum *is* accessible but needs a more convoluted reference. Meantime, as you say, it appears to have been "hijacked" (probable cause, someone didn't pay for the domain name). I own a forum myself and the problem is that many of them are on a shared IP with some sort of redirect. If the hoster broke it, or the redirection failed for reasons beyond his control, somehow the name has to be put back online. I haven't taken time to check but the arin.net/whois should give some clues, as well as good old NetSol whois. Before we do that, ask some of the posters here (kurisu?) who are involved in atraclife. I bet one of them knows what is going on.

I agree, Windows Mixer. Look at the advanced controls - maybe it thinks you need to set recording source to Line Input (or Aux or whatever you have plugged the cable into). You don't tell us the setup . If you can swap the to-computer cable for a headphone and it makes the headphones produce music, then the next thing is to find another sound source and see if that also fails to get to the computer, eliminating the MD from the equation. I'm assuming an analog line input (not Toslink digital) here. I have exactly this problem on my Terratec, when trying to grab a waveform for recording with something similar to Audacity, because of where the sound card routes the input.

The last trick that I learned was (when I have something that won't fit well on SP disk) to use an MD deck (not the HiMD!) as a glorified D-to-A. This means no dependency on the electronics in your HiMD portable. So I have my JE630 hooked to the stereo system, take OUT the minidisc, and press "RECORD". It now pops into a mode that shows "D-to-A" on the lighted display. Then optical cable to the HiMD recorder. Hope this helps. Regular decks are available and cheap. The Onkyo (HiMD deck) doesnt have digi-out. Now that is hard to believe. Where do you live? Presumably they are selling the 780. What is the voltage required? Stephen

Are you sure you cannot re-import the .WAV file into SS? (yeah yeah, I know everyone hates SS but it's just temporary so you can split up the file). You will have to convert it back to OpenMGAudio (choose convert on the right-click menu of the track). I am not certain about this - but it looks like SS does almost zero work when importing a WAV file, thereby confirming the contention that OpenMG Audio (for 1411 kbps) is simply a wav file with a header stuck on the front. I just tried it out (with a small file). The only thing I had to do was to DELETE the wave file (from the properties of the file) before SS would let me divide the file. Sorry I didn't have time to do it with a large file, but if my theory is correct that won't be a big deal. Save a copy of the monster file before you do this, painful as that is. Another thought: if you have Nero, try opening the wave file in their Wave Editor. Maybe Nero fixed whatever problems CoolEdit didn't. You're going to need Nero to burn that DVD that you save the file on, right?

1. CoolEdit reads the file into memory. Any memory over 2GB is likely to be problematic. My copy of cool edit chokes the whole system when reading in very large files, because nearly all memory is taken away from other programs already running. I don't think CoolEdit can be set up to use virtual memory properly. But maybe they improved it and I didn't upgrade. 2. CoolEdit was written way back before large files were common (1996 or so). I wouldn't expect it to deal with files of this size. My own practice is to put automatic track marks and make a series of files (usually I break into 10 min chunks but you could do 1 hour at a time). This only helps you next time. 3. With any luck the file is in the recycle bin. Even if it isn't some tools may find the deleted file. More on this if you need. 4. I don't think you can just split an audio file using a file splitting tool. However it's JUST possible that SS will allow you to divide the file before exporting - ie the problem might be in CoolEdit. Look up "Divide" in the Help index for sonic stage. There's a trick - you can only do it when "All Tracks" are displayed. 5. There's no way you are on FAT, contradicting the previous posters. Max FAT size is 4GB, period. There are also some problems with some of the programs written for the Windows 98 era which didn't support more than ***2*** GB properly (files might exist but would show with a negative file length). So you are, ipso facto, on NTFS. 6. If you DO manage to split the file using something not designed for audio files, I am reasonably sure the information about audio is stored at the beginning. This means you could truncate at about 4GB (must be less I think, 4GB might look like 0) and at least get the audio up to that point. I reckon the rest is dead unless some genius manages to figure out what header to splice on to the .7GB chunk. Ah.... you could IMPORT it back into SS and divide it there. All in all, dividing it in Sonic Stage into 1GB chunks is probably your best bet once you have found the file. Let us know how you get on. Stephen

That's great; however the 700 doesn't have a radio - that seems to be the big difference when I checked in the equipment browser at http://minidisc.org/part_Sony_MZ-NH700.html Thanks for the clarification.

Sounds like you are in Europe (well, not USA/Canada) from the 220 volts. Disregarding the power supply, what would shipping be? I have a friend who might be getting into this..... and others will probably have the same question.

Same comment - Richy, time to zap this guy. Cheers

oh my, could the moderators delete this and zap this guy?

Funny, I didn't go straight to the "new posts" to read this. I woke up with an odd idea, and wanted to chase down your posts for the conversation about the blank formatted disk. And the weird thought was almost unrelated, yet it was related, as you will see, to your new thread. What has been bugging me is the idea that I have to have so many CDs. (Not that I care THAT much but the S.O. is definitely making complaining noises). The "problem" is that nothing can read an ATRAC CD, except a few portable Sony DiscMen. But clearly, one could make an ATRAC CD, or better yet, DVD, with an absolute TON of compressed stuff on, comparable to a single HiMD disk. Of course one would need to read or mount said image(s). For example, I have about 60 of the Goon Shows (out of around 100-130 that were ever broadcast). They fit nicely on one HiMD, and the quality is good enough at just about any data rate (many of them started off as recordings off the radio, now I am collecting them from the BBC R7 each week wherever I didn't have it). So to put them on a single DVD whence I could retrieve them would be very handy, provided I could later get them onto MD (or something else) to play back. So clearly if I could blast them to an image of an ATRAC CD (or better yet) some larger container whose image up to 4.7GB, there might be a way to have my eat and cake it. I suppose knowing how to build a blank HiMD image is going to be part of this, just as you suggested. Cheers Stephen Sorry didn't do any USB spying yet - was sorta thinking mebbe would use my 30-day license on that tool when you and I both have some time. I'll be busy to the end of the month now, but in August, who knows? Stay in touch.

I agree totally. What is archivable is not necessarily what immediately sounds "the best". SP is essentially broadcast quality, agree 100%. But so far, for listening, I take LP2 type S (ie not LP2 on a HiMD machine) over all others. Needless to say my backups are all .WAV or physical playable CD.

Well, I am now the possessor of the best sounding (and incidentally, looking) portable MD unit so far. I'm not the one to boast or I might have taken some pictures in that other thread, not my style. It's an NF810. The NF610 is a close second, but the problem with that beast is that it was badly bashed up when I got it; the mechanism makes a lot of noise, and the radio doesn't work (I eventually determined that the problem was not in the radio/remote but in the main unit. One of the screws on the main unit was rusted!!!! - so that was as far as I got). So I figure it will die pretty soon. The NF810 however is absolutely perfect. It also plays LP2 amazingly well. The RH1 doesn't come close. I tried it using several MDs, and the same head phones and remote on all three units. What do the NF610 and NF810 have in common? They have Type-S. Although the HiMD units say they have type S, my opinion is that it is somehow "included" in the HiMD base feature set, as you imply. I further believe that the "real" type-S machines sound better. To be fair, LP2 isn't the state of the art, and we know that the diagnosis of the waveform shows the cutoff. But with all the concerns about HiMD not being so well supported (or sold), I'm very happy with MDLP. Worst case (I lose the SS database completely) I can play LP2 disks back from my JE640 deck to recreate the digital - granted it won't be great but at least I will have the waves in digital form. Mostly I have made CDs for archival purposes already where I didn't have the CD to start with, so SS is irrelevant. For now though, the sheer pleasure of having 2 hours 40 mins of high quality listening on 1 disk, which is enough for any 2CD album, is enough to make me forget all the rest. BTW I listen to almost 100% classical. When I playback these disks on the JE640 through my stereo, it does not sound as good as a CD of the same music that I have made or bought. Maybe that's because the 640, unlike the classier 980, doesn't have Type S. But for headphone listening, the NF810 (which is an N710 they tell me) rules!

It can do mono recordings too (160 mins), and has a microphone input. Could be useful for lots of applications. But if you need a downloader, get one and you can still use the R91 for playback. It has a great sound.

One interesting part about all this is as follows: if you have put all the music onto MD, it's safe there, because the right MD player will always play it. As I pointed out in another post, if you have an MDLP-capable deck, then you can get digital out from that into your computer, and there appears to be no restriction (at least with XP) to that PCM input being recorded with any wave-recording program, and saved as .WAV. Bottom line, .oma files are useless, actual NetMD minidiscs are useable.

It might help to know what model and type of disc (format, not the manufacturer, ie SP/LP/Hi-SP etc). So far it looks to me (in a few manuals, of course I don't know which is your unit) that C16 only refers to some test modes. Are you sure it wasn't C14, which is a TOC error? Some folks here will tell you how to clone a TOC to get the music off. I haven't done it (yet). The fact that you have 4 hours on one disk makes it sound like it might be LP4. It might be a good idea not to keep only in LP4 format, so in future keep in the highest quality format you have space for on your computer hard drive. Amazing, you are user #586 and this is your first post. I can't exactly say "welcome", now, can I? Hope we can help.

The whole beauty of minidiscs is that they are digital. Once you have a digital signal (such as CD) unless you compress things further you can't go wrong. Once you have compressed, you're ok as long as you don't switch formats from a lossy compressed format - not all compression formats are lossy. Sounds like both of these methods involve digital to digital. You're right about the convenience of track labelling. But you should be able to record on the Onkyo and then label on the RH1. That's exactly what I was doing yesterday, except I used an SP deck to get the signal from analog (an old LP). But I was making a "new" CD, so uploading **from** the RH1 to computer followed next. All the Sony formats are pretty good, and most of them way better than most MP3, for listening purposes. The only reason to care about how much your data are mangled (as opposed to what the sound quality is like), is if you are making an archive copy, which you might need to copy again in some years - when the current generation of records and recording equipment goes obsolete. Hope this helps. Stephen

I don't need one. In fact I have 6 sitting on the desk in front of me (give you a clue - they all start with the letters MZ).

That's pretty cool. Well done, again I say, well done. Edit: of course the other thing we might EASILY do is to edit the .inf, and probably it would even be safe to post it. I can't see Sony having any quarrel with that, as long as it was tested.

There's actually one more way. You can get an MDLP deck (JE480,JE640,JB980) with digital out and transfer at playback speed into your computer. (don't tell me it doesn't work... I just checked, and I can indeed play netMD recordings from my 640 into the Toslink input on my sound card). The only problem with your recordings (and possibly one of the reasons Sony disabled this, though their overwhelming motivation continues to be seen as protection of copyright) is that they are in a lossy format. I would be inclined to get some player that has LP support, at least you can listen to them without any further degradation. For archival purposes, it's probably too late, as what is saved on the MD's you have simply isn't good enough quality. If you are really desperate, you can use analog out but you have to find something that will play them first. When you eventually get Sonic Stage going again, I strongly recommend exporting every single file (that isn't straight off a CD) into WAV format, and saving that. Stephen

Sadly, no. Your MZ-NE410 supported LP2 and LP4 (I never actually tried putting SP on it). But the EP11 predates MDLP, LP2, LP4, NetMD, etc etc. So it will not ever. But you can easily pick up another NE410 or one of the many players that support MDLP. Good luck!