sfbp

The other plus on MD seems (to me) the consistency of the manufacture of the play/recording assembly. Touch wood, I have yet to see a disc recorded in one unit that would not behave perfectly in another (assuming it was supposed to be able to play it!). As long as Sony makes at least ONE device that does everything, all existing owners should be happy.

One problem with NetMD is the 1700 character limit. It seems quite frequent that when downloading to LP2 (or, heaven forbid, LP4) that it is quite easy to get too much ("disk full") in the titling info. This is indeed solved in HiMD. Just a thought.

I have observed that erasing on a deck is basically instant. The same cannot be said for portables. In fact if I want to erase something quickly I will walk over to the deck, since it knows enough even to recognise a "HiMd" as such and simply erase it all. I would guess there is no appreciable wear.

Not sure if this the right place, and if our kindly moderators decide to move it..... It suddenly occurred to me that we MD users have a huge advantage over the Ipod crowd if we are travelling. If someone wants to inspect our machine, all they can likely do is take away 1 minidisc. After all there is no way that they can determine what else is on some other disc we have in our bag. I suppose it might take some convincing that "officer, this is not an ipod, there's no music on it". But assuming the said forces of copyright law and order are intelligent enough to look at what is being listened to, they probably are intelligent enough to understand that when the disc is removed, there is no infringing material in the machine. Could this even be enough to spark a flight back to MD? I doubt it. I always knew MD was superior because you can hold it in your hand (unlike a hard disk which will eventually die) and know what's on it. Stephen

I think the last comment (about flushing the disk) is right on the money. The technology seems pretty reliable, and although SS is a bit "idiosyncratic" in the end it delivers most of what you want given the restrictions (mostly gone) that Sony placed on its designers. Sure, if they could have delivered DRM-free management right at the start, things would have been better. But SS does work with all USB-capable minidisc devices.

'fraid the customs guys are quite used to people lying. They don't care, they open the package and collect money anyway. Even gifts are taxable. If you lie about the value on the commercial invoice there's even more complications. Weird, some shipments just roll right through, others get dinged. There's no rhyme or reason to it. Just DON'T try this with UPS or you will have one very angry recipient. Cheers Stephen

I'm just curious what you mean by this. There likely is no duty on such electronics (or a couple of percent). However there will be GST, PST and the cost of clearing it through customs (UPS will charge you a whopping $50 or so, Canada Post about $7, FedEx probably about the same as Canada Post but maybe 0 if you have an account). If you have a way to make it arrive here FOB, I am sure some Canadians might be interested. But Minidisc Canada sells the black ones for $329 (Can) still + shipping + taxes. I am mildly intrigued (by the Silver case) but not enough to spring for it in my current circumstances. Cheers

You would need some sort of microphone preamp with its own power supply. This would magnify the signal up to Line In levels. Look at some of the other threads (in this section) before you leap into this. Even with the "right" gear some people had trouble. Disclaimer: I have never used a microphone preamp/battery box.

Not sure what you mean by "using Realtek". Also NetMD is not designed to playback via the USB cable. But assuming you were trying to send the MD's LINE OUTPUT (from headphone jack) to the LINE INPUT of your sound card on the PC, then the problem is as I stated. Now try some other source of sound (this shouldn't be too hard, take the same cable's end that was in the MD and plug it into something with a 3.5 mm jack socket that is an output) and see if you can hear that on the PC. From what you're saying this might fail too. If it does, then the problem is likely nothing to do with minidisc. If it works, then the minidisc is either broken or set wrong.

nice to see someone else with my weird sense of humour

Where's dat?

Try this topic: http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=21145 Good luck.

One oddity about the RH1 new users (including myself) usually run afoul of is this: the power supply and the USB-to-computer work a little differently. Specifically the PS has rather strange characteristics. You should always let the lights go out before switching from one to the other. I recall some of these errors with an out of the box machine, on the first day. Try taking out the Li Ion battery completely. I don't remember if it needs to be discharged. If the player is still working you can run it for some hours first. It may be that when the machine reinits, it will start working. The other thing to understand is that when you plug into USB you should not use a hub, and that when you switch from NetMD to HiMD the interface shuts down and opens up again in the other mode, like a different driver. Plugging into the "wall" powersupply seems like a 3rd "mode". Let's hope you haven't got a busted head cable......

Have you checked to see if the Sound Card input is set to actually a. receive and b. record from the line input? Don't try recording anything, just first see (a.) if you can play back from MD into your PC speakers If this works, check the record devices on your sound card. It may be that one of them is muted. In my case, if you set it to Digital input (I have a Toslink-In card) then normal line in doesn't work for recording purposes.

Sorry for shouting so loud, but none of the regular experts has replied any further. I still have a problem. What i now know is that the machine passes the continuous write diagnostic test with no errors. But that noise is definitely strange, and I am concerned lest I need to oil or grease something. This is a very nice deck but the first one that did anything like this. I also noticed that when i turn the AMS button esp when playing LP2, that frequently the track change doesn't take. This almost suggests that the vibration I can see of the head lateral position may after all have some side effects. I suppose it's just possible that this deck may have been almost unused (the guy didnt have any MD to offer me) and somehow this will go away if I use it enough. I'd really really hate to bust it, especially if there's something that I can try to fix it. Thanks all Stephen

Before doing anything else make quite sure the hold button isn't on. People report weird problems using the machine remotely when "hold" is set (yellow showing). I assume you cannot write to a disc by any means, including but not limited to the following: add a track mark, delete a file, record using microphone or line/optical input. If this is not so, disregard the rest of this post. Without being an expert (as I only suffered one dead drive, ever) it seems that the major likely reason you cannot write to a disk is, well er, you cannot write to a disk. What I mean by this is that a critical component is the write head which is separate from the read head. It's connected to the electronics by a thin, coated, flexible wire (of course, how else are heads built?; until someone embeds bluetooth there) and the wire may be broken internally or even visibly. Various solutions have involved reattaching (using solder) the wire (or a new, parallel wire made of the the kind of wire you buy in electronics breadboard kits; if you know what I mean there's a chance you can fix this) to the write head, which has been reported to get detached from that wire by repeated flexion. This is pretty tricky stuff. Unless you are an electronics genius Sony repair (out of warranty of course) may be your only option. (edit-update) I found that post http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=4712 Good luck; you may need it.

Agreed. However (just to be a curmudgeon) I notice there is quite a habit by Sony of cut-and-paste. Eg a manual with no microphone input may have a whole section devoted to recording with a mike. The difference I observed was quite startling - and I went back and checked a couple of times. One reason I was intrigued is that if d/l to SP on the RH1 is producing "fake SP" (ie LP2) then somehow there had to be a compensating technology to enable them to pull this sleight-of-hand. That would argue in favour of RH1 supporting type S. Very odd.

I looked quite carefully for that before posting. Perhaps you could check again and tell me what page of the manual. I agree, if it says type S that would not explain the difference.

Very interesting. I just fired up my first unit with type S and it seems to confirm this. Up until now I was underwhelmed by the LP2 format (132K Atrac3) especially on the RH1. But stuff that sounds not-great in that format on the RH1 sounds amazingly good on the type S portable. I don't have a type S deck, though it seems only the last few decks manufactured actually had this feature. A (?partial) list: JB980, JE480, JE780, S500, SE9, DAV1. Another question might be, if we have tracks recorded in LP2, is there a way to recover the marvellous sound (put another way, is LP2 a decent archival format)? My guess (and I am sure someone here can speak to this) is that you need one of the decks in the above list, with optical out (ie not the 480) in order to extract the goodies properly. But maybe uploading from the RH1 will actually do as well. I am suspicious on this point, especially given that the RH1 doesn't seem to play it back all that well. It's possible my testing wasn't very systematic. But it kindof hit me over the head when pointed out in this thread that type S is a playback only technology. Ah, the quest for Nirvana!

Sounds like something wrong with SP3. Thank heavens I didn't install it. Try uninstalling the service pack (should be a no-brainer). If that works, then you can try to figure out which piece got broken in the upgrade. Contrary to bobt's implication (sorry if this isn't what you meant, bobt!) there's never been a problem on XP SP2, for me using SS 4.3. I wonder if some codec is missing? You could always check the list of Codecs (Control panel, Sounds and Audio Devices, Hardware, Audio Codecs, Properties) though I don't of my own knowledge know which (if any) of these is *installed* by Sonic Stage. I'm guessing in the new rush to update things to DRM, you need to undo the "DRM for Windows Media Player 9" update (I think but am not 100% certain that that was its name) that I carefully avoided a few weeks back. It may well be rolled into the SP3 distribution, so now you need to go back and reinstall one by one the other updates. I could imagine that Sony, having their own DRM, didn't update to something that meshed with the "standard" scheme. Either that, or some DLL or driver they did replace was zapped by Windows File Protection, and effectively not installed. Install log for SS4.3 may help with this. Finally, I note that there is a 4.4 floating around (Sony's Japanese website IIRC). Perhaps it will run in English, does anyone know? Good luck, I look forwards to the results of your researches, as they may affect me sooner rather than later.

Really the only bit that disturbs me is the last sentence. Some of my most cherished recordings are radio broadcasts from many years ago. But overall it looks like a reasonable way to make it illegal to make money from selling copies of things you don't own.

What mentality? The whole row is erupting because our Canadian lawmakers are being blackmailed into the DMCA or something resembling it. Hollywood's complaint is that Canada is a source of piracy, and so the US is threatening to make us (and the world) comply with this super secret ACTA. Super secret because noone has the guts to present it to the electorate. Try googling "ACTA copyright" (in the news, not the regular search engine) and you will quickly see what I mean.

The "copyright police" won't have time to prevent imports of second hand MD equipment. Seems what they are really targeting is Blu-ray, ironically no point until everyone agreed on it. But it's true: the everything-is-free-internet had to end, just like the dot-com bubble. Make the most of it. The one that worries me is region-free DVD players being outlawed. There was a nice player being made in Taiwan for a company here in Vancouver and I think someone bought them off. This means that pre-Vista PCs may end up being the only way to view a DVD that some idiot won't manufacture for your country but wants to protect at home. I don't think international trade will cease. That's scaremongering. I think the forces of DRMness will kick around for a while and come to some compromise over new movies, that's all. If the world economy craters maybe there won't be enough of those to worry about anyway. I always viewed BluRay as a tool to sell lots of ridiculously oversized TV screens

Atrac codec allows you to play atrac files on your computer. If you can figure out a way to get atrac files off that CD onto the PC, you're in business. I asked a somewhat related question (and researched fairly well, too) - is there such a thing as a CD player (component) that plays Atrac CDs? Apparently not, you can buy a DVD player (and other devices) that play MP3 CDs but there is no device except a portable (walkman) that plays them. Really stupid, IMO, because I would love to have a permanent CD with compressed stuff (eg radio comedy shows) that I don't have to have a HiMD forever in order to play, but which allows me to get more than 80 minutes of speech recording.

You're right of course. I don't know why, I'm not with it today. I wish someone'd answer my other post, still no idea what's wrong or what to do with it. Cheers S