sfbp

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

Anything that's HiMD will have an H in the name eg RH55 (which doesn't exist). So you are correct. Cheers

Broaden your search to worldwide. Lots there.

Take a look at the service manual, if it's here. Or look at some other model if not. I had a quick look and it seems very common for these types of equipment to be essentially one wire different (2 or 3 taps on the power supply) between voltages. I realise this may not be good from warranty POV but realistically you won't get warranty service in another country anyway. So likely you are stuck with getting a different mains plug for the cable (or replace the whole cable) and that's about it. Hope this helps.

Some more info: - I put the JE630 in place of it, no problems, so it's not the environment or setup. - I opened the lid of the 640 (not plugged in to anything except AC power) and recorded silence on the Analog input. As soon as the write head descended, the noise started (on playback there is no noise, and the write head doesn't descend - learn something every day) - There appear to be two cogs (gears) one of which is attached to the positioning motor, the other of which is much larger and goes to the head transport. It's a gear down arrangement, the little one moves a fraction and the big one moves 10 or 20 times less. These two gears are permanently vibrating at what looks about the right frequency (I was exaggerating, it's not right at the top of the piano, only 2 octaves above Middle C), however they are vibrating when playing back too. If I had to guess, I'd say the spindle has developed a wobble and the servo manages to keep up with it but at the expense of making this noise. Stephen

Well I turned it off pretty quick when I heard it. It sounds mechanical, and builds up after a few seconds of recording. Its somewhere at the top of the piano keyboard and a bit wobbly, if that helps. Maybe I should upload a recording of the noise? I can insert and remove disks fine. I can play disks fine. The short passage that I recorded with the noise going, had no obvious ill-effects in the recorded sound. I like the idea of spying on it. Stephen

Very weird, my "new" JE-640 (one previous owner, beautiful condition) suddenly started making a high-pitched "whistling" noise when recording. So far I have only tested with SP as I am not anxious to blow it up. I tried several disks, too. No problem on playback. Any ideas please? Thanks

I am firmly of the opinion that the RH1, whilst nice, does *not* give you a lossless copy, and certainly not at high speed. However there is some doubt about this position, and the RH1 does "ok" by most people's standards. Claims are made that it goes at faster than real time, however I have personally failed to do so with any setup I have tried. If you really want to get it out digitally, I think your best option is to get a MD (very very old portable, or something like 75% of all decks made) with optical out, and record into your 'puter equipped with an optical (Toslink) input. You'll still be stuck with titling everything though. Hope this helps. Stephen

Looks like you might be right. It might have even saved mine (too late now). http://www.sparepartswarehouse.com/Sony,La...Backup-RTC.aspx About $23 but you would have to figure out which one to use, the numbers don't match.

update: Check any of the service manuals: you will probably find that C13 means "Laser Power Check". IIRC this error happened to me when the head wouldn't drop onto the playing surface. I'm sure the expert hardware fixers here will be able to explain this. But I would suggest you check to see if the head is going down onto the surface of the disk as it should. Not doing so, was exactly what was wrong with mine. I gave up on fixing it... in fact I'm sure I bust it forever. But it's quite possible you *can* fix it if you ask the right people here, and are very very gentle.

FWIW this is roughly the sequence I recall when the drive in my JE-510 died. It may be nothing more (or less) complicated than the head either a. losing connection (as described in several threads here) or b. out and out dying. You might want to read all you can about repairing the head connection, because a complete replacement drive module (they refer to it as the BD board, I think) runs around $300. Sorry to be discouraging.

My point was that, especially if the Sonic Stage and Roxio software are attempting to use different versions of the same engine, that you might have trouble (it's known in the trade as DLL Hell - there is no one version that works for both). I recall that earlier versions of Roxio were very very non-portable across different hardware platforms and drives. It looks as if Sony offers some "improved" version of PXEngine. I imagine it might still break whatever other version you had, from an old Roxio CDCreator. Or I may be completely wrong

I wonder what's wrong? Maybe that connector is USB 1.1 and the streaming behaviour only occurs with USB 2.0. Let me check.... Nope, strange. I'm on a machine with about the same clock speed as the tester (2.6 Ghz) and using a USB 2.0 port. Is there a definitive way to tell (hopefully quickly) if I am operating in USB 2.0 mode?

One more thing: I just tried out uploading LP2 for the first time, using the RH1 (of course the NH600 won't upload it at all). It seems at least as slow as uploading SP. The audiotstation topic seems to suggest that transfer between PC and MD is basically PCM, either with extra headers or encrypted, or both. I'm guessing that even LP2 is the same when uploading. Can someone confirm this? So the only thing which is relatively fast in pre-HiMD is PC-->NetMD, as advertised by Sony. But (of course) they locked it up.

Take a look here: http://www.audiotstation.com/forum/showthr...p;threadid=4748 I think everything I have seen indicates that uploading SP from the NetMD to the PC is going to be at best Real time, because what is transmitted would be essentially encrypted PCM. At least that is what goes from the PC to the NetMD. (Honestly, I didn't yet read all 15 pages but the stuff on the first page tallies with my observations about the presumed properties of the system and its formats). So this explains why, if you take "real SP" written by a MD deck, it can be uploaded from the RH1, however very slowly because what is being transmitted is the same size as PCM. But if you put a NetMD-written SP disk in the RH1, even the RH1 cannot upload it. My deduction is that the data on a given NetMD is encrypted. There are no SP codecs in a PC, because (?) of Dolby licensing restrictions. So what you will never get is FAST upload of SP. In addition (I recall someone explaining this but I admit haziness here) it seems that PC-->RH1, although not encrypted, is some sort of "Fake SP" (in reality LP2 with padding); if this is true, you will never get audiophile quality with any SP tracks you sent TO a non-deck recorder or NetMD or even RH1. This surprises me. This is overall in accord (though I cannot prove it to my own satisfaction) with what I have observed - the best results (without PCM or HiMD) are using optical in and out from a deck to the PC. This is x1 transfer speed, but up- and down-load of SP ain't much different from that anyway because the USB is actually carrying raw (or encrypted) PCM. Presumably this is why there is no deck with HiMD and optical out - they really really don't want us making world-class recordings with these consumer devices. Not to mention Sony's agreements with Dolby. Stephen

ahhh.. there's nothing except control in the remote. Thanks for the explanation. I guess I might not have asked such a dumb question with the unit actually in my hand.

Send the guy an email - he's very reasonable. Usually not in the office if you try to call, but I'm sure he will respond.