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I think that I finally worked it out when someone said that USB->SP is a "fake" LP2 + padding: 1. You don't get something for nothing. Fast uploads/downloads = sacrifice of quality 2. Sony didn't want to make it easy for us to author high-quality stuff 3. The Dolby codecs cannot be used on the computer, Sony never got a license to do that. So here are the reliable options (sequence): a. Record from analog using Sony's great electronics in any of their decks. (A->D probably better than any sound card). A new option suggested here I haven't explored (yet) is to go straight to computer from the optical out without actually making an MD. b. Transfer from a deck at x1 for editing/noise removal on the computer, capturing on the optical sound card input. c. Make a CD of the wave files after processing. d. Record the CD back to SP via x1 optical link (this is relatively easy because the track marks get made for you). One real problem in all this is that you have to keep throwing away any title information. I have gotten into the habit (after the x1 upload) of putting the SP disk listing in the transfer screen of SonicStage, and as I extract each track from the properly processed waveform, I can cut and paste the name from the existing minidisc listing when I save the wave file. TOC cloning or something equivalent would be nice, but the contents may have changed a bit (deletion of clunks and run-in/out) so this is good enough. As you say, it's tedious, but it works. Hi-MD (256K) is OK, but SP is about 99.99% as good as a CD.

"You should learn not to make personal remarks" Alice said with some severity. "It's very rude" http://www.alice-in-wonderland.net/books/1chpt7.html But he is the most boring person, I thought. Maybe it's time to replace the image with some stock drawing, like everyone else. Cheers

Please could someone explain to me exactly what is being taken offline and how this affects my library of music held in SonicStage? 1. Is there encryption which will magically fail to authenticate once I am offline or the server is not there? 2. If I have no "downloaded" tracks (I don't), will I lose any access at all? 3. Is it necessary to export from a working SS before they close the server? (most of my files are WAV anyway so not protected) 4. Exactly what will fail? I guess I can play with SS not connected to the internet, heheh. Thanks

We can. it just happens only at 1x by playing on a MD with digital output.

the NH600 (as opposed to the NH600D) does also have optical/line input. This means that all you need for microphone is a some kind of mic preamp, which is not necessarily absurd. Beware, it seems there is one being sold every few days on Ebay where the guy shows 2 different pictures. The ad claims 600 but in fact some pictures show 600D. I messaged him, no response, end of my dealings with that enterprise.

Actually you should be able to get a HiMD machine that is for download (no mike) for around $100, brand new, from several sources. I don't think it's right to post that information here but you can easily look on ebay and also on the web. I know, I just ordered one. Also any portable from before NetMD should have an optical input which you can hook to the optical output of a CD player or a sound card. The MZ-R90 or R91 for example. This will allow you to get "highest quality standard" without a computer, quite nicely. The better HiMD models all have an optical input as well as USB.

No wonder I never noticed. My goal is nearly always making CD's from uploaded sound, and I have used SB only once, to see if it worked. I think you are saying that there exists still a 2-step process to get from CD to MD at these bitrates....? 4.x (I used 4.0 or 4.2 for a short while before jumping to 4.3) seemed more reliable than 3.x so I was one of the happy campers. Interesting the part about padding - seems to confirm that NetMD was a big push to make MD cheap without caring about the details too much, since most of the formats are still better than MP3, and probably Sony was trying to play catchup with IPod. I am still fascinated to know what the real cause of the SP mess is - so many people have speculated (including moi) and the latest one about Dolby codecs seems very possible too.

Avrin, I think maybe you omitted (at least I couldn't see) the link to the downloadable full version of SS4.3 that Laidler was asking about (this is to your own post, of course). I just grabbed that as I find it is indeed annoying to have to download an application in little pieces from their server (and maybe it won't be there one day). http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?s=&am...st&p=117697 Interesting, it never occurred to me the whole SP upload fiasco was a Dolby problem. Best is still to use digi-out from a deck, neither Sony nor Dolby can interfere with your musical enjoyment by preventing that. For once, I think Microsoft are the heroes here from pushing the unvarnished .WAV format as "Windows PCM".

I recall this with the MZ-RH1 until I got used to it. IIRC I learned quite quickly that charging only ever works if the MD is first "off". But if you are already an RH1 owner this makes no sense. What happens if you plug in to the wall having first removed the battery? It should work fine. If it doesn't, something else is wrong (duh, like one of those J****h doctor jokes). Funnily enough I had my old laptop start to play up about 10 days ago. The battery says its fully charged but kicks out after 10 minutes. If I disable all power management it runs for at least another half hour before actually running out of juice. Something about circuitry that measures and remembers the state of the Li battery?

There you go. The recorder added the track marks all on its lonesome. Depending on which recorder you have you might want to disable the automatic track marking. It might be "timed" (see below) or it might be that you turned on "sync rec" which is a switch on some units (eg on the back of my MZ-R91). I had the opposite problem. No simple way to find something specific in a 2 hour recording, and I needed to turn ON the automatic track marks. On the RH-1 it's quite simple under Menu->Record Settings->Time Mark. (the Sync Rec is also there under Record Settings). If you have an RH-1 I would be happy to explain further, if this doesn't give enough information. Joining them up would be easier on a deck, if you had that option. Good luck!

Sounds more like a USB issue to me. I've never seen it, but I can easily contemplate that temporary loss of connx by SS might decide that a single file was in fact multiple uploads. Just one single file visible in the Sonic Stage transfer screen, huh? (Multiple files in a single folder don't exactly count). These sound like they are SP recordings. SP transfer is very slow, unless you downgrade the transfer to 256kbps. Even then it doesn't work too well with newer machines, something funny about USB timing. This was reported elsewhere (sorry don't have it to hand) and I reproduced the same thing, 5-year old machine uploads SP->256K way faster than 2 year old machine. Are you also sure you don't have hub problems? (connection via a USB hub is not recommended for SonicStage at all)

huh? I just checked and there it is, in 4.3, 105 kbps, as one of the options for Hi-MD transfer. Was it removed in 4.2 and put back again? Thanks for the tip, never even considered that bitrate.

What on earth is wrong with 4.3? I am running it on two different machines, one XP Pro, one 2000 Server, and it always behaves exactly as advertised. I mean, if there's some feature that they took out I am always intrigued by looking at other versions, but I never saw anything outright objectionable. In fact IIRC it was better than the 3.4 which came with my RH-1. It works with every device I have tried. Is it possible that if it works for Vista, the problems are to do with security and the lame security model of XP Home? In that case, maybe the statement needs qualification..... Cheers Stephen

I am an absolute beginner too at the mic end of things, but I would offer 2 observations: 1. From way back (30 years) I recall problems with microphones with a setup like you describe simply picking up crap when on an extension cable of any kind. Back when the only Sony device I ever had used was a Tape Recorder. 2. It seems to me that if the poor little RH1 has enough power to drive something on a short (or "no") extension, that putting the same thing via a long cable AND a switch box is a horse of a different colour. (ha! the spell chkr refused to accept my spelling of that last wurd) Never having possessed on it seems like you need some sort of pre-amp. Some of the experts here could probably point you in the right direction. Phono input has always had a very similar problem.... microvolts of signal and necessity to blow that into an amp which is set up for millivolts, right? I am sure this is only the broadest possible picture. Please feel free to correct me where I fell off my soapbox through ignorance. Stephen

Suggest we take this discussion offline. I sent you a PM but maybe you didn't notice S I'm not the one reporting that fact. But I think it comes down to Sony Music leaning on its Electronics Division (and for that matter any one they sign an agreement to market/manufacture equipment like onkyo, sharp or kenwood) . The consensus seems to be "how on earth did the RH1 ever make it out the door?"

You bet!

Thanks... that's sort of what I suspected, I now recall the review of the Onkyo *with* speakers, and if this is simply the same unit, I guess the same outcome follows. So the only reasonably safe way is to buy the N9TX for recording, as receiver (it looks nice but not clear how to hook up all the other legacy devices) and listening, and keep the RH1 for mic recordings and uploads. Like everyone else I am wary of getting too much into a format that might only last as long as one piece of equipment. I had a JE510 for several years and one day it abruptly died. Thanks

Looks like there is a new model made by Onkyo, the FR-N9TX(S). http://cgi.ebay.ie/ONKYO-FR-N9TX-S-Hi-MD-C...1QQcmdZViewItem It's a lot of money but if the digital output is from the MD not just from CD, it's probably going to find a bunch of customers from here. Does anyone know?

I am not sure speed is even an issue, if (as for most people) they were recorded with NetMD - there is no way to get the data back, even with RH1 (the experts may correct me on this, as I havent tried). If you recorded the MDLP on a deck, it may be that you can transfer them ok. I have no information about how long it takes to transfer LP2 and LP4. I have a feeling it's only SP that is so terribly slow, I would hazard a guess that LP2 is at least x2 and LP4 at least x4. Maybe a lot faster. I'm still working on my comparisons of upload, there's something funny about SP uploads with the RH1, the data don't match what my ears are telling me. But the quality of LP4 is so low (see Avrin's graphs from the summer) you don't have to panic over a loss of quality. Maybe I'll try it for you, but I am not 100% sure I can generate genuine legacy LP4 that is uploadable, as I have only a NetMD or the RH1 to generate that format.

OK, there's a nice challenge. Now I know all the pitfalls and parameters, I'm going to redo some experiments. I have a deck, a sound card with digital In and Out, and an RH1 with the latest SS. I also have Audition's precursor, CoolEdit. So I can probably make the same comparisons. Funny, the guys over at tapers seem to confirm my rather hastily-noted down hunch (I was very busy when I did it). Maybe I can be a bit more systematic. I have a feeling that the response thing may depend a lot on what you are listening to. More later.....

OK, thanks for the confirmation. Does that mean that the transfer in the other direction (from MD to PC) is doing the same thing? Seems kinda probable, and in accord with my original experiments. The only difference is that you can't see the files. What you do see is the unit scraping around all over the place. Is it the case that you cannot upload from a nonMD (I don't mean NetMD) if the write protect tab is open? 1. The RH1 cheats when downloading SP to itself 2. There seems evidence that that RH1 ??????s when uploading SP (my posts from July) So buying the RH1 is good for only one "legacy" thing, fast uploading of speech. The new modes work nicely, especially recording live in PCM - but if Sony is going to abandon the HiMD format.... And there doesn't seem to be a single machine that actually outputs real digital signal from the new formats. Looks like Sony really really doesn't want you to have digital sound except as a way of compressing things. Even the Onkyo HiMD decks don't have digital out - makes me wonder if they had to promise Sony not to add that feature.

Hi folks I was playing around tonight using different formats and transferring to see what quality was gained/maintained/lost as sound is copied from one medium to another. I took a recording which I had recently cleaned up on my computer, and which Sonic Stage can see as PCM wave files, and transferred it to the MZ-RH1 using USB. I was very careful to set "SP" mode ("Use this mode to ensure compatibility with devices that do not support MDLP"), and I was going to do a comparison with the original sound captured on a normal 80 minute SP minidisc (with a deck that does optical out to the computer). Sure enough the disc is playable on the non-HiMD deck, so it somehow got converted to 292kbps. But imagine my surprise when I looked in Sonic Stage as it was being transferred. (Note: there are obviously 2 phases, conversion and transfer, because the conversions all go to 100% and the transfer takes a lot longer). After the conversion, but before all the transfer was finished, there were a series of files created on the hard disk. You can see them by right clicking on the individual file and selecting "Properties". When I looked, there were two files, the original PCM 1411kbps and an OpenMGAudio(ATRAC3) file with a bit rate of 132kbps. THAT'S RIGHT, ***132kbps***. That's the LP2 bit rate. When the transfer had finished, these "extra" files must have been deleted because they were no longer visible in SS as described above (BTW, the location was in SS\Optimized Files, hehehe). I am shocked if SS and Sony would stoop so low as to actually try to fool us by pretending that the transfer is taking place at 292kbps giving me a replica of my original recording. Someone, tell me there's some special way to force the NetMD standard transfer. There is a blue icon just below the transfer settings (white) icon, with a white arrow pointing rightwards, and "MD". When you hold the mouse over it, it says "transfer with the format that can be played on devices that do not support MDLP". Nothing happens when I click on this icon. So maybe it's operator error. Try as I may, I cannot get MD SP (292kbps) quality onto the MZ-RH1 by this route. I set the proper setting to force SP mode - and that's indeed what I got, sort of, on the target minidisc. I originally posted some months ago that quality is lost when you UPload from the RH1. Now I am beginning to think it's lost when you DOWNload, too. Granted that the other formats (eg 256K Hi-SP, PCM) may transfer correctly. But this one is rather suspicious to me. Anyone able to repeat this experiment? Stephen

You're right. With the convert to Wav option set, I get two files, almost the same size, one of "OMA" at 1411khz and one wave file. The transition from one to the other is so fast I suspect the "OMA" format is std CD format with some header attached. And it takes place at exactly x1. Back to the deck, there's no savings visible here. Stephen

Played with reel to reel tape recorders from the age of 5 - introduction to music, listening to recorder of mom and others in Amateur Gilbert & Sullivan, and other musical comedy. Tapes going back 40 years, now. Got one of the first CD-ROM drives from Microsoft (1988), and always fascinated by possibility of making CD's. Read (1999) that I could do so with digital sound card costing $20, and got it, started looking for MD deck with optical out. The guy who sold a JE-510 to me (second hand) on Ebay went on to become my Web Hoster for 5 years! At the time I got into minidisc recording 2 or three CD's was the most I could fit on the computer's hard disk, so the ability to get a bunch of MD's (SP of course) by recording from Tape Recorder, Cassette, vinyl (and latterly Internet) seemed the way to get music onto CD. I never used a portable MD seriously. I had an (Aiwa cassette) walkman when they first came out in 1983, but wore it out and never replaced it). I bought the MZ-NE410 hoping to be able to upload by USB, second hand (factory refurbished) in 2005. No luck, and got an RH1 this year when the JE510 broke, not for the portable aspect but to upload things faster. I quickly added a pair of decks when I discovered the limitations of the RH1 (not that it isn't amazing for a bunch of purposes, including the first live recordings I have made for ages).

Just because you choose WAV on output doesn't necessarily mean it will be transmitted as WAV. I get the strong impression that it transfers as some other format (probably 256K) and then SS makes the WAV file from that. This WAV file compares quite unfavourably with SP->Optical In, as I documented in my very first post here. Perhaps I was mistaken, and I used the wrong options... pretty easy to do I think. I agree that there are some options which *force* the software to do something different... BUT, it doesn't ever keep it as SP on the computer, (right?), and I get the strong impression that the WAV file is made at the very end. But perhaps some longer sufferer of SS can put me straight on this point. Certainly the SP option is (getting on for) as slow as straight playback. I upload legacy recordings from the MZ-RH1 as a last resort. It seems sooooo busy, I am concerned for the poor thing's health