sfbp
-
Posts
6,730 -
Joined
-
Days Won
11
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Downloads
Everything posted by sfbp
-
That's a contradiction in terms. Either they're ATRAC or they're MP3. But I think I have answered it, that format is simply not playable by earlier models.
-
The disks recorded by a HiMD deck can be played back on a USB-connected HiMD portable (or transferred to PC for that matter). So it hardly matters. Does look like Sony**** being paranoid again, but as I've said many times, in the light of history (and file-sharing torrents) who can blame them? **** one can reasonably infer that the lack of digital out was a condition imposed by Sony on Onkyo.
-
Probably a good plan. I may have time to try this out, but don't hold your breath. Tested. Works great. You can probably get away with one of the other LCD backlit devices such as RM-38EL.
-
The RH1 got a significant upgrade from the second generation MD players (RH10/910 and M10/100). I would not be surprised if the incompatibility is simply the result of that lack of capability in the earlier models. I would hazard a guess that the 128kbps (a lousy format TBH) is variable bit rate and that Sony hadn't learned how to do that yet in 2004. Can the 910 play regular ATRAC without problems?
-
I bought most of mine when the outfit in Quebec was selling them for $3 in sufficient quantity. They had a deal for 100 for $250 (IIRC) and I shared it with a friend who thought they were rather expensive!
-
Well one problem with most PC sound cards is that many of them output 48 Khz regardless, meaning a double sample conversion if you record back to MD. Whilst this is perfectly fine on uncompressed PCM 1411 bps data, it messes up otherwise fine MDLP recordings. But the "reliability" thing is that regardless of what you plug it into: a. there always seems to be a good strong signal at the other end (and I have pushed that to its limit by having the TOSlink at or above the specified maximum length, which is exactly when some optical sources suddenly discover they don't really have enough "oomph"). b. it always (eventually) shows up as a sound card even in Windows 7-64 (and presumably the later 64-bit versions). I have tried to figure out why, but I am too dumb - there's some override, grandfathered mechanism whereby this is recognized as a sound card even though there is apparently no match for the ID's in the configuration files. I'm sure someone will put me straight, but I confess myself mystified. Perhaps I should write "determined" rather than "reliable" but it would sound even more confusing.
-
I actually like the PCLK - it is highly reliable. And the PC3 is a gem, given that you can't do the remote PS/2 (well, can you????) with the non-Japan version of 940.
-
You don't need to use W98. XP is fine, not sure about Vista. Even the XP box in W7-64 works. However you will lose some functionality in M-Crew as it cannot read the CD in your computer from the virtual PC. On reflection, I think any 32-bit version of Windows (even the latest) should be able to support PCLK-MN10. Don't worry about the MN20 - it's the same hardware, lol.
-
Quite so. That update rollup is quite significant.
-
My relatively limited experience with coax (most of my digital cabling is TOSlink) is that it's noise prone. Also, unlike TOSlink, when you connect two devices with a coax cable, there is at least the **possibility** of a signal ground loop which may interfere with the high frequency data being transmitted, The only relevant case (for me) was right when I started in this digital sound game, I purchased from an astute individual in Europe (no it was many years ago and it most definitely wasn't NGY) a magic connector/converter that did clever things with the output from a cd drive, back before the software companies figured out how to rip without even using the digital output. Its biggest fault was that if the connectors were even slightly loose you got annoying glitches and bursts in the sound. I always assumed it was due to the less-than-perfect nature of the cabling (gold connectors would be ideal but I simply couldn't afford them then). Introducing a mechanical A-B switch of some kind is subject to this kind of possibility INTERNALLY. That's what I would worry about.
-
Hmmm need to think about that. Not making sense yet. Maybe it only bothers to protect the tracks it thinks are copyrighted?
-
Right - they figured out that the upload speed was not enough. This meant they never had to worry about copyright violations. They had enabled copying TO minidisc. Enabling copying FROM minidisc at that stage (before they had any encryption and protection mechanisms properly worked out) would have been Sony handing the world a free tool to music-share. The RH1 was their exit-the-market tool so that people could not complain they had been left high and dry with LEGITIMATE recordings.
-
A single disk, I would be happy to help with, using my RH1. When it says NetMD, it is lying (in this case). You CANNOT transfer legacy MD to the PC with any unit made before the RH1 was incarnated. Rereading what I wrote, I think I misspoke. If it is a HiMD recording that is somehow blocked by rights management, then HiMDXfer can help. (Actually VLC or ffmpeg might do it). But if it is an original legacy recording made on a deck, most likely, then HiMDXfer is useless. Sony really did make that process one-way in the hardware (until the RH1). It was not a matter of deliberate protection, just that the earlier units could not be handled by USB1.1 (speed of Xfer). The RH1 barely manages it, and there is a major tweak you have to do to make sure it uploads at full speed always.
-
Right, but I think there are lots of bargains that do not last many minutes. The prices you refer to are people selling for more than the value. TBH, the second generation HiMD units (RH10,RH910, etc.) are the least reliable of the portables, sadly.
-
NetMD means (really) that the disk was MADE by NetMD. Are you sure? If what you have is a "legacy" disk then there are two questions: 1. Did the legacy disk get formatted to HiMD specs (can you see the .HMA file like on the one you mentioned)? 2. Was the transfer to the disk via USB, if not HiMD? If #1 is yes, you should be able to work with the disk same way you did with the 1GB disks. If you cannot, it means that you are kindof screwed. However, the good news is that HiMDXfer may be able to help. If the answer to #1 is NO, then you need an MZ-RH1, no ands ifs or buts (except for the x1 transfer - you can do it digitally, just need a deck with optical out). Sorry. How many disks? If the answer to #2 is YES, then even MZ-RH1 won't help you. But probably you have original recordings and it's not an issue. Anyway it sounds like things are starting to move.
-
TBH, I don't think you will get that price (except maybe on EBay). $100 seems nearer the mark. Kind regards
-
If you're running Windows 7 or later, I strongly suggest turning off Windows Update. This should fix the system from going bad. The only problem with this is that Microsoft, in their fervour to force everyone to use W10 has messed up the Windows Update site (there IS a solution, but first, verify that this is your problem). The standard configuration includes tasks that wake up in the middle of the night and do heavy stuff like defrag, sending all your information to MSFT, and of course update. ("All your bases are belong to us" - Apple's method is simply to make the hardware obsolete much faster as I found out when my son approached me for $2000 to buy a new laptop). If you're on XP, don't be particularly afraid of SP2. Until SP2 many of most drivers for USB didn't work well. This included Sony in some cases. MIcrosoft doesn't care about XP activation much since they started giving away free copies as "virtual XP" in their Windows 7 installations. This nonsense with verifying the DB during installation is Sony trying very hard to fix your non-existent database. You need to be aware that there's a bunch of stuff under C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Sony Shared ALL of which can be deleted. Yes ALL of it. This should prevent the install from trying to rebuild a non-existent database. You could try ignoring the install error. If you do, often installing again right over the top (don't even bother to delete), may solve the problem.
-
You did everything right (don't need the 64-bit NetMD drivers), but you omitted to take account of the (unknown to you) fact that Sony needs the disk to be UNwrite-protected before it will pull stuff off them. I know, that's one place they violated the rules (there are, as you imply, others). However the vast majority of users spent man-years putting copies of copyrighted music ON to minidisc, and Sony not unreasonably felt that they couldn't encourage them to recover music from disks where the owner did not have the original CD. Sigh. (there was also the small matter of the world's first trillion dollar lawsuit against them over the original VCR, but we'll postpone that discussion until you've calmed down and got your data). Actually copying music back from the MD was not allowed originally - instead they had to update the transfer count on the PC which is no different than Amazon or Itunes IMO. So things actually improved from the "legacy MD" recordings, which recordings the BBC used happily as their entire work product for about 15 years. To be fair, there's a lot better chance that an MD will be readable in 2025 than the disk from an Atari, Amiga or Commodore 64 (Apple 2 - we won't even go there). Exercise trust (and caution) and open the disks to writing, and you'll have no further problems. Stephen
-
You have to have Sonic Stage actually download something to the MD. The flag is on a track's TOC entry, not on the disk.
-
More to the point the E12 supports MDLP (as do some other units) whereas the SP decks do not. Not clear if cloning MDLP TOCs is possible with SP decks. I have a feeling that the MDLP decks respect the TrProtect flag. I'm not sure if the E series are the exception to this. You can tell us.
-
Check for things like Norton Internet Security, Zone Alarm, hijacked DNS (ie are your own dns servers pointing where they should be or has some malware pointed them elsewhere?) Oh yes, there are couple of "background" programs (from Sony) that you may have never needed and some security sweep analyzer disabled them. SS<something>.exe
-
Firefox browser wear and tear on ssds with multiple tabs
sfbp replied to freddyjollo's topic in Minidisc
There's another issue here, No browser should be writing gigabytes of data to your computer. This should only come about because of the latest monster websites which each use three hundred (well, I exaggerate) JavaScript packages from anything up to about 30 sites. I strongly suspect that this problem (and the main reason I abandoned Chrome a couple of years back) is the real driver of the hard disk wearing out. Of course FF has to keep taking snapshots of it if the scripts are running and changing things all the time. The 15-minute refresh on news is one example. What you and others may prefer to consider (presumably someone out there has tools to measure this - I've got no motivation and cannot be bothered, sorry) is NoScript which allows the user of Firefox to be selective about which sites' JavaScript packages are allowed to run on one's machine. Whitelisting is sort of interactive, one can generally figure out which sites to add. This is the ONLY way I know to allow access to all kinds of websites without being "spied on" and generally having websites take over your computer. Many websites are just a vehicle to load nasty JS onto your machine. Big companies hate NoScript, because they rely on JS to gather information for them. Ed Snowden has been telling people ever since he first rose to prominence, about this tool. Highly recommended. I'm not posting links here, as it may simply draw bots from who-knows-which-cyber-army. But it's easy enough to find in the list of FF add-ons. The PC version (but not the Android version, sadly) allows you to load some or even ALL scripts from a given web page temporarily - you can revoke all temporary permissions very easily. That's what I do when I want to checkin for an airline ticket, for example. You'd be horrified just how many scripts get loaded. Malware in scripts is the new source of trouble, and the reason why "attack websites" can catch their victims. -
Firefox browser wear and tear on ssds with multiple tabs
sfbp replied to freddyjollo's topic in Minidisc
Nice tip. I bet it's not that hard-disk friendly either Even worse is the way that Google News defaults to autorefresh every 15 minutes. Therein lies a long story for me to tell one of these days. -
The E series definitely don't set the nocopy bit, from everything I've ever read. But this is not about SCMS, I think. NetMD is not secured by that mechanism.
-
Did you actually STOP the windows 8.1 firewall service?