sfbp

They have to be decrypted. I wrote the software to do it, but the QHiMDTransfer guys declined to have any involvement (the project seems to have died). In a word they told me to fork off, hahah. The key is slightly different from the one used by MD, but it is the same encryption scheme used by Sony pretty well everywhere. I have long since parted company with the source code and can only remember the generalities of it. Sony took the view that this was a one-way deal, you could never get anything off the ATRAC CDs that you had not put there from original sources. Tuff beans if you did not own the tracks to begin with. There are still units which will play them. Maybe you could start there.

Maybe foobar2000 does what you want.....

Sort of. But the point is this: anything you already ripped, DEPENDING ON THE RIPPER, is worse than useless for getting good compressed formats. Sony has some settings but they are mostly hidden from you. When you rip to AAL, you get some choices about "ripping speed" vs "ripping quality" IIRC. When you rip to "plain" 16 bits, you don't. It's about dithering a 20-bit source down to 16 bits. Sorry for the digression about Sound Forge - it will not get you any help with 292kbps ATRAC. That format is officially obsolete, though it still plays on all MD units, of course. There is no corresponding disk format, probably because of contractual undertakings to Dolby, I use (if you read some of my posts) SP for analogue recording (eg LPs). But the very first thing I do it to convert it by upload to HiSP (256kbps Atrac3+) which is then easily editable by Sound forge. When I record PCM format, I use the real thing on Sony's amazing PCM-M10. I also make sure it's always recorded in a 24-bit format before I edit it and then convert down to burn a CD or (blush!) MP3. BTW the NetMD interface is not particularly fast or reliable until you get to HiMD. Then it's pretty good. The slowness on decks which have NetMD is more to do with the speed that the control information passes - it's mostly at the speed of SIRCS, to be 100% compatible with remote and front panel display. I have many wonderful recordings made in LP4, of music played on the radio (orchestras, organs, choirs, string quartets, you name it - just not pop music of any kind). They were all made, not by transfer, but by optical.from the computer. The reason is simple - ATRAC is a logarithmic format. PCM is not.

Sorry but I don't always have time to type answers which have already been canvassed to defend a point of view with which you apparently disagree. I do have a life too. My strongest recommendation is the MDS-PC3 which fits all those criteria. That is by any definition a deck, and I already made that suggestion. I asked only that you google it. I will do so now... uh well, I came straight to a topic where I gave the answers you are asking now. "ripping atrac 16 bits" You might try that combination. I hope you don't consider that "coddling". I don't want a war either, but I know who will win it. To return to my last point - "NetMD with newest DSP" absolutely rules out using SP recording via optical.

I'm suggesting that your topic title is an oxymoron

Note in particular the quote: In other words, Sony ***knew*** this about the original (SP) Atrac, and took steps to quietly ditch it in favour of a more reliable, modified scheme (in A3 and A3+). The problem they were left with was (is) compatibility. So SP has a special flavour but it's not necessarily the most accurate; it's what people got used to hearing. Makes perfect sense (to me) since for most, what came before SP was analogue. HiSP with a better encoding scheme and almost as many bits is probably better (well, more accurate). As far as 16-bitness goes, you have some reading to catch up on. I'm not going to rehash it all here - but a word of advice, look using search engines, not the search facility in this forum. Cheers

You're looking at an artifact. This artifact effectively killed ATRAC in favour of MP3. What you do NOT want to do is to use the PC to reduce straight from 1411 PCM down to LP2. This provides stupid results (I didn't say you were stupid, just that the output is, as you have determined, crappy). If you pre-encode (and store) all your CD's as Atrac Advanced Lossless (AAL), and in your case I recommend making the Lossy part to be 132kbps ATRAC3 MDLP, you will find that transfers to NetMD work perfectly. Don't ask me why - I can see it in a general way but I don't have enough background in DSP to be able to explain it. Neither, apparently, did the Dutch testing lab that rubbished ATRAC in the battle of the codecs getting on for about 15 years ago. For sure, part of it is about the fact that so-called 16-bit CD data has more like 20 bits encoded in, and that ripping the data off a CD is NOT a matter of "just copying the data" (I detest that word "just"). You will get a much better image on disk if you do NOT store the data you ripped from a CD as 16-bit PCM. You can use XP virtual machine to operate a PC-Link just fine. There are a few restrictions. PS, if you want to verify what I am saying, try using Sound Forge to do the conversion, and listen to the results on the PC without involving MD hardware at all. But you may need to take special care with the ripping.

Sorry teabag we have a rule that no self-posted ebay listings are allowed. This looks like one of these, I'm afraid.

What is a mini-deck? I've never heard the expression, so you had better define your terms. My favourite, small, non-portable is the MDS-PC3 which does everything a JE640 does but adds M-Crew functionality (you will need a PCLK-MN10 and XP most likely, since 64-bit Windows doesn't work). In my view you don't want the NetMD functionality in a deck (as opposed to portable) sized package, because it's a bit slow for transfers. The HiMD units are the best way to do remote titling (MCrew can do that, too) and USB transfer. Another option would be one of the all in one units that has a direct USB connection. The CMT-M333NT (and -373NT) is good. This is the only way to have M-Crew and Sonic Stage on a single unit.

The symptoms you describe suggest you may have to enable JS for this site at least. We already have the good stuff from V5 included in the download of 'Ultimate II' I'm sorry for my previous short answer, I am simply busy. You will need an MZ-RH1 OR (a deck and a lot of time).

MZ-RH1 1. You can solve those with a deck that has optical output, without loss of quality. But will be at playback speed! 2. Sounds like an alignment problem. 3. generally arises with music that has been transferred TO the minidisc from some other media. Sony decided that was therefore likely copyrightable material.

Sounds like variable bit rate to me.

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.