sfbp

I'd actually be extremely surprised if the ear could even HEAR the lossless part on a portable device, but I'm just an old, deaf sceptic. For me the benefit of AAL is that it is a universal (kindof) storage format. I can convert to different bit rates and the doing so creates no artifacts. I do know that when it's transferred to HiMD for example, the lossless part is simply abandoned. If you're saying that the files are the 50-60% bigger when on the device than the corresponding lossy codec (eg HiSP 256kbps ATRAC) then you must be correct. As you say, there may not be much of a way to tell if they're being processed. I am not sure that "ordinary" ear buds will even reproduce all that. My hunch is that you need reference monitor speakers and a large powerful amplifier before you can tell the difference between HiSP and HiSP-AAL.

I'd be more inclined to get a custom charger. Or an MZ-R90/91. You can try cleaning with isopropanol, and/or a very sharp knife (scrape a bit) or boxcutter.

That's very bad news. It matches what I have been thinking, that he may be not well, as no one seems to have heard from him. I cannot speak for him, but it may be right for us to try to get in touch. Please send me a PM.

The real question is: how do you charge them? Do you have another battery that works decently in the E-DJ2000? Are you charging that by the same method you used to charge the replacement batteries? If the answer to both the last questions is yes, but the same charger doesn't work on the replacements, try cleaning the contacts. When that doesn't work, I recommend an MZ-R91 (or MZ-R90) as for some reason the charging circuits in that device seem to work better. You may find that the battery gets hot (only once!) on charging and then settles down. You're welcome to slip one (I assume you bought lots) in the mail to me, as I see you live not so far away. Send me a PM if you like. I will pronounce on it, and send back. This will be quicker than ordering more from China.

No problem. I'm moving this topic to the main Software forum. GYM was an odd sort of thing that seems to be dead.

I don't understand this. Which driver did you install? Assuming you used this one, - What is the model number of your unit? - If your unit is on the list, something else is messing you up, probably the USB subsystem. If not, we can add it but you will have to do some tests first so I can alter one of the files to include your machine. Hope this helps. And - please don't use all bold. Just let the text format be what it wants to be

Delete all and scan folders (Under File->Import->Scan Folders). Be sure to delete/select only the folders you have trouble with. Note that PLAYING an MP3 track with some other piece of software can sometimes cause information to be WRITTEN to the file. This makes it useless in Sonic Stage. One option may be to set the (Windows) attribute on that file to Read-Only.

If you're recording in Hi-SP I am not sure it benefits you to upload from the MZ-M200. I've had pretty good results uploading with the NH900 itself. Of all the portable units I have used for this, the NH900 seems the easiest and most reliable to use for editing (setting track marks and metadata) Hi-MD disks. Unless you are stuck with the M200 because it's the only thing that works with a Macintosh, I'd use the NH900 for everything, get another just in case, and save the M200 for uploading legacy MDs. My $0.02 I think that what CAN happen is the supply voltages get out of whack on the mainboard. This in turn leads to the writing of borderline disks which may or may not be readable in this or some other unit. In turn this may stress the whole mechanism through too many retries. Beware lots of noise and delays at the same (unexpected) time. Overall, I think the disk will wear out before the unit does

The reading AND writing is done with the same head (you need the overwrite head too but thats different, it modulates the laser signal with a magnetic field). But writing takes 10 times as much power. So it's much less likely to wear out when you are only reading. Your instinct was correct. I don't think HiMD disks upload very well when you write protect them (or have no overwrite head), though. So there must be some writing, probably to do with updating transfer counts or something like that.

You need the "already-downloaded" version from the Downloads section of this forum. All should be clear, then. Good luck

Oh, wait a minute.... I see the problem. You're talking about using something BEFORE the RH1 to upload. No way, no how. The processing power simply isn't there in those earlier units. And in any event Sony's firmware which is most definitely not flashable, never was, will not permit it. But the trouble we had with driver incompatibility (you can read about if you stick at it long enough) where the upload from RH1 slows to a crawl must arise because the earlier units were not very fast and relied on some sort of polling loop, and NetMD was designed initially as a one-way protocol. As far as we know, the NetMD driver for RH1 works with all known NetMD devices. However, that of itself doesn't magically upgrade them to being upload-capable. Sorry.

Ah yes, I was forgetting about SCMS. SCMS only allows ONE copy to be made, and if you are right then copies ending up on the MD from certain earlier units have the bits set allowing ZERO copies to be made. I have no idea why. Perhaps that's what I forgot about - that maybe the NetMD-created disks all have the SCMS bits already set for no copy. But this should not happen with disks that were created from microphone. If they were made by digital (optical) input from a stream that already has the "copy once" bit set I can see the problem also happening. Fair enough, right? However the DECRYPTION has nothing whatsoever to do with SCMS. It applies to data that has been extracted successfully by whatever means, either from CD or from MD, when that data gets stored on the hard disk of your computer. The encryption ensures you can't copy that file onto another machine (sorry to be pedantic, I mean play that file when copied). Apple does exactly the same with ITunes, I think. Also, Bluecrab has pointed out that SOME CDs already have the no copy bit set. Most don't bother. I should very much like to get my hands on a disk that won't upload that was made from a mike. Can you spare one? If so we can exchange personal info via PM. I have an SCMS stripper to hand if it is needed and it will show me the bits encoded on the MD. You should probably record it into another device by playing back at x1, if it contains something irreplaceable. I am curious what device and what input made it, too. In the mean time I will try to intentionally generate disks that cannot be uploaded. Interesting.

Please see edit in long post above. Sigh. There is no-such thing as a "self-recorded NetMD file", as by definition, NetMD means it was transferred from the computer, and the result has to be compatible with MDLP and SP units that had no ability to decrypt that data (ie they date from before the NetMD introduction). The only trick they pulled (quite reasonably, when you think about it) is to make it so that only Sonic Stage can get access to the Track Protect bits on the (legacy MD) disk. This prevented (past tense) users erasing tracks that had (at the time) limited transfer count authorizations. With the introduction of version 4 (maybe before, but I am not going to install 3.4 to find out) all transferred tracks had infinite transfer counts, and it didn't matter if you erased an MD, you lost nothing. The only remainder (vestigial, like the human tail bone) of this procedure comes when erasing a 1GB disk by formatting in the unit. When you show that "reformatted" disk to Sonic Stage, the system now attempts to recover all the transfer authorizations, which have clearly been stored ON THE REFORMATTED DISK. This quite naturally leads to duck soup in the case that the erasing was being done owing to the target Hi-MD unit giving trouble. When HiMD units fail, it's invariably the 1GB disks which play up. Besides which, legacy disks reformatted to HiMD can always be erased (see below) in an ordinary (legacy) unit. The other annoying reminder of "Track Protect" is when you try to erase individual tracks that got transferred to a legacy MD using NetMD. The way round this is to keep around one recorder unit that dates from before NetMD, and therefore doesn't know about track protect. You can then use that old unit to erase disks without futzing around with SS. Oh yes, one more tidbit: if a single bit of a track introduced to (imported), or created by, Sonic Stage, is altered, it magically becomes "not transferable". This should never happen, but unfortunately some evil programs that play MP3's have been known to write extra data in the file when playing it. As well, the advice I gave in another thread about editing .OMA files neglects to mention that, once edited by Sound Forge, those files need to be removed and re-added to Sonic Stage so that the SS database is in sync with the bits in the file. This is something they really should have fixed, but at the time, no one expected these files to get altered. Ever. Clear as mud?

Isn't that dangerous? I thought that there's a high voltage in those backlight drivers.........

First someone needs to prove it works for FLAC. Theory is not always matched by real life. I also missed one caveat, see the edit there.

That's simply not true. If you understand WHEN and WHAT gets encrypted, everything is transferable since we now have ways to beat most of the encryption. Many of the reports of people having trouble with SS arise out of other problems not related to the "protection". Nonsense. The only thing (apart from silly "Connect" files downloaded from Sony) which is REALLY hard to break is the encryption on NetMD files generated from CD and other sources when transferred to legacy MD (ie not 1GB, and not reformatted legacy disks in HiMD format). And this has been done too, there's just no easily available tool for it at the moment. To be fair to Sony, they wanted to prevent piracy, having made it very easy to make MDs of COMMERCIAL disks. The only people moaning, in my limited experience, have been those who made copies from someone else's CDs. Tuff beans! EDIT: I got this backwards. Sorry. I have been known to write rubbish. The files that can not be recovered are the encrypted ones (encrypted by import, that is) that get stored on HiMD formatted disk. If you decrypt them first, there is no problem. If you choose a format that was never encrypted in the first place (eg Sony's Advanced Atrac Lossless), there is no problem. Note: the lossless part never gets on to the MD, so that is a slightly different issue! Legacy MDs (not the Hi-MD reformatted ones) are not themselves encrypted - the tricky thing is that the NetMD protocol encrypts them during transfer TO the disk, thereby preventing a generic non-Sony-approved device from scarfing up the data as it emerges from the PC. Azureal, I don't know why you weren't yelling at me

Hehe maybe the trick is to pull the plug so that windows complains bitterly when you turn on again, and gives you the option to boot in safe mode etc.....

That's Windows trying to be "nice and protective" just like Apple has always been The trick is to turn off driver signing at boot time by hitting F8. For one boot only.

You will need the 64-bit NetMD drivers which work for RH1 and also all other NetMD units. Unfortunately the RH1 is the only one which allows upload as you have discovered. Yes, 7 Home will support Sonic Stage no trouble. I actually recommend the following (assuming you are going to FLAC) since you are starting from scratch now. What I've done is similar; but I have hitherto had no interest in FLAC, nor was what I am about to suggest possible when I started. Like you and most people here I have a large collection of MD's many of which (mine anyway) were made of LPs and tapes. It may not actually make that much difference compared to Martin's answer but theoretically may sound better and will probably preserve all your metadata which other routes may manage to mangle (even if only slightly so). 1. Upload to 256kbps so-called "Hi-MD format" Hi-SP (it's one of the choices when setting up upload to PC, and it is a remembered choice between sessions. I'm sure you'll find it). 2. Run the File Conversion Tool that got installed with SonicStage (set to the main library and it magically appears on the menu, run it from here and NOT from the Windows desktop or the command line) to get rid of all the copy-protection in the files you just uploaded. You can do this once or repeatedly, the software scans looking for newly included still-encrypted files. You now have .OMA files (rather than .oma files) which are free of copy restriction and which can be edited. 3. Edit the ATRAC files as necessary using Sound Forge 9 or higher (I have 9, and a copy of 10 which I have not yet installed), which includes being able to do all kinds of pro-type things with the sound - more than just cutting bits out. Add all the metadata you want, including copyright, artist, engineer etc. 4. Export them from there to FLAC (SF Version 10 can do this, I believe, Version 9 does not). (Note added: files that have been edited, regardless of the fact they have been decrypted, will have to be deleted from, and re-added to, the Sonic Stage database if you want to transfer them to MD again. Of course if all you want is FLAC, there's no particular problem. This is because the DB is supposed to be a record of what's in the file. Any edit makes them so that the bits in the DB no longer perfectly match the file). Why this way? A. To many people's (including mine) surprise, Minidisc turns out to be at least a 20 bit format, maybe as high as 24 bits on some units. ATRAC files (.oma) are 24 bits which gives them much better characteristics and (in principle) better reproduction than 16-bit WAV (SS doesn't give you the choice of generating 24-bit WAV, but Sound Forge does). B. Hi-SP is about as compressed as original MD, ie 5x as compact as WAV. This can be significant if copying, backing up, streaming or other activities are envisaged, and certainly doesn't eat your hard disk so fast, and in my experience, unnecessarily. C. WAV, for all its virtues does not encompass metadata, so everything important needs to be in the title. SF will preserve the metadata for export to the modern formats. I switched to going via Hi-SP and editing with Sound Forge a couple of years back. YMMV. Welcome to the Insiders PS you can get a free copy of Sound Forge 9 with some Sony Recorders, I actually got mine with one of their Flash Recorders, although I don't know if they bundled 10 with anything. However a copy of Sony's Movie Studio HD Platinum Version 10 may be available for under $50 (I bought mine from some guy in England who was selling them off, and I have since encountered someone here who got a similar deal elsewhere) AND THIS INCLUDES SOUND FORGE 10.

No need for uploading, Syrius. The version that is all-in-one-file is here, and should work on everything from XP to 8. Maybe even more than that. There are also drivers which you may need if you have a 64-bit version, and drivers (which won't matter to you) which will keep the 32-bit upload experience on the RH1 smooth in the event your machine gets loaded with NetMD drivers for older portable units. I'm pretty sure Vista will work - it's just not very mature system. Same thing always happens when a technological divide of sorts is crossed. Wags have often noted that even numbered versions are born to fail.

It seems to me that regular MD's are 150MB, not 300, so (perhaps) they should have been called MD Data4?!?

Hopefully he hasn't fallen off the grid completely.... The galleries feature (here) is just what we need, IMO.

Currently hidden. But available, after some work has been done.

When it saw the ID match it probably decided to try and "do stuff" like patching up authorizations etc. Your best move is to IMMEDIATELY decrypt any imported oma files (assuming you have any) using the File Conversion Tool to remove the copy protection. We'll help you along. Once you have done that to your satisfaction we'll give you best practice information. Question: is your user name (which is inevitably in the path name of the files the way it defaults) longer and/or containing spaces or other non-alphabetic characters? Longer than your wife's that is? There's a possible problem with long file names (total path + track name .= 256 or even 128). Strongly recommend copying/moving all your music files to something like e:sonicstageimported files and use that by resetting SS to point to it. In NTFS that won't even generate a copy (if the move to and move from are on the same disk drive). The advantage of this is that any user-specific permissions won't be needed. W7 tries to protect anything and everything in the user tree from other users. Your situation is backwards, not sure why (yet). Stephen

Not at all. It seems to be a function of the disk, not the recorder or format.