A440

Did you delete them in My Library on your computer or from the disc via SonicStage? If deleted from My Library, they should still be on the disc and you could upload them again as long as you were using a version of SonicStage later than 3.2. Earlier versions only gave you one chance to upload and trying to upload a second time will wipe the music off the disc--evil, evil, evil. If you're running an old SonicStage, then you have to play back from the disc and record in realtime--out of headphone jack into the computer, with Audacity or other recording software. If you deleted from the disc itself, you could try file recovery software like Recuva http://www.recuva.com/ . Just connect the RH1 to the computer, without SonicStage running, so it reads as a disc drive. I have no idea whether you'll be able to get anything useful with Recuva--in fact I doubt it, since Hi-MD encryption throws everything into one giant .HMA file--but it's worth a try. Also, if you deleted the upload, run Recuva on your computer drive and see if it finds any deleted .oma files.

ATRAC is abandonware. Sony has given up on it. Perhaps the person who reverse engineered it could communicate directly with Marcnet, who could quietly incorporate direct decryption in Renderer.

Where did you find 3.4? Can you post a link?

You don't need WinNMD any more. (But save the key before you uninstall--I don't think Klukas is bothering with his program any more.) Get Marcnet's Hi-MD Renderer, which has exactly the same functions as MD Recorder. Free, send him a donation if you like it. http://www.marcnetsystem.co.uk/ Look in the Programs folder. Maybe uninstalling WinNMD will help. For SonicStage, search this forum for 3.4 installer--there may still be one around. If you can't find it, post here and I'll do an overnight upload of my 3.4 disc again to Rapidshare.

Don't limit your search to Sony. They never had decent stock. Amazon UK still has the MZ-NH700, MZ-NH900 and the MZ-RH1. The MZ-NH700 is a fine unit, and I see new ones for £109. http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_ss_w_h_/2...p;x=12&y=20 The MZ-NH900 supposedly has better sound on playback than the NH700, but I never liked the one I had. Its display is an unlit LCD behind smoked-colored plastic--don't ask me why. More important, for recording, especially in the dark, it has a major design flaw--Pause and Stop are both on the same button (a rocker button), and if you push Stop by mistake you'll have to take the unit out of your pocket and go through the menus again to get to Manual Level recording. Pause and Stop are separate buttons on the MZ-NH700. So it depends on the situations where you'll be recording. Also, the MZ-NH900 has a rechargeable internal battery and a screw-on outboard pod for a AA battery. NH700 runs a long time on one AA battery--a little bulge in the back--which I prefer since you can always carry a replacement AA. The rechargeable for the NH900 is expensive, you'd have to keep it charged, etc., and the outboard pod is just one more thing to carry around and/or lose. But that's just my preference--the pod is barely bigger than another AA, so it might not bother you. Incidentally, the RH1 has only its rechargeable battery (or you can get a very bulky 4-battery Gomadic USB charger), but it's a long-life Li-Ion battery that should be good for a whole day's recording. Realistically, I deeply doubt you're going to find a new R50 without a time machine. And I don't think Guitarfxr is letting his go... There's also a practical difference between SP and Hi-SP. SP will give you 74 or 80 minutes per legacy MD. Hi-SP will give you over two hours on a legacy MD and just under 8 hours on a Hi-MD. A Hi-MD disc holds 94 minutes of PCM, which is technically better than 74 or 80 minutes of SP.

You're asking two different questions. One is about recording quality. One is about playback from the unit. The recording quality of all the Hi-MD units that record (NH700, NHF800, NH900, NH1 RH910, RH10, RH1/MZ200 and the line-in-only NH600 (NOT NH600D) and RH710) is exactly the same as far as what gets put onto the disc. It is better quality than any old MD because you can get uncompressed, CD-quality, PCM sound. The R50 is an ancient unit. Perhaps people are/were fond of it because its particular compression (SP) sounded fairly warm when played back through the unit, or because it was a sturdy unit, or because perhaps its mic preamps were less prone to overload than later versions--I don't know, I never had one. But the recording quality of the R50 still doesn't give you as many bits or bytes of information per second of sound as PCM will. You'll only get 74 or 80 minutes per MD blank. And you won't be able to get the music off the MD blanks in any way other than recording in realtime (unless you also get an RH1 and upload from that). Any R50 that you find for sale now is going to be old and used. It was introduced in 1997. But you are also planning to play back from the unit. So you are also concerned with the quality of the output. And for that, the NH900, NH1 and the RH1 are supposed to be better than the other Hi-MD units. However, since they are Hi-MD, you can upload the files and play them back on your computer, portable music player, burned CDs, etc., which makes the quality of headphone playback less important. Note that the NH1 has a proprietary charging stand and connector that makes it useless without its accessories. The other Hi-MD units take a standard USB-Mini-USB (a) cable. You can look at all the MDs ever made here: http://www.minidisc.org/equipment_browser.html But none of them are made any more. Sony gave up on them. So realistically, you are going to be limited to what you can actually find. By the way, you can also drastically improve your recording quality by upgrading your microphone, getting a battery box or preamp, and going through Line-in.

This is really a stumper. Do you have other music software installed: Winamp, iTunes, etc.? How about uninstalling them?

For your old discs, you could also use any NetMD player. Go to http://www.minidisc.org and click the Browser tab to see all of the models. The problem is that none of them--absolutely none of them, including Hi-MD units--are manufactured any more. Hi-MD (MZ-NH**, MZ-RH**) are the last units, NetMD (MZ-N**) before that, regular MD (MZ-R*) units back in the day. The older they are, the more of a chance you are taking, but conceivably you could get lucky and find something barely used on Ebay. Scrutinize the photo and look for wear around the buttons, a good indicator of use. The NE410 is also an old unit and was the el cheapo, bottom of the line unit. I never had one, but people didn't love the sound or the reliability. Checking Amazon right now, I see MZ-NF520 (which has a radio in the remote, if you care) and the MZ-NH600, both better bets than the NE410. The NH600 is the Hi-MD player, compatible with all older discs. You're not playing back Hi-MD discs, so it would be technological overkill, but it is a recent unit and pretty sturdy. Presumably the ones on Amazon are "new old stock"--units that have been sitting unopened and unsold somewhere. Check Ebay too, but at this point, I wouldn't buy any used NetMD for myself--they're just too old.

You've probably tried it already, but how about uninstalling device drivers, then opening SonicStage, then connecting the unit. Hoping that would make SonicStage install its own drivers first....

How about uninstalling those device drivers in Device Manager?

SS 4.2 and XP should be working just fine together. SS 4.3 is for Vista, and XP users have reported problems with it.

My guess and only a dim guess is that it's something to do with a SonicStage setting. Open SS and look around Tools/Options/Transfer. Is Hi-MD listed? Are there settings you can play with there?

Onkyo makes a Hi-MD deck but this is still going to be a time-consuming process. http://www.minidisc.org/part_Onkyo_MD-133.html You could just record directly into your computer with Audacity. http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ It's best with a line-in connnection, so if your computer only has mic-in then get a Griffin iMic (which despite its name is a USB line-in audio connector). http://www.amazon.com/Griffin-Technology-i...d/dp/B00006BALQ To help with the track marking, there's a free program called CDWave that suggests track marks at silences. It's pretty good unless you have gapless albums. http://www.milosoftware.com/cdwave/

To get back to the orginal post, low recording level creates the track marks. After 3-5 seconds of what seems to be silence, Line-in automatically inserts a mark. Yes, REC level matters. But ForLoudMusic only affects the Automatic Level Control, and doesn't matter when you're using manual. 13 is pretty low. I usually record around 19-20 at a rock show, and I've only had to go down to 13 for big booming arena hip-hip. Even though GYBE can get loud, you can probably get away with 16. By the way, Group is useful. It starts a new group after each time you press Stop. So if you record the opening act, press stop to save the data when they're done, and then start recording the next act (after re-setting Manual, etc.), you'll get each group in a separate folder.

Take the minidisc out of the picture. Record from the turntable into Goldwave. If your computer doesn't have a line-in jack--many now have just mic-in, which is noisy--then get a Griffin iMic, which gives you a line-in jack via a USB port. http://www.amazon.com/Griffin-Technology-i...d/dp/B00006BALQ

Unamplified instruments in a practice room or small concert hall are loud enough. I've used this setup with my BMC-2, and I expect it would also work with the powered mic unless it has much lower sensitivity. From far away in a concert hall, you're right, it might be too quiet. Mic-in might be better, but not necessarily, because it picks up every rustle of everyone around you. The lower sensitivity of the battery box--line-in setup can sometimes be helpful there. I've recorded orchestras through battery box/line-in and through mic-in, and I'm really not sure which I prefer. Mic-in is always a good option to have. But if it's a question of expense, a battery module is worth a try. It would be useful to have even if David B went on to get a mic-in recorder now or later. Guitarfxr, sometimes people don't really know what they want until they are better informed about the options. My first battery box was as big as the MD unit and so bulky to carry around that I thought I was better off with an attenuator. I didn't want to use the battery box. When I found the mini-module, which was tiny and easy to use, what I wanted changed. Can we still be friends?

I did read the post. I was addressing the fact that it's neither expensive nor complex to use a battery box. Cheaper by far, and probably simpler, than getting a whole new MD recorder. And the sound from line-in is nice and clean.

The recording guts of all the Hi-MD units are the same. If an affordable MZ-NH700 is still around, that's all you need. I'd love to know where the NH700 is available, in fact, so after you grab yours let us know. You could also get her a Microphone Madness battery module for $60 and plug it into the NH600 line-in jack. It should get a loud enough signal from a close spectator, and it's only the size of a car alarm remote. She could plug it in, have her friend plug the mic into it and you'd be good to go. http://www.microphonemadness.com/products/mmcbmminminc.htm The only thing you have to remember is to unplug the mic from it between uses. While the mic is plugged in, the batteries are draining. You could leave it connected to the recorder. Another digital recorder to consider is the Edirol R09--just drag-and-drop, no SonicStage uploading--but people say that the mic inputs on the Hi-MD units are quieter.

There are so many MD and Hi-MD recorders that you really have to be careful about what they're trying to sell you. Please go to www.minidisc.org and look through the Browser tab, which shows all the units (latest ones are first in case you want to look at the most likely ones). The best thing for you to do is note the model numbers and check back here. It is totally confusing otherwise. Here's a longer explanation for once you've rechecked model numbers. There are at least 3 kinds of minidisc units: original, NetMD and Hi-MD. Most are old and technologically outmoded, though some people here are fond of them. MD was once by far the best bang for the buck for portable recording. It may not be any more. Look in your electronics stores there for the Edirol R09, now used by many journalists, or the Zoom H2. No idea if they've reached East Africa yet. Those are easy to use--built-in mics, CD-quality recording, drag-and-drop upload, flash recording with no moving parts. By comparison, the best that MD can do is uploading through Sony software called SonicStage, which works pretty well now but is still an extra step. And SonicStage only uploads from Hi-MD--not from the vast majority of MD units. MD has other good features, including on-unit editing, and its mic preamps are a notch above the flash recorders, but it is not as convenient. If you want to upload recordings directly to your computer as digital files--instead of recording them in realtime out of the headphone jack--your choices are reduced to Hi-MD units. There are only a handful of those, only Sony makes them, and you can see them all in the Browser. Hi-MD and MD recorders are not being manufactured any more, so you are going to be limited to what you can find. Among Hi-MD, to me the best choices boil down to two: MZ-NH700, the basic workhorse, and MZ-RH1, the pride of the fleet. The MZ-RH1 is the black one you probably saw. It's Mac-compatible; MZ-NH700 is PC-only. The RH1 uploads files from old MDs, which doesn't matter to you; MZ-NH700 doesn't. But other Hi-MD models will also record and upload: MZ-NH900, MZ-NHF800, MZ-RH10, MZ-RH100, MZ-M200 (which is just the RH1 bundled with a microphone). Anything with a D in the model number is just to download music, like an iPod, and will not do realtime recording. There's an NH600, that only has a line-in jack (but no mic-in jack to power a mic), and an NH600D, which does not do realtime recording. Confusion for all. Anything else--MZ-Nxxx- units, MZ-Rxxx units (both without the H), anything by Sharp or Panasonic or Aiwa or Kenwood, will only record in compressed formats and will not upload to your computer. The compressed formats can sound good, but you'd have to re-record in realtime out of the headphone jack. Try to hear some benga and taarab music while you're there. You might even record it....

Very cool idea. What do you mean "should not be touched"--static on the recording? Is there a way to put something on the battery clip--maybe even a dead battery--to prevent that?

4.3 works well for some people and not for others. Before you mess with SonicStage run the File Conversion Tool--in the Programs group or under Tools when you open SonicStage--to remove copy protection from the files in your computer. Since you're running an older Windows, it's possible an older SonicStage is better for you. For me, 4.2 seems to be a little more efficient on my XP computer than 3.4 was, but you'll have to make your own choice for Win2K. Here's a 3.4 link for you: http://www.savefile.com/files/194995 4.2 is better than 4.3 for anyone who's not stuck with Vista. Look at Avrin's post for the link and the (separate) drivers. http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=18671

Through the years many people have commented that AC power can make noise on the recording. I think it's supposed to have something to do with grounding. But why not just use a battery? Unless you're doing some eight-hour marathon recording session, you won't run out.

I can't agree with you, wiz. I have had failures with both opaque and translucent Hi-MDs, from the total disaster of CANNOT READ error (though Sony Media Services got the data back!) to little skips in the middle of tracks that prevent uploading. I use the 1GB discs because they're so capacious, but I never entirely trust them.

I don't see a stereo line-in minijack on the Edirol, just RCA and optical. There's no optical-out on your unit. You're going to be getting your output from the headphone jack. If you have a line-in jack on your soundcard, that might be fine for going in directly. Try it and see if there's noise. Otherwise, if you just have a mic jack or don't like the sound of line-in, you don't need the Edirol. Save some money and get a Griffin iMic. It's exactly what you need for this purpose. http://www.amazon.com/Griffin-Technology-i...d/dp/B00006BALQ

JessT, try putting the disc in the unit and connecting to SonicStage. Sometimes SonicStage can read the disc even if the unit can't. Otherwise, Sony Media Services at http://www.sonymediaservices.com/ may be able to recover the data, but it's expensive--$45 or so.