A440

Yes indeedy. We've all been software guinea pigs for a while. Most are labeled with that circle/triangle Copy Protected logo, but it's beter not to Autorun ANY CD, regardless of labeling. Turn Autorun off as detailed above, or if you want to live dangerously, hold the Shift key down while inserting to disable Autorun in that particular instance. To look at a CD, put it in your CD drive and Explore it. Anything but .cda or .wav files is suspect, particularly if there's an autorun.exe on the disc or anything called mediaplayer or something like that. .mp3, .mpg or flash (.swf) files are probably OK--just videos or added content--but be very suspicious of anything else. Here's a list of Sunncomm CDs: http://www.eff.org/IP/DRM/Sony-BMG/mediamaxlist.php Here's Sony's list of XCP CDs: US: http://cp.sonybmg.com/xcp/english/titles.html and for Canadians: http://cp.sonybmg.com/xcp/canada/titles.html If you have a poisoned CD and still want to hear the music, I suggest running CDEx to extract the audio and burn it onto a clean CD. http://www.download.com/CDex/3000-2140_4-10226370.html You're likely to see a list of audio tracks followed by a data track. Copy the audio tracks to a blank CD. Guess what the data track is?

Sony BMG was a merger. Old Sony labels--Columbia and Epic--tend to use XCP. Old BMG labels--Arista, BNA, RCA, ATO--have been using Sunncomm for more than a year. The Sunncomm is actually worse. If you haven't disabled Autorun, it plants itself in your computer BEFORE you see the licensing agreement that's supposed to offer you any choice. The Electronic Freedom Foundation has sued over the Sunncomm because that kind of behavior is clearly invasive. Here are some details. http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=936 "MediaMax phones home whenever you play a protected CD, automatically installs over 12 MB of software before even displaying an End User License Agreement, and fails to include an uninstaller." Sony isn't the only company that uses MediaMax. Look carefully in the fine print on your CDs. Also, Sony still hasn't provided any uninstaller for XCP. The guy who blew the whistle, Mark Russinovich, said he could easily write an uninstaller and he doesn't even have the source code. By not providing an uninstaller, Sony BMG Music has proved how little it cares about consumers. http://www.sysinternals.com/Blog/ "I could write an uninstaller in an hour based on my own research of the software without access to the source code. They have source code and an existing uninstaller. I find the delay utterly inexcusable." And Sony's supposed recall isn't exactly taking the CDs off the shelves, as New York's attorney general found. http://www.businessweek.com/technology/con...ign_id=rss_tech "It is unacceptable that more than three weeks after this serious vulnerability was revealed, these same CDs are still on shelves, during the busiest shopping days of the year," Spitzer said in a written statement. Greed makes Sony do some very stupid things. I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but Sony's head of technology, Phil Wiser, was a honcho in Liquid Audio, one of the early (failed) encrypted formats. He knows how this stuff works, so Sony's attempt to put all the blame on the copy-protection software vendors just doesn't ring true.

Or if you need to do it fast, connect with SonicStage and title the discs from there.

You're standing there holding that giant mic expecting not to be seen? No wonder security nabs you. Please, get something stealthy. It's a lot better than getting pushed downstairs, and a lot cheaper than having to replace your unit. If you can't find anything locally, try this: http://www.soundprofessionals.com/cgi-bin/gold/item/SP-BMC-2 or even something like this: http://cgi.ebay.com.au/STEREO-BINAURAL-MD-...1QQcmdZViewItem

On the RM-MC40ELK remote, pushing the P-Mode button sets a track mark during recording. Have you tried all the buttons on the RM-MC38EL ? Maybe there's one with a dual function.

Sony finally fixed that a few years ago. All Sony models now (since MZ-N910 if I remember right, but definitely all Hi-MDs that record) can change level while recording. Before you start each recording, you have to put it in REC-Pause and go through REC SET/REC VOLUME menu to switch it to Manual--you can't make it default to Manual. But while it's in Manual you can change the level. If you have the RM-MC40ELK remote you can look at the level (backlit) and change it while recording.

Best price I've found is from an eBay seller named acc4less that often has 5-packs of 1GB Hi-MD discs for $24.95 + $6.95 shipping. I've bought from them and they're fast to ship. The picture on the listing is of the old black 1GB discs, but what he sent were the newer blue ones. Here's a listing. http://cgi.ebay.com/5-SONY-HMD-1G-MINI-DIS...oQQcmdZViewItem

That's the RH710.

Usually when the battery is getting low the machine automatically saves the data and shuts down. I don't know why it didn't happen with you. If you can't find a long file on the disc with Windows Explorer, then your concert is probably gone. It's like writing a long piece in a word processor, but closing down without saving it. Sorry--one way or another, it's probably happened to all of us.

Any Hi-MD unit EXCEPT the NH-600, NH-600D or DH10 will work for you. They all record via mic in PCM or Sony's compressed formats (Hi-SP), which can be uploaded and converted to .wav, which can then be converted to whatever you want. The MZ-NH700 or MZ-NHF800 would be best. They're basically the same unit: they run on one AA battery for many hours. The F in MZ-NHF800 is because it adds an FM radio in its remote. It was the version sold in the U.S. (A rechargeable AA will recharge in the unit, but you'd be better off buying a separate battery recharger and 2500 mAh rechargeables.) But those are 2004 units and getting harder to find. This year's units, the RH910 and the more expensive RH10 (fancy OLED display lights up the face of the unit) will also work: they take a rechargeable gumstick battery with an outboard pod for an AA battery. RH910 is $170 here: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller...oughType=search Cute as it is, don't get the NH1, which has weird proprietary connections and battery. And don't use the software disc that comes with your unit! Use SonicStage 3.3, from the Downloads tab here. SonicStage versions 3.2 and 3.3 allow unlimited uploads; previous versions, like the one you may find with your MD unit, only allowed ONE upload. Meanwhile, here's a good place for batteries and chargers: http://www.thomas-distributing.com/aa-nimh...geablebatteries

If that's all you want to use it for, get any NetMD--you can see all the models under the Browser tab. Even the most basic ones--NE410, S1--will be able to download music in SP, via SonicStage, to play in the car. No MZ-R models (which were pre-NetMD): just MZ-N** . (2d-generation Hi-MD's are MZ-RH** but you don't need to spend that much.) Look on eBay, where they're under $100, sometimes under $50. Look closely at photos--make sure you don't see huge wear on the buttons or "wheel"--and check the seller's feedback, etc. Or look at some of the model numbers in Froogle via www.google.com. Some stores have old NetMD models like the NE410 for very low prices. Check this: http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showt...t=0entry80253

I hope DRM is not here to stay. It's snake oil. Pirates will get around it, and ordinary people will be infuriated by it. With any luck, it will also present legal problems because it violates the idea of fair use. My hope is that Vista (which ought to be called Blinders) is roundly rejected by consumers who are presumptuous enough to think that when they buy a CD or a DVD they actually own it and can do whatever they want with it on their own computers. It's called the first-sale doctrine. The Sony DRM debacle ought to alert people--and legislators, too--that people don't like their computers calling the mothership every time they want to play a CD or doing mysterious things behind their backs. Meanwhile, iPod isn't tied to iTunes DRM quite so tightly as Jobs seems to have convinced the labels. iPods wouldn't have sold as they have if you had to fill them exclusively from CDs you owned or from iTunes (20,000 songs from iTunes would make your iPod worth $20,000--which would be kind of a loss if you dropped it accidentally and broke the HD). iPod depends on mp3s and file-sharing (or CD borrowing/burning) to be a sensible economic choice for the consumer. That's obvious to anyone except a record executive.

If you load SonicStage first without the unit connected, then plug in the computer USB and plug the USB into the MD, will it recognize the unit? Does SonicStage work with other discs? I'm pushing you on this because I have had Format Error discs that the unit won't handle at all, but somehow SonicStage can deal with them. You might just have to replace the disc in the end, but it's worth a little effort to salvage it.

Deceptions-- Have you tried downloading the full installer, disconnecting from the internet, turning off any antivirus and firewall software and running the installer? Just make sure you start the antivirus/firewall when you reconnect to the net. Emmrecs-- Can you still play tracks from My Library with the new install?

http://www.popgadget.net/2005/11/sony_psp_corpor.php Sony's corporate imperative now extends to defacing walls to sell PSPs. We're supposed to respect their intellectual property rights while they vandalize real property?

Have you tried just connecting via USB and formatting the disc with SonicStage? Under Controls/Device-Media, Initialize should wipe the disc .

Which version of SonicStage are you using? You can make .wav copies as you upload or pick tracks in My Library and "Save in .wav" (under Tools). Then you can convert the .wav to mp3 with dppoweramp, in Downloads. Get SonicStage 3.3 from Downloads. Among its other good features, it allows you to upload from your MD not once, but an unlimited number of times. Or if for some strange reason you want to keep using an older SonicStage, use HiMDRenderer (also in Downloads, of course) as Syrius suggests.

Low-bitrate (48kbps) mp3s sometimes give SonicStage trouble. Try converting it to a higher bitrate with dbpoweramp .

It's better to keep your source files than to keep SonicStage's versions. SonicStage keeps "optimized" files as .omg or .oma. Those are encrypted and tied to the particular installation of SonicStage on your computer. If you have to restore, format, or anything else, and then reinstall SonicStage, you may find that it has decided you no longer have rights to play the tracks. Instead of keeping the SonicStage versions, keep versions that can be played outside SonicStage. With mp3, keep the mp3. They're not much bigger than .omg, if at all, and you haven't lost any quality by converting them to .omg. With .wav, they are big. You could archive them in a lossless format like .flac at about half the size of .wav. Or if you dont care that much about them, convert them to .mp3 . and save them like that. Use dbpoweramp in Downloads, minimum bitrate 192 for sound quality. Then, for space, delete the .omg/.oma files with SonicStage by removing them from My Library. Just make sure that during the delete dialogue you uncheck the box that says "remove these files from my computer," or it will take the source .wav or .mp3 with it.

You should be able to upload the optical tracks from MD to PC with SonicStage. But SonicStage won't convert those tracks to .wav because Sony is so afraid of piracy. Get HiMDRenderer from Downloads. Once the tracks are uploaded into My Library, HiMDRenderer will convert them into a more portable and editable format like .wav or .mp3. Then you should be able to download the converted files back onto another MD.

What was the format of the track you were trying to burn? It could be a glitch in SonicStage--try copying again. More likely, it's a copy-protected .wma file or possibly .mp4 from iTunes. Since I never touch copy-protected .wma files, I don't know if it will work, but you could try converting the track into an mp3 file with dbpoweramp from Downloads on this site. Use a high bitrate, 192 or above, to save sound quality. You might also try converting with HiMDRenderer from Downloads.

Yes. javascript:emoticon('', 'smid_9') smilie

I don't know exactly what you mean by an Active Microphone. If that's a microphone with a little battery, it's hard to say until you try it. It won't hurt the MD. The Line-in jack needs a strong signal. If you are recording loud amplified music, you might be able to get a strong enough signal by running a mic through a battery module like this http://www.microphonemadness.com/products/mmcbmminminc.htm or these: http://www.soundprofessionals.com/cgi-bin/...tegory/310/mics But that will not be strong enough to record speech, quieter music, etc. For that you would need a preamp, for which the cheapest would probably be here: http://stores.ebay.com/CHURCH-AUDIO You can also look at the Microphone Madness and Sound Professionals sites above. Many other preamps are so expensive that you'd be better off starting again and getting a mindisc unit with a mic-in jack. There is a built-in preamp behind the mic-in jack.

It looks like there are some out there, but as usual you pay a serious premium for extra portability. So it's back to AC power.

I'm about to get an external HDD: something big, probably >100 GB. I want something USB powered (not AC) and plug-and-play with Windows XP Pro (no software install) since it's going to be moved between at least two computers. It can look as boring as it wants--I just want something reliable that I'll never have to think about. Anybody have one they love? Anybody have ones to avoid? Thanks.