gull

Ah, I've just looked elsewhere in the forums and discovered that it can't be done. To be honest, I'm not surprised that SONY has put this block into their stuff, but what totally surprises me is that nobody has developed any 3rd-party software to over-ride this. I mean, painstaking measures were taken to ensure that DVDs couldn't be ripped, but unless I'm mistaken, DVDs get ripped all the time. I guess though that the Minidisc hardware itself probably isn't designed for transferring from the disc to computer at all. Is that the case? I'm guessing that "checking-out" actually copies from the computer to the disc, but "checking-in" merely erases the data from the disc and tells the computer that it's no longer there. If that's the case, I suppose no amount of programming could solve the problem, you'd have to actually change the hardware. gull

Hi all, I did some searching through the older messages to see if I could answer my question, and I do apologize if this has been answered before. I just bought a SONY Minidisc recorder, but I'm taking it back. The check-in/check-out thing is just too useless for my purposes. I'm hoping that another brand of Minidisc and/or different software will help me overcome the limitations that SONY seems to have imposed. Here's what I do/want: I record stuff using a microphone. Sometimes sounds that I may want to create a loop with, sometimes my own live music performances. Nothing copyrighted. In the past, I've then just recorded from my Minidisc to my computer. Now that they've got the USB thing happening, I figured "great!", I'll be able to just download it right to my computer in less than real-time, and I won't have to deal with getting levels right, etc. It'll just be a direct copy. Well, with the software I got with my SONY, I can do no such thing, as I'm sure you all know. The check-out/check-in thing prevents me from doing that. Hence, I'm taking the damn thing back. Are there any other brands of Minidisc that would let me operate as I described above? Is there any third-party software that would let me use my SONY as I described above? Thanks! Gull