PaulBennett

You haven't been articulate about what you are doing. You say you record your 'work'. What is that? Also, what connection are you using? What program are you using. It's no problem to connect the MD to the sound card and use any of many programs to transfer it onto the HD and a CD. You aren't going to get any worse quality by staying analog than you would get by a digital/digital transfer.

I designed industrual X-Ray equipment at one time and can guarantee the magnetic leakage from the transformers (NOT the X-ray tubes) used in some X-ray cabinets CAN (not will) definately cause reduction of magnetic bit-fields on minidisks. Although you think of digital as having definate 0's and 1's, in actuality adjacent areas have a little more or a little less magnetic field. Take a few bits from from 51 pct to 49 pct in the track directory area and the recorded information can become toast. No redundancy as in CD's technology. Caveats. 1) More recent security cabs have improved magnetic leakage because it was erasing credit cards of the 8hr/day operators. 2)Some designs place the transformers at a distance. 3) If the disks are in the MD player they are NOT at risk. Pre and post exposed film should be placed in a film bag as a precaution against X-ray exposure. Degradation is cumulative and a trip to Europe is garanteed to take it's toll. (go digital magnetic). I would suggest household aluminum foil is a decent low cost deterant for reducing mild exposure of both film but is likely to trigger hand inspection. If I were a pro and dependant upon the disks, I would go to the home heating supply shop and get a couple 3" x 3" pieces of galvy used for heating ducts and wrap it in duct tape and use rubber bands to fasten the disks. Or go solid state Network Walkman instead of MD. Lastly, you can request hand inspection in lieu of X-ray inspection, if you have the time to wait. (Am I getting paid for this?)

I'm almost 70. I'd be 80 but smoked too much in my yut. I gave a MD to my 15 yo g'dotter. So guess the average age is 42. I do have 20 years of education cuz I had to take 10th grade twice. (lied about school - the rest is true)(actually didn't lie about IN school, just after school)(was hit in head with bowling ball and woke up unconscious)(carry on) MZ R900 + at least 1 each of everything Sony makes. Getting the biggie 1G Sony HiMD when it hits. (am I getting paid for this survey?)

Majestic, if you are still hanging around...please clue me into the two sofware programs. SonicStage and OpenMG. I know they only come bundled with Sony products and my local Sony dealer sales clerks seem to know nothing except the sales price and descriptions ebay are lacking plus many used boxes on eBay don't come with software which seems ominous. I am looking to get an Sony Atrak CD and a R707 (now have a R900). It sounds like the major function of these 2 programs are for copy protection lockout licensing or for web downloading which I don't. I don't really understand the function of the software apart from atrak compression. Can you clue me in in 80 words or more?

Q & A A Why not convert wma to mp3 with available software like dbAmp? Q I have a R900 and am about to buy a new MD, are you saying I cannot use SonicS to transfer my existing CD's and mp3 without getting a licence? Incidently, I will not have MusicMatch, Quicktime, or RealAudio on my computer because they want to take over. I'm quite happy with MS MediaP and use it to loac my R900. Only need to load song text.

Paul, elsewhere on this web site you will find 3 mp3 files containing silence. Insert these inbetween the songs and you will have the pause you need to energize the track incrementer. that's ok, no thanks necessary.

After more looking around, I've pretty well become convinced to toss the R-900 as old fashioned. I'm going to get a Sony Atrac/MP3 CD player which holds more music than it's batteries can play. Gone will be the download hassle. And I can't believe how cheap...I was considering another $300 minidisk and these CD Players are well below $100. Such is life. Guess now I have to look for the Sony CD forum.

I prefer MS Media Player but I cannot find a way for it to pause between songs so that the R-900 increments the track number. Manual says 3 seconds of silence is required. I have tried MusicMatch but the print is too tiny to read and the playlist, which is my main interest in adding songs, is relegated to 10pct area of the screen. What simple software is best to send songs to the USB?

I have an R-900 to which I transfer mp3 files via pcLink. The mp3s are from 78 records which I have meticulously edited the ID3 files for title, artist, album etc. I would like to have the song title placed onto the MD but herein lies the rub. Seems the R-900 only does text from CD and requires a special cable at that, which I cannot find anyway. Should I toss the R-900 into the obsolescence box? What Sony MD recorder should I obtain to accomplish this? Question again - ? pc mp3+title >> MD ?

That's OK, Jay, we forgive you for spamming products on your web site, but please do work on your 'broken english'. And yes, that ellusive key on your keyboard is for capitals. Incidently, I'm glad to see that microphone ad. Got 3 on order now. tks.