dex Otaku

Rip to PCM, then make sure SS is set to transfer "AS IS" when downloading tracks to your player. Take a look at the options for bitrates in the CD copying window.

I'd agree with all but the comment on ffdshow. I've been using ffdshow as my primary codec/filters for movie watching for about 2 years. SS uses the playback filter perfectly fine - I've been using ffdshow for mp3 for that long and never had a single conflict between it and SS. I even use 24-bit decoding with it, and enable the EQ built into for auditioning tracks through SS. Again, I've never had a single problem [on 4 machines running this way]. I'd still assert that this is the biggest myth of SS interactions.

Interesting point, gm. Those 1.2M hour MTBFs are likely made under the assumption that the unit is running a maximum of 2 hours per day. 24/7 use with regular access probably changes that number drastically. In 24/7 use, I have rarely seen hdd's last longer than about 5 years, and those would be in situations completely atypical to home computers - connected, turned on, left on for 5 years save 4-5 shutdowns, never moved at all, and in climate-controlled environments. As a tech for consumer puters I'd say most drives don't last longer than 5 years with only 2 hours/day use before they start to fail one way or another. O course, your mileage may vary. I put very little faith in consumer products, primarily because I've serviced them on and off for over 10 years. That said, my own 234MB hard disc that I bought in 1991 still works perfectly, albeit slowly.

I agree with greenmachine on the reliability factor, but must note that even with my lax storage standards I've never lost data from DVD-R or CD-R, and have usable CD-R discs going back to 1997. The only optical computer backup media that are more trusted in this regard are CD-RW [which is phase-change material based, not dye-based] and DVD-RAM or RW. By comparison, most hard discs have a rated MTBF that is about 3 years in length. I don't trust anything to permanent storage on hard drives, even while having never lost data from hdd without it being somehow my own fault. MD, being magneto-optical, should have similar longevity to DVD-RAM. The problem with MD is that players are likely to become unavailable long before the media itself ceases to be readable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flac http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WavPack http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Loss...sion_algorithms These pages also contain links to the originating websites. Most lossless algorithms compression nominally at about 2:1, meaning the output takes roughly half the space of the input. i.e. a full CD in 300MB. The compression ratio for a given piece of audio depends largely on its complexity. I suggest FLAC and WavPack over most other methods, because they include corruption-protection in their streams [my most common experience with APE is a download with a single corrupted byte in it being unplayable past the corrupted byte, which it totally unacceptable in my books.] FLAC and WavPack are both open-source, both compress well on average, and both support metadata and embedded cuesheets [for making CD images, which is what I use it for]. WavPack is significantly faster than FLAC during encoding. As for sacrificing space - I can walk down the street here and buy a dual-layer 16x DVD writer for less than $100CAD, and single-layer DVD-R media is about $0.25/disc for 4.3GB. If your purpose is to archive your old collection, which would imply that you're not going to be listening to those copies every day, then why keep them on your hard disc?

Your mistake is in your assumptions about "padding out". When ATRAC [or atrac3 or atrac3plus] audio is played back, first it's converted back to PCM, then it's put through D/A conversion. Data does not just get "padded out" to fit over the SP/DIF pipe. It gets decoded to PCM. That means any loss from the first pass of compression is part of that PCM. Any further encoding incurs a further loss. I just wrote about this is another thread [also by you], so see there: http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=13231 To clarify one thing: to my knowledge, only 3 lossily-compressed formats are regularly used over SP/DIF [coax or optical digital connections]: DTS [which can be as high in bitrate as full 16-bit 48kHz PCM], AC3 [aka dolby digital], and MP2 [common on European DVDs]. All of the above are transmitted over SP/DIF by setting a flag which denotes the data as other than standard PCM; decoders that don't understand the data will either decode as silence or as pseudo-random noise. I have never heard of ATRAC of any form being transmitted over SP/DIF, though there were at one point professional MD drives that could copy data directly to computers. These cost several thousand dollars per drive, and AFAIK no longer exist.

I haven't actually noticed any transfer speed differences at all, between any version, starting with SS2.1.

Sorry, but that's invalid logic. Decoding ATRAC to PCM is not simply "padding out". ATRAC is lossy; the decoding process converts the lossy data into an uncompressed format, sure, but it's not just padding it out to fit the full bitrate, it's actually attempting to reconstruct the whole original signal - minus the parts that lossily compressing it in the first place threw away. Decoding a lossily-compressed format to an uncompressed format [ATRAC to PCM] means carrying the loss into the PCM. Recompressing the PCM it into *any* lossy format will incur another generation of loss; basically, you're taking the first lossy compression pass and applying more lossy compression to it. While the loss in quality isn't that significantly noticeable by the majority of people until several generations of loss have been applied [the original patents for ATRAC refer to something like, 'high-quality data reduction that can survive several passes without losing quality' but that is subjective, of course], the only way to find out what's acceptable to your ears is to try various methods. Many of us here use lossless-packing formats like FLAC, WavPack, and APE for archival purposes. Lossless-packing means exactly what it infers; while there is a reduction in the space required, there is no loss in quality as what comes out on the decoder end is bit-for-bit identical to what went in the encoder end. No, actually. Anything that involves a pass through D/A and A/D converters will have more damage done to it than simply taking the digital stream [decoded PCM] and recording that on a digital recorder. That said, the only method I have ever used for copying legacy MDs was the analogue route, and the results have always exceeded my expectations. The real question here is what your expectations are. Many people are actually corrupted with the knowledge that it's possible to make bit-perfect copies of digital audio, not realising that the amount of generation loss incurred in going through a single pass of D/A - A/D conversion is usually way less than their ears can discern [unless, that is, your equipment is absolute crap]. If you have truly golden ears and can hear the difference between two D/A converters, or different lossy compression methods at high bitrates, or the difference between dithered and undithered signals, then by all means go the digital route [and buy the additional equipment doing so requires]. For the vast majority of people, the analogue route is not only the simplest way, but also does not incur sufficient quality loss to really bother them.

On the NH700 there is no option for auto-marking on silence when recording through the mic input. There is also no option to -disable- auto trackmarking when using the line input.

Yes, they do. I would check for the following: Are you listening from the original disc with EQ on, and then listening to the CD without? How are the levels on the recording - how do they -look- in an editor? Is everything -looking- quiet, i.e. well below the -6dB line most editors show as half-amplitude? What proessing, if any, was used on the audio before burning it? There should be no audible difference between what you hear playing back on the recorder, what you hear on the PC after uploading, and what you hear from the CD you've burnt. I would look at the steps you followed for a difference somewhere in how you played back from one source vs. another, or something you [even unwittingly] did during upload and burning to account for the difference. Even something like switching the headphones or speakers you were listening with will make a huge difference.

Okay. Let's be nitpicky here for a moment - First - Your 74-minute MDs are recorded in SP mode, which is ATRAC audio, not ATRAC3 [which covers LP2, LP3, and LP4]. Second - regardless of how you try to copy that disc, either by analogue or digital route, the ATRAC audio will be converted to PCM. There is no way around this. That said, the quality of conversion is good at worst, and if you have a decent sound card, the quality of your copy can be as good as the source. You'd probably be surprised by how little loss there actually is.

Any methods of copying from SP / LP2 / LP4 recordings on legacy MDs involves decoding the audio to PCM. If you copy the analogue route - your player convert ATRAC or ATRAC3 audio to PCM, then to analogue, then recording on your computer converts analogue back to PCM. If you copy using a deck with optical output, it still converts to PCM, and whatever you record with records -that- PCM directly. As greenmachine said, there is no way to copy from legacy MD without the audio being decoded.

Good suggestion, gm. Perhaps I'll put my ears on for that some time soon.

I'd be willing to bet that ATRAC [sP] itself is probably still being developed, as SDDS uses it for film soundtracks, and Sony appear to be seriously committed to what is currently the only 8-channel surround scheme used in the film industry. [interestingly - I have never been able to find sufficient technical data on SDDS to figure out whether it actually uses SP or not; their literature implies it, but does not confirm it. I would hazard a guess that it's more likely SDDS uses a VBR version which allocates bandwidth by complexity by channel, similar to most uses of joint-stereo encoding, as opposed to discrete stereo encoding.] I have serious doubts that LP2 or LP4 are being refined any further. I would doubt that any ATRAC or ATRAC3 hardware-encoders seen by consumers will see any change from the encoders that have been around since before HiMD was introduced. Type S and Type R have both been around for a while, and AFAIK no improvements have been made to either. That said, my findings re: LP2 were found when comparing [by memory alone, thereby totally fallible] with what I remember from SS 2.1 and 2.2. I tested with the same music, and if the difference were truly minor I doubt I would have noticed and would have simply continued saying that LP2 from SS is crap, period. It did seem less like crap than before, though, and I'll stand by my opinion, which is just that. Software codecs being improved is also a completely separate matter from the codecs being improved at any base level. I still stick with my earlier [as of mid-2004] thoughts on the fact that the software codecs for all a/3/+ bitrates in SS were compromised quality-wise in order for gains in encoding speed, to satisfy the vast majority of users who would rather have quicker response than higher quality. Decoders are fairly easy to standardise whether hardware or software, as the basics of any given format are pretty much set in stone on that side of things. The decoder either works or it doesn't; if it's having qualtiy problems of any kind, that indicates a serious error in implementation [i.e. actually not following the format's standards], not just a compromise in coding. Improvements in encoders can be created and implemented as long as their output follows the spec expected by the decoder. My assertion would be that, given the compromises that are plainly audible in the LP2 codec [hardware encoding sounds nothing like softwre encoding to my ears in this regard], the software codec shows further room for improvement. All they have to do is stay within the boundaries defined by the spec / decoder. As a parallel example - MP3, in the hands of the lame group, has been tweaked sufficiently that lame's VBR encoding exceeds the quality of the reference encoder made by the company who owns MP3. I'd expect that Sony at least have the potential to increase the quality of all their codecs' encoders at least on the software front in the same manner. However - the fact that atrac/3/plus are proprietary, closed systems does imply that less work will likely be done on such, and less progress likely to be seen over a short time. Incidentally, the quality-mode options in SS 3.3 still have no apparent effect to my ears. With a lack of any ABX system that would permit direct use of OMA files, I have no way to really test this opinion scientifically. Oh, and - I would concur with ROMBusters that 64kbps will never achieve the relative quality of 256kbps. I still find it far less offensive than many other low-bitrate formats, but not really listenable under most circumstances.

Bump. Updated 2005-11-21.

SonicStage and Simple Burner are both in their DRM's "allowed" lists, so there should be no problems for either.

Kurisu: In the process of editing the upload FAQ, I will be making notes of this fact.

Sound Forge is an editor, and doesn't qualify as non-destructive depending on how you use it. To my knowledge [having used SF since V2 or so] it has no uploading features. You will likely have to upload via SS, export to WAV, and edit with SF or something else just as the rest of us do. Incidentally, the MZ-M100 will upload PCM to Macs as well.

Actually, Sony don't have the encryption keys, but they might have the tools to decrypt the data without having you violate the DMCA or their software patents. The crucial point here is that OMA is NOT suitable as a backup medium. Export to WAV, and do what you will with those files. OMA is key-encrypted to your specific installation of SonicStage, and as such can not be opened by anything BUT the specific intallation of SS the files were created [uploaded] with. If you still have the original recordings on the original disc, and the first upload was made with SS 3.2 or 3.3, you should be able to upload them again. All that said, I'd still trying pressing Sony until they provide you with a solution of some kind.

Hey - if you've never either needed it [and/or researched it] or simply tried it out of curiosity, then why would you know? Most people probably never dig deeper in the interface than using HiLP and HiSP or LP2 for downloading.

I don't recall which version it was enabled in, but PCM downloading has been there for a while now. If I'm not mistaken, it showed up first in Simple Burner 2.0x and came soon after in a revision of SS.

I don't see why this is a surprise. AS IS = AS IS. You can manually select download bitrates by turning that mode off. The AS IS fallback rate is only used if SS can't transfer as is - i.e. with MP3 to 1st-gen HiMD or NetMD, WMA, atrac3plus bitrates not supported by your device, &c.

See here: http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=7070

And for that matter, are your USB ports working -at all-?

Since the files you have are encrypted to a key you no longer have, they're basically useless. Liscenses lost = files useless, unless of course you happen to have reverse-engineered Sony's DRM. If you bug Sony enough they might come up with some kind of solution for you, and hopefully everyone else. This is the only suggestion I can make, other than to, in the future: * update to SS 3.3 and rip your new stuff without DRM [the option is there] * make backups using the SS backup tool * convert to WAV as soon as you've uploaded Side-note: if you bought music from Connect online, Sony can re-establish those liscenses for you.