dex Otaku

1 - assuming the cuesheet actually points at the APE file, just use something like Nero to "burn" a CD image. In the case of Nero, mount it with ImageDrive, then open SS or SB, and copy the image as though it were an actual CD. 2 - [unrelated to your question] APE has no protection against data corruption. FLAC and WavPack do. What this means is that if your backup CD/DVD with tha APE image on it gets damaged or has a read error of some kind, everything in the APE file past the error is corrupt. WavPack I have found [after archiving hundreds of files this way] to have slightly better compression that APE, even with the overhead of corruption-protection. FLAC and WavPack also allow embedded cuesheets. .. the first thing I do with APE sources is convert them to WavPack. The only advantage APE really has is that its interface is simpler to use.

This is interesting.. because my RH10 - which annoys me because it tries to top-up the battery when I plug it in via USB - has no problems running via USB with only the USB cable connected. I almost always completely remove the battery when doing transfers from SS.

The addition of the dynamic playlist function is probably the biggest single step ever taken in actually making SS usable, IMO.

Transcoding from any lossy format to another causes further loss - call it generation loss. Transcoding from any bitrate [lossy or not] to a lower one causes more significant and noticeable loss. The plain truth is that taking something that already is artifacted by one compression algorithm and transcoding it to another simply takes the original signal, artifacts and all, and adds more artifacting to it - regardless of the originating and destination compression formats. The only way to avoid really noticeable generation loss is to transcode to the most transparent [i.e. highest encoding quality] bitrate available. Thereby, the best bitrate option would be the highest available, HiSP or a3+ 352kbps [depending on whether you're using SS 3.3 or not], unless you want to ensure that there's -no- further loss, in which case use PCM. As much as you may hate MP3, if quality/size is important to you, then keep the original MP3s. Transcoding to a higher bitrate is wasting space and still adding further loss. Transcoding to a lower bitrate is saving space, and adding much further loss. So, to answer directly - MP3 - a3+ -------------- 128 - 256/352 160 - 256/352 192 - 256/352 224 - 256/352 256 - 256/352 320 - 256/352 VBR - 256/352 As I said, if you prefer not in incur any further loss, simply replace all of the above with "PCM". If you're running SS 3.3, replace all of the above with a3+ 352kbps. Keep in mind, though - what one person finds acceptable in terms of artifacting/loss is bound to be different from another person's opinion. My opinion is based on the assumption that you don't want things to be any worse than they were when they started. The best way to avoid this is, of course, to not transcode the original files in any way.

From the HiMD uploading FAQ: You didn't get the wrong end of the stick. You just didn't read it fully. Glad to hear things are working now. Cheers.

I don't experience either problem.

I'm willing to bet that the replacement CDs will have a different form of copy protection on them.

The simplest answer here is no.

Before reading - please excuse the bluntness of some of my responses. I'm not intending to be rude, I'm just being honest about things. Anything anyone can say on this is purely speculation at this point. I myself have considered MD to be officially deprecated [no further development] since HiMD was introduced. It's important to note here as well that MD != HiMD. The future of MD is basically closed. Whether the same will happen to HiMD is, again, purely speculation. In any case, and at the least, the media itself [both MD and HiMD] should be available for some time, even if the equipment is not developed further. The fact that Sony have released new HiMD player-only units recently is a hopeful indication. All equipment have their own quirks, whether by intent or accident. I think the biggest factor in this is not necessarily whether something is quirky [or even problematic] but whether hte user can come up with a reliable, repeatable method for recording. Expectations meet methodology, basically, and whether things work for you or not depend on both. I personally have no serious problems using HiMD for portable recording that aren't related to the limitations of consumer/prosumer equipment - such as unbalanced connections being standard, and the limitations that itself imposes [short cable lengths, poor noise rejection in noisy electromagnetic environments, &c.]. As I was just discussing in another thread, [in terms of recording] I use HiMD only as a preproduction/production tool. I do my initial recording with it, but don't use it for editing or storage/archival, even if some related features are standard to the format. The vast majority of the time, once initial levels are set [if necessary] my recording process is very much fire-and-forget. I start the unit, and don't touch it until I'm going to stop it. Sometimes I make trackmarks while recording, and I've never experienced any problems with that feature because I don't do any further editing on the unit itself. On-unit editing has limitations that vary with each bitrate [each frame stored having a different length of audio for each bitrate, and there being minimum lengths for a track during editing even if they aren't imposed when initially recording] that have caused some users grief that I have never encountered myself simply because I don't try to edit on the unit. IMO, the biggest caveat to HiMD in use as a recording medium is that jarring the unit while recording can cause unrecoverable write errors that can cause problems when uploading tracks to your PC later. Anyone who has used a portable CD recorder [egen rack-mounted] is familiar with the issues that can arise if the recorder is banged during recording; MD, HiMD, and CDR being disc-based and either optical or magneto-optical, the reasons for this are fairly obvious. Mechanical tolerances must be kept in mind or things can go wrong in some way, period. That said, I have very rarely experienced write errors while recording, even when walking around with the recorder in a shirt or jacket-pocket. The second biggest caveat, depending on your expectations, is SonicStage. You *must* understand beforehand that SS is required to upload tracks from HiMD to your PC, and is likewise required to convert those tracks to WAV for subsequent editing or archival. If you can accept being locked into using SS [which I find works quite well and stably since v2.3 for the purposes of uploading and exporting] for this part of the process, then you're fine. If you expect drag n' drop support from the unit to your computer without using Sony's tools, then frankly - look at another [more expensive] format. The third caveat is that HiMD is a magneto-optical medium, and as such is not speedy in terms of either reading data from or writing data to disc. PCM recordings typically upload for me at about 2.5-3x realtime, for instance. This is a physical limitation of the medium itself [with a bit of an affect from low-power requirements and miniaturisation, but not that much], not the fault of Sony's software or anything else. If, like me, you have worked in ad hoc [i.e. home studio] production environments and have long been accustomed to copying exclusively in real time from analogue sources, this will likely not be an issue for you. If your expectations are to be able to upload 90 minutes of PCM recording in a couple of minutes, again, look elsewhere [and spend more]. Expectations are really the key here. If you're willing to accept Sony's near lock-in software-wise, as well as the mechanical limitations [including speed] of the format in order to save several hundred dollars on a high-quality recording medium, then the format is fine for you. HiSP [256kbps] is pretty much transparent to me. I use HiMD for portable listening as well as recording, and use HiSP most of the time. I also use it for recording slightly less-important material. I find its quality to be acceptable in both cases, even with 1st-generation recordings. This is, of course, personal opinion - but I'll add that I'm pretty finicky about sound quality, and frequently annoyed by the artifacting that different methods and levels of compression can ruin music with. It's a pretty big drop-off to my ears, but I'm not the most typical listener on earth by any means. I do not use HiLP for music, ever, though I would consider it fine for making voice recordings. Many users find the quality of HiLP to be just fine for listening purposes. The only way to really find out your own opinion is to listen to material encoded in HiLP. It's difficult to make a comparison in this way. MP3 sounds different depending on what bitrate you use [i.e. how much you compress things], and so does atrac3+, as with any lossy coding format. I, personally, find that atrac3+'s artifacting, even when evident, is not as annoying as MP3's when comparing similar rates of compression. Again, the only way to find out is to try it yourself. Well - first of all, again, MD != HiMD. That said, I think of HiMD as a production tool, not a carrier medium [like CD is]. If you think of it in terms of being a production tool, and think in terms of how other production tools [specifically, recording equipment] commonly work, then HiMD is no more difficult or inconvenient to use than any other recording format [excluding CD]. A quick [simplified] summary of my procedure is this: * make my recording * upload it to the computer with SonicStage * export the tracks to WAV * edit my recording with a nonlinear editor [sS is -not- editing software] * make my master and distribute them. As part of a production environment, HiMD works well for me. It lets me make good uncompressed 1st-gen recordings, copy them digitally to my computer, and export them in a format that I can subsequently do anything I want with. I would dare to suggest that HiMD is not a format for beginner users who expect everything to be as simple as burning CDs with, say, iTunes. Getting good results takes some learning and know-how. The majority of the recording I do is from analogue sources ["line" or microphone]. These can be exported from SS directly to WAV with no hassle. Recordings made with the optical input can be uploaded to your computer, but not exported with SS. Marcnet has created a tool that does permit digital extraction of these tracks, called HiMDRenderer. See here: http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=6087 Again, this relates to your expectations. I do not actually use SS for anything but uploading recorded tracks to my PC and exporting the to WAV. Okay, that's a lie - I use it to download MP3s to my HiMD recorder as well - but the important thing here is perhaps that I have never attempted to burn a CD from SS [i use authoring tools for that], &c. I always edit and archive my recordings using tools completely separate from SS. I hope this addresses your questions adequately. Cheers. P.S. - Take a browse through the reviews section. The reviews can give a pretty good indication as to what the quirks of various models are.

A440 and I likely use very similar methods. Here's mine for line-in recordings: * auto-trackmarking can NOT be disabled, so don't bother trying * make your recording * upload it * export the tracks as WAV * drop the tracks in sequence into a non-destructive nonlinear editor such as Audacity, Krystal Audio Engine, Audition, or Vegas * do your editing * save the file as your edited master and do what you will with it I basically use HiMD only as my recording medium. I don't edit with it at all, and don't keep the original recordings on the discs as masters. It's my production recorder, all post-production is done on the PC. Basically: If you want to do editing, use an editor. SS is not an editor. HiMD [like MD and even CD] has limits to the 'resolution' of editing as well, which are different for each bitrate [a single frame contains a different length of audio for each bitrate].

I know you say you removed the battery the first time, but try again - remove -all- sources of power [battery, AC, USB] for at least a minute, then put the battery back in and try formatting again. I've had similar things happen [sS crash during download] but have found that stopping the SS process, disconnecting the unit from the USB cable, removing battery, reconnecting and then running SS again and telling it to initialise the disc [or formatting from the menu] has always worked to get the whole process started again. I have rarely had SS trash a disc that couldn't be reformatted within a minute later, but maybe I'm just lucky.

There's only one way to change this: change the artist to read "Springsteen, Bruce" - not "Bruce Springsteen". Regardless of where you tell it to sort the artists [i.e. manually changing Bruce from "B" to "S"], SS sorts within that letter by the artist name; Bruce Springsteen comes before Dusty Springfield because "B" precedes "D". Most music library progs have the same problem, incidentally.

I would concur with A440 about the SP mics over Sony's. I would strongly recommend -against- using stage vocal mics for recording individual acoustic instruments. In particular, both of these Shure dynamics have a heavily-weighted response in the vocal range, and a rolled-off high-end. In a pinch they work fine [and I have used both to mic instrument amps for 13+ years] for instrument micing, but the sound is extremely coloured and compared to most condenser mics their sensitivity is fairly low [though maximum SPL is high, they being dynamic]. For mic'ing an individual instrument, I'd suggest using a cardioid rather than an omni, and a monaural mic rather than stereo for most things. The SP-SM17 is an omnidirectional stereo mic, which means it will not only pick up whatever it's set close to, but literally everything from every direction around it. Using a cardioid at a couple of feet distance rejects sounds other than what the mic is pointing at, for one thing. For another, using a stereo mic means that as you move when you're playing, the recording kind of moves with you [in the stereo image]. Also, remember that the closer the mic is to the source, the louder it will be .. with the preamps built-in to portable recorders like ours, distant-mic'ing is not as successful as if you are using pro equipment; the further you are from the source, the quieter the signal to mic transduces, meaning more work for your recorder's preamp and a much higher likelihood of microphone self-noise or preamp self-noise becoming evident in your recordings. This [these?] reason is [are?] why I suggest mic'ing relatively close to the subject, and using a relatively directional mic to ensure better rejection of room tone and spurious background noises. Nick - you might like to take a look at microphone university for some information about different microphone types. Unfortunately they don't have much to offer in terms of advice on instrument mic'ing technique [they do for stereo technique], but they do have an excellent dictionary/glossary of audio terms.

Unfortunately I can't speak to this based on personal experience. The only external preamps I've ever used were in actual mixers, such as Mackie VLZ-series units [which some people love, and others hate]. That said, Reactive Sounds [see the customer forum on this board] and Sound Professionals are examples of companies that make external preamps specifically for use with portables such as MD and HiMD recorders, with powered 3.5mm connections for the kind of mics many of us use. There are other users here who have these units, and Reactive Sounds are represented here in their own forum as I already mentioned. You can take a look at both the above companies' websites to get an idea on price - just look for microphone preamps. There are others who make them too, of course, though as I already stated I can not vouch for either the build quality or performance of any based on personal experience. There are also portable [kind of like hip-pack] mixers out there that can let you use balanced microphones. I'd suggest searching the net for "portable mic preamp" or something close to that. Cheers.

re: 352kbps - Golden ears or not, I'd use it for recording were it available. For portable listening I find HiSP sufficient. The only time I tend to use PCM is when copying things such as Bach's Toccatos & Fugues which are all pipe organ recordings, which I find most forms of lossy compression tend to make sound raspy or even gargly.

Reformatted after Nero? I've been using Nero for about 5 years and have never had a problem with it that wasn't caused by something other than Nero [faulty hardware, defective discs, or faulty user, heh]. I'm not running the most recent version here, but Nero does write images, and it comes with a image-mounting tool as well. There are probably better tools for making images, but I've never had the need. I also use Virtual Clonedrive for images from other sources, though.

If you have a computer that can play sound, you already have what you need. Your equipment will, of course, determine the quality of the copy, but even most built-ins nowadays can do a better job than most people's ears could detect any noise in. $20 sound cards now outperform the equipment you'll be copying from. Whether you decide to go this route really should be based on what you're comfortable with doing, though, not just what your quality expectations are. Cheers.

I've used HiMDs under win98 as data drives. All it required installing was the personal audio driver [which has a version of the USB mass storage drivers in it]. If you have a copy of SS that came on CD with your portable, you can install the driver by itself without SS. Even from SS 2.1 the driver alone works fine for data purposes.

http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=13102 Was just a quick test. Also, note that "high quality" is only available when ripping from CD, not when encoding/transcoding within the library - and there is no quality setting for atrac3 rates.

They made the encoder that way. Speed still has nothing inherent to do with accuracy.

It would be nice if London Drugs existed east of Alberta.

The RH10 uses a standard USB cable with a that you should be able to find at any computer and most electronics shops. It's the same type of cable used by most digital cameras that have standard mini connectors. See here: http://www.vivitar.com/Products/DigCams/te...Bminicable.html

More news on this subject: http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=926 Apparently, Sony's XCP uninstaller can actually cause more problems than it's supposed to fix.

I've been working on it.

The things [aesthetics] we sacrifice for progress [upgrades]...