phaworth

The backup tool worked. I just had to tell it a different folder to restore to than where the data was originally. Many thnaks, Pete

Thanks, I'll give that a try and report back... Pete

Just got a new computer running Windows XP Home edition and am trying to move my SonicStage library from my old Windows 98SE computer to the new one. I moved the Packages folder from the old computer to the new one and all my albums and track listings show up in SonicStage on the new computer OK but when I try to play any of them I get a message that the music track for the file was not found and the track will not play. I do get the opportunity to specify where the file is. I believe this is beacuse the music files are stored in a different folder on the WIndows 98 box than on the XP box and there is a pointer somewhere in the SOnicStage database that holds the name of the music file. I have not been able to find a global setting to change the name of the folder where the music files are which means I would have to go through and individually change the file name of every track in my library (hundreds of them!). I really hope someone can come up with an idea of how to fix this! Thanks, Pete

Glad to hear that PCM files are transferred wihtout being converted to ATRAC3. I assumed that was what was happening because of the time it took to transfer the file, but after looking at the file size I see that it is much bigger than a similar time recording stored in ATRAC3 format. I notice that the PCM recording was stored in a .oma file while the ATRAC3 recordings are stored in .omg files - is that the only reason for those two file extensions? Pete

Transferring PCM files into SOnic Stage takes only a little less than real time, so 60 minutes to transfer a 79 minute PCM recording sounds about right. I assume it's the conversion from PCM to ATRAC3 that takes so long. Recording something in PCM only to have it get converted to ATRAC3 in SonicStage, I've already lost some sound quality so converting it back to a lossless format like WAV doesn't really help with the audio quality, just the ability to burn normal CDs. Now if someone could figure out how to get PCM recorded data on the minidisk directly to WAV format on the PC bypassing SonicStage, we'd really be in business! Failing that, I'm anxiously awaiting the release of the Roland R1 solid state recorder which records in several different qualities of WAV and MP3 which you then upload to your computer via USB copy, no extra software required, to do with as you please. Pete

Unless I'm missing something, the Sony WAV convertor only works with .oma files, at least that's all that show up. Marc's program does .oma and .omg files. Pete

Thanks to the posters. I started making a handwritten list compiled from the Properties of each track, then saw the post about the option in SS to rename files along with the tracks. Fortunately, I have only named about a dozen of the 150 or so tracks I imported so the double rename thing won;t be too much hassle! Oh yes, and the two tracks I've renamed so far bith got that "00-" prefix. I'm also a little curious about the post that said that if I had named the tracks on the minidisk before importing them, they would have retained their names. I haven't actually tried that, but I did title all the groups on the minidisk and none of them retained their names - I was asked to either add the tracks to an existing album or create a new album which I had to supply a name for. Thanks, Pete

I recorded a lot of music from a music festival I was at onto my MZ-NH900. I used a different group for each performance I went to and a different track for each piece that was played within the performance. I named each group on the minidisk but left the tracks untitled. I uploaded each group, 1 at a time, into SonicStage thru the USB port, keeping each group as a separate album which I named the same as the group name on the minidisk. After they were uploaded, I changed the names of each track in SonicStage from Untitled to a real name. The result of all this is that all the tracks are in the Program Files/Sony/Packages/HI-MD folder with names in the form "untitlednnn", where "nnnn" is a number that starts at 1 and gets incremented by 1 for each track I uploaded. If I'm in SonicStage, none of this really matters, but I'm using Himdrenderer to convert some of these tracks to wav format and trying to find the ones I want to convert in this situation is a real pain! Ideally, Each group/album should be in a separate folder and each file within the group/album should be named as I titled it in SonicStage. This is what happened when I imported a CD from my CD-ROM drive (although the title data was obtained through CDDB, not by me typing it in). Probably too late to do anything about it now, but is there a different sequence of opertaion that would have resulted in a more tidy organization of these files? Better yet, is there anything I can do in SOnicStage now to make it more easy to recognize which of these files is which? Thanks, Pete

Just got my MZ-NH900 unit and used it to record several hours of music at a music festival. This is the first time I've used any minidisk recorder and I'm sure there are a lot of good things about the quality of the recordings they produce, but the design of this thing stinks! The LCD display is way too small and practically unreadable in almost any lighting conditions. And it has no backlight - really useful when you are trying to record something in a dark concert hall and can't even see if you pushed the record button correctly. And then there's the buttons it. Why on earth are they so small? It's difficult to find them in a darkened room and they give practically zero tactile feedback as to whether you actually successfully pressed them or not. The track mark button on the side is particularly bad in this respect. Add to that Sony's proprietary mania for their ATRAC3 format and the lack of an official method of converting from that format to one that the rest of the world uses (Yes, I know about himdrenderer), and this product is pretty poor. I guess I can only blame myself for buying this thing online without actually seeing it first, but if the Roland R-1 turns out to be anything close to as good as the pre-release blurb claims, my Sony unit will be for sale on eBay in December. Pete