1kyle

Whilst on the whole I'm reasonably satisfied with the MZ-NHF800 I've seen some wildly inaccurate specs on this model. 1) Backlit remote --- please where or how. As far as my unit is concerned I've never been able to find this on any menu -- and I'm no amateur in finding obscure or even service only menus on gear like this. A backlit remote IMO especially with the size of battery you can insert into this unit --(chuck away the supplied one and insert one of those rechargeable 2200 mAh ones instead) seems to me a MUST. I'm not bothered about a backlite on the unit itself. 2) The AM-FM Radio -- specs talk about "Weather Band" -- mine only has standard FM 88-108 and standard AM so spec again inaccurate. I know some features might be specific to certain countries but whilst I'm not too bothered about the Weatherband on the Radio -- I really miss a "Backlite" on the remote. If any of you want these features on this model --CHECK BEFORE YOU BUY as some descriptions are INACCURATE. Cheers -K

I'm not quite sure what the problem is here If you want to record on Cassette Tape why not just connect the Headphone / Line out socket on the NH-700 to any old cassette tape recorder's Line In -- or even easier if the organisation has old Minidisc recorders (probably Pre-NET MD) you can still connect the output of your recorder to the input of their's. Now if you really want to make CD's then you'll need something like NERO and a Recording program --which you probably got with your sound card. If you don't have Nero I think you can download a trial version --but it's so useful anyway just get it. 1) connect your 700 to your PC and start SS transfer (But DON'T TRANSFER). 2) press the play button 3) Start your recording software on your PC to record as a WAV or WMA file. 4) Now burn a CD of this WAV file --but burn it with the "Image Recorder" in Nero -- so you don't have to burn a Physical CD. If the conference speeches were more than 80 Mins then use the WAV editor in NERO or your Sound recording program to break up the recording into 80 min chunks. 4) Now with Nero's DRIVE IMAGE you can mount your "Virtual CD" and then you can play it etc. 5) Using the output of your sound card record this to a tape or whatever. You can also burn to "physical CD's which will play on any standard CD player. If these methods don't work then I haven't understood the question - so perhaps you could explain exactly what you want. Cheers -K (If for some reason you can't get any sound using SS --then as it's speech --just connect the headphone socket of the minidisc recorder to the Line in on your sound card -- press play and start your recorder program. Ensure Line In is selected as your recording source and then proceed as above. I think even Windows has a basic recording facility).

I love the thinness of the MZ-N10 even though it's only a Net-MD unit. Whilst a disadvantage is having to have an internal (re-chargeable) battery the thinness of the unit makes it a real pleasure to own it (still) --and it feels so much more like a "real" unit than the "plasticy" feel of the newer HI-MD units such as the NHF-800. Any chance of Sony bringing out a HI-MD version of the N10 -- it's got to be my favorite all time player and it has a BACKLIT REMOTE which my NHF-800 doesn't have --why ever not as it's got a bigger battery anyway. Sometimes I think we just get carried away by the technical specs (which are the most important) but designing nice sleek "KEWL" looking units should also be a part of the process. And SONY --PLEASE let's have some HI-MD separates and what about a Car radio -- an HI-MD car radio which allows 1 Disk to play at least 7 hours of music at high quality (HI-MD SP mode 1GB disk) will surely be the best "CD Killer" radio yet. Saves all that CD changer junk and carrying the CD's as well. (And I know you can do MP3's on some radios --but I like a lot of classical music and for this MP3's ARE JUNK -- No way Johan Sebastian Bach sounds even half way bearable on MP3's. --so I want a REAL HI-MD Car radio please).

Without wishing to get into the area of Computer "Geekdom" too much --there is an inherent limitation in any case to the File Size -- irrespective of the capacity of the disk. The limitation is based on the File System used in writing the Disks. If the Minidisc system uses (as I suspect it does) the FAT 16 file system (The earlier Windows system) then the maximum file system size is 2GB. Unless the firmware is re-written to use FAT32 (a file system used by the current versions of Windows and readable by most other OS'es such as Mac and Linux) then 2GB will remain the maximum theoretical limit from the SOFTWARE's point of view. I'm not sure about the earlier Net MD disks operating in SP/LP2/LP4 mode as these were'nt designed originally as Data discs. You can dump sectors of the 1GB disks and the dump shows that the file system seems to conform to Windows FAT 16 specifications. I suspect that the older disks re-formatted in HI-SP mode will also use the FAT 16 system. I haven't got any mechanism of reading the SP/LP/LP4 disks directly yet but I think I might be able to do something on my Linux box.

I'd sugest if you are using a laptop get the Audigy 2 ZS notebook card which plugs into the PCMCIA slot --Has Optical / Analog Line in, Optical Out, about every DVD audio type of decoder you want (DTS etc) and will even drive 7.1 speakers. Just plug the MZ10 Line Out into the Line in on the Audigy card. Set the output option of the MZ-N10 to LINE not HEADPHONE --done in the menu. You can set your Computer to use WAV / WMA or whatever you need to record / load the music to your computer (quality is pretty Good as well) and you can copy via Optical Out to a 2nd MD recorder at the same time (You don't need to record to your computer ist BTW) -- I've been doing this to copy some SP disks from my N-10 to HI-MD format on the 1GB disks on a NHF800 I have. -- OK it's real time -- so what I've got plenty of time. It works the other way as well -- Just play a CD or keyboard or whatever on your computer and you can record directly from the Optical Out on the notebook card to the Optical In on a minidisk recorder. The main problem with the method of using the LINE IN and OPTICAL OUT is to get the track marks correctly --but if you RECORD to the computer then both the Audigy Software and Nero have a decent WAV editor which allows you to automatically insert trackmarks at user defined Pause intervals etc. Now to get this back to the MD you'll have to burn the recording as a "Virtual CD" using Nero's Image recorder ( i.e don't burn a physical disc) and then mount it with Neros DRIVE IMAGE (comes with NERO). The computer thinks this is a real CD and can be played -- the Optical out on the sound card will then have the correct Track Marks -- and You've got a decent digital copy back on your MD without having to use any of the Sony software with all the DRM stuff. If you've got HI-MD units there are other options but for the Net-MD units this works fine --no digital Copy problems, no DRM issues. The Audigy software supplied with this card is brilliant --and it does "Exactly what it says on the Tin" -- one up to Creative Labs here. Cheers -K

There's an interesting by product to the ongoing SAGA between Philips who own the CD patent and EMI who are trying to introduce copy protection on some of their CD's by adding extra illegal sessions or other stuff attempting to stop these being played (and therefore "ripped") on computers. Phillps is about to get legally embroiled here with EMI on the grounds that the EMI disks deviate from the Philips Patent on the CD format and therefore can't be legally sold as 'CD's or even called 'CD's --- should be interesting to watch this one. However the by product of this is that the SCMS mechanism is prohibiting "Bona Fide" musicians from legally distributing their music in a manner conducive with the principles of "Free and Unfettered" Trade, and therefore as this acts as a "Restraint of Trade" contrary to the Rules and Charter of the European Union and in consequence of this must therefore be deemed illegal and as such must be discontinued forthwith. This would clear the way therefore for anybody (residing in the E.U countries) who wishes to set the SCMS bits off by SOFTWARE such as using a Disk Sector Editor would be 100% within their rights to do so --and it would be up to the Music Industry to prove Piracy Intent rather than the other way around. If this case wins maybe Firmware can be retrofitted to the zillions of MD recorders out there now. Interesting times ahead especially with the giants of the music biz squabbling over an already lost cause. Cheers and a happy New year everone.

Actually there's some interesting Legal shenanigens going on here at the moment. A CD that has an "Illegal" or whatever 2nd session doesn't conform to the Patented Philips CD specification and therefore can't be LEGALLY sold or described as a CD. It's interesting that Philips in exercising it's Patent rights might actually help us (the small boys) out for once --There's more to come in this saga BTW so watch this space.

I've got a question that I haven't been able to find a decent answer too even with a bit of "Googling" Assuming you play an HI-MD disc on your computer via SS (just play --don't transfer) and the computer sound card is a high quality one which can play back 24 bits @ 192 khz or whatever and you set the "recording input" to WAV (Or SPDIF) even though you are not actually going to make a recording to your computer Then my question is this If I connect the optical OUT of the sound card to the Optical in on to another Minidisc unit (be it HI-MD or the Net-MD versions) how many A/D stages of conversion are there (if any) -- apart from one where you have to have an A/D conversion to actually hear the sound from the speakers. I'd assume that it works like this 1) ATRAC==>WAV / SPDIF Sonic stage digitally decoding the ist minidisc unit from the USB into the computer sound system. SPDIF should enable "Digital Pass Thru" to the optical output of the Card -- note no DRM at this point (thank goodness) 2)WAV/SPDIF===>ATRAC on the 2nd minidisc player digitally at the Optical In stage of the 2nd minidisc player. (No SCMS or DRM BS stuff either) Why would the Sound card have to perform another A/D conversion before outputting to the Optical output. I understand there would have to be an A/D conversion before playing on the computer speakers but in theory the Optical output should just be able to output a WAV signal directly like a CD player with an optical Out. Have I misunderstood something here. Surely the whole point of the SPDIF interface is to have direct Optical links without any intervening A/D stage until the final playiut at the Spekers which are of course Analog. Here's the "Spec" of the Sound Card I'm using. Technical Specifications High Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) exceeding 104 dB using high linearity, low distortion 24-bit converters with resolutions of up to 192 kHz Playback: 24-bit Digital-to-Analog conversion of digital sources at 96 kHz to analog 7.1 speaker output, 192kHz for Stereo DVD-A Recording: 24-bit Analog-to-Digital conversion of stereo analog inputs at 96 kHz sample rate Supports Sony/Philips Digital Interface (SPDIF) format of up to 24-bit/96 kHz quality at selectable sampling rate of 44.1, 48 or 96 kHz Thanks everyone.

This method works (But Don't get the LATEST software upgrade). (Forgot to add -- am using the Creative Labs Notebook Audigy 2 ZS card) -- the one that slides into a PCMCIA / Cardbus slot on your laptop). I've got 2 Minidisc recorders -- A Hi MD unit (NHF800) and the older Net MD model MZ-N10 (absolutely love the thin case even though it's an older unit). A disc I recorded digitally on the NHF800 can be played via Sonic stage (even though as I've posted prevciously won't let me transfer to computer for all sorts of stupid reasons) and then using the digital OUT plugged in to the optical input of the MZ-N10 works perfectly --even though I'm using the MZ-N10 in LP mode. The Disc I copied on to the MZ-N10 can then be digitally copied to another disc (on the HI-MD MHF800) in either MDLP mode or Hi-MD SP/LP or whatever. (Making a 2nd generation copy -- not normally allowed by SCMS) This 2nd generation copy can then be digitally copied back to the Hi-MD unit where I can repeat the whole process. I haven't got 2 Net MD or 2 HI-MD units so I haven't been able to check all possible combinations -- but for what I want --provided it's done in Real Time I can make any number of digital copies from a Digitally recorded minidisc via the USB cable to an older MD unit. If I've got 2 Hi-MD recorders I can't see any problems either --so the Audigy 2 ZS notebhook card definitly ignores SCMS. (The latest software is alleged to have fixed this so the card honours SCMS but so long as you are just playing your MD with Sonic Stage (don't transfer) the digital output on the card will allow a disc copy and THAT copied disc will copy another disc and so on. I know it's digital as a) I've looked at in on a 'Scope and the only connection from the Source MD unit is via the USB cable. Cheers all -K Don't use a version above 3.10.08 however as they've AFAIK plugged this loophole

Booting a version of DOS with a USB driver on it DOES work -- I managed then to load a minidisc with BartPE windows system on it. I booted Dos from a CD-RW which then loaded my Windows PE system from the USB device ( i.e the Minidisc) -- I've got no FDD on this system so I'm messing around with CD-RW's for the DOS boot. My MOBO supports USB booting -- and I've no problem booting a 512MB Camera Compact Flash card or al old IBM Microdrive (now Hitachi makes them) Booting direct from the minidisc gave a couple of errors -- boot process starts OK then system stops. Taking a system dump shows that my Boot image on the MD is not correct -- I create the boot sector via Nero "Create Bootable CD" -- It's something to do with HD emulation / boot sector address and number of sectors -- need further info. I need to look at the difference between booting the Microdrive and the Minidisc -- but I'm winning. The Minidisc will be a great way to make a recovery / restore program. After a bit more computer "Geekdom" researching I'll be able to post instructions on what you need to do to boot up your Minidisc -- assuming your MOBO can support USB booting. Note if you do use a USB device like a CF card or a microdrive which is read via a reader rather than plugged directly into the computer's USB port you need to ensure that the reader doesn't need any drivers otherwise it won't work. Most readers that are used with Windows XP work fine -- no special drivers required. For Windows 2000 or that simply HORRIBLE Windows NEANDERTHAL Windows NT I don't think it'll work as drivers need to be loaded for both USB and the reader. Cheers -K

I've got a MZ-N10 Net MD (love the really thin model) as well as a Hi-MD NHF-800. Now I am trying to digital copy a MDLP Minidisc from the MZ-N10 to my HI-MD unit The MZ-N10 has a nice Line Out (settable in the menu to Headphone / Line out) -- option so I know I can get the best possible analog signal out. OK this is analog I know --but If I plug it in to the Line In on my Audigy 2 ZS sound card http://www.theregister.com/2004/12/22/revi...ve_audigy_2_zs/ and plug the NHF-800 to the Optical Out of the Audigy sound card will I get a better quality recording by recording on the computer in 24-bit/96kHz WAV ( the old audigy I believe had limit of 48 kHz ) and then uploading to the NHF-800 . Or is it better to simply plug the NHF-800 into the optical output of the card. Does the Optical output have a lower quality than the 24-bit 96 khz I can record at. Playback on this card is rated up to 24 bit 192 kHz so in theory using the card's internal A/D converter and plugging into the optical out should lead to a better quality copy -- or have I missed something here. Also if I use the optical out should I set the mixer controls to anything special or leave everything as "neutral" as possible i.e around half way for everything provided the recording volume is sufficient. BTW for anybody with Nero by using the Drive Image software bundled with Nero you can mount a virtual CD drive and then you can rip the CD to digitally load to a Minidisc -- you don't actually need to burn to a physical CD -- I think there's quite a lot of stuff on this all over the Forums -- of course the drawback is it's real time only . ( Briefly you create your WAV recording, edit so it'll fit on a CD or a set of CD's and then you use Nero to create your Audio CD's -- burn as Images --don't actually burn a physical CD. Then mount the image with Nero's Drive Image and the computer is "poodle faked" into thinking it's a real CD and can be played / ripped or whatever. If you have the Hi-MD units this CD can be uploaded to your MD as well). Help / answers would be appreciated. Thanks

The problem here was the Disk FAILED before a music backup could be done --not a question of re-format or anything else --Disk went Belly up --so I installed a Brand new one (same size - same make as the old one) and restored my data from my backup tape. (Also it shouldn't be necessary to have to use a Zillion backup products --a Disk Image should ALWAYS work (Image copy) and this method is 100% used in large commercial computing installations where they don't have the time or manpower to execute loads of different backup programs). These are more common situations than most people realize -- you have to restore the last "Disk Image". If you don't believe me I suggest you try the following. 1) Backup your music library ( I don't want to be held responsible if you lose your library) with Sony's or whatever software you think fit. 2) Now dump your entire disk with Norton Ghost, Power Quest Drive Image 2002, Acronis True Image or whatever package you like. 3) Re-format your entire disk. 4) restore from the Ghost Image / Drive Image / Acronis or whatever you used --ensure you have a bootable medium to load and execute the program or you are in that very well known street without the paddle. 5) now see if your music library is still acessible without using the Music Backup you took -- we are trying here to simulate a real computer failure. I think you'll find a few nasties here after the restore. I agree if you backup with the appropriate software it should work --but if you don't have RAID and your disc / OS goes BSOD (Windows Blue Screen Of Death) then you will have to either restore from a backup or re-install your entire OS again. If you've got time try this scenario -- but don't blame me if you can't get proper access again to your music. Also what happens if you get a new machine --do you have to unload everything (300GB or more) and re-import. I've got over 1TB of stuff ( 1,000GB) !! and some people have a lot more. Cheers -K

The point of the post was basically that SS Transfer doesn't always work and therefore I was looking at other ways to do the same thing. For example I recently had to restore an entire 300 GB hard disk ( Computer Disk not a MD) from a tape backup and I can no longer transfer the tracks on 3 of my HI-MD disks to the computer -- get message saying "Tracks cannot be imported from another computer" even though it's THE SAME computer. So I was suggesting an alternative (albeit real time approach) which works without using SS Transfer --especially when the transfer fails. I can also play the tracks via SS and using the RECORD function on the Audigy software it will create WAV or WMA's with a reasonable choice of sampling rates digitally so long as you select WAVE as the recording input. This again is real time but it works at least on HI-MD disks. For Net-MD I think this method won't work but you can use the digital output on the sound card or record the analog signal as WAV using the cards built in A/D converter which seems to be reasonably accurate. I'm sorry if I've posted misleading information -- Please point out the misleading info and we can change it. Note I often do entire backups and restores of my computers and this is where the whole of the SS stuff and DRM fails if you backup via a "Partition Image" Or "Disk Dumping /cloning" process rather than use specific backup software. If you are backing up 300GB or more regularly you don't have time to backup per file -- especially when you need DIFFERENT backup programs to back up different file systems and data-- just dumping the disk via a Disk Imaging program is the usual method. Anyway here's the error you get when trying to transfer again into SS. This was AFTER I'd restored my Disk image from the tape backup which is a perfectly normal computer operation -- everybody is allowed (and it's silly not to BTW) to keep archives of their stuff and should be allowed to retrieve it again after a computer failure etc. I'd hate my Bank to have to come up with -- unable to access account -- originated on a different computer !!!!!!! Cheers everyone and happy hols -K

A directory data Dump of a digitally recorded MD reveals something like this Now presumably using a Disk phsical sector editor I should be able to "AND" an important BIT with a '0' in the TOC to switch it off and therefore the disk would have all its important features restored again such as permitting digital recording again. Anybody know where I can find the "logical" layout of the TOC. Dumping a few sectors out from each of these files doesn't really tell me much -- but the TOC can't physically be scrambled / encrypted as a disk has to be readable on other players as well. I've no problem coding stuff to write to the disk -- I just need to know WHERE to write it to. Any gurus out there got a logic map of the TOC and can tell me on what Disk sector it's located. Cheers -K

Thanks Latexxx great idea --I'm still new to DVD "ripping" etc --but I knew how to do it in DIVX. It still played BTW from the USB so I assume if your computer is fast enough the USB 1.1 won't be a problem. I'll certainly look into Xvid. It's nice to know anyway at least that you can get at least one and maybe in some cases 2 movies onto a 1GB disc --saves carrying DVD's (or region probs) as I do a lot of travelling. Happy Xmas --am waiting for my Dinner which is why I've got time on Xmas day to be on the forum !!!. Cheers -K

I've attempted to play around with this -- It to me seems a complete waste of time as it will only convert stuff thats been imported into SS -- and that to me is a NO NO as you then get embroiled in DRM and all the other BS. It still seems for me the best way to get digital copies of old recordings is to either use the Digital out of my Notebook with the new Audigy 2 ZS notebook card (Optical Out now much faster and better than the old 48 khz stuff) or use the excllent recording software that comes with the card (Thanks Creative Labs --your software is great unlike Sony's) to make very high quality WAV files. You can then split / create tracks or whatever with the either the Creative software or Nero's WAV editor -- You need to split them up so you can break then into Logical CD's. You then burn a set of logical Audio CD's using Nero as say CD1.NRG, CD2.NRG etc You Mount each one as a Logical drive using Nero's DRIVE IMAGE (in built with the software) Hey presto -- the Quick Burner comes up saying Unknown Audio CD inserted. You then copy your tracks to the Minidisc. Using DRIVEIMAGE again "Eject" this CD and mount the next one. (The DRIVE IMAGE software will actually allow you to mount 2 "virtual Drives" if you want but I find just using One is fine). No DRM --Nada Nichts -- and you can copy to as many computers as you like. Note also you don't need ANY physical CD's so speed of creating these "Virtual CD's is quite quick on a decent computer and unlike some posts are saying it most definitely DOES work with Nero 6 and I'm using Windows XP Pro with service pack SP2 applied as well. OK it's real time but the quality is as good as you can get from old recordings and even the Older NET-MD's that you want to convert to HI-SP and it's digital as well. YMMV however with regard to Sony's WAV converter. Inspite of Sony's best efforts to hobble what is perhaps the most useful and versitile recording medium yet to appear on this planet it's great that there are other (albeit slightly more time consuming ways) to use the minidisc in the way it was really intended to be used. And Sony -- why no Minidisc Car radios -- you can still get those horrible CD changer units which will even play those nasty CD MP3's --I've only ever found 1 decent MD car radio --my Kenwood 673R which plays MD-LP minidisc --but it's aging now and I haven't seen any replacements. However it will still play 4 hrs at LP quality --still easily good enough for a car. You are missing a HUGE marketing opprtunity here -if you brought out a HI-MD version - pop a small 1GB minidisc into your car radio which plays high quality for up to 7 hours -- irresistable --beats carrying around a load of CD's. Cheers and Happy Xmas everyone.

I'm looking at the "Boot image" created on the Minidisc. -- It's possible that it might use a file system not recognized by Windows / Linux so unless a driver is loaded the computer won't be able to read the disc. (I've got a Bartpe Windows system on it so I'll try when I can get to the machine with a bootable USB option on it). Link to BARTPE Windows recovery stuff is : http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ However even if this is the case it should still be possible to make a bootable floppy (or CD) which could load the Minidisc driver and then continue the rest of the start up by loading the OS (Windows etc) from the USB. I'm going to try this on a machine where I haven't installed ANY of the Sony software to check whether the actual minidisc can be read by normal OS utilities like Windows explorer. I know I'll have to format the Disc FIRST on the system with the Sony Software. Some Linux gurus might have already been able to boot a minidisc -- these guys seem to have more knowlege at writing device drivers etc etc. Cheers -K

Using DVD ripping software (freely available all over the Net) the 1GB minidiscs are great for storing even 3 hour movies -- convert / squeeze to DIVX first. If your computer is fast with USB2 connection you can play the movie from the minidisc --otherwise just copy to your HD withy Windows explorer and enjoy. That saves having to carry a load of DVD's when I travel now. You'll need to get the DIV4X codec (free) and a DVD descrambler (the standard one is Smartripper 2.41) or DVDencrypter3.5. Removes macrovision so the TV Out and digital out and / or SPIF on your video / sound card will work and also removes region encoding. There's info all over the net on how to compress and copy DVD's -- the point of my post was to say that the data can now be stored on HI-MD minidiscs and it works fine. When compressing the DVD you can use any sound compression (or none) you like so audio quality is up to you. Divx4 is also remarkably good unless you have one of those real size cinema screens at home. For a Laptop on the move quality is great. (You can also use the older minidiscs but you'll usually need 2 to copy a movie.) Happy Xmas everybody. -K

True -- you have to do it via a sound card -- but if you have a little bit of money and a laptop this one is BRILLIANT. It's the Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS Pcmcia card which fits into any notebook pcmcia slot. There's Digital and Line IN and Digital OUT. There's also a "Speaker" Dock which allows you to connect to Stereo / 5.1 / 6.1 / 7.1 speaker systems complete with a built in Dolby Digital EX and DTS-ETS encoder (great for DVD's or just ripping the sound). Software includes mult-format conversions so you can record your minidisc in WAV or whatever and then with the digital output copy it to minidiscs / other computers etc. I've been doing this to convert some of my old Net-MD stuff to HI-MD format. There's none of the stupid restrictions that Sonic Stage has. Of course the digital OUT will have to be done in real time but at least this method works flawlessly and for Digital recordings that you've already got on the computer you can now make a Minidisc copy (digitally) and this minidisc CAN be uploaded to another computer. If you have NERO however you can mount a Virtual Disc (Nero Drive Image --bundled with Nero) and burn the WAV files to the disc image and then use Simple Burn -- if you have a MI-MD recorder otherwise the Digital OUT and IN will have to be done in real time however. Quality is fine -- I've checked it on a 'Scope and the files are really nice and clean. If you've got a Laptop and want a nice Xmas prezzie you can't do better than this Creative Labs Audigy 2 ZS card --- even the software is great and also of course supports Sound Fonts2.1 and 24 bit 96 KHZ audio. Even using a pair of "Cans" is great -- sitting on a Plane watching a DVD and listening in great DTS mode is quite a good way of passing time on a long flight as well. Throughly to be recommended. Note that it's Windows only -- sorry Mac users. (There might be a version of this for "Ordinary" computers but I haven't yet seen one. I'm sure there must be. Perhaps someone else has one and can post their impressions of it). Bye Bye Crap Sony Software ( I like your devices but the software does "you know what !!" ) big time. Happy Xmas everyone -K

Thanks -- I'd never heard of Total Recorder --but for around USD 11,00 it seems to be well worth the price and "Does what it says on the Tin" -- The Powers of the Internet. However the drawback of course in this case is you have do to it in Real Time --which if you are "cloning" a 1GB minidisc recorded in HI-SP will take a LONG time --- run the job overnight I suppose. It's not too bad in PCM transfer however. One other area that might be worth looking at is that the Minidisc is DATA so a Bit for Bit / sector by sector Disk copying program might yield some interesting results. One couldn't use the normal file copy as per Windows Explorer since there are obviously encrypted pieces of data on the disc which may also be either hidden or highly dpendent on the physical location on the disk. A sector by sector bitwise copy should work in theory --provided the disk was accessed at the physical level rather than via the OS's (Windows etc) file system. There are a few of these Disk cloning programs for Linux so maybe I'll have a look. Cheers -K

Great work BTW thanks However the crunch a lot of people will have is in this one -- Nr 3 from your instructions. Or if you're a command-line fan: ----- 2) Extract the HIMDRENDER.exe program from the HIMDRENDER.zip file. Make sure you unzip it to somewhere you can remember. The root of c: is usually a nice and easy place to find. 3) Upload your tracks from your HI-MD to your PC using SonicStage. If someone gives me an MD where the tracks have already been uploaded from this disc to a computer I'm up that proverbial street without the paddle as I won't be able to get the Minidisc tracks into my computer. Now if your program could rip the minidisc directly -- that would be FANTASTIC and I'm sure a lot of people would happily pay for such a program. Thanks -K

Actually the Sony ATRAC ===>CD conversion seems to work quite well --especially at HI-SP rate. The Sony ripping software seems to be fine at this point. looking on a 'Scope (Oscilloscope -- an instrument which displays waves etc on a CRT device and is used a lot in sound labs) it shows that the difference between the 2 minidiscs is fairly minimal and much better than using an Analog transfer --even via a soundcard with a Digital out facility. On some tests a few people were unable to tell which was the original MD and the "cloned" one so whilst this method is "cludgy" it does allow at least a decent level of quality of music to be uploaded on to different machines

the problem is getting the data in / on to another computer from a minidisc. For example If i've recorded some tracks and made a minidisc -- now I want a colleague to add / remix tracks on a different machine --we've got problems. For a start I won't be able (normally) to upload my minidisc music on to his computer which is what I want to do. You'll get this type of error if you upload your minidisc on to a 2nd computer Duplicating Minidiscs is no problem on a single computer assuming you've got all the sources. It's when you want to share etc that problems arise. Cheers -K

one way that "sort of Works" 1) import your music into the library -- you'll have to do this once unfortunately. 2) Mount a "Virtual CD" --there's loads of programs out there that can do this -- a 30 second google should find you what you need -- I can't be too specific here as I don't want Sony on my back for "Piracy" -- Would be funny to get thrown into jail for copying MY OWN MUSIC !!! but still. 3) record your CD to the "Virtual drive". from the Library -- you can mix / match tracks and although I haven't tried it yet you should be able to burn as much as can fit on to a DVD if a CD is too small. 4) depending on the "Virtual Drive" you have you might be able to bypass this step --otherwise create a Physical CD with Nero. 5) now you can burn as many minidiscs as you like from the CD. My Virtual CD program doesn't need me to actually burn a physical CD so I'm lucky here. 6) You can copy the "virtual CD" to other machines . 7) the "Virtual CD" can also be loaded into the Sonic Stage (SS) library of other machines as well. It's not perfect but at least it's A way of bypassing the most irksome restrictions of Sonic Stage. I know this is not the most elegant solution but it works and does allow you to record and distribute your own minidiscs digitally. If anyone has better / more workable solutions please post. Cheers everyone -K

What a Bummer the Sonic Stage is -- I created a MD via Simple Burn. I NEVER uploaded any tracks to the computer. I was installing some other (totally unrelated to MD or Music) software which didn't work on my Windows XP system. So to get rid of the software I decided to restore my System via Ghost / Drive Image --similar programs which simply restore an entire partition image --excellent for recovery --saves re-installing Windows etc. Now I get the message when trying to copy the MD to my computer with Sonic Stage --- Can't transfer --SELECTED DATA COMES FROM A DIFFERENT COMPUTER ---- BUT IT DOESN'T GRH!!! GRH!!!! GRH!!! Can any one tell me what's going on here -- who designed this absolute piece of dog poo software --I'm sure I haven't done anything wrong or illegal. The only way I've half way got round the problem is to mount a "Virtual CD" -- extract the WAV and then mess around with Nero so I can re-record again on to a MD. What a complete bummer --as the 1GB minidiscs are really great. Why can't we upload OUR OWN MUSIC to a computer without having to make a "Virtual CD" first. Thanks everybody.