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I think it's 42 !! I'm gonna have a lot of spare time during the day on my travels so I'm thinking of doing it then. I'll probably get a new but low spec laptop and cheapish Firewire or USB soundcard and transfer that way.

Yep, I agree with that. All my audio work is recorded to wav on then put on data CD's. It's just that I have this back catalogue of material on MD that I need to re record back into the computer. I just wished I had saved the wav files when I converted them all to mp3s the first time. I never really expected the original disks to start to fail considering they haven't been played that much - must be an age thing as some disks are 6 years old. I should have got into the habit of recording anything from my old MD player to my computer on regular basis - instead of letting it build up. That's the joy of the Hi-MD format, I can get CD quality recordings and back it all up (with a lot less fuss) at a later date. Unfortunately I haven't got the time to record all my old MD's at the mo, I'm going to be mobile for about 6 months. Does anyone fancy doing it all for me, I'll shove a tenner their way

The reason is because I need to start backing up my old MD's. A disk from the first batch of Md's I ever bought has started to skip. I'm basically looking for a way to back up these old recordings in the best quality way possible.

Thanks for the speedy response. I thought the CD route sounded a bit silly as it can't enhance the mp3. I was wrongly under the impression that sonicstage yielded better results when converting from PCM rather than mp3's, which was why I suggested the wav route as that would be quicker for me epsecially with the batch processing available in Soundforge. But now I understand it was just for people who were having trouble converting mp3's and other formats to atrac. I can be a bit of a thread skimmer sometimes I basically have a load of recordings from my old MD-MT20 minidisc that I recorded as wav and converted into 256kbps mp3's on my PC with lame. I am unhappy with how they sound when converted into atrac3 plus 256 using sonicstage. Unfortunately I deleted the original wav files as there were 30 MD's worth of material. It would seem that the best way is going to be to find an md player with optical out so I can record on either to my soundcard or my Hi-MD player in PCM. Next best is record from audio out of my MD-MD20 to my soundcard (again) or Hi-MD. Or lastly, to pray that someone write a nifty bit of software that will allow me to transfer my old MD recodings from inside my MZ-NH900 via USB, as I've said before I would happily contribute to a project like that Andrew

I think this is a great idea. THIS thread was almost there but I'd like to see a sticky that listed success and failures and that also listed computer spec, O/S, background tasks etc

I've noticed how bad mp3's sound when directly converting to atrac3 plus 256kbps. From what I have read, I get the impression that the best quality is attained when these mp3's are burnt to an audio CD (which can be a virtual) and then converted by sonic stage into atrac. If the above is true then it makes me wonder if there would be any benefit by converting these mp3's to wav files first, and then converting from there. I ask as I can easily set up a batch transfer in Sound Forge, which is much less hassle for me than burning an audio CD or creating a virtual drive. Thanks in advance Andrew

Thanks everyone, I now have PCM too Like a few people have pointed out, it took a bit of fiddling. I installed the new Simple Burner first, but no PCM. I then installed Sonicstage 2.3 and still no PCM so I reinstalled the the new SB again and bingo. Andrew

It's all good news, lets just hope it gets uploaded somewhere soonish

First of all take a deep breath, period I got my MZ-NH900 for the following reasons. (1) I can play my old mindisc recordings on it. (2) I can make PCM quality recordings that can be converted to WAV. What is it exactly that you dont like about ipods? I ask because if I didn't need the 2 reasons above then I probably would have bought some kind of mp3 HD player. Andrew

Am I right in thinking that THIS thread says that you can record a CD using Simple Burner to PCM quality on my MZ-NH900. I can't find the option to do this in my version of Simple Burner (2.0.03.16212). Apologies if I have got the wrong end of the stick. Thanks in advance, Andrew

Just to add... I always check the Rane website for this sort of thing There are some handy diagrams about half way down the link below. http://www.rane.com/note110.html

Thanks BobS. That's quite disappointing. When you tried to back up your disk did you do it by the drag and drop method? I wonder if there is any comprehensive imaging software that might work?

I'm worried about Sonic Stage trashing my recordings. As my MZ-NH900 acts as a Removeable Disk when I plug it into my PC, am I correct in thinking I can back up a whole Hi-md disk to my computer. That way if a disk goes 'bellies up' when using Sonic Stage then I could just format the disk again and copy the original files back. Would that work? The handy thing would be that I could fit all my Hi-mds on one backup DVD. Thanks in advance Andrew

Just to add - I've had my MZ-NH900 for a couple of days now and and I'm pretty impressed. To be honest I only bought because my old MD was player was on it's last legs and I wanted 44100 16bit PCM recording. The interface is fine - I dont expect too much from something so small and I always enjoy trying to master new operating systems. My initial tests have shown the PCM recording to be pretty good. I monitor through Genelec 1029As with a 1081A bass unit. I've A/B'd MZ-NH900 PCM recordings from my desk with what's actually coming out of my desk and so far it's been very hard to tell the difference. That's a thumbs up in my books. I'm going to A/B test with some Mackie HR824s at the weekend. I was a bit concerned with this post http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=7447 as I thought it didn't show the MZ-NH900 performing that well (although I'm not sure if right mark analyzer can be callibrated for external units) isn't it all about how it sounds anyway . My good results may be due to the material that I was using at the time. My only wish is to be able transfer an exact copy of my old MD recordings to my PC via USB. Andrew

Thanks for replying. I dont think that works with my older MD recordings. I've got some that were recorded on a Sharp MD-MT20 (poor thing, it only has 2 screws holding it together). I wouldn't mind a 2 step transformation process with my MZ-NH900 via USB. Andrew