lkawamot

jadeclaw: excellent point. I don't think this is the case for my scenario, though. I'm pretty good about trying to keep a clean system. I've got a current version of Norton AntiVirus with live-update regularly updating it. Also, I have Spybot and Adaware which I run regularly on my system. Finally, I have BHO Demon to check for malicious BHOs. dex: When I get home, I'm gonna examine your test scenario's and compare our setups to see if there's something that stands out as a possible trouble spot for my machine. Just from a quick glance, it looks like your system and my system are pretty similar... and sounds like you had a heavier system load than I did when I was transferring. Off the top of my head: AMD Athlon 2500+, 512MB RAM, DVD-RAM drive (LiteOn??), Sony DRU-510, SB Audigy something or another with LiveDrive, ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, MAXTOR 250GB?, IBM Deskstar 80GB? Windows XP SP1 plus additional patches, typically running SS 2.3, Norton AntiVirus, BHO Demon, and a few other background apps... I had just rebooted my machine when I started the huge amount of transfers. I wanted to be sure my machine was not "stale" when I ran SS. HOWEVER, the problem first occured on my 2nd of 3 discs. We had 2 intermissions and I swapped discs during each to be sure I had enough room to record each set. Perhaps I should've rebooted after each disc transfer? One final oddity... I don't know if others had a similar experience... I mentioned that I had lost transfers from 2 of my discs. On my first occurance, the transfer failed on the last several dozen tracks -- that is, once it happened on one track, it continued to fail transferring the rest of the disc. HOWEVER, on the 2nd disc which had this problem SS managed to successfully transfer the final track. So it failed on several dozen towards the end of the disc, but the final track (about 20 seconds in length) was transferred. This indicates, that SS doesn't end up in a jacked up state forever... perhaps something unique about those tracks causes the failure? OK.. I better actually get back to work...

dex: Ahh yes... another mistake on my part... I meant "digital transfer of an analog recording using SS" ... gosh, this can get kind of confusing... huh? kurisu: what OS is your custom Athlon 64 system? Glad to hear that you're not having any problems with SS 2.3. This gives me hope... corien: yeah, I figured that out... and I noticed that I won't be able to transfer the tracks to my DELL machine. topaz: what OS is your setup? what brand PC are you using or is it a custom built system? This is all definitely interesting stuff... thanks all for your input

You know... I thought so... and I mentioned this to the tech support person. She assured me that SS would NOT since it would recognize that the computer was different. This seemed to be backwards from a DRM perspective -- but what do I know? I don't even know how to build a computer as well as DELL, GATEWAY, etc... *sigh* This just gives me more motivation to ty to bypass SS completely... Does anybodyelse think it's total BS for Sony to have printed in their manual that the software is not supported on anything but brand name PCs?

sorry kurisu, I've converted it to jpg and re-attached...

[attachmentid=39] bug80: Yeah, my mistake... I meant silence, not 0db... oops... mrsoul: SS wouldn't transfer 20 or so tracks. They are not tracks of silence entered by the recorder... the recorder automatically creates track marks when it detects greater than 2 seconds of "Silence" (note, I mistakenly said 0db originally, but meant silence). So my concert was broken up into several dozen tracks by the recorder automatically and several of the tracks were simply not transferred to the PC, but now corrupted on the disc and no longer play. In essence, the original recording is now completely inaccessible to me. On to some interesting bit of info... I talked with Sony Product Support. The lady helping went through a few questions to try to understand my problem. Then she asked me what kind of system are you running on? I said "Windows XP SP1"... she asked what brand PC? to which I replied "I build my own PCs" ..."our software is not supported on custom built PCs"... WTF?!?!?!?? After the next few minutes, this is what I ended up with: 1. SS is not supported on custom built PCs so there is no guarantee on whether or not the music files would transfer to my PC successfully. 2. Try installing SS on my DELL system at work and try to transfer my original recordings again. 3. If the transfer on my DELL system fails, then my disc is most likely corrupted (persumably from using SS with a custom built PC) and can not be recovered, even if I send my discs into Sony. So ... my question now (to the forum): How many of you guys have had an anlog recording file transfer via SS 2.3 end up in the "zombie" state (not playable on the disc, and not transferred to PC) while using a DELL, HP, GATEWAY, etc brandname PC? Could you list out your operating system and about how often this condition occurs? I'd prefer people that have NOT modified their systems at all from the original setup (other than installing SS). I want to be able to see if it is like she said, "a custom built PC doesn't recognize the files properly" situation. *grrr* *grrr* Looks like she's right, though... the attachment is from page 108 of our handy dandy user manual...

OK... so my community wind ensemble had a 2 day concert weekend (of which I am a performing member). I recorded both concerts with my new NH900 and new mic... I was soooo excited. Got home, and started transferring the recordings via SS 2.3. My last conversation with people on here seemed to imply that 1) SS 2.3 was more stable and people had not yet encountered trashed transfers; 2) even if SS trashed the transfer that I should still be able to play it back via USB and, using Total Recorder, do a real time digital capture. Unfortunately, about a third of both Sat and Sun recordings got trashed. The recordings were broken up into several tracks (every time there were 2 sec chunks of 0db the frickin' recorder put track marks... another point I won't get started on for now...) so something like 20 tracks between 2 discs were now marked as "Not Playable" on the HiMD unit and did not transfer into my library in SS. So... lesson learned... SS 2.3 still has trashing of transfer... AND once the tracks are trashed, one can NOT play them off the recorder either. So, do as previously stated -- realtime capture with Total Recorder FIRST, then transfer via SS. Luckily, I had concurrently run my MZ-R55 just in case I ran into problems. I was able to analog real-time copy from the non-PCM recordings made with the R55. Anybodyelse have problems with SS 2.3? BTW, what's difference in Sound Quality between a real-time capture via Total Recorder and transfer via SS? *grrrrr* my purchase of the NH900 was supposed to simplify my recording and burning process AND give me uncompressed recordings... 50% is NOT passing in my gradebook...

Cool... I'm feeling MUCH better about all this now. Thanks guys... all y'alls rock!

...so it sounds like it's "safe" for us to u/l tracks from HiMD->PC via SS 2.3 Again, my question is, IF SS decides to choke and kill the track, is the original on the disc still playable and, therefore, recordable in real-time via Total Recorder? 1.5k was just a number I pulled out based on prices I've seen on other "pro" digital recorders... the marantz may or may not be near 1.5k in price. I'm glad that people are starting to revive my confidence in SS 2.3... I guess this might not be that bad after all... and today is Friday... what a nice start to my weekend... too bad I have no performances this weekend, I'm actually excited about using my equipment soon.

kurisu- No I haven't lost any tracks yet, but unless we can see a proven track record, I don't feel safe using SS 2.3 to u/l if my original recordings are going to get lost. When SS messes up the u/l process, is the original track preserved and playable? If so, then I could always resort to a real-time dump via Total Recorder. ROMBUSTER- yeah that's what I think I'm going to end up doing... but for now, I've resolved to continue my HiMD usage for recordings... aeriyn- I'm not quite ready to drop 1.5k on a digital recorder yet... the recording projects are more of a "hobby" thing for me... Maybe if I get frustrated enough I'll start saving for pro equipment. Thanks guys for the feedback and support... really appreciate it.

Thanks kurisu, Yes -- the first thing I did after installing the software was check for an updated version. I have SS 2.3 installed on my machine. I've not yet tried marcnet's util, but as far as I understand it, it's simply a replacement for Sony's wav converter tool... so unless there are new features I haven't read about yet, I don't think it will solve my problem. I don't think my problem can be solved, unless Sony changes its mind about a few things... mmilovan, I checked out the Neuros website and found the forums... ugh... I'm soooo disappointed again. That idea has now been quickly flushed down the toilet. So it seems that HiMD is, in fact, going to be my choice for a while longer... I wish Neuros survives the slew of issues and comes out a winner. I think I will have to wait until then to make my switch from the MD world...

What about their non-HD models? What about other digital recorders in general? I think somebody on some other thread suggested an Edirol R-1 recorder... http://www.edirol.com/products/info/r1.html This one's a bit more pricey, especially after you include the price of a 2GB CF card... You know, this is all just too bad, 'cause HiMD could be so good. I know Sony has got an interest in reducing piracy/bootlegging -- they've got a lot of artists signed on and they release a lot of albums. But come on, they're doing things to the point of frustrating people with legitimate use on these ALMOST perfect devices... *sigh*... this is frustrating...

Well, after a few years of waiting, I finally bought myself the NH900 for Christmas. I've been patiently waiting for the USB upload ability and when the HiMD was announced, I was sooo happy. Then I found out that HiMD would record in PCM!! I thought, "this is frickin' awesome!!" Then I opened the packaging and started using the thing. I record live performances of musical ensembles I belong to and (as a hobby) make CDs of our performances available to everyone in the group. As performers, you really don't get to enjoy your own performance as an audience does, so this was a nice thing for all of us. So it's not like I'm pirating or bootlegging... I don't understand Sony's paranoia and why I am NOT allowed to do a straight binary copy of my recording on the disc to my PC as a RAW file so that I can edit it and burn it to CD... I wouldn't mind the EXTRA step we all have to take to convert from OMA to WAV, if the (not so) "high speed" transfer via SonicStage would just work... but NOOOO, there has to be a silly bug which could cause me to lose the recording. After reading the many threads on here, I've even purchased Total Recorder and tried using it to make a real time dump of my tracks first... it works, but this was getting ridiculous... what I'm trying to do should be MUCH simpler. So... after much thought, I'm almost ready to ditch SONY and go with an alternate Digital Recorder. Am I over-reacting? I've been an early MD user since the MZ-R3... I've a ton of discs with random music mixes I made from back when I had a couple portable players and an MD unit in my car. Ever since my car MD unit died, I've stopped using MD for listening to music and so I really don't see the point of putting up with all this crap... Has anyone had any experience with the Neuros digital recorder?? http://www.neurosaudio.com/store/product.a...ct%5Fid=4010301 I've got a few digital stereo mics that I've been using with my MD recorders, but not much else in other equipment. Should I invest in a mic amp? It looks like the battery doesn't last quite as long during WAV recording -- should I get an external battery pack for it? It looks like this would give me what I need... raw WAV recordings with a USB interface to copy directly to my PC for immediate editing. Is it time for me to wave "good bye" to my MDs? Wouldn't it be great if Sony at least released a new WAV converter tool which converted from the HMA file? Then we could copy directly from HiMD to PC via USB (which shouldn't trash the data like SonicStage) and convert our analog PCM recordings.