grf

Hi Atrain, Thank you very much for the reply. Unfortunately SB needs insert notification to work, otherwise it does not know the disk has changed. Thank you for your help and the fact that you are using XP on a 500 Mz machine. My PC that SB is running on is 700 MHz ! I will think about upgrading.... Best regards Graham

Hi Atrain, I really appreciate the help hat you are giving me on this. However I am running Win98SE and there is no such tab on the CD drive. The choices I have are 'General ' and 'sharing' neither relevant to this and no 'autoplay' box. The nearest i can get is the WMPlayer Tools->Options->Formats and the Audio File and the 'audio File' and the 'cd Audio ' are both unchecked. WMPlayer still auto starts when a CD is inserted but not when SB is running (i guess cos it grabs the device/driver). I am guessing that you are running xP or Win2k. i would love to upgrade but the machines (Laptops) are too slow for this OS. Really appreciate the time you made to reply. Best bregards Graham

Hi Folks I would love that you were right but unfortunately WMPlayer does not have an option to completely disassociate from Audio CD's. I am running 7.01 and the CD Audio association is unchecked as are all the other settings under CD Audio (digital playback etc) WM Player still starts up when and audio CD is inserted (and sB is not running). The fix I mentioned seems tto be reliable but some CD are sill not recognised in the CD drive witthout a lot of prompting even when WMPlayer is not running, i.e. SB weakness. Best regards Graham

Hi, Quick follow up from the last post. After my having lots of failures, the most reliable way to get SB to work is to:- -Boot the computer. - RUN SB - Insert Audio CD (SB Recognises it, Media Player does not run because SB is running and grabs the driver) - Connect HiMD recorder on USB (no conflict with windows on the hi md drive as a windows drive because SB is running). All now works reliably. Best regards Graham

Hi, Just reading the problems encountered with SB 2.0. I am also having problems and there is notthing wrong with my CD drive. SB 2.0 seems flaky when it is started with a CD in the drive and HiMD recordr is connected. It often refuses to read he CD drive and even though 'insert notification' is enabled in the driver SB does no see an audio CD. it then starts to run the CD test and it fails. I got around this problem by noticing that Media player tried to start when the audio CD was inserted it thinks I want to play an audio CD. I closed it and then the troubles witth sB started. I could also see the there was a Mplayer process still running (even after closing MPlayer window) aftter killing this process SB started to work correctly. This is all on a Win98SE 700Mhz new installation of SS 2.1 and SB 2.0 from the disks. I do not use SS. I am still investigating but the above actions do point to a conflict of access which SB does not like. Any ideas on how to stop WMedipalyer 7.1 starting when a CD is inserted ? Best Regards Graham

Hi, Just a few furthher thoughhts on this topic. The disk batch number I had problems with was 4BAA1827E As I said in my previous mail I could eventually record over the same bad track area in analogue mode, so I think that faulty writes are close to thhe write limit tolerance in some way. One thing we could try is to attach the faulty Hi MD disk as a windows drive and then run the system utility disk cheecking programme and see if it can spot te same read/write errors. I wil do this when I get another faulty disk. Best regards Graham

Hi, Just read te post on errors during the editing of tracks. I think that there are TWO types of fault going on here and we should be careful not to confuse the two. I can well believe that there is a 'firmware' bug in the NH900 or other similar Hi MD recorder/players which refuses to play an edited track. There were similar faults on the early Sony 4 Track recorders but I am sure that this fault is not related to that early bug. There is another problem with the reliability of the Hi MD media and this exhibits itself independently of editing action and varies from disk to disk. The best way forward on both of these faults is to log on this forum the batch numbers (they only have batch numbers) of disks that exhibit a media fault (silence or skipping) and then seperately serial numbers of recorder/players with editing problems. Both of these should also be reported to Sony through their help line (telephone only ?) but as seperate cases and with a pointer to additional info and fault descriptions pointing back to these pages. Very best regards Graham

Hi, I searched but could not find an email address that looked appropriate so I phoned them instead. The man/boy who answered at Sony took a lively interest in the complaint and I was able to explain more by phone than a great long email. I reminded him about this list (he knew it) and said that he could gather more data about failed Hi MD disks from here. It was certainly worth a call. Best regards Graham

Hi, Having looked at the responses from people who are also having problems with the reliability of the Hi Md Disc Media I have opened a call with Sony UK on this problem. The call is with Sony UK and the Case Number is 140981444. Please log as many genuine faults on the Hi Md problem to Sony using this number, you might have to specify that it is with Sony UK. We might at least alert the company to the level of the reliability failures. There is also a link to their digital audio page which might get a topic added into the faq if we persist. http://www.sonydigital-link.com/DNA/HiMD/himd.asp?l=en best regards GRF

Hi, Just reading the discussion on the HiMD having errors when recording and here is my experience which may shed light on what is happening. I recorded 5 CD's to Hi MD 1Gb using Hi MD LP mode using Simple Burn on an Mz-NH900. Nearly all played perfectly but CD No3 started producing errors on the last 5 of the CD tracks i.e roughly in the middle of the MD. It sounded like a CD when its producing errors making clicks at the rotation rate. I deleted the whole CD (group) and then recorded it once more using Simple Burn. This time the same CD and the same tracks produced a humming broken up at the (MD?) rotation rate; a similar set of errors. I then deleted all of the tracks using the hi mD player edit controls and re-recorded the offending CD completely as an analogue input to the Hi MD recorder. I used SBurner to copy and paste the track and artist info from the CD to the new MD tracks (nice trick). The Re-recorded CD plays perfectly ! This leads me to tthink that the Hi MD writing mechanism could be sensitive to the *rate* at which the data is written as the audio data would be written more slowly (greater gaps between writes0 than with SBurner. Anybody any ideas ? Best regards Graham