ekb

Believe it or not, recording through the soundcard is much easier than any USB system, USB tends to be confusing, most of the equipment needed to play or record needs drivers -- such as the ones you had to install when you purchased your NEDMD and installed Sonic Stage ... with analog recording all the drivers are built in into the Windows or MAC OS. You also don't need to worry about file conversions from ATRAC to a PC-friendly format if you record in analog mode -- you simply save the files to MP3, .wav ... whatever you want. Perhaps the only advantage USB input would have if it were possible would be to transfer file names from the MD, but how many people really go through the tortous procedure necessary to input names on their MD. OK, the basic procedure is to plug a cord from the headphone jack of your NetMD into the line input jack on your computer -- the line input jack is one of the miniplug jacks right next to where you plug in your speakers -- it is the same size as the speaker jack -- so if you see different size holes they're for something else like digital or video in/out. (Don't worry, you can't break anything by trying the wrong hole first.) If your MS model allows you to switch from headphone out to line out, you might want to set it to line out -- which basically means the computer is getting a fixed signal uneffected by the MDs volume control -- but it's not all that critical. Start any sound editing program from a multi-thousand buck entry like ProTools to the free sound recorders embedded in Windows and OX, set it to record at 44.1k and 16 bits, push the play button on MD and enjoy listening to your disk as it records onto the hard drive -- or go do something else. When you are done recording, you can edit the file into tracks, name the tracks and save them into whatever format you want. There are also some very cheap (about $25) programs that will automatically record your music and separate it into tracks by identifying gaps between songs. This is very convenient, particularly when recording old LPs, because it saves editing a huge continuous file into tracks. For my $25 bucks, the best of these programs is called 3D MP3 recorder, it is especially good because it gives you the option of saving each track as an uncompressed wave file or an mp3. Unfortunately, I don't believe there is a Mac version, but there are many programs for Mac that do the same thing. Please feel free to drop me a line at ekb6@runbox.com if any of this is unclear. Note what you say but for beginners like me the whole point was that it was bought on basis of ease of use. I just about understood the instructions for a USB cable. Reading all this stuff about soundcards/analog etc is quite intimidating. I'm sure you'll say it's not that bad but I'm a musician and not IT literate. I reckon I've already spent sooo much more time trying to work out how to save the recording of my concert than i did rehearsing and performing it... When you say "..just plug the MD into your computer etc" I'm left thinking where?, with what? etc etc. Reading all the threads and so on is like trying to understand a foreign language half the time - not a criticism of anyone, just the reality of people being at different levels of experience. Ho hum ←

I'm not sure I quite understand this, will a minidisc recorded at, say, 256, be playable on all recent MDs player, i.e. all MD LP players, only MDNET players, only players released in the last 60 days ... one of the many things to mourn in the minidisc world is Sony's wanton distruction of their own standard, is this more of the same? (It's of only academic interest to me since the perfectly wonderful six-disc MD changer in my car, built back in the days before Sony started engineering all MD products with the average lifespan of a disposable razor, mandates my recording everything in SP anyway. A final question, is this plethora of bit rates accessible when you're using the RealPlayer NETMD plugin or Nero Image writer or do you only get them by allowing Sonic Stage to limit, harass and potentially destroy your music database. If the latter is the case, I can't imagine why anyone would care -- being stuck with only three bitrates is small price to pay for freedom to burn your music whenever and to as many discs as you want. BTW, can anyone explain the furor over copying from the mini to a PC. Why does anyone care if you can do it via USB? If you want to do it digitally get a soundcard with an optical in -- you can get good ones for 30-100 bucks these days. Or use analog, it's not really bad. I've been recording on MDs and copying the files to PCs since MZR-2 days and haven't felt cheated that I can't use USB, firewire, Bluetooth, 811G, 1000Tbase ethernet or other esoteric transfer protocols. There's plenty to complain -- and, probably, file a class-action lawsuit about -- about in regard to Sonic Stage's inability to handle files coming into the MD (read all the disclaimers in the instruction manual you get after the purchase and compare them to what it says on the sales brochures, box and Sony website and you'll see the basis for the suit) but whining about the reverse direction is kind of over the top. Just plug the MD into your computer and record your stuff on the hard drive, it's so simple and foolproof even Sony hasn't figured out a way to make it impossible yet. (But they're working on it.)

OK, I thought I'd have to duplicate all my FLAC files to mp3s to move them to a NET MD. Than I discovered that Nero supports FLAC, so I made a disk image, imported it into Simple Burn and copied it to the NZ10. Unfortunately, a few of the songs had the music truncated ... not the files, the files are full length ... they just have no audio on the last third or so. I backtracked and discovered the problem -- isn't it always -- is in the software. The songs are already screwed up when played in Simple Burn before they are transferred to the MD. I'm not sure, but I think the same thing happened with a few mp3s I transferred with Real Player .... Has anyone else had this problem ... could it be some kind of software conflict .... I'm using Simple Burn 1.0.03 with Soundstage 3.1.0. Any other suggestions for putting FLACs on a NETMD without going analog? Incidently, Sony, hypocrits that they are, have absolutely no problem with allowing NETMD owners to freely and fully copy any songs they want to their MDs as many times as they want ... they just won't let you do it free. Spend 3 or 4 hundred dollars for Sony Sound Forge 7 or 8 or Sony Acid Pro5 and you'll find a handy "save to NETMD icon" right in the file menu -- it allows unrestricted file transfers. Unfortunately, Sony has not seen fit to support FLAC in either product so that solution doesn't work for me -- though I have been a dedicated Sound Forge user since long before the Sony octopus swallowed it. Does any one know if there is a NETMD plug-in for Adobe Audition (formerly CoolEdit Pro)? There is a FLAC plugin for Audition and it has a kickass batch function that would be perfect for exporting large numbers of files to an MD. Thanks