divirtual

Rich, thanks for correcting my understanding. I've amended the footnote at http://coevolving.com/blogs/index.php/arch...nobvious-choice to reflect this revelation.

Yes, that's what I'm talking about. I'm getting my new from http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=18523 . Is that information misguided?

Tekdroid, this is David Ing. Thanks for actually reading the article. (It seems as though some others have chosen to comment on the article without reading it. I did try an iPod, and didn't like it!) I actually have participated in the minidisc.org forums before, and learned a lot from the community over the past 4 to 5 years. I sent a note to the webmaster as a courtesy, because I get a lot of information from this web site, and the article links directly to some of the minidisc references on it. (There are a lot of people in the world who don't know what a minidisc is!) Part of the motivation for writing the article -- I write a lot of different things -- was the news that Sony is dropping support for WAV conversion when I have to move to Vista. That's somewhat unrelated to the core of the article, which is about listening to playback rather than recording live music. However, I don't think that I would find much disagreement from even the most enthusiastic minidisc promoter that Sony hasn't advanced the minidisc technology as much as we would like. Yes, I know that I could record WAV files, but realistically, my content tends to be two to three days of lectures, and the end result as 64kbps MP3 audio is more than sufficient quality, at a reasonable amount of disk space. (Getting people to download a series of 40-50MB files is an achievement in itself). I find it interesting that the discussion has happened mostly on this forum, because the protocol on blogging is usually to respond on the blog. I just noticed some of the later links coming from this forum, and thus tracked it down. I chose to blog to share my experiences with other people. I'm sure others would reach different conclusions -- yes, I like the Creative Zen, although it's not perfect -- and other people would reach different conclusions given their interests and applications. I haven't abandoned my RH910 for recording -- yet -- and time will tell when I might switch. I would certainly look to Sony if they offer a reasonable alternative in their product line, but it doesn't look like minidisc technology is a long-term proposition for them. David Ing -- owner of a RH910, NF810, two NF610s, and an N1

Arghh ... Just when I thought I had it figured out ... I got the same problem again. I have yet another story to report. The answer: SonicStage doesn't play well with other applications using audio at the same time. When I did the DirectX 9.0c installation, it caused a reboot of the computer. I immediately started up SonicStage 3.3, as I mentioned in the last post. I then did a successful OMA to WAV conversion (and posted the prior result). I went for breakfast, came back, and tried to convert another file. I got the error message again. This didn't make sense! So I tried HiMDRenderer, and got that same DirectSound/DirectX message again! What was different? Well, it turns out that I've been running Live365 for streaming audio. For the most part, I usually work at home and listen to the radio while I'm doing stuff like uploading and converting audio. The last few recordings I've done have been at client office (and now, I'm in hotel in Finland) where there's no radio. I therefore have been listening to Live365 while waiting for the tedious conversions to happen. So, on this suspicion, I rebooted the computer, started up SonicStage without Live365 running, and converted the OMA file to WAV. I then started Live365, tried to convert the same file again, and got the error message. What a long runaround! It's not DirectX or SonicStage 3.2 or SonicStage 3.3 per se, but it's the interactions some how. Most diagnosticians would call this an "intermittent" problem, but I've now figured out the major cause behind all of my problems: not converting audio at home where I have other distractions, but doing so where I have no other ways to relieve boredom than my computer. Determining this problem has probably burned 8 to 12 hours of my time ....

So, a month later, I've figured it out. There are some issues with DirectX 9.0c interacting with SonicStage, and probably Windows hotfixes. I'm not sure how this is missed when reinstalling SonicStage, so I'll relate the story. Under SonicStage 3.2, I was using the two step method. The transfer from Hi-MD to OMA worked fine, but then there was a hiccup on the immediate conversion to WAV format. After exiting the error message, I would manually convert the OMA file to WAV. I thought that installing SonicStage 3.3 would make things better, but they actually made things worse. The transfer from Hi-MD to OMA worked as before, and the hiccup happened, but the manual conversion to WAV wouldn't work anymore. I was going to use the fallback plan of HiMDRenderer, and noted that it's now at v0.52, whereas I had successfully used v0.31 before. I downloaded the new version, and got a message that DirectSound/DirectX wasn't running at a current version. Thus, HiMDRenderer wasn't working -- although I'm not sure if I had reinstalled v0.31, whether it work. Taking the error message from HiMDRenderer seriously, I went to the Microsoft site and downloaded and installed DirectX v9.0c. I note that it hasn't changed since 2004, so I wonder what's up with this problem. It's possible that there's some interaction between Windows fixes and DirectX, so maybe reinstalling DirectX 9.0c restores something. (I'm annoyed that my company-owned machine automatically installs urgent fixes in the background now, so I can't, in effect, remove a fix for more than about one day before it gets reinstalled). Another annoyance I've now had is with SonicStage downloads/installs. I have high speed Internet access, so using the Internet install isn't a problem, but it appears that Sonicstage 3.2 has been expunged from the world. When I try to reinstall SonicStage 3.2, it actually installs v3.3. I looked around minidisc.org, but all instances (still in the cache from Google searches) of SonicStage v3.2 "full installs" are now gone. I've been trained as a systems engineer, so problem determination is one of my skills. It's hard to do problem determination when Microsoft, Sony, and my company all have moving targets on software versions! For now, I'm back in business. We'll see if anything changes when Windows fixes start coming down, again ....

It's XP Security Fix KB902400 that is causing this problem. It was automatically installed on my XP SP1 image on October 18, and it caused SonicStage 3.2 to fail when invoking the conversion to WAV format. I removed the Security Fix, and the WAV format conversion (i.e. from OMA to WAV in one step using SonicStage) is working as I write this. Is there someone in the Minidisc Community that could report this problem to Sony or Microsoft, to make them aware of it? (I know that sometime, the automatic installation will happen again, which will probably replicate the problem).

I've been using SonicStage 3.2 to upload Hi-MD files from my MZ-RH910 for some months now. Under Tools ... Options ... Transfer ... (Hi-MD) Transfer Settings ... Advanced ... Save in WAV format when importing ... is checked. Last week, I started getting the "Cannot Save To WAV Format" error message. I had reported this on a thread in the Hi-MD Renderer Forum . Since my PC is under automatic installation of fixes -- my company doesn't give me a choice -- I suspect that this error is the result of a conflict with a Windows XP fix installation. (I'll see if they can point out a log where the changes have happened). I used Hi-MD Renderer last week, but a little investigation revealed that if I use the right mouse button on the .oma file in SS3.2's left pane, the "Save in WAV Format" works fine. Thus, it doesn't seem to be a direct problem of the WAV conversion, but instead some associated with the program that kicks it off. I'm posting this message, and will see if I can track down more details on the installed fixes. I'm running Windows XP Professional, Version 2002, Service Pack 1. (My company doesn't believe in SP2, because they think it introduces more problems than it fixes.)

Hmmm .... I just got the same error message. This didn't happen last week, when I was uploading lots of files. I'm running HiMDRenderer right now, and wonder if the error will persist. The error came from SonicStage v3.2. I record meetings in Hi-LP, upload via SonicStage to convert to WAV, and then use TotalRecorder to do a conversion to 22050 Hz mono 32kbps MP3. (That seems to be the minimal level for speech for me, trying to keep hours and hours of audio down as minimal records). Maybe I'll have to reinstall SonicStage.

I've been using Total Recorder for some years, transferring audio from MZ-NH1 Net MD to MP3. I recently got a new Thinkpad model that doesn't have "line in" anymore, so I upgraded to a MZ-RH910 to transfer via USB onto Total Recorder (instead of via the "line in" patch cable). On the last transfers, I noticed a few gaps on some recordings -- presumably because I was doing something else on the computer while transferring files -- and it impacted the USB transfer. Now that Sonic Stage 3.2 uploads without locking up the source Hi-MD files, I feel more comfortable using it. I normally record conference lectures -- i.e. a few days of talk, which can mean between 6 to 40 hours of audio! -- and therefore have been using Hi-MD 64kbps (when I used to used Net MD 66kbps). Just experimenting this morning, it appears to me that Sonic Stage 3.2 takes the Hi-MD 64kbps file, and transfers it up to an OMA format. As a second step, it will then also create a WAV file. Question 1: I haven't found a way to create an MP3 file from a Hi-MD 64kbps (presumably ATRAC3 file) directly from Sonic Stage. Is this correct? Question 2: Is it possible to create the WAV file on Sonic Stage 3.2 without creating the OMA file first? (This is a small annoyance, because it's probably only 2 minutes to do so). Question 3: I've chosen Hi-MD 64kbps ATRAC3 to record speech, rather an MP3 128kbps , because I don't think that the quality will be much different, and more audio fits on the one minidisc. Does anyone think that it would really make a difference to record to MP3 128kbps, and then downsample to MP3 64kpbs in the future? To convert from WAV to MP3, I first tried Audacity, but it seems to take a long time to load the WAV file. Using Total Recorder, there's no initial load issue, and converting to MP3 using LAME seems okay (taking 5 to 6 minutes for an hour of audio). I've been using MP3DirectCut to edit tracks of audio down. I'm accustomed to using it, and find the slider bar and UI to be relatively straightforward. (It's possible the same thing could have been done from Audacity, but I couldn't find the slider bar!) Sonic Stage 3.2 appears to have resolved the lecture/speech recording upload issues that I've been working around for 3 years! If anyone has any additional suggestions on shortcuts, I would welcome them.