mkeswani

Correct - best price in Australia. Don't think they ship, you have to walk in and buy. They used to be $4.75 each last year but went up to $11.95. mkes

Hello, Don't know if this is the right forum to post in but I visited the SonyCentral City store in Sydney today and found that 1GB Hi-MD discs were on special at $5.95 each. I think this is 1/2 price from the recommended retail. Appeared to have plenty of stock on the shelves. Packs of standard minidiscs were also on sale. The store is on the corner of George and Goulburn streets across the road from the cinema strip in George Street. Regards, mkes

I've tried both Qemu and Wine under Ubuntu Linux. With wine, SS installation process only starts if you use the full install package either off a CD or from these forums. It then complains about a missing DLL (which I found and copied into the Wine directories). Once the installation process starts, it gives an error message complaining about the wrong version of Windows even though I have tried all configurations in Wine (Win98 to WinXP). I have checked the Wine website and they have been unable to get SS to run either. This is a known issue with Wine and a solution doesn't appear to have been found. Under Qemu, I loaded Win98SE and then installed SS4.3 off the web. SS will start and everything works fine until you plug in the Minidisc unit into the USB port. SS sees the MD unit but it slows down the emulation so much that you can barely move the cursor. From this point, nothing works and you can only recover the emulator by unplugging the MD unit from the USB port. From all the searching I have done, only VMware seems to allow SS to work properly. Regards, mkes

Michael, The RH10 should work fine for you. I have an NH900 with mic-in and have been making live music recordings in PCM mode (16 bit, stereo) with no problems. SonicStage 3.2 does not restrict in any way how you manage any recordings made from line-in or mic-in. They are saved on your PC in WAV format and you can edit as you like. Suggest you look through the forum to choose the best model to suit your requirements. Regards, M

I ran the web page through Google translation and I think that all Sony are saying is that SonicStage will do the translation from MP3 to ATRAC. I think the photo showing MP3 filenames on the remote is probably misleading. Here is the translation from Google: Simultaneously MZ-NH1 besides supports high quality sound compression technology ATRAC3plus which Sony is in sole possession of, but also supports the MP3 form. After forwards as an enclosure the application software " Sonic Stage Ver.3.0 " reads takes the MP3 document, does not transform the ATRAC3plus form, but is the direct transmission. Because needs not the switching time, therefore can realize the high speed data transmission, smooth broadcast. Regards, M

You might want to read this interesting report done by Sony to compare ATRAC3plus versus MP3 and WMA. http://www.sony.net/Products/ATRAC3/tech/l...test_report.pdf Listening tests and frequency analysis are carried out to compare the three formats. Regards, M

No problem. I had similar things happen and like you, my patience was really tried. This is the first piece of software that I have purchased that has caused so much trouble. I would think that most ordinary people who buy an MD unit would return it if the software would not work first time. Had it not been for this forum, a lot of patience and some searching on the Internet, I would have returned my unit too. Regards, M

A couple of questions - 1) Are you upgrading from an existing SonicStage installation? 2) What OS is your PC running? I think I had a similar message when I tried to upgrade from 2.1 to 3.2 on my Win 98SE machine. I was unable to successfully upgrade 2.1 to either 3.1 or 3.2 until I did a complete uninstall of 2.1 including the registry edit as outlined in this forum. See the link http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=8071. Regards, M

My experience with SS 3.1/ 3.2 installed over 2.1 using Win98SE was that initially, neither worked. SS 3.2 could not see my MD player and replacing with 3.1 caused registry errors with OpenMG. I could re-install 2.1 off the original disk and it would work fine. I basically had to do a clean install using the information on this forum to get both 3.1 and 3.2 working. Also make sure that Smartdrv.exe is not running under Win98SE by renaming it to Smartdrv.old. It is found in the C:\Windows\Command directory. Regards, M

I had many problems in getting SonicStage working on my Windows 98SE PC and came close to returning my Hi-MD player because of this. To benefit other users of this forum having similar problems, I have put down the problems I encountered and the steps I took to fix them. It took me close to two weeks to get things working satisfactorily. Sony support was of no use and did not respond to my complaints. The only response I got from them was an SS 3.1 CDROM sent in the mail. Hope the following is of use to readers of this forum. Regards, M ========== 1. Machine setup My PC is configured as follows: - Pentium 3, 850MHz, 384MB RAM, ASUS CUS-L2 motherboard. - Windows 98SE 4.10.2222A and up to date with all Microsoft patches - Matrox Millenium G450 Dualhead Video Card - Soundblaster Live! Value soundcard - Dual harddrives, one CD-ROMs one CD-RWand one floppy. The machine was built to order through a local computer shop and according to Sony's fine print, SS would not work for such a setup. My Minidisc recorder is an NH900 supplied with SonicStage 2.1 2. Installing SonicStage 2.1 2.1 The problem The installation of SS 2.1 on my machine caused it to lock up after re-boot. It would show a DOS screen, load up Config.sys, Autoexec.bat and then show the Windows 98 bootup screen. After that, the screen would return to DOS mode with the following error: While intialising device IOS: Error: Real Mode System Memory Allocation failed. Pressing the return key on the keyboard a couple of times would produce another message saying that the STACKS setting in Config.sys should be changed. The machine would freeze at this point. Subsequent re-boots would return the machine to the same state. I was only able to re-boot into Safe mode by pressing F8 or CTRL on bootup. Changing the STACKS setting in Config.sys to increase stack allocation did not fix this problem. 2.1 The solution The most common solution for the IOS problem found on the Internet indicates that you should re-install Win98SE. I was not game to do a full re-installation. More searching revealed that removing Smardrv.exe from Windows might fix the problem. See: <<http://www.tencorp.com/SALESTIP.NSF/d5510884f791efbd8525681e0000d544/d1a92a925d9803f785256fd8004f2e54!OpenDocument>> I re-booted in Safe Mode Command Prompt only as recommended and renamed Smardrve.exe to Smartdrv.old as per the above instructions. System re-booted fine and SonicStage 2.1 started up and recognised my MD player. I had a working system again. 3. Installing SonicStage 3.x 3.1. The problem After getting 2.1 working properly, I tried to update to SS 3.2 off the web. Result was that after installation and re-boot, 3.2 refused to recognise the MD player. I only had options to create CDs under the Transfer menu. I could however, open up Windows Explorer and see the MD unit as a removable drive to which I could read and write files. Contacting Sony (Australia) for support, I did not get any help except for a SS 3.1 CDROM in the mail. Removing 3.2, I installed 3.1. This time, SS 3.1 would not start and produced a Registry error indicating that the OpenMG driver was not of the correct version. Nothing I could do now, including uninstalling/re-installing SS 3.1, OpenMG through Add/Remove Software under Windows Control Panel would fix this. At some stage, I also received an error saying "Cannot locate the files required to open the database file.", and then SS would exit. I eventually managed to un-install 3.1 (see below) and restore 2.1 but with the newer OpenMG (from 3.2) still running. I could not get either 3.1 or 3.2 to work. 3.2. The solution The first problem, of fixing the registry error was straightforward. I looked up the Microsoft site for manually restoring the Registry (Article 221512) for Win 98. <<http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q221512/>> I followed the instructions exactly to restore the computer to the state before 3.2/ 3.1 was installed. Installing 2.1 again, I had a working SonicStage using the newer OpenMG driver from the 3.2 install. Since neither 3.1 or 3.2 would work, I resorted to searching the web to find a solution and happened to find the instructions on this forum for getting SS 3.x working. Refer to: http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=8071 I did a complete removal of SS using the instructions provided including the change of the registry but did not install the German version of SS 3.x. Instead I installed 3.1 provided by Sony. I also disabled multi-monitor support through control panel as Sony recommends that SS will not work under Windows Multi-monitor mode. Wonder of wonders, SS 3.1 worked first time and saw my MD player. I could do all operations and my PC and SS were stable. I then upgraded to 3.2 off the web and this worked fine too! I now had a fully functioning system. Refer to: http://www.sonydigital-link.com/DNA/HiMD/himd.asp?l=en" target="_blank to download 3.2 or get the full installer in the downloads section of this forum. I also restored Multi-monitor support and found that SS 3.2 works fine. 4. Conclusion Though Sony does not guarantee operation of SS under Win98SE, especially a custom-built system, I have managed to get it working as per the above actions. I have found that for a clean install of SS 3.x on another Win98SE machine with similar configuration, all I had to do was rename Smardrv.exe as outlined in Section 2.2. I was able to install SS 3.1 and upgrade to SS 3.2 with no problem whatsoever. ==========

I have tried everything - mznh900, MZNH900, minidisc and so on. I can't get past the first stage where they ask you to select the product. Looks like they have deleted every trace of minidiscs from their website. M

The news gets worse. I tried to register my NH900 today with Sony and the MySony (Australia) website refused to recognise the model number so I couldn't even start the process. I have sent a query to their Support people by e-mail asking why I can't register a product that is still available for sale in the Sony shops here. Regards, M

As of this week, even support for Minidisc has been taken off the Sony Australia web site. I have expressed my opinion on the Websurvey about this. Regards, M

Hello, I am new to Mindisc players and this forum. I suffered the same problem on my Win 98SE PC for the last two weeks after purchasing an MD recorder (NH900). I had Sonicstage 2.1 supplied which completely stuffed up my PC with an IOS error locking up Windows. It turned out that Smartdrv.exe was the problem which I fixed and got 2.1 working fine. Keen to get all the benefits of 3.2, I downloaded the latest version from the Sony Europe website. Sonicstage would not recognise the MD recorder. I rang Sony here in Australia and they supplied me with 3.1 on CDROM. Installing 3.1, I had the same problem - though Windows could see the MD player as a removable drive, Sonicstage did not recognise it. I then re-installed 2.1 which worked fine strangely enough. Searching this forum for this problem, I followed exactly the instructions provided at: http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=8071 I uninstalled every bit of software provided with the SS2.1 release - this included removing the reference to OpenMG driver in the Windows registry. I then installed the Australian version 3.1 off the CDROM and it worked fine. Unfortunately as Sony Australia no longer support Mindisc here (as of last week), you can no longer download 3.1 off their website. Next, I downloaded the European version 3.2 found at and upgraded 3.1 to 3.2 from: http://www.sonydigital-link.com/DNA/HiMD/himd.asp?l=en This loaded fine and is working perfectly now. I am much happier with 3.2 than I was with 2.1. Hope this helps. M