guyj1

I agree 100% Dex. MD units do not have a mechanical lock and key preventing access to the data held within. They have a software lock and key and Sony for whatever reason will not give it to us. It seems to me no different than defeating the software lock and key they use on DVD's to prevent copying. Most people with a DVD burner have a program that will allow them to defeat DVD encryption. The movie industry tried to stop VCR equipment manufacturers from allowing copying for fear of people ripping off movies. That is the same type of mentality that has been driving Sony Electronics development for the past decade. Sony made (and still does) some of the best consumer electronics available. That is why they were King. But as soon as media content got portable and easily reproduceable then Sony Corporate tries to stuff the genie back in the bottle. Their marketshare has suffered when other manufacturers started building equipment of equal quality and ease of use. It is simple economics, the customer votes with their dollars and Sony has to change the corporate mentality if they are to regain marketshare.

I've found that sometimes when switching between standard line in and SPDIF, you have to reboot to get it to work. Turn on the SPDIF then reboot, this may help...good luck

I guess we sullied the Rah-Rah celebration of the release of 3.4 with some critical discussion regarding the development of Sonic Stage. We've now been relegated as Ranters by someone with moderator priveleges and kicked into our own Rant Thread. Guess I better shut my mouth now before I get banned for having an opposing view and not being a very good Sony customer.

I can still open and read documents in Office 2003 that I wrote in Office 97 because it was designed with backwards compatibility in mind. There are 2 schools of MD users. Recordists and those that just want to hear their MP3's on the go. If I were from the latter group then I would have already made the jump to Ipod and I'd already be "over it". Sony currently provides backwards compatibility for listening to SP and LP modes. Just give us recordists the same backwards compatibility for archiving our old recordings. The MD is just the extension of the cassette recorder technology anyway. I do not see it surviving in it's current form as an MP3 medium when so many unencumbered competitors abound. I'll quit bichin now cause I've made my point. I just wanted to disagree with the title of this thread because i do not agree that "3.4 has debuted with Stunning New Functionality". I just hope Sony fixes my issues before Steve Jobs puts recording inputs on an Ipod.

>>Every time there's a new SS release and NetMD uploads are (yet again) not allowed, the same discussion ensues and it's getting a tad boring. It's also a bit unfair on Sony who are now making their MD technology more accessable to it's users. Sorry that the repetitive complaining seems boring to you but I'm sure lots of people that complained in the past about a digital link between their PC's and MD's are happy they got what they repeatedly complained about with the introduction of HiMD. Squeaky Wheels! >>You bought your NetMDs knowing they couldn't transfer to PC, didn't you? Now you want something extra that wasn't in the original deal. I see the annoyance but must this be discussed with every SS release? Yes this is partly true, I knew when I bought those older units that the technology offered the best affordable way of digitally capturing recordings but I would have to transfer analogue. I also knew and still know I could buy a deck and transfer through an optical cable to capture in real time a digital copy. I expected that the technology on future portables would evolve to allow unencumbered digital transfers of those recordings so I continue to buy into the format and cross my fingers. I do appreciate the ability to use HiMD to be able to transfer my new recordings. I just think that because my older recordings are wrapped up in DRM, the software developers at Sony should be able through the software to strip it out. At the least SS should be able to play it through my USB and capture that recording in real time digitally. They put it there so they should be able to take it out or ignore it. What would make me (and others) quit biching about MD? Drop the ball and chain of DRM entirely. Allow Drag and Drop of the files (MP3 and files recorded from MD) between MD>PC and back again. Let me do it through a simple windows explorer type interface. Quit forcing me to use Sonic Stage. This is some of the worst unreliable code written since Windows 95 but I have no other choice but to not use it at all. I love and enjoy MD. I think it is the greatest, most affordable format for digital recording. When I started listening to portable music I started out listening to really big Japanese monaural AM radios through a tiny speaker pressed up to my ear. Technology for portable digital recording is past a stage of maturity and MD should be the format. Sony just needs to let it be what it could be or die like the 8-track did.

I'm not talking about transferring from a an actual Net MD recorder. I'm talking about transferring my previous recordings in SP mode I made on my MZ-R909 and Sharp DR480 (recognized as NetMD in SS) through my Hi MD recorder. If SS through my Hi MD recorder can read the files and decode them then it should be able to transfer them. The information is only digital bits of "1's and 0's". I would think it is just a matter of the software allowing the transfer to occur through the USB cable.

I would like to hear a valid argument as to why I shouldn't directly upload my Net MD live recordings, particularly since you can now upload your tracks from your library to your friends library. I got permission and was even encouraged by the indie bands I recorded to do so. The capability through MD for ripping off music without paying for it is there already so why still the fear of allowing people to share their own recordings. I got into MD 5 years ago for the sole purpose of recording live music, not for listening to my MP3's. I would like to be able to share those live recordings with the fans and band members of those bands without having to degrade the quality through an analogue transfer. Sony needs to allow SDK for HiMD so that innovative people can develop applications to expand the capabilities of their units. I'm not as encouraged by the release of 3.4 as some of you may be because it still will not allow me to use my recorder to it's potential. I already have discovered that it is no more stable than previous versions. I have already had it crash twice on me just trying to import playlists generated from MMJB. No other MP3 software has any problems with the same .M3U files. It took 3-4 minutes of wait time when I started the import before it even attempts to take any action. Then 3/4 of the way through the playlist import OMG crashes. When I considered buying MD again I read up about the problems of digital transfers through SS and thought to myself it probably wasn't as bad as it seemed. It is as bad as I read... Sonic Stage is still cra ppy software and every update just takes baby steps at resolving problems. Sony doesn't have time to delay in fixing the issues because people like me are going to get fed up and move on to something more user friendly.

Not quite, we still cannot upload our old Net MD live recordings. First thing that I did after upgrading to 3.4 was to try and import a recent .M3U playlist and SS3.4 responded by promptly crashing. So far I am less than impressed.

I bet if you begged hard enough, someone out there has the old MDCF Non-net installer for 3.2 still sitting on their hard drive. 3.3 just came out in late November or early December, I think, so a recently outdated version should be easy to get hold of. I think version 3.0 came with my MD. I just checked and I must have gotten rid of 3.2 installer.

Looks like we all have been victims of the same bug. I log on everyday hoping for a new version of SS that will work worth a hoot. I am going to be building a new PC soon and I was hoping a newer system would help. I've recently given up on USB transfers and gone back to the old days of real time recording. Kind of defeats the purpose, this is my third MD and I've been very underwhelmed by my latest Sony. Of the three I've owned I miss my Sharp DR480 the most.

I doubt available power supplied is a reason. If it is not just an imagined increase there could be an environmental reason. Air is cooler in the evening so soundwaves may carry better than in daytime. Also there is a lot more ambient/white noise in the daytime ie: traffic, conversation that may be making it seem lower in volume because your ears are trying to filter through other things.

I too have the exact same problem. I use WinXP Pro and no other program windows open when it happens. I also noticed when it says it is transferring the first track it actually shows in the transfer display window that it is transferring the last track I uploaded on the previous upload. Very frustrating!

The RH-910 will play MP3's between 32-320 KBPS both constant bit rate and variable bit rate. They have to be 44.1 Khz sampling frequency. Podcasts are typically recorded using a sampling frequency of 22.05 khz and will not play on the RH-910 unless they are converted first. LP2 and LP4 are the NetMD/MDLP (pre-Himd) versions of ATRAC3 compression. RH-910 will play both NetMD/MDLP Atrac3 and also the new format Atrac3plus. LP2 and LP4 songs can only be transferred through Sonic Stage. Those modes are not available when recording from the RH-910 Question: If you drag and drop an mp3 as a data file will the RH-910 allow you to transfer the mp3 to another PC? If so that kind of blows the whole DRM scheme right out of the water if it is meant to keep you from sharing music files.

Podcasts of "60 Minutes" episodes can be found on Itunes. Convert it to atrac and you can listen to it on your MD.

I haven't tried playing Pre Hi-MD discs through SS yet so I wasn't aware they couldn't play through USB. I had just played my Hi-MD discs through it. I guess this would make it less than a worthy method to try since you can upload Hi-MD recordings already to your pc. Thanks for the info!

So if I used this method to transfer some older Atrac3 SP mode recordings I made on a pre Hi-MD unit would I be getting a better quality recording than if I had transferred through an analog cable? I guess what I still don't understand is if there is a loss of fidelity by using this method as opposed to my unit being capable of digitally uploading the non Hi-MD file to my computer...

I hope Sony CEO Howard Stringer attended this conference. He might learn something... http://www.cesweb.org/attendees/conference...p?ID_session=V1

In SS you can play the MD's while connected through the USB cable. If I open Soundforge and record in real time what is being played am I capturing a digital or analogue signal through the USB cable? Is this just the same as running a cable between the headphone out of my unit and the line in on my soundcard?

Well I recently said hello to a new RH-910. I really struggled with the decision to get an Ipod but decided to give USB transfers on MD a chance cause I want to hang on to the recording capabilities of MD. The RH-910 sounds great but for generally the same amount of money spent on all three of the MD's I have owned, the plastic construction really makes it seem cheaper quality. I figured the ability to transfer up and down digitally would balance out this negative. Unfortunately I have had so many problems with SS as a stable platform my enthusiasm of Hi-MD is really quashed. I think this will be my last MD cause next time I'll be saying hi to flash memory or hard drive player. I had to say Bye last summer to my Sharp Dr480 when an auto mechanic lifted it from the center console of my car. It was a sweet unit and the best one I have ever owned. I held out for 6 months waiting on Sharp to release a Hi-MD style recorder but finally gave in to the 910

Thanks for the response KrazyIvan, I don't think it is a fragmented hard drive issue because I defrag every few weeks. The drive my MP3's are on is exclusively for MP3's and there has not been much new written to the drive since it was last defragged. Regarding optimizing the SS library, what does this do? I don't want SS touching my organized MP3 folders other than accessing the MP3's for transfer to my MD. I have spent way too many years getting the folders organized and the ID3's updated just the way I like. That is why I only have less than 100 songs at a time in my SS library. I export M3U playlists from MMJB into SS when I want to load a MD. The library only shows the contents of 2-3 M3U playlists/MD's at any one time.

This is about the third time recently I've posted a question and not gotten any reply. I may as well unsub and go ask my questions directly to Sony. This forum has become a shadow of what it used to be in years past...

My hard drive grinds away for several minutes after closing SS 3.3. Even with a small library of not more than 100 converted music files. I do not use the program to access my entire collection and just import music folders I want to transfer to my MD. Has anyone else had this problem? I recently had the previous version of SS on and it did not do this. I also use MMJB for my mp3 collection and as much a system hog as it is, it closes very cleanly on a library of 1000's of MP3's. Why is it grinding the drive so hard during shutdown, is it backing up the library? Is there a parameter I can change to stop this behavior?

I have an RH-910 and asked this same question recently. There are mini USB's with multiple pin configurations. How many pins are in our minidisc cables??? My eyes aren't good enough anymore to see inside to count the pin-outs.

Bypassing DRM would be the only thing I could see as a use for this device. But since you can pass Analogue Hi-MD recordings from MD to PC already why bother? Besides the Ikey only has an RCA line in connector so that would mean you can only make soundboard recordings with a patch cable, right? I would be more interested in this device if it had Mic connectors and I owned an Ipod.

I'd like to get a spare usb cable for my office computer. I found some USB cables in a retail store that looked like they had the same style mini connector that would fit the RH-910. But they had 6 pin and 4 pin versions... Will one of these work with an RH-910?