wildgoose

I decided to just try it on my main machine at home instead of waiting til next week. Unfortunately it did not work, same as it was in the VM. I was able to find out more: 1) SonicStage Ultimate will install, but toward the end, there are 3 errors relates to driver install... 2) If MZ-M200 have regular MD formatted as Hi-SP disc, then connecting via USB will use the standard windows XP mass storage driver, and I can browse the files. Furthermore, I can upload the songs in SonicStage! 3) If MZ-M200 have a regular MD containing old MD songs, then XP will prompt me for a driver, and when I browse to the Win7 64bit driver, I get the same error as I did in the VM: I take it case #3 works in Vista/Win7? I guess I could try my Win7 VM tomorrow..

I'll bring the MD to work next week and try it on one of my work machines. It's ironic, the recordings I care about the most, my own recordings, needs no copy protection. The recordings I care about the least, digital copies of songs from CD (heck I didn't even bother to upload those..), Sony wasted countless hours trying to protect, and in the process, killed the format. Now the question is what, do I do with my MD equipment.

I am testing it in a 64-bit virtual machine (VMware Workstation) running Windows-XP 64bit SP2. (Same as my physical machine). The reason is I don't want it to mess up my real machine.. Physical machine: Core-i7 OS: Windows XP 64bit SP2 App: VMware Workstation Virtual Machine: Pristine 32 and 64bit XP environment. It did not work in the 64bit XP VM. I installed SonicStage Ultimate, there were maybe 2 errors during driver install, the install was able to finish. I can launch SonicStage. Then I plugged in the MD, and a window popped up asking me for driver. I browsed to the driver files, but Windows it says it cannot start the driver. Tried twice. However it worked flawlessly in my 32bit XP VM. This is where I did all the screenshots and the uploading from MD->PC. I finished transferring all the discs. 13 disc and about 8GB of wav files. Hearing the precious recording I made 13 years ago literally bought tears to my eyes. I don't know whether I should be happy, that Sony made such nice equipment 13 years ago that made these recordings possible, or sad that they *(*%$ up the format so bad... It would've been so nice if SS can name the track using the recording timestamp rather than the current timestamp (kind of useless), oh well. I am doing that manually now. I guess there's no hope of SS being updated.. I have some tracks that were copied from Tape and are missing track marks. What do people here use to split these tracks into multiple tracks? Audacity?

I finally received my MZ-M200. I tried the Vista/Win7 64bit driver, it did not work in my Windows XP-64bit VM, unfortunately. I was able to transfer tracks and convert to WAV in my 32bit XP VM. I was able to transfer tracks from a standard MD disc that is write protected. I compared the WAV of two separate uploads, and they were identical, which is very good. (The OMA file was deleted between uploads..) Here are the settings I used. FYI I was not prompted for anything during transfer. So I guess this setting is not active when transferring from MD. This should be the setting for lossless upload from the MD to my computer right?

I'll be happy to help. What's the best way to try this? Can I 1) plug in the MD-M200, when the dialog for driver pop up, browse to the driver folder and try it 2) then install SS ultimate Would #2 override the driver I installed in #1? Asking because my XP-64bit is not a VM, so I kind of got one shot at this. Unless of course I create a 64bit XP VM and try it there I suppose... Thanks.

I installed SonicStage Ultimate in an VMware Workstation 32bit XP VM in my XP64bit system. The install went fine and I can fire up the app and play with its settings. Can't do much yet without the MD device. Hope it arrives soon...

I am running Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, Version 2003, Service Pack 2. The ultimate version of SonicStage, it includes all the necessary drivers correct? So basically 1) Install the ultimate SonicStage 2) plug in the MZ-M200 I purchased from prooutlet.sel.sony.com yesterday. Anyone know where they ship from and how fast they ship? I am in San Jose. Thanks!!

You mean I can title the disc from SonicStage? That's neat, I guess I'll just title it manually to the timestamp name I want.. Hmmmm. My PC, an newly built XP-64 bit system, have no MD connection ever. Is XP-64bit supported? Or am I better off with a 32bit XP VM? I have yet to upgrade to win7.. If it's a clean machine, I shouldn't need to do any 'crazy stuff' to save recorder wear right?

One other question. The MZ-R50 will timestamp the recording. Is there a way for me to preserve the timestamp somehow so that I end up having a file such as 001_YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS.wav 002_...... Etc? That would be nice for archival purpose.. My PCM-M10 actually records files using a timestamp, so something like that would be ideal...

Thanks for the replies! The disc that I wanted to upload is recorded on an MZ-R50 that I purchased back in 1998. I also have some recordings from an MDS-JB920 I picked up on craigslist, along with about 50+ SP discs. The MDS-JB920 recordings are less critical and I won't lose any sleep if they are lost. But the MZ-R50 recordings are more important. Sounds like by default the recording will be ATRAC3+ and that will involve a transcoding? What format does the MZ-R50 records in? And the JB920? Based on what I am hearing, I will save it to WAV, and convert it to FLAC afterwards. I have a Logitech Squeezebox setup and all my CDs are ripped to FLAC. So Wav->FLAC is probably the best archival format for me. I was thinking about .atrac initially for nostalgic reasons. Perhaps also to save a bit of disk space, but we'll see how well FLAC can compress those voice recordings... Is there an option to save the recordings from the MZ-R50 as is? (would it be atrac3 or 4?) The copying protection and how I can turn it off sounds a bit confusing. I am sure it'll make more sense once I receive the unit from Sony and start playing with the software... (fingers crossed...

Hello, I have some old, but important voice recordings that I would like to transfer from MD to my PC, so I can archive it and burn it to a CD and give it to friends/families as needed. These are standard MD disc from 10+ years ago. I just purchased a MZ-M200, arriving in a few days, which have a USB connection, and my understanding is I can use it to do the task. Reading wikipedia on sonicstage, there seems to be a lot of DRM build into SonicStage. I would like to know what I am dealing with so as to not make a irreversible mistake. 1) Does the upload work if I put the disk in write protected mode? (ie, if something goes wrong, the disk is still good..) 2) Does the upload generate an .atrac file, or can it only upload to a wave file? or even worst, some DRM wrapped file? Ideally I'd like to archive it as an .atrac file, but if that's not possible, a wav file would do fine. 3) If I can generate an .atrac file, are there software besides sonicstage can play it back? 3) I vaguely recall from researching this a few years ago that the upload will erase the copy on the disc (so it's really a move, not a upload/copy). Is this still true? If the upload target is a DRM protected file, that'll be even worst. (If this is true, are there any other options for me to get a lossless copy from my disc to the PC without messing up the disc)? Thanks in advance!

Strangely when I toggle the D.OUT bits using the remote, there isn't any pause/interruptions in the sound from the receiver. Makes me wonder if it's actually doing anything. My receiver is a Denon 3803 and I can't get it to actually display the bit depth info.. Is the MD format itself 16bit or 24bit? IF it is 16 bit, does that mean the JB920 will interpolate the signal into 24bit, does the encode, and finally transform it again to 16bit and store it? Or perhaps the question doesn't even make sense. MD is a compression format, therefore have no bit-depth. Some kind of a formula to approximate a specific curve. If there are more bits to represent the curve in the first place, then the approximation may be better. If that's the case, then perhaps the IN.OUT should be both set to 24bit. I don't know if the R50 can handle the wider bit or not. My receiver has 2 optical out. One is connected to the JB920, the other I connect it to the R50. I have recorded digitally to the R50 from the JB920 through the receiver. I am going to try tonight to copy a MD using 24-bit out to the R50...

My JB920 has option to set the bits for digital in/out between 16, 20, and 24. The default is 20. Now if I want to make an "as pure as possible" copy of a CD, should I set it to 16? Since CD is 16bit? What about if I am copying an MD (to a MZ-R50 digitally)? Should I set both in/out to 16-bit to bypass any upconversion/down conversion in the progress? If that is the case, what is the point of providing 20bit and 24bit output? When I am listening to MD? When I am encoding from analog source? Thanks!