kino170878

It doesn't solve his problem with deck compatability though. Sony really dropped the ball on this one. No Hi-MD deck, the mind boggles. So I stick with SP decks because that is the way Sony originally intended minidisc to be, a one way street. At the end of the day it's the music that really counts whichever method you choose.

^ Wow it only took you two and a half years to submit a post!

From what I have read, the RH1 has special hardware in it in order to upload legacy tracks which is absent on every other Hi-MD unit.

I think you may need to install Sonicstage in order for SimpleBurner to work properly

I seem to recall a wild hack that Avrin posted some time ago which allowed the RH710 to record in normal SP mode. It removed some of the unit's other features though so I never attempted it. But it's there should you want to try.

Try here http://www.esdl.co.uk/index.htm They're the only company I think which might be able to recover your data on the minidisc.

The JE780 is one of the last decks Sony made, so it would definately have the latest incarnation of Atrac. I think Type R and Type S are almost identical anyway. That's interesting about the track protection. I think if you had an older pre-NetMD deck (and preferably pre-LP) it may not be able to recognize such commands and would erase the disc if asked. Otherwise Sonicstage should be able to completely format the disc for you.

You got a sweet deal including all those blanks. First try to open/close the write protection tab on the side of the disc, this may be stopping you from erasing it. Second, decide whether you are happy with "old" SP (Atrac 1 - type R) or wish to upgrade to Hi-SP bit rates (Atrac3plus). You have a lot of reading to catch up on in this area. Personally I stick with old SP because I can use my decks with that.

Tell your kid to go to the toughest one in the group and lay into him until he is a bloody pulp. The rest of the pack will feel useless without their leader and will never bother him again.

I can verify that the above procedure works, and very elegant it is too. This method for lossless copying really should be made a sticky as it is invaluable information (for those of us lucky enough to have an MDS-W1).

XP > Vista It's the law, and if you choose to break it then prepare for the consequences. I won't upgrade as long as its humanly possible.

Minidisc has to write the table of contents for the disc to be read. If any power gets cut off then it won't be recorded, unless you have the battery inside. Interestingly there is a professional marantz portable that automatically creates the TOC as you record audio to protect against this very thing from happening.

90% of my stuff is SP - decks, minisystems, and car audio. I only use Hi-MD bit rates for portable use, and even here I have some nice portables that are SP only. The choice is so much greater with SP. You can still buy brand new equipment from Japan that uses Atrac type R/S. Can you say the same for Hi-MD? I can only see one unit by Onkyo.

I may be wrong, but I think that the digital output from all MD decks is fixed at 44.1khz, not 48.

Sony MD decks from the UK http://www.sony.co.uk/view/ShowProductCate...MiniDisc+Player

This is a great post you made. Hopefully other companies will continue to pursue their minidisc plans even if Sony fail to deliver. Onkyo, Panasonic, HHB and Tascam are still actively supporting the format.

It's a professional unit, so you can't even compare it to consumer based recorders/players, whether Hi-MD or plain MD. I would obviously like one and knew for a long time about it. You are right it is very well built, you can take this thing into a warzone and it would still work.

This unit has a USB socket, but the only use was for real time recording. If only HHB could have designed some software,....

I sense great potential for this project. Don't let big guns like Sony and other parties scare you, they are too busy to care for an abandoned format which no longer yields profit.

Sony don't like to admit defeat. They took years to officially announce that DAT was gone for good. I would imagine the same for minidisc. Until then there is ebay, other online stores and Japan where MD still has a presence.

Some people favour the hands-on approach using dedicated hardware units to do the job. Editing is of course much simpler to do on the computer (although you could argue decks have their advantages too), but in a studio environment you also may want dedicated audio input and output connections which a portable unit like the RH-1 cannot provide. But I suppose if everything you do is strictly on the computer and portability is all you require from the RH-1 then there is no reason to change your setup.

Never trust digital media. You should have at least 2 copies of any important data. The 1gb discs were always less stable than standard minidiscs.

If only it was so easy. Sony stubbornly refuses to provide a professional level Hi-MD deck. There are still quite a few normal MD decks on ebay though (Sony still makes the JE-480/780) and Tascam continues to produce studio grade minidisc decks. None of these interface with a Mac however.

Wow, you are still using cassette recorders? I tip my hat off to you sir. I suspect most of the MD users here have now ditched the format completely and upgraded to flash based recorders. So in a way MD is indeed a dead format. But for me, there will never be anything better than MD for recording purposes. The only new minidisc recorder available in the UK right now is the RH1. It is actually a 'Hi-MD' format recorder using Atrac3plus compression so that up to 45 hours can be crammed onto a special 1gb disc. As a comparison, the same disc can also record in Linear PCM mode (no compression) for 90 minutes. I would stay clear of low compression rates and use at least 256kps 'Hi-SP' mode, but you can go all the way down to 66kps rate I think (that is the only way to get 45 hours). At 256kps you will get around 5 hours on the disc. There is one catch, so significant that it has forced me to 'downgrade' to the older compression format (more on this below). You have to use a computer program called Sonicstage in order to upload your recordings to the PC and edit there or transfer to WAV format. It is a DRM nightmare of a program, although when it works it works quite nicely. The older SP atrac format is what I use mostly. The reason being is that I am free of using the computer, and also there is a much, much larger market for the older Atrac 4.5/Type R players/recorders/hi-fi systems. Also, using MONO mode you can double the recording time on a minidisc giving approx 160 minutes. Or you can use 'long-play' mode (LP2, LP4) which gives 2.5 and 5 hours respectively. Please note the following. YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO USE HI-MD DISCS ON NORMAL MD RECORDERS/PLAYERS. Only 80 minute discs recorded in normal Atrac 4.5/Type R will work (basically anything before Hi-MD). You can, however, use the older SP format discs on the RH1. Make the decision, do you want to use your minidiscs on other equipment or just upload to the PC? If it is the latter, stick to the Hi-MD format. If it is the former (like me), stick to the older MD format. The one saving grace that Sony did is allowing the RH1 to upload the older (legacy) Atrac recordings to the PC. If I assume correctly, you are totally on the hardware side of things, so my advice to you would be to buy the RH1 but only to record in the older SP (292kps) format which you will be able to upload (the RH1 can record in both Hi-MD mode and SP mode). I also have a lot of Sony decks with digital output, and they allow me to do real-time transfers from say minidisc to a CD recorder: yet another reason to adopt the old SP mode.

lol $35 is a bargain for a minidisc recorder!