btovsky

understandable, except in my case i am making FIRST GENERATION digital recordings not copies. is Sony saving me from myself? b

hi all i posted a response to another frustrated mac user and thought i would make a general post about this issue to see if anyone has had any luck getting an answer from Sony. i recently did recordings of some of my live performances using my MZ-M100 HiMD deck by plugging directly from my M-Audio FW410 firewire audio interface into my MZ-M100 using an optical digital cable so that the recording would stay in the digital domain. i recorded in PCM mode onto a 1 gig HiMD disk in HiMD mode. after the show i checked the recording, which played back fine. however, when i got home and attempted to import the file using the Sony HiMD Music Transfer v2 software it showed the "single note" icon which identifies a non-compatible file. i searched through the software manual and only found a reference to these "one note" files as "non transferrable." i decided to do some tests, and did recordings on a new disk digitally using both an optical source and a SPDIF source through a SPDIF-to-optical converter; an analog recording from the FW410 to the line in of the MZ-M100; and using a mic into the mic in. everything but the digital recordings transferred fine. to be clear: these digital recordings were sourced from my g4 powerbook running os x 10.4.9, and the audio was generated from live audio i was feeding from Ableton Live, the music software i use when performing. no pre-recorded audio was used. both the HiMD Music Software and Sonic Stage docs state (Sonic Stage says this specifically) that digitally recorded files are transferrable if recorded in PCM, HiMD SP and HiMD LP modes. i have tried several times to talk to Sony tech support about this issue, but have been stymied trying to get past Tier 1 tech support to someone i don't have to enlighten about how recordings are made. ;-) the last time i tried, kindly and with great patience and tact, they hung up on me. i am assuming that this is somehow related to digital piracy issues, but since these are original digital recordings i am stumped as to why Sony would block these as it stops any musician who has a relatively modern setup from recording their music digitally. this was the reason i bought the HiMD in the first place! anyone else have issues with this? cheers bruce

hi i'm also getting bitten by this problem, and a bit of experimentation and some fruitless calls to Sony got me to this point: it seems that if you record digitally, using the optical input on your hi-md deck (i use an mz-m100 portable) from any digital source (i have only tested this using my m-audio firewire 410 audio interface) and try and import these files using the Sony Hi-MD Music Transfer for Mac Ver. 2.0 software you will find that these digital files will not transfer - they have the "single note" icon rather than the "itunes-ish" icon for files that are transferrable. i have called Sony several times about this, and the last time i kindly asked to be bumped up to the next tier of tech support after patiently trying to explain modern recording practices to the helpful-but-clueless tech support person - and she hung up on me. so i haven't found out "why" officially this is the case - the docs i have read about Sonic Stage (the PC software for transferring files) state that this type of recording is supported and can be transferred - but not with the mac i guess. anyone else ahve any ideas? cheers bruce