Does Sony Wave converter == bit-for-bit WAV from PCM?

[ds13]

Hi, I'm a new MZ-NH700 owner (teamed with an ECM-MS907 mic) and I'm hoping to do some live music instrument recordings, both practice and concert. The PCM feature of Hi-MD interests me most...

1) If I record a session in PCM and use the Sony WAV converter to create a WAV on my PC, will the WAV audio data itself be essentially identical to what was on the PCM recording in Hi-MD?

2) Are there any good Linux utilities that can download from a Hi-MD unit? It pains me to boot into Windows each time to use SonicStage. :-| I'm not really interested in music library management or titling or anything like that; I just want to get the audio data off the portable and onto my PC so I can manipulate it.

Many thanks!

[tartan]

This is a hot question, can someone please answer as soon as possible and don't let this post fall off the bottom again until it is answered.

Has anyone also taken waves made by TotalRecorder, HIMDRenderer and the Wave Converter and compared the results ???

[dex Otaku]

ds13:

1) In theory, yes. The data should be the same. As has been stated elsewhere on the fora, this is a topic of minor debate at the moment, as some suspect that Sony are watermarking audio coming from HiMD.

My own assumption is that the audio should be identical from source to destination if digital transfers are used.

2) There are no linux utilities. Nor are there 3rd-party utilities that can do the extraction.

This would require either:

* reverse-engineering Sony's DRM and encryption as well as their protocols for accessing the units via USB, or

* liscensing the technology from Sony, at a probable high cost

tartan:

No one to my knowledge has done an -accurate- such test yet. The problem is mainly that all three methods of conversion will not have the exact same start/end sample positions, which makes accurate comparison somewhere between difficult and impossible.

Perhaps it's time for me to run another ad-hoc test suite to settle this issue.