Sony's Wav converter -- A Waste of Time -- YMMV however

[1kyle]

I've attempted to play around with this -- It to me seems a complete waste of time as it will only convert stuff thats been imported into SS -- and that to me is a NO NO as you then get embroiled in DRM and all the other BS.

It still seems for me the best way to get digital copies of old recordings is to either use the Digital out of my Notebook with the new Audigy 2 ZS notebook card (Optical Out now much faster and better than the old 48 khz stuff) or use the excllent recording software that comes with the card (Thanks Creative Labs --your software is great unlike Sony's) to make very high quality WAV files.

You can then split / create tracks or whatever with the either the Creative software or Nero's WAV editor -- You need to split them up so you can break then into Logical CD's.

You then burn a set of logical Audio CD's using Nero as say CD1.NRG, CD2.NRG etc

You Mount each one as a Logical drive using Nero's DRIVE IMAGE (in built with the software)

Hey presto -- the Quick Burner comes up saying Unknown Audio CD inserted. You then copy your tracks to the Minidisc.

Using DRIVEIMAGE again "Eject" this CD and mount the next one.

(The DRIVE IMAGE software will actually allow you to mount 2 "virtual Drives" if you want but I find just using One is fine).

No DRM --Nada Nichts -- and you can copy to as many computers as you like.

Note also you don't need ANY physical CD's so speed of creating these "Virtual CD's is quite quick on a decent computer and unlike some posts are saying it most definitely DOES work with Nero 6 and I'm using Windows XP Pro with service pack SP2 applied as well.

OK it's real time but the quality is as good as you can get from old recordings and even the Older NET-MD's that you want to convert to HI-SP and it's digital as well.

YMMV however with regard to Sony's WAV converter.

Inspite of Sony's best efforts to hobble what is perhaps the most useful and versitile recording medium yet to appear on this planet it's great that there are other (albeit slightly more time consuming ways) to use the minidisc in the way it was really intended to be used.

And Sony -- why no Minidisc Car radios -- you can still get those horrible CD changer units which will even play those nasty CD MP3's --I've only ever found 1 decent MD car radio --my Kenwood 673R which plays MD-LP minidisc --but it's aging now and I haven't seen any replacements.

However it will still play 4 hrs at LP quality --still easily good enough for a car.

You are missing a HUGE marketing opprtunity here -if you brought out a HI-MD version - pop a small 1GB minidisc into your car radio which plays high quality for up to 7 hours -- irresistable --beats carrying around a load of CD's.

Cheers and Happy Xmas everyone.

[sxc]

Not sure if I'm reading your post correctly, but the process for using the WAV converter is:

1. Record an analog recording on Hi-MD device.

2. High-speed upload of recording to SS. The resulting upload is in OMA format and has DRM.

3. Use WAV converter to convert this recording to a WAV file with no DRM restrictions.

The downside to the recording method you describe is that it is a real-time upload, so it takes longer.

[Christopher]

Exactly, sxc. It's a very carefree process and there's some misleading information in this post that may influence people in a wrong way.

[1kyle]

The point of the post was basically that SS Transfer doesn't always work and therefore I was looking at other ways to do the same thing.

For example I recently had to restore an entire 300 GB hard disk ( Computer Disk not a MD) from a tape backup and I can no longer transfer the tracks on 3 of my HI-MD disks to the computer -- get message saying "Tracks cannot be imported from another computer" even though it's THE SAME computer.

So I was suggesting an alternative (albeit real time approach) which works without using SS Transfer --especially when the transfer fails.

I can also play the tracks via SS and using the RECORD function on the Audigy software it will create WAV or WMA's with a reasonable choice of sampling rates digitally so long as you select WAVE as the recording input. This again is real time but it works at least on HI-MD disks.

For Net-MD I think this method won't work but you can use the digital output on the sound card or record the analog signal as WAV using the cards built in A/D converter which seems to be reasonably accurate.

I'm sorry if I've posted misleading information -- Please point out the misleading info and we can change it.

Note I often do entire backups and restores of my computers and this is where the whole of the SS stuff and DRM fails if you backup via a "Partition Image" Or "Disk Dumping /cloning" process rather than use specific backup software.

If you are backing up 300GB or more regularly you don't have time to backup per file -- especially when you need DIFFERENT backup programs to back up different file systems and data-- just dumping the disk via a Disk Imaging program is the usual method.

Anyway here's the error you get when trying to transfer again into SS.

This was AFTER I'd restored my Disk image from the tape backup which is a perfectly normal computer operation -- everybody is allowed (and it's silly not to BTW) to keep archives of their stuff and should be allowed to retrieve it again after a computer failure etc.

I'd hate my Bank to have to come up with -- unable to access account -- originated on a different computer !!!!!!!

Cheers everyone and happy hols

-K

[sxc]

Do you know that before you do a disk reformat, you should use SonicStage's backup process to copy your music library? Then after you have reformatted your drive, use the SonicStage restore process to restore the library.

These are commands that you can execute from within SonicStage.

[1kyle]

Do you know that before you do a disk reformat, .

The problem here was the Disk FAILED before a music backup could be done --not a question of re-format or anything else --Disk went Belly up --so I installed a Brand new one (same size - same make as the old one) and restored my data from my backup tape.

(Also it shouldn't be necessary to have to use a Zillion backup products --a Disk Image should ALWAYS work (Image copy) and this method is 100% used in large commercial computing installations where they don't have the time or manpower to execute loads of different backup programs).

These are more common situations than most people realize -- you have to restore the last "Disk Image".

If you don't believe me I suggest you try the following.

1) Backup your music library ( I don't want to be held responsible if you lose your library) with Sony's or whatever software you think fit.

2) Now dump your entire disk with Norton Ghost, Power Quest Drive Image 2002, Acronis True Image or whatever package you like.

3) Re-format your entire disk.

4) restore from the Ghost Image / Drive Image / Acronis or whatever you used --ensure you have a bootable medium to load and execute the program or you are in that very well known street without the paddle.

5) now see if your music library is still acessible without using the Music Backup you took -- we are trying here to simulate a real computer failure.

I think you'll find a few nasties here after the restore.

I agree if you backup with the appropriate software it should work --but if you don't have RAID and your disc / OS goes BSOD (Windows Blue Screen Of Death) then you will have to either restore from a backup or re-install your entire OS again.

If you've got time try this scenario -- but don't blame me if you can't get proper access again to your music.

Also what happens if you get a new machine --do you have to unload everything (300GB or more) and re-import.

I've got over 1TB of stuff ( 1,000GB) !! and some people have a lot more.

Cheers

-K