Digital Out

[psper]

I'm considering getting one of the new Hi-MD players and i had a few questions about recording digitaly.

First, can you copy secured music (eg. secured wma from napster) through the digital out on a soundcard directly into a md recorder?

I'm assuming this is not possible. Therefore, what would be the best way to record the music and get the best quality recording?

I 've seen info on recording the songs to wav using winamp and a plugin or total sound recorder. Would you get better quality onto the MD by recording the resulting wav through optical out directly to the MD or by encoding the wav into mp3 or atrac and transfer to the MD using the USB and the sony software? Is there alternatives that could be used?

Finally a more general question about recording through digital out. If you have mp3 or wma recorded at 128 kbs, would it make more sense to record using the Hi-SP (256kbs?) setting or the Hi-LP (64kbs?)? Is it worth it to sacrifice the extra space without actually getting higher quality audio? Would the Hi-LP sound significantly worse than the orginal sound file?

Thanks for any help that someone can provide...

[A440]

Optical/digital out isn't a file transfer. The only way to copy playable music faster than realtime to the MD is via USB and SonicStage, which won't transfer DRM'd music. You need to get the WMA files out of their DRM wrapper.

You should experiment with rippers and encoders like dbpoweramp ( www.dbpoweramp.com ), foobar ( www.foobar2000.com ) or others. See if any of them can turn your .wma files into .mp3s or .wavs. I'd try it myself, but I don't have any DRM files.

If those files are locked down, you could use TotalRecorder, play them in a music player (realtime) and record them as .wav files, and then transfer them via SonicStage. If there is a difference between recording them via optical out (which would be realtime) or transferring them via SonicStage, it's probably negligible, and the amount of time spent would be significantly shorter with the SonicStage transfer. You can transfer them as PCM (.wav quality) if you don't mind using a whole lot of discs, or SonicStage will encode them into ATRAC--that's what it does--so you wouldn't need or want to encode them first.

If you have mp3 or wma recorded at 128 kbs, would it make more sense to record using the Hi-SP (256kbs?) setting or the Hi-LP (64kbs?)? Is it worth it to sacrifice the extra space without actually getting higher quality audio?

You don't get the same quality just because the bitrate number is the same. Every time you compress you're losing quality. The 128 kbps mp3's are already compressed, and Hi-SP and Hi-LP compress the material further, like taking a grainy photograph of an already grainy photograph. Technically, you want to get as much resolution as you can, so it's better to use the higher bitrate.

But it's up to you and your ears. If you're out jogging on the street with little portable headphones, Hi-LP might well be good enough. I use it to pack a dozen albums onto an 80-minute disc for car trips. But if you're in a quiet room with good 'phones, you'll hear the difference.

[psper]

Thanks for the info a440, what you said is helpful. Although I had one of the first MD players way back, I'm a newbie to most of this stuff.

Optical/digital out isn't a file transfer. The only way to copy playable music faster than realtime to the MD is via USB and SonicStage, which won't transfer DRM'd music. You need to get the WMA files out of their DRM wrapper.

Sorry, what I meant to ask is can you record the DRM'd music in realtime if you play it through the sound card optical out? In other words could you bypass the DRM by using the optical out of the PC?

From my understanding of what you said, there is negligible difference between the quality of the track if you take off the DRM wrapper and record the resulting wav in realtime to your MD or you transfer the resulting wav (or converted mp3/wma) through SonicStage.

Thanks again.

[Syrius]

Yes you can. I have recorded some of the songs I have rented from Napster on my Sharp SR 60 using my USB-to-optical converter. I dont' think there's anything wrong with that, as I compare it to recording from the radio.

[psper]

Sweet! What recording level (bit rate) do you use?

[Syrius]

Since the sharp recorder is an old-style MD, I can only use True SP @ 292.