Recovering Audio from a Problem Hi-MD Disc

[belletristik]

Hello All,

My first post in this forum is, alas, a desperate plea for help. After seven years using MD, I finally find myself with a disc full of audio that I cannot play. Here's what happened:

I have about 20 hours of a favourite radio programme recorded to a Hi-MD disc in Hi-LP directly via the optical input of my RH10. While titling the tracks and arranging their order this past weekend using SonicStage 3.3, all of a sudden the Hi-MD window went blank. As far as SonicStage is concerned, there is no longer any audio on the disc. When I try to play the disc using my RH10 (while disconnected from my PC) I get the 'cannot play or record' message, along with an invitation to format the disc. The thing is, when I look at the disc in Windows Explorer, all of the ATRAC data is still there.

I managed to find fishstyc's HiMD-Xtract application. It does find all of the tracks on the disc and enables me to transfer them to my PC. Unfortunately, once on my PC, SonicStage will not allow me to play or transfer the files due to DRM restrictions, despite the fact that they are my own amateur recordings of a radio programme.

Does anyone have any idea as to how I might be able to listen to and/or transfer this ATRAC audio, either from the disc or from my PC? I would be much obliged if anyone could provide me with advice.

Thanks!

[Syrius]

See if HI-MD renderer will convert them to a non-drm format. I had that happen just once, and I was lucky it did, while SS refused to recognize it. Got lucky.

[belletristik]

See if HI-MD renderer will convert them to a non-drm format. I had that happen just once, and I was lucky it did, while SS refused to recognize it. Got lucky.

Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately Hi-MD Renderer 0.52 gives me the error message 'Cannot connect to a Sony OMG/OMA filter'. It says that it can't do anything with a file if it is not playable in SonicStage, and it is true that the files extracted from my Hi-MD disc (via Hi-MD Xtract or Hi-MD Renderer) are not playable in SonicStage. And of course the disc itself is neither recognised by my RH10 nor SonicStage 3.3.

I guess what it boils down to is this: all of the ATRAC data is still present on the disc and I have the ability to create OMA files on my PC using this ATRAC data. I don't have the ability to convert the OMA files to any other format. Is there any other software that will play back ATRAC Hi-LP data, one that ignores DRM?

Thanks again for any help anyone may be able to provide.

[fishstyc]

Right now I don't think there is a solution to your problem, but make sure to keep the disk!!

Just in case someone finds a way to unencrypt the now encrypted data somewhere in the future, so you could make un-drm-ed oma files out of it...

[belletristik]

Thanks for confirming my worst suspicions! If the author of HiMD-Xtract says there is currently no solution, that's about as authoritative as you can get. As you suggest, I will retain the disc and hope that something will come along one day. I'm pretty sure that SonicStage was the problem here as I've never had this happen before while editing directly on the RH10 (or any other MD or MDLP unit for that matter). I can't say that I'm terribly impressed with my first experience using Sony software (I skipped from MDLP to Hi-MD without experiencing Net-MD).

*sigh*

Right now I don't think there is a solution to your problem, but make sure to keep the disk!!

Just in case someone finds a way to unencrypt the now encrypted data somewhere in the future, so you could make un-drm-ed oma files out of it...