how to upload to Mac?

[keelah]

I've had a mini disc recorder for years & have over 100 disc's full of band rehearsals and live shows. i just bought an MZ-NH900 Sony mini disc recorder off of craigslist, largely because it came with SonicStage & i hoped to be able to upload music to my G4 (with Tiger, the latest OS X). now i've discovered sonicstage is only for PC (welcome to the club, i guess?) is there any other software out there to download that for Mac that will convert the mini disc stuff to wave files?

i can hook the usb cable to my computer, and it does read files (all with a .HMA extension) is there any certain application for mac that will read these files?

Thank you!

[The Low Volta]

welcome to MDCF but...

- there is no way to upload to mac, ecept for PCM recordings with the M-models (MZ-M10/MZ-M100)

- even with HiMD and a PC, you will never be able to upload pre-HiMD recordings through USB

check this thread for the only possibility to upload to mac (through an analogue connection MD/headphone out->mac/line in)

[atheodo]

Recordings on non Hi-MD media can never be uploaded; the only way to get these recordings on the Mac is via GarageBand and MD-HeadPhone--->MAC Analog Audio Input Port

Recording on Hi-MD media can be uploaded to the Mac as follows, again you have to use GarageBand

Upload the Recording to a Windows PC using Sonic Stage; make sure the Windows PC has an optical out port (you can get a usb based soundcard with optical out ports) connect the Windows PC Optical Out to the Mac Optical In;

Essentially, you will use Garageband to record in real time the MD track playing through your soundcard on the Windows PC; however since this will go optical to optical you are not losing anything in translation. Once, you have recorded the track with GarageBand, you can export to Itunes in AIFF format which is loseless; then you can either maintain the file at uncompressed format, or use Apple Losless, so it's more manageable.

Result, you have a digital recording transfered from windows to our beloved MAC.

The other way to do it, again only for your Hi-Md recordings, is to by an M series Recorder, however Hi-Md recordings recorded with the M series recorder in PCM mode can be uploaded; existing Hi-Md recordings that have been recorded with prior Hi-Md units will not upload on the Mac. At least that's my understanding from reading the Sony literature, someone please correct me if I am wrong.

Thanks

[duancg]

Is this true? I remembered seeing posts about using Virtual PC on Mac to upload hi-md recordings. The point was that, if you can upload to PC, you can upload to Mac using Virtual PC. I never tried myself though...

- there is no way to upload to mac, ecept for PCM recordings with the M-models (MZ-M10/MZ-M100)

[Morlok]

welcome to MDCF but...

- there is no way to upload to mac, ecept for PCM recordings with the M-models (MZ-M10/MZ-M100)

- even with HiMD and a PC, you will never be able to upload pre-HiMD recordings through USB

I'm wondering, how can it be possible - not to upload through USB connection on MAC if this is possible on PC. Or there is a difference between USB for MAC and PC? All that is fully controlled by the software. Does anybody know a HW reason, why you can't upload anything to MAC from RH10, for example? There is no one. It's just another stupidity from Sony.

[The Low Volta]

Is this true? I remembered seeing posts about using Virtual PC on Mac to upload hi-md recordings. The point was that, if you can upload to PC, you can upload to Mac using Virtual PC. I never tried myself though...

of course you are absolutely right about VPC... but:

- as it is a windows emulator, I didn't really count that as mac...sorry

- as VPC runs ever so slow on light programs and SS is a resource hog, you'll have a ball uploading longer recordings... try like 100xrealtime (haven't really tried it, but it sure will be slow)

- I dunno whether your version of VPC meets the system req's for SS, but if it does, feel free to try it

Or there is a difference between USB for MAC and PC?

no, but last time I checked the entire OS's were completely different... uploading takes a bit more than a standard USB port, the software (SS or the mac uploader for the M-Models) is an absolute requirement thanks to the anti-copy-paranoia at Sony corp... well, that's one theory, could just be that the technique is a tad more complicated and it really isn't able to do drag-n-drop

[Morlok]

no, but last time I checked the entire OS's were completely different... uploading takes a bit more than a standard USB port, the software (SS or the mac uploader for the M-Models) is an absolute requirement thanks to the anti-copy-paranoia at Sony corp... well, that's one theory, could just be that the technique is a tad more complicated and it really isn't able to do drag-n-drop

Muchas gracias!!! I didn't mean drag-n-drop!

The only thing that is really needed for music transfer - right software for each OS.

Nothing more. Confirmation for this is, that it may work under VPC on Mac.

Still wonder, how dare they say, that this is a new model with a new great feature (M100)? RH has all that functionality.

[duancg]

of course you are absolutely right about VPC... but:

- as it is a windows emulator, I didn't really count that as mac...sorry

- as VPC runs ever so slow on light programs and SS is a resource hog, you'll have a ball uploading longer recordings... try like 100xrealtime (haven't really tried it, but it sure will be slow)

- I dunno whether your version of VPC meets the system req's for SS, but if it does, feel free to try it

Makes sense. The reason that I asked is so that we know it is 'technically' possible. Sure people have given up the hope for a native OS X app, the Mac fans (well, including me) just want to know if there is a way without touching a PC

I did get a chance to try. Here are some of the details:

Mac: 1.33GHz Powerbook G4, 768 MB SDRAM, OS X 10.3.9, MS Virtual PC 6

VPC: Win2K SP4, 128MB memory (I don't recall the system requirement of SS, but it works on my VPC, which emulates "Pentium II with MMX")

Downloading a 5min mp3 to RH10 took about 50 seconds. But if convert&transfer using 64kpbs bit rate, than is took about 15 mins (yes, 15) while more than 14 mins were doing conversion.

Uploading a 1 min Hi-SP recording took about 12 mins and then converting the uploaded file to wav took about 9 mins. (I have no idea why upload took so long) I also tried to upload a PCM recording of the same length, but it was even slower so didn't bother to wait until it finished.

While by no means the above numbers be accurate (nor be propotional to the length of recording), it does give some indications of how practical to use SS on Mac. Bottom line, if you directly download mp3 files from Mac, it is not bad; otherwise, you may be better off buying M10/M100, or finding a PC, or use an analog link.

Hope this is helpful for Mac users, since SS/VPC is not absolutely useless depends on your use case.

Edited January 17, 2006 by duancg

[oivindi]

The only thing that is really needed for music transfer - right software for each OS.

Nothing more. Confirmation for this is, that it may work under VPC on Mac.

I can confirm that it works fine under VPC. I've done it lots of times.

Be patient, however. While the 100x suggested by another poster isn't at all true, I can say that you'll have time for a lot of coffee while you wait...

[newsphotogdog]

you can transfer files easily to a mac with out a pc emulator...with limitations. The software, HI-MD WAV Importer for Mac was included with my MZ-M100. The files have to be the larger PCM files. I just did a test one and it worked fine. Here is a link to instructions.

http://home.earthlink.net/~mac-minidisc/Mac-MD/MZ-M100.html

[The Low Volta]

yes, the mac software works for PCM-tracks recorded on a M-model, not with anything else so it's useless unless one simply buys a new HiMD (MZ-M10 or M100)

[Herri]

I finally got around to testing Virtual PC 7 SonicStage 3.4 on my Mac. The results were a bit surprising...

Hardware Configuration:

iBook G3 900 Mhz, 640 MB RAM

Software Configuration:

Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.6

Virtual PC 7, Windows XP SP2, 320 MB RAM Allocated

First, I should say that installing everything took eons. Windows XP, SP2 update, and SonicStage 3.4 left my thumbs twiddling for hours. After I finally got all the software installed, I plugged in my MZ-RH10 to see if I could get the ball rolling. The computer beeps a sound indicating that a USB device has been detected and installed. Windows recommends that I reboot to make sure that it works properly. So I rebooted and loaded up SonicStage just the same as before. I waited for a good 20 minutes and still wasn't able to see the the Hi-MD contents in the Transfer window. I opened and closed to make sure that my MZ-RH10 even worked as a USB Mass Storage Device. It did. And when I tried to access the file-system with Windows Explorer while SonicStage or SimpleBurner were running, it denied me access, so I was certain that these programs were trying to access the Hi-MD contents. I decided to pop in a different disc and went in the shower, hoping that I'd see it working. Lo and behold, it listed the 3 tracks I recorded in Hi-SP during band practice the other day. "It works!" I rejoiced and did a little dance. But how well did it work after that? My observations below.

I decided next to test to see if it would transfer standard Atrac3+ files that I ripped on my beige box PC would transfer in a timely manner, so I copied them over to Virtual PC. Importing the tracks for 2 albums seemed to take like 5-10 minutes. That was insane! And transfering those Hi-SP files to the MZ-RH10 was just as fast as real-time recording, so theoretically I'd end up having to wait 8 hours to fill one Hi-MD disc. That's not acceptable, especially considering the overhead that Virtual PC causes on my iBook.

Next I copied over an album in MP3 format. Importing took probably less than a minute. Transfering them over to my MZ-RH10 without transcoding seemed as quick as it would on a native PC. Yay! SonicStage running on Virtual PC is reasonable for something!

I tried popping in the original disc I had popped in earlier to see if SonicStage would play nice with it this time. No luck, it seemed, after waiting 5-10 minutes. A Hi-MD containing PCM recordings also refused to show in a timely manner. I ended up popping in a blank 74 minute disc, and after a couple of minutes, it was accessible, displaying that 267.4 MB was available. Afterwards, I attempted to test MP3 playback within SonicStage, and it was perfectly fine. Attemping to listen to one of the Hi-SP files I had loaded earlier caused SonicStage to hang, and I had to force-quit. Damn that sucks!

The verdict now stands that Atrac3+ has no home with SonicStage running on Virtual PC. MP3 OK. Which sorta sucks, considering that I despise the MZ-RH10 MP3 playback bug, and that all my friends who I swap MD's with own 1st gen Hi-MD models. I also do a lot of self-recordings for practice sessions with my band, and there's simply no chance of me doing uploads/downloads of those recordings on my iBook.

If the upcoming MZ-RH1 offers the Mac-compatibility that I so-crave, then I will not hesitate on purchasing one. As I recall, the press release mentioned Mac-compatibility, but was not very specific. Sony could very well be releasing a Mac version of SonicStage, or at least offer some way of enabling transfer of audio files from a Mac to Hi-MD.