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Help! How do i convert .Hma files to .Wav

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anas

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Hi all, i hope someone can help me here.

I am new in this forum.

I am using a SONY RH910 HimD mainly for field recordings and some live gigs of me and my mate.

I was abroad for a mini tour and every night i was recording the gig on PCM format on the one 1GB disk i got. Next day i ll tranfer on my laptop format the disk and have it ready to record the next gig.

In one occasion whilst on a train i tried to tranfer using Sonic stage 3.2 version and it gave me an error (which i ve been getting a few times lately). So as i got a bit worried i thought lets just copy the files as they are on the MD (apparently the main file was on some .HMA format of about 650MB) and i ll convert them into wav files later.

But since back in the UK i cant figure out how to do it. Sonic stage doesnt seem to open HMA files, its looking for OMG files. I ve tried to copy the files using windows explorer back into the MD and then try to repeat the usual process with Sonic stage but it doesnt read any files on the MD...

Is there any software that ll do it or do i have to ask SONY to do it for me cos i am sure they can decode all these copy write protection crap the do..Copy protect my music from me....ha!

anyway, any help would be greatly appreciated. I cant believe i ve lost my file or something..

Thanks a lot

Anas.

Edited by anas
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Thanks for the reply..

I was hoping there would be some software around but it seems no..

I always follow the proper way to upload. Plug it in, start Sonic stage, tranfer with automatic conversion to wav and bingo..Sonic stage gave this error during tranfer which i ve had before and i retried then and it worked. This time i didnt retry just copied the file manually thinking i can convert with Sonic stage later..I am learning Sony's nonsense rules the hard way..

I really want this recording, i listened the first 20mins of it just before tranfer and it was a good performance..LL try SONY, wish me good luck...!

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try turning the automatic conversion to wav OFF, this has caused errors for me before!

- just upload without conversion

- try to manually convert to wav in SS

- if that doesn't work, try marcnet's HiMDRenderer to convert to wav

hope this helps for future uploads

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JUst phoned Sony uk support and they said they ll look into it and hopefully call me back...I am sure there has to be a way to do it. Its a matter of going deep into SONY technical support to the people who made Sonic Stage.

I told that other people are having the same problem. A came across a website with some info but it was in german, i cant find it now. Ll keep looking.

I ll let you know of any progress.

thanks

Anas.

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  • 1 month later...

JUst phoned Sony uk support and they said they ll look into it and hopefully call me back...I am sure there has to be a way to do it. Its a matter of going deep into SONY technical support to the people who made Sonic Stage.

I told that other people are having the same problem. A came across a website with some info but it was in german, i cant find it now. Ll keep looking.

I ll let you know of any progress.

thanks

Anas.

Hi,

I have exactly the same problem, with the RH910 unit.

I've just sent an e-mail to Sony asking them for a tool which could extract the audio files from the HMA files. My data are still there, I know it, I just need something to extract them ! I asked Sony twice before, they always answered "sorry, we have no such tools, it's not possible to recover your data". I can't believe that. As you say " Its a matter of going deep into SONY technical support to the people who made Sonic Stage." The problem is "where art these people ??? how to contact them ? will they do something for this problem ?".

Anything else, if you find the german web site you were talking of, please let me know, I will check it.

And tell us if you get an answer from Sony. I'll let you know if my request gives something too. I hope so, I really want to get my recordings back !

Thanks.

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Hi all, i hope someone can help me here.

I am new in this forum.

In one occasion whilst on a train i tried to tranfer using Sonic stage 3.2 version and it gave me an error (which i ve been getting a few times lately).

In case you haven't yet -- upgrade your SonicStage to v3.4. Versions prior to v3.4 only allowed you one try at uploading your PCM recordings... if your PC crashed in the middle of uploading or whatever, you were out of luck. I believe that with v3.4, this restriction has been removed and you can upload PCM recordings as many times as you want.

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In case you haven't yet -- upgrade your SonicStage to v3.4. Versions prior to v3.4 only allowed you one try at uploading your PCM recordings... if your PC crashed in the middle of uploading or whatever, you were out of luck. I believe that with v3.4, this restriction has been removed and you can upload PCM recordings as many times as you want.

I just upgraded to 3.4 after a painfull procedure since the stupid online installer from Sony didnt work, i mean i spent 10mins looking for the appropriate website alone as Sony seems to have a dozen different sites (this alone is so bad - oh god how much i hate them now..)

No chance to open HMA files with sony stage. Its looking for usual files to convert (tried the conversion tool as well). Thanks Sony for your shit once again...

From now on i ll tell any person who mentions Sony to avoid this company and their products. There serious issues with them.

You know what they say: one disatisfied customer tells another ten.. Well i ll make sure i tell 1000s till i die...

There was another guy with the same problem. Please anyone with HMA files that need conversion let me know if u ve found a solution.

There is another suggestion which says to use WinHEx to read the actual code of that HMA file and copy it into a new OMG files or something....blah blah...

Its too late to remember what exactly, i ll try this method when i have some time...

IF anyone wants info on what i am talking about i ll be happy to pass on the details. I ve got the info saved somewhere..

cheers

I ll pay money to someone who can develop a simple tool that you can avoid Sonic Stage all together. Honestly i ll!! I am not a programmer..

Hi,

I have exactly the same problem, with the RH910 unit.

I've just sent an e-mail to Sony asking them for a tool which could extract the audio files from the HMA files. My data are still there, I know it, I just need something to extract them ! I asked Sony twice before, they always answered "sorry, we have no such tools, it's not possible to recover your data". I can't believe that. As you say " Its a matter of going deep into SONY technical support to the people who made Sonic Stage." The problem is "where art these people ??? how to contact them ? will they do something for this problem ?".

Anything else, if you find the german web site you were talking of, please let me know, I will check it.

And tell us if you get an answer from Sony. I'll let you know if my request gives something too. I hope so, I really want to get my recordings back !

Thanks.

Well i forgot to mention that i did receive an early morning call from Sony about my enquiry. I chatted with a guy who as you can guess without wasting time as i did, SOny cant help me out although i have a feeling if i really pester them something may come out. We shoudl form a pressure group!

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  • 2 months later...

:( I think I have the same problem. I was uploading a two and a half hour interview with my grandmother from the MZ-NHF800, and I wanted to be safe (!) so I copied it from the disc to the computer, directly. Then it converted everything to an HMA file and now I can't open it, even with the Sony program. Has anyone found a solution to this??? It's incredibly frustrating, because obviously the data hasn't gone away, it's just converted it to some screwy format.

Anyway, this is the last time I use the Sony. From now on I'm sticking to the Marantz recorders (the PMD 671 and/or 660), which record directly to .wav

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Just want to add my 0.50 $....

People, try to contact various Sony departements in Japan, writing in japanese, if you have a japanese friend that

can write and translate. You probably will get more detailed answers for this matter in a more caring form.

Another advice...why rely on a crappy usb transfer that can make your life a burden ? Go digital or even analog (i.e. realtime recording) through a soundcard first ! Better so than nothing right ? B)

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As far as I can remember, it managed to backup and restore an Hi-MD disk in a previous state by backing up all the relevant files (the HMDHIFI directory and the [something].IND file in the root directory). If you restore all these files ON EXACTLY THE SAME DISK THEY WERE BACKED UP FROM AND WITHOUT HAVING REFORMATTED THE DISK MEANWHILE, the Hi-MD disk will appear in the same state as at the moment of backup. I should retry this procedure to confirm, but I think this works. It would thus be possbile to backup sensitive recordings before uploading them with SonicStage and exposing them to irremediable trashing. If something goes wrong, try to restore all files and upload again. DO NOT REFORMAT THE DISK, otherwise you will render your backed up files unusable.

However, the best solution seems to be the following configuration:

* recording using the new RH-1

* uploading to WAV files from PCM or ATRAC3plus recordings using a Macintosh and the Sony Macintosh software

With this hardware/software combination, upload of recorded tracks is possible EVEN WITH THE WRITE-PROTECTION TAB ON, thus making them absolutely safe (the other side being that the Macintosh software is not prone to crashing).

However, my own experience shows that uploading recordings from another device using this method will not work.

Edited by storm shadow
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In case you haven't yet -- upgrade your SonicStage to v3.4. Versions prior to v3.4 only allowed you one try at uploading your PCM recordings... if your PC crashed in the middle of uploading or whatever, you were out of luck. I believe that with v3.4, this restriction has been removed and you can upload PCM recordings as many times as you want.

Upload restrictions of MIC/analogue recordings were removed in SonicStage 3.2 released last year. SonicStage 3.4 introduced the same for recordings sourced digitally (optical/usb).

Is there any software that ll do it or do i have to ask SONY to do it for me cos i am sure they can decode all these copy write protection crap the do..Copy protect my music from me....ha!

Sony's encryption of recorded content has made many headaches through the years (although considerably less since upload restrictions were removed).

Sony are looking for new and juicy revenue sources.

I suggest they release a software recovery tool and/or service, and actually support their userbase who have priceless recordings that need to be recovered.

Some sort of acknowledgement they were clueless with all this we'll protect your data from yourself DRM nonsense would be nice, too. Faith-restoring, even.

Would be nice of them to implement recording straight to WAV (with a Hi-MD Pro line, perhaps). Would certainly mean something tangible rather than useless 'pro' market positioning offering the actual users nothing.

Good luck with that, and pray that they finally get a clue.

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