uploading old SP discs using MZ-RH1

[jbdance]

I have a library of old MDs. (SP-mode, stereo: the original MD format before LP, LP2, HiMD etc). These are used for dance rehearsals and they have rehearsal points (track markers) in the middle of the music, not just in the silence between songs.

I want to upload these to the computer using my new MZ-RH1 HiMD unit, which I bought because I read it was supposed to be able to do this. In SonicStage under Tools-> Options-> Transfer -> NetMD/HiMD -> Transfer Mode Settings I have "Standard transfer mode: Transfers the file "as is" (no conversion). The track names appear on the screen, and the upload from MD to computer appears to go quickly and work properly (using SonicStage Version 3.4.03.15140 on WinXP SP2).However when I test it out by writing out all the files to a new blank MD, there is a problem.

First, when writing the new MD, SonicStage says "one or more files cannot be written in their current bitrate. They will be converted and transferred. Please select a bit rate" (LP2 Stereo, LP4 Stereo, Stereo). I chose "Stereo" and wrote the new disc. (if the file came from MD with no conversion, why can it not be written back with no conversion?)

At any rate, when I play the new MD back, the music is there, but there is a "pop" or "click" sound at each new track. These clicks were NOT present in the original.

Am I doing something wrong, or does this software/hardware just not work the way I thought it did (losslessly transfer music to and from minidisc) ?

thanks for any advice!

[Richard]

The SP mode tracks will be converted to either Hi-SP or PCM when you upload. Depending on the option you choose in the advanced transfer settings. It sounds like yours are uploading at Hi-SP and hence when you try to download them on to another NetMD disc it is asking you to convert them. I would suggest uploading them as PCM if you need to copy back to further NetMD formatted discs (non Hi-MD discs). You won't in fact be able to copy them back as true SP if you are using NetMD formatted discs.

To avoid the gaps, make sure you have the view in SS set to Albums / Playlists and then transfer the entire top-level album as opposed to going into the album / group and selecting all tracks.

* Moved to Software Discussion

[jbdance]

The SP mode tracks will be converted to either Hi-SP or PCM when you upload. Depending on the option you choose in the advanced transfer settings. It sounds like yours are uploading at Hi-SP and hence when you try to download them on to another NetMD disc it is asking you to convert them. I would suggest uploading them as PCM if you need to copy back to further NetMD formatted discs (non Hi-MD discs). You won't in fact be able to copy them back as true SP if you are using NetMD formatted discs.

To avoid the gaps, make sure you have the view in SS set to Albums / Playlists and then transfer the entire top-level album as opposed to going into the album / group and selecting all tracks.

I selected convert to PCM, set the view to Albums / Playlists, and transferred the entire album. The whole thing plays back just fine on the computer from SonicStage, with no clicks between tracks. The problem is when I then transfer this to a new MD. When I play back the new MD it has an audible "click" glitch in between tracks, that the original MD did not have. I want to make a new MD that sounds exactly like my original MD, but it is not working.

Has anyone done this successfully? I am thinking maybe Sony only tested MDs with track points in the silence in between songs, and they aren't even aware of this glitch.

By the way I tried using the WAV files exported from SonicStage. When I assembled those separate files together in another program (Sony Vegas 7) they played smoothly on the computer with no glitch between tracks. The only problem is when I try to write a new MD and play that back in the MD player.

Edited January 9, 2007 by jbdance

[jbdance]

I've been using MiniDiscs for many years, but now I am learning a little bit more about the details. Let's see if I've got this right.

The RH1 will record in Hi-SP, ATRAC3plus/256 kbps on a HiMD disc, but if you use a standard disc it will record with ATRAC/292 kbps in SP mode, or ATRAC3/132 or /66 kbps in LP2 or LP4 modes respectively (from RH1 user manual p. 81-82).

Until I got the MZ-RH1 last month, all my MD recorders were "old-fashioned". They recorded in stereo SP mode, that is original ATRAC at 292 kbps.

When I put one of my old minidiscs with a stereo SP (ATRAC/292 kbps) track into my RH1 and upload the track to my computer using SonicStage 3.4, and check the "Track Properties" -> File Info it reads ATRAC3plus/256 kbps. If that's true, then SonicStage must have converted the file, even though I had Tools/Options/Transfer/NetMD/Transfer Mode set to:

Standard transfer mode: Transfers the file "as is" (no conversion).

I'm worried that Sonic Stage 3.4 may not be able to handle original ATRAC/292 kbps at all. But if that is true, then why does p.82 of the RH1 user manual have a table listing this format?

(p. 82) When transferring FROM the computer:

ATRAC (stereo)/292 kbps Recording time: 80 minute standard disc: 1 hour and 20 minutes

How exactly do I get Sonic Stage to transfer ATRAC/292 kbps files to my RH1? Has anyone done this? Is there some other software that is capable of writing ATRAC/292 kbps, if SonicStage is not?

[KJ_Palmer]

None of the versions of Sonicstage actually handle the original SP ATRAC 292kbps, but a 'fake' version of SP can be output in NetMD mode for compatibility with older MD machines. The 'fake' SP is actually LP2 padded up to SP format in Sonicstage.

The only way to get true SP is by recording directly onto the RH1 in realtime via a stereo line cable or (preferably) an optical digital cable from a source CD player etc.

[raintheory]

There are a few threads right now that touch on this.

When you upload SP recordings via RH1, you specify whether it is uploaded as Hi-SP or PCM. Personally I have always uploaded these as PCM with no problems.

The original 292kbps SP Atrac codec is not in the software. I'm not sure why, but something tells me it has to do with licensing/patents and Dolby:

http://www.minidisc.org/minidisc_faq.html#_q47

http://www.minidisc.org/patents/abs/US05394473.html

Edited January 10, 2007 by raintheory

[jbdance]

The original 292kbps SP Atrac codec is not in the software. I'm not sure why, but something tells me it has to do with licensing/patents and Dolby:

http://www.minidisc.org/minidisc_faq.html#_q47

http://www.minidisc.org/patents/abs/US05394473.html

Very interesting, thanks for that info. PCM ought to be fine for me, the reason I was trying to get the "original bits" is I suspected that something in the conversion from and back to Atrac/292k was causing me to get the "glitches" in between tracks. Basically I want to be able to make an exact copy of an existing Atrac/292k MD with the same track divisions, without hearing a click or pop noise in between tracks in the new copy. However, so far I cannot do it.

It seems the only way to get a perfect copy is to join the entire disc into one long file, write that to the new disc, and then afterwards re-apply all the track divisions and re-title them, a time-intensive process I was hoping to avoid.

Here's another question then: Is there a way to automatically extract track points and labels from one MD and apply them to another one, without scrolling to each track divide point on the player and re-entering each track name?

Update: I did manage to write the disc out as a single WAV file, lay out the track marker times in Vegas (set 75 frames per sec) and author a gapless CD by manually entering the track times in Nero. It is kind of ironic if it's easier to generate the project as a CD than as a MiniDisc!

Edited January 11, 2007 by jbdance

[jimbo561]

This thread seems to be quite old so I hope this reaches someone.

I think this is a bug to do with buffering in the software.

I have some MDs with tracks which run into each other. When transferring from the MZ-RH1 to a PC using sonicstage 4.3 (or ultimate) on Vista or XP, the pop that you hear at the start of the transferred track is actually the end of the previous track. This happens when multiple tracks are selected for transfer and doesn't happen when the tracks are selected and transferred singly. When converted to a .wav file, I estimate (with audacity) that approximately 20000 samples of the previous track remain at the start. If PCM transfer is selected, the problem almost goes away but only because the same number of samples occupies a shorter time. I cannot find any setting or option which might have any bearing on this problem.

The difference between single and multiple transfer is easily seen by looking at the difference in the sizes of the files produced.

Any suggestions?

[Syrius]

Hmm.. Edit the pop out if it's at the beginning?

[jimbo561]

Hmm.. Edit the pop out if it's at the beginning?

Thanks, but don't really relish the prospect of editing 1000s of tracks once transferred. I was really hoping for a response from the support team or somebody who had experienced a similar problem and had found a solution.

[Avrin]

Tracks running into each other is a pefectly normal phenomenon for gapless lossy encoding. It is caused by lossy encoder/decoder delay.

[jimbo561]

Tracks running into each other is a pefectly normal phenomenon for gapless lossy encoding. It is caused by lossy encoder/decoder delay.

Ok, I understand now. Thanks. I'm guessing that the overlap is not of a constant size then? Is there any way of doing single tracks automatically? Is there, for instance, (don't laugh) a command line interface, or an API, or something? I can't find any evidence that there is.

I thought maybe that transferring every other track would fix it, but it doesn't.