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Accessing audio in .hma format

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OK, I'm a complete miniDisc beginner and I have just done two foolish things.

a) I dragged and dropped the contents of a HiMD disc to the desktop, not realizing I had to use SonicStage

B) (even more stupidly) I then formatted the HiMD, seeing that the files were safely stored on my HDD.

Unfortunately my PC doesn't know what to do with the .hma files from the disc. I've tried dragging them back to the minidisc, but this doesn't seem to work.

These audio files are important to me. Any way I can get them back??? I have all the original files from the minidisc so logic tells me there MUST be a way! Apologies if this has already been answered on this forum - please point me to the relevant thread.

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The news is all bad: Say goodbye to those audio files.

Sony doesn't believe in drag-and-drop. Logic does not apply.

HMA is Sony's encryption, tied to your particular computer, your installation of SonicStage, and probably hidden info on the original disc itself. You were supposed to upload to SonicStage and then remove encryption (with File Conversion Tool under SonicStage). Only Sony fully understands the encryption.

Keep the HMA files in case Sony ever relents and releases its encryption keys. It hasn't happened yet.

You can also contact http://www.sonymediaservices.com/ and see if they will help you. If they do, please let us know, but don't get your hopes up.

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Wasn't there an earlier post of an outfit that was able to toc clone a Hi-md disc, try copying the files back to a Hi-md disc, and see if you can find the place that can recover, and say to yourself, self, I will never do that agin, repeat three or more times

Bob

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The news is all bad: Say goodbye to those audio files.

Sony doesn't believe in drag-and-drop. Logic does not apply.

HMA is Sony's encryption, tied to your particular computer, your installation of SonicStage, and probably hidden info on the original disc itself. You were supposed to upload to SonicStage and then remove encryption (with File Conversion Tool under SonicStage). Only Sony fully understands the encryption.

Keep the HMA files in case Sony ever relents and releases its encryption keys. It hasn't happened yet.

You can also contact http://www.sonymediaservices.com/ and see if they will help you. If they do, please let us know, but don't get your hopes up.

Without that encryption, HiMD would've never been allowed to exist. Welcome to the real world.

Cheers

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There was never any reason to encrypt homemade live recordings. There's no encryption on the M-Audio Microtrack, Iriver's H120 and 140, Edirol R01 and R09, etc.

And the antipiracy frenzy around CD tracks downloaded to MD seems pretty excessive when every Sony computer has a CD burner in it. Let's see, would I borrow a CD, convert it through SimpleBurner onto MD, then upload the ATRAC compressed tracks back from the disc to someone else's computer....when I could have just burned another CD?

Meanwhile, even a non-techie like me can see the conceptual flaw in the way all the audio on the minidisc is placed in one giant file. With any corruption of that one big file, everything is lost. Even if encryption was in any way necessary, it could have been applied to separate groups or tracks so that one glitch doesn't ruin everything.

Sorry, but I'm not the one whose reality checks are bouncing. That would be Sony.

Edited by A440
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OK, I'm a complete miniDisc beginner and I have just done two foolish things.

a) I dragged and dropped the contents of a HiMD disc to the desktop, not realizing I had to use SonicStage

B) (even more stupidly) I then formatted the HiMD, seeing that the files were safely stored on my HDD.

Unfortunately my PC doesn't know what to do with the .hma files from the disc. I've tried dragging them back to the minidisc, but this doesn't seem to work.

These audio files are important to me. Any way I can get them back??? I have all the original files from the minidisc so logic tells me there MUST be a way! Apologies if this has already been answered on this forum - please point me to the relevant thread.

Along with the HMA files , when you were in the MD folders , there were system files that contained the info on the HMA files , when you formatted the disc you erased the system files along with the Tags for the HMA files , There isnt a way to duplicate that .

Rule #1 : Never Mess with a file who's extension you do not know and understand exactly what it is for and what it does .

The rule applies to ALL computer related stuff and is stated in every computer seminar you might take ( although it's position in the rules might be different depending on the instructor)

To mess with files you dont know , is like walking into an East St Louis neighbourhood late at at night , and you dont know anybody .............. your asking for it.

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There was never any reason to encrypt homemade live recordings. There's no encryption on the M-Audio Microtrack, Iriver's H120 and 140, Edirol R01 and R09, etc.

And the antipiracy frenzy around CD tracks downloaded to MD seems pretty excessive when every Sony computer has a CD burner in it. Let's see, would I borrow a CD, convert it through SimpleBurner onto MD, then upload the ATRAC compressed tracks back from the disc to someone else's computer....when I could have just burned another CD?

Meanwhile, even a non-techie like me can see the conceptual flaw in the way all the audio on the minidisc is placed in one giant file. With any corruption of that one big file, everything is lost. Even if encryption was in any way necessary, it could have been applied to separate groups or tracks so that one glitch doesn't ruin everything.

Sorry, but I'm not the one whose reality checks are bouncing. That would be Sony.

M-Audio and Edirol put together are miniscule grains of sand compared to the beach that is Sony, which experienced crippling historic threats of lawsuits from a certain group of US lawyers years ago and now is itself being run by the same scummy bunch. You know, the slime that is currently threatening civilian populations with similar lawsuits around the world if they had the chance? They even tried to put copy protection on CDs, but since those are also in common use on computers, they faced a tidal wave of resistance. But enough with the history lesson. :)

Oh, and by the way, as you mentioned iriver used to have the option of creating home recordings of sorts. That capability disappeared fairly quickly. I wonder why? :) Is it because the US mass market wouldn't allow it? Hmmmm...

I for one am grateful that somebody somewhere got around this "reality check" for so many years.

Cheers

EDIT: Fixed a bit of the abysmal grammar. Sorry 'bout that.

PS: PlaysForSure, anybody? I'll take Sony any day. :)

Edited by e1ghtyf1ve
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There is no way to play HMA files, even if you are be able to put them onto a HiMD disc again (it is impossible to restore pointers and indexes). This has nothing to do with copyright protection or DRM. This is just HiMD technology. Same as there's no way to play CDA files, after you copied them from a CD to your computer (not a perfect example, but still...).

Edited by Avrin
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Sony, which experienced crippling historic threats of lawsuits from a certain group of US lawyers years ago and now is itself being run by the same scummy bunch. You know, the slime that is currently threatening civilian populations with similar lawsuits around the world if they had the chance? They even tried to put copy protection on CDs, but since those are also in common use on computers, they faced a tidal wave of resistance. But enough with the history lesson. :)

In the Betamax case, Sony was sued by television studios for allowing people to record programs to watch later. Sony, and consumers, won the case, establishing historic protections for end users back when Sony was only an electronics company. Then Sony bought CBS Records (Columbia et al.) and Columbia Studios (no relation to CBS) and became a copyright holder, and promptly regretted its Betamax victory. The music and movie studios started dictating to the electronics side. You said "never been allowed to exist." You don't mean allowed under the legal system--you mean allowed by Sony's completely schizophrenic business team. And in that you are probably correct.

But they were the ones being unrealistic. In minidisc's early days, when it was an improvement on the cassette and home CD burners didn't exist, perhaps uploading didn't matter. But by the time Sony made Hi-MD, it was more than obvious that people wanted to transfer their recordings to computer.

Sony knew it too: hence uploading capability, more or less. Then Marcnet--all by himself, a one-man paradigm shift--came up with Hi-MD Renderer--which, some people remember, was the first program that freed MD recordings from SonicStage. Sony followed with .wav converter as an add-on, then built .wav conversion into newer versions of SonicStage. And now, without much publicity, the File Conversion Tool makes .oma files portable to any computer with SonicStage installed.

Let's not forget, Sony is making VAIO computers with built-in CD burners (like every other computer) and even--ohmigod--DVD burners. I don't understand how Sony Music and Sony Pictures tolerate that.

By now, the game is over. Sony should release software that nullifies encryption and makes all Hi-MDs drag-and-drop. It should license or make public its ATRAC codecs so they can be plugins for other media players. The idea that it can force people into Sony's own ATRAC universe is beyond delusional.

I'm getting increasingly exasperated with SonicStage. Even 4.2, which is relatively stable, sometimes decides it doesn't want to upload files on the first try, then uploads then fine on a retry. But I shouldn't have to upload, unencrypt (to make a safety copy) and convert--I should be able to drag and drop a file that I can play anywhere.

When a solid flash recorder with track marking, level control and decent mic preamps comes along, I will feel no loyalty to minidisc. Even now, if I'm just recording voice, I bring along my Iriver T30 with its dinky little voice mic and low bitrate mp3 recording, and then I just drag-and-drop that file onto my computer instead of the higher-quality Hi-MD recording. Sometimes convenience is more important than sound quality. And if Sony had ever had a clue, I could have had both.

Edited by A440
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In the Betamax case, Sony was sued by television studios for allowing people to record programs to watch later. Sony, and consumers, won the case, establishing historic protections for end users back when Sony was only an electronics company. Then Sony bought CBS Records (Columbia et al.) and Columbia Studios (no relation to CBS) and became a copyright holder, and promptly regretted its Betamax victory. The music and movie studios started dictating to the electronics side. You said "never been allowed to exist." You don't mean allowed under the legal system--you mean allowed by Sony's completely schizophrenic business team. And in that you are probably correct.

But they were the ones being unrealistic. In minidisc's early days, when it was an improvement on the cassette and home CD burners didn't exist, perhaps uploading didn't matter. But by the time Sony made Hi-MD, it was more than obvious that people wanted to transfer their recordings to computer.

Sony knew it too: hence uploading capability, more or less. Then Marcnet--all by himself, a one-man paradigm shift--came up with Hi-MD Renderer--which, some people remember, was the first program that freed MD recordings from SonicStage. Sony followed with .wav converter as an add-on, then built .wav conversion into newer versions of SonicStage. And now, without much publicity, the File Conversion Tool makes .oma files portable to any computer with SonicStage installed.

Let's not forget, Sony is making VAIO computers with built-in CD burners (like every other computer) and even--ohmigod--DVD burners. I don't understand how Sony Music and Sony Pictures tolerate that.

By now, the game is over. Sony should release software that nullifies encryption and makes all Hi-MDs drag-and-drop. It should license or make public its ATRAC codecs so they can be plugins for other media players. The idea that it can force people into Sony's own ATRAC universe is beyond delusional.

I'm getting increasingly exasperated with SonicStage. Even 4.2, which is relatively stable, sometimes decides it doesn't want to upload files on the first try, then uploads then fine on a retry. But I shouldn't have to upload, unencrypt (to make a safety copy) and convert--I should be able to drag and drop a file that I can play anywhere.

When a solid flash recorder with track marking, level control and decent mic preamps comes along, I will feel no loyalty to minidisc. Even now, if I'm just recording voice, I bring along my Iriver T30 with its dinky little voice mic and low bitrate mp3 recording, and then I just drag-and-drop that file onto my computer instead of the higher-quality Hi-MD recording. Sometimes convenience is more important than sound quality. And if Sony had ever had a clue, I could have had both.

Actually, I had the DAT fiasco in mind. :) Or any other leading technology (at the time) that got killed in the consumer market due in no small part to the criminal activities of the media cartels. A lot of people still think that Sony bought a small part of Hollywood when in fact it seems, looking back at who took over, to have been the other way around. ;)

Anyway, getting back to software, drag'n drop with HiMD works great for those of us using OSX, with no encryption whatsoever. :) Right now my MT is an expensive paperweight, as nobody wants to buy it from me. ;)

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Drag & drop of Hi-MD audio recordings?

Correct, and as long as you stay away from ATRAC, no encryption per se either. For the RH1, this leaves PCM/WAV and to a lesser extent mp3 (download only). The transfer software (really just a driver) is much less powerful than SS4.3, but seems (to me) to approach flash drives in speed. How about that! :)

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Fabulous, hand it over!! Post a donate to Mr.85 PayPal link & Bob's your uncle, I'm sure many here would contribute to your driver software hack/creation.

That's pretty funny. :lol2: I'm talking about Hi-MD Transfer for the Mac 2.0. It's really mostly just a driver, and the "program" only consists of a window to drag'n drop. Make sense now? ;)

Edited by e1ghtyf1ve
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It's still sure is handy! No Sony software, that's nice, + drag 'n drop. Any chance of extending your genius to PC?

Now I understand (85 IQ, what did you expect?) - no, the driver was written by Sony for OS X. Sorry about not being clear.

Cheers

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It's still sure is handy! No Sony software, that's nice, + drag 'n drop. Any chance of extending your genius to PC?

MD Transfer IS SONY WIZ ,,,,,,,,, That is what he was saying !!!

It is the tiny prog they made for MACINTOSH , but So very handy and uncluttered , very Drag and Drop :imsohappy:

I had my first threeway Video conference today in iChat we tried to get four , but not enough bandwidth . Three guy , two guitars , and a Rennaissance Lute , .......now if we could have had some virtual BEER !

85 ...you on a Mac by chance??? ahhh I see that u are

My Bad

Macbook Pro Core2Duo here

Edited by Guitarfxr
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MD Transfer IS SONY WIZ ,,,,,,,,, That is what he was saying !!!

It is the tiny prog they made for MACINTOSH , but So very handy and uncluttered , very Drag and Drop :imsohappy:

I had my first threeway Video conference today in iChat we tried to get four , but not enough bandwidth . Three guy , two guitars , and a Rennaissance Lute , .......now if we could have had some virtual BEER !

85 ...you on a Mac by chance??? ahhh I see that u are

My Bad

Macbook Pro Core2Duo here

Macbook Pro C2D here as well, my wiser brother! :drinks:

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O rI I C... so 85 wuz just describin' da official MD transfer fer Mac by Sny... k, k... well, I've been real slow on that one... but I never have used the RH1 with a MAC... yet.

You should try it sometime .... you know what they say .....Once you go Mac , you never go Back , .....oh wait that was another phrase ???

:dirol:

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