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MD Drive - MD to MP3 ?!?!?

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Dear All,...

I have owned an MD Player,... and then some years ago, bought a NetMD player thinking that it would solve my dilemma of how to take my MD music off the MDs onto the computer or onto CD, etc. But I didn't realise that the software that came with it only allowed music that was already in the computer only to be transferred on and off,... and existing MDs could not be copied back on to the computer.

I was, and still am to some extent an avid fan of the format and lament its demise to some degree.

Still, I would like to know of a way to be able to copy my MDs back into the computer or at least on to a CD which could then be ripped back into my computer. Basically, I want those tracks off the MD.

How can it be done - !? Simplest possible way?

Most appreciated if someone can help solve this dilemma of 3+ years,.... !!

Thanks,...

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  • 2 weeks later...

How did you record the disc? The only way to upload old legacy recordings is via the RH1. If the tracks are from NetMD, you cannot upload them other than doing realtime recording back. There are already plenty of alternatives available in the past 3 years. :)

That's patently nonsense. Sony made minidisc decks for over 10 years with optical out. I have bought 3 of them (1 about 6 years ago, and 2 more when it busted, earlier this year). The optical out can go into your computer without any problem.

Sony must have done something magic with the 292kbps format of the original MD. The uploaded results sound so close to CD quality, even the same thing uploaded on MZ-RH1 doesn't compare (yes I have one, and I did the comparison). My personal suspicion is that they couldn't duplicate the work of the original programmer (I read somewhere about some tricks he used) and were stuck with this code that they couldn't even augment to do upload etc. Never ascribe to a conspiracy what might be simple incompetence.

Also with MZ-RH1 you will get at most x2 upload speed (on SP discs). Hardly worth the money, whereas for $100 you can buy a second hand deck with optical out (check on the information pages to see which models do) and for $25-30 a sound card with optical in. Now you can make beautiful recordings, no SCMS to worry about as the sound card won't care.

Also on the decks you can record speech in mono, so that increases your capacity a lot, a great feature. I don't have a deck with the MDLP formats (LP2 and LP4) but there is a list here

http://www.minidisc.org/part_Decks_Sony.html

Many of these show up on a weekly or so basis on Ebay. Happy hunting!

Cheers

Stephen

Edited by sfbp
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I have come to the conclusion that my real time recordings actually sound better , to my ears ,than downloads. Especially the stuff I take off vinyl

Second Law of Thermodynamics... you don't get something for nothing? I agree with you 100%.

The price you pay for the USB fast upload (IMO) is the loss of squeezing it to ATRAC 256K. Somehow the original coder managed to avoid it with the SP and Sony has been scratching its corporate head ever since. He decodes it in some pseudo lossless manner and then playing that back on optical is as good as it gets. I assume you mean that you, too, upload in real time via optical out?

http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=19514

However I think the RH1 has the ability to "save" the whole concept of MD, so don't let's knock it too much. Maybe Sony's apparent reversal in favour of MDSP is technology based after all.......

I wonder how an HiMD deck would sound, if I can ever afford it. Especially if it would record 240 mins of SP (or so) on a 1GB disk.. that might be the best of all possible worlds. I thought I saw a reference from someone here that hacked a machine to do that, but maybe I misunderstood the post.

Meanwhile the interesting test is 95 mins on a 1GB with raw WAV 1411 on RH1. I just got some affordable 1 GB disks, so maybe that's an experiment to try sometime soon.

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I recorded a number of high quality Wav based Hi MD discs when I first got the RH1. The sound quality is great but when I tried to upload them to my Mac it was a no go. I have forsaken that so as to have a back up to my hard drive that i can easily access. Also, the 5 bucks a pop for the discs is hard on my wallet

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I recorded a number of high quality Wav based Hi MD discs when I first got the RH1. The sound quality is great but when I tried to upload them to my Mac it was a no go. I have forsaken that so as to have a back up to my hard drive that i can easily access. Also, the 5 bucks a pop for the discs is hard on my wallet

I Think the Mac software has some limitations on what it can upload, but several other users seem to be ablt to have a workeable solution. As to $5/disc. the RH1 can use regular MD's, and those go for way cheap on ebay

Bob

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The price you pay for the USB fast upload (IMO) is the loss of squeezing it to ATRAC 256K. Somehow the original coder managed to avoid it with the SP and Sony has been scratching its corporate head ever since.

Original SP is 292kbps. It's not lossless, but you can upload it as WAV (not losing original quality) using the RH1. There is also the option to upload it as Atrac3+ 256kbps, but that is transcoding, which may or may not introduce a potentially negligible amount of quality loss.

Either way, do whatever sounds best to you and fits your needs.

Edited by raintheory
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Original SP is 292kbps. It's not lossless, but you can upload it as WAV (not losing original quality) using the RH1. There is also the option to upload it as Atrac3+ 256kbps, but that is transcoding, which may or may not introduce a potentially negligible amount of quality loss.

Either way, do whatever sounds best to you and fits your needs.

Just because you choose WAV on output doesn't necessarily mean it will be transmitted as WAV. I get the strong impression that it transfers as some other format (probably 256K) and then SS makes the WAV file from that. This WAV file compares quite unfavourably with SP->Optical In, as I documented in my very first post here. Perhaps I was mistaken, and I used the wrong options... pretty easy to do I think.

I agree that there are some options which *force* the software to do something different... BUT, it doesn't ever keep it as SP on the computer, (right?), and I get the strong impression that the WAV file is made at the very end. But perhaps some longer sufferer of SS can put me straight on this point. Certainly the SP option is (getting on for) as slow as straight playback.

I upload legacy recordings from the MZ-RH1 as a last resort. It seems sooooo busy, I am concerned for the poor thing's health :rolleyes:

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I recorded a number of high quality Wav based Hi MD discs when I first got the RH1. The sound quality is great but when I tried to upload them to my Mac it was a no go. I have forsaken that so as to have a back up to my hard drive that i can easily access. Also, the 5 bucks a pop for the discs is hard on my wallet

If you recorded them Optical , yeah , it is a "no go " but if you record Analouge , they will upload fine.

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Just because you choose WAV on output doesn't necessarily mean it will be transmitted as WAV. I get the strong impression that it transfers as some other format (probably 256K) and then SS makes the WAV file from that. This WAV file compares quite unfavourably with SP->Optical In, as I documented in my very first post here. Perhaps I was mistaken, and I used the wrong options... pretty easy to do I think.

I agree that there are some options which *force* the software to do something different... BUT, it doesn't ever keep it as SP on the computer, (right?), and I get the strong impression that the WAV file is made at the very end. But perhaps some longer sufferer of SS can put me straight on this point. Certainly the SP option is (getting on for) as slow as straight playback.

I upload legacy recordings from the MZ-RH1 as a last resort. It seems sooooo busy, I am concerned for the poor thing's health :rolleyes:

There is no actual SP codec for PC, that is true.

As far as transcoding from SP to Hi-SP then to PCM (when upload as PCM is selected), there was some debate on taperssection regarding this, and my frequency analysis can be found here: http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?s=&am...st&p=125745 which shows a definite difference between SP uploaded as PCM vs SP uploaded as Hi-SP. Based on that, I can say with at least some certainty that SP uploaded as PCM is not transcoded to Hi-SP first. Thus, it should be retaining it's original quality when transferred as PCM.

EDIT: What I suspect is that the option to "automatically convert uploaded files to WAV" is checked (which is a different option), and the default option for SP uploads isn't changed to PCM (default is Atrac3+ 256kbps). When you upload SP as PCM, you will end up with a PCM file in SonicStage (instead of a 256kbps Atrac3+ file, which you wou7ld get if the SP upload setting has not been changed from it's default). Do a simple test, don't change any of your current options and upload an SP file. Right-click on the file after it is in the Library and check the properties. This will show either PCM or Atrac3+ 256kbps. If it is the latter, you need to change your importing options under transfer settings NetMD/advanced/import options to PCM.. See image below:

post-1817-1192151959_thumb.jpg

If you recorded them Optical , yeah , it is a "no go " but if you record Analouge , they will upload fine.

??? I could've sworn I've uploaded optical PCM recordings (to PC and Mac)... hmm.. it's been awhile though so I could be wrong about the Mac aspect, but I'm almost positive you can do it via SonicStage (any recent version) just fine..

Edited by raintheory
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You're right. With the convert to Wav option set, I get two files, almost the same size, one of "OMA" at 1411khz and one wave file. The transition from one to the other is so fast I suspect the "OMA" format is std CD format with some header attached.

And it takes place at exactly x1. Back to the deck, there's no savings visible here.

Stephen

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it has been stated before that you can upload recordings made with the optical input!

Yep, it works just fine uploading optical PCM to SonicStage. I'm going to try the Mac upload again to see if it works...

What version of the Mac music transfer are you using? Be sure to grab the most recent from the downloads section if things aren't working.

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