MZ-RH1 help required

[se325919]

Hi,

On reading about the MZ-RH1 being the last and most fully featured minidisc recorder available. Read that Sony had dropped all the OpenMG restrictions for the MZ-RH1 and allowed recording and uploading of all legacy formats.

On the strengths of what I'd read, I have gone and bought one.

I have literally hundreds of lossless CD albums downloaded from the likes of metalmadness.org and similar places, which I had been tediously burning on to a CD-RW then playing it back on a DVD player and recording to my Sony 520 deck with a coaxial digital connection. I then put the recorded MD into my Denon 1050 deck with keyboard and jog/shuttle dial, to clip off the first few frames of silence from each track, and title all the tracks manually. I am only interested in normal MD recordings, not HiMD or NetMD, because I want to listen to them on my ordinary portables and car MD players.

I thought if I get the RH1, I could greatly speed up this process by preparing all the albums in WAV format first exactly how I want them on the computer, then transferring to the RH1 in normal SP mode on normal 74min discs of which I have a huge stock, hence the same end result as what I had been making with my previous procedure. As the computer could get the titles from Gracenote, that would even save me time with the titling.

I have SonicStage 4.2 and Easy MD burner, but I can't work out how to transfer wav files to the RH1 to create a standard ordinary SP MD playable in ordinary MD players. It is supposed to support all legacy recording formats.

Also how do you erase a standard MD in the RH1? Formatting it immediately converts it to HiMD format which I do not want.

[kino170878]

The short answer is that the RH1 cannot send or receive SP from the computer. Yes unbelievable but true, there is no SP legacy codec for the PC.

The NetMD transfer mode in Sonicstage can make a disc in 'fake SP' that will play on your old equipment, but it effectively compresses the music twice so forget that one.

You're better off sticking to the good old way of recording music using hardware. That's what I do. I have no use for Hi-MD or NetMD so I know where you are coming from. That Denon 1050 you have is an excellent MD unit by the way, I've been looking for one forever.

The RH1 will however record SP in real time. That's what Sony meant when it said 'compatible with all legacy formats'. You have to read between their lies (sorry lines) to get the real story.

[se325919]

Oh blast, thats a bit pointless. Whats this method you mention which compresses the tracks twice? If they are in WAV (uncompressed) on the computer ready to be transferred, why would it it transcode them twice?

I knew it could not upload to the PC in native normal SP format, but I believe it can upload normal SP files in WAV format. Haven't yet found out how to do that. Will be greatful of any pointers on that. At least that way I can get computer backups of some music and self-recorded files off old minidiscs which I recorded 10 and 11 years ago before I even thought of keeping computer backups.

As for the Denon 1050. I bought it on eBay for £190 about 5 years ago. It is an excellent deck for accurately editing recordings due to its jog shuttle dial. I like the fact that you attach an ordinary PS/2 keyboard for titling as well. However I don't use it for recording for a few reasons: If it has digital record level adjustment, I can't find it. Level meters are always over keen. Recordings which did not peak OVER on Sony and Sharp decks frequently go into the red when played back on the Denon, so this does not give me confidence in its metering. I do not know how old the deck is, but expect it to have an old and inferior Atrac codec compared to my MDS-JE520 Sony deck.

At work I use a Tascam MD350, which allows titling of disc and previously recorded tracks while in record mode. The Denon only allows titling of the track currently being recorded. The CAPS LOCK also works on the Tascam. On the Denon, you have to hold SHIFT for capitals. The Denon seems to be configured for an American keyboard or something certainly not British. A lot of the symbols are on different keys to the British keyboard and you have to guess until you find them. The Tascam however seems more suited to a British keyboard and most of the characters are where they say there are.

Tascam is useless for editing though, with a horrible rehearsal procedure much inferior to the Denon or even the Sony.

The Denon also has the annoying omission of not having a NAME COPY function in the edit menu which is useful on the Sony decks. I also keep a Kenwood portable (Sharp clone) to make use of its NAME STAMP function to

[kino170878]

Yes the RH1 with Sonicstage has an option to upload to Linear PCM (make sure it's PCM and not Atrac3plus 256), after which you then save to WAV. I have never tried it myself as I don't own it and others here can tell you the procedure in more detail. Of course this only applies when transferring to, not from, the PC so you only get 50% functionality at any rate. The good thing about it is that it should transfer the track titles (if any) along with the audio, saves you having to re-title everything. I might get it if just for this purpose only as many others have done.

I myself have many hardware units but they are home decks. The professional units have been more difficult to get hold of and go for eye-popping prices on ebay.

As for the compressing twice bit (from PC to MD), it's a long story but that's basically the price you pay if you want to keep to SP. Again I don't know the details (and maybe nobody does apart from Sony) but I have read on here countless times that the PC will transcode the data to LP2 first and then again to SP on the unit itself.

Edited February 3, 2009 by kino170878

[bobt]

You have to go into the options menu of sonic stage to set it for SP, I've done quite a few that way for my car deck with my NH1, the same options are there for the RH1, forget about the talks of compression and all, the end result is what you hear, and what you hear will be quite nice

Bob

BTW, for Simple burner to work you need a CD, I have heard that an image made of the tracks will work, but I don't know if you can get SP out of SB

[sfbp]

Given your requirements (which are completely reasonable) the only thing the RH1 does for you that you cannot do any other way is perfect and fast upload of SP from MD to PC. That's worth having.

The download (PC-RH1) isn't exactly transcoded twice. It's coded to LP2 and then the LP2 is blank-padded with 0 bits at the RH1 before writing to disk. You can do the optical in thing, and this should record perfect SP but I haven't tried it since there are so many ways to do that not involving the RH1 and I want to keep it for uploading the recordings I keep making on various units (eg MZ-R91 mono gives 160 mins for lecture presentations).

Funny how Apple only dropped the DRM from Itunes only when they won the format war, isn't it?

[Hungerdunger]

I can't work out how to transfer wav files to the RH1 to create a standard ordinary SP MD playable in ordinary MD players.

On the "Transfer" screen of SonicStage, set the MD mode (Right side of screen) to Net MD.

Click on the "Briefcase" icon in the middle of the screen.

Select the third option - SP Transfer mode.

I believe the bitrate for this transfer is 105kbps, but as bobt pointed out, if you're playing the discs in a car player, you should find the results quite acceptable.