Which Hi-MD for Fastest Transfer in 'Fake' SP Mode?

[jmsla]

Hi All,

A question...and sorry if it's already been answered but, I couldn't find ecxactly what I was looking for.

Which Hi-MD unit has the quickest transfer (download?) speed from SonicStage in SP, (yes I know it's fake), mode?

I have available an RH1, an NH1, an NH-900, an NH-600 (no "D") and an MZ-DH-710.

I have up-loaded both a 74 and an 80 minute analoge SP track to SS, saved in .wav. I want to be able to transfer (download) a track to a disc thai I am recycling from some prior owner. The reason being that if I only erase or format a previously recorded disc and then need to TOC clone to recover my own mistakenly erased tracks, I get remnants of the original recordings as well. But. if I record a single track of silence after erasing, (and then erase the silent track of course), I can then record on the disc and if necessary recover my own lost tracks with TOC cloning without getting bits and pieces of the truly awful music some people put on their minidiscs before giving them away.

I don't want to have to do this in real time, hence the 74 and 80 minute tracks of analog silence I uploaded to SS. Now I want to know which of my machines wil transfer theses tracks to a disc the quickest.

Thanks in advance for any replies.

[sfbp]

I think only the MZ-RH1 has USB 2.0 interface, and therefore high speed.

[jmsla]

I think only the MZ-RH1 has USB 2.0 interface, and therefore high speed.

Thanks for the reply sfbp.

The RH1 was my choice for the initial experiment to see if this scheme would work. It seemed to take half the length of the track, (about 37 minutes for the 74 minute track), for the transfer to complete. That seems like a long time and a lot of wear and tear on my best machine.

Wasn

[sfbp]

Ah, you need to catch up on the whole RH1 fast transfer issue.

There's a mega thread on it. Turns out that if the USB system EVER saw one of the other portables (in NetMD mode) the transfers from (and, presumably, to) the RH1 are crippled to about x1 - instead of between x8 and x 30 depending on source and bitrate.

So having decided you want to use the RH1, now you have to clean up windows. Life's a *()_ isn't it?

(all the stuff they quote relates to HiMD mode, I think, which simply doesn't apply in your case).

[Avrin]

The slower USB transfer is related only to SP uploads by the RH1. It shouldn't affect fake-SP downloads, since this function is perfectly handled by any NetMD driver.

As for downloading fake SP to different units, the main factor that affects the speed is not the transfer rate of the USB port, but the performance of the unit's internal DSP that has to decode LP2 to PCM, and then compress it to SP. And all Hi-MD units seem to have more-or-less similar DSPs, so there may hardly be any speed improvement with different units.

But there is a trick to remove an old recording from a legacy disc much faster. Just fill it up to capacity with a silent LP2 track using SonicStage. It doesn't need any conversion, and it should play as silence after TOC cloning.

Edited February 10, 2010 by Avrin

[sfbp]

The slower USB transfer is related only to SP uploads by the RH1. It shouldn't affect fake-SP downloads, since this function is perfectly handled by any NetMD driver.

As for downloading fake SP to different units, the main factor that affects the speed is not the transfer rate of the USB port, but the performance of the unit's internal DSP that has to decode LP2 to PCM, and then compress it to SP. And all Hi-MD units seem to have more-or-less similar DSPs, so there may hardly be any speed improvement with different units.

But there is a trick to remove an old recording from a legacy disc much faster. Just fill it up to capacity with a silent LP2 track using SonicStage. It doesn't need any conversion, and it should play as silence after TOC cloning.

I thought that is what he was attempting to do, Avrin. And saying that it worked at only x2. Or are you implying that the conversion each time is hampering the effort?

I've never cared about true formatting, but somewhere I recall seeing a format function. Can't find it, though.

[Avrin]

Yes, I meant that conversion to SP is only slowing down the process, without doing anything useful.

The Format function is only available in Hi-MD mode, but it doesn't actually format anything. It only deletes all files (including possible data files stored on the disk), and creates a fresh set of system files.

[jmsla]

Thank You Gentlemen,

Your discussion has guided me to the solution.

First off, I did read the long thread quite sometime ago about slow uploads w/ (I thought it was the NH1), and performed the fix as described because I had in fact attached some older Net MD units to my computer. I thought the warning was to avoid attaching any units that were not at least 2nd Generation Hi MD.

But, the real solution lay in the LP2 suggestion. It is indeed light years faster transferring from SS to an MD...6 minutes for a 00:74:56 track from .wav to LP2 as opposed to 30+ minutes to SP.

It did take me a minute, well honestly a bit more, to finally figure out that I needed not a 74+ minute track of line recorded silence but rather, a 148+ minute track. Transferring the 74 minute track in LP2 onto an erased disc left exactly half of the objectionable original recordings on the disc, which I discovered after erasing the transferred track and cloning a fresh TOC to the disc as a test. Good that I did.

So I loaded my 74 minute track into Audacity, which doubled it for me creating a 148+ minute track of line recorded silence. (Although it manifests as 'white noise' static when played but, not after being erased and recovered with a cloned TOC. Then it's silent.) The 148 minute .wav track is 1.47GB which I am storing on a thumb drive and import to SS to use only when I have some discs to clean up for future use. SS imports and accesses the track from the thumb drive so I never have to load it onto my computer hard drive at all. The transfer from SS to MD takes 11 to 12 minutes and completely obliterates the original recordings.

Many thanks, you guys are great,

-jmsla

James

Brooklyn, NY

[Avrin]

You may import the 148 minute WAV file into SonicStage, convert it to LP2 with copy protection (it is mandatory when transfering in NetMD mode), and then delete the original WAV from SonicStage. Then the program will transfer it even faster, since there won't be any need for a WAV to ATRAC3 conversion before the transfer. And the track will be usable as long as your SonicStage installation is not changed.

[jmsla]

You may import the 148 minute WAV file into SonicStage, convert it to LP2 with copy protection (it is mandatory when transfering in NetMD mode), and then delete the original WAV from SonicStage. Then the program will transfer it even faster, since there won't be any need for a WAV to ATRAC3 conversion before the transfer. And the track will be usable as long as your SonicStage installation is not changed.

If I convert the .wav file to LP2, aren't I creating one of those OMA files we are advised to delete in preference to the .wav format? And, I've noticed that the conversion part takes place rather quickly...2 or 3 minutes. It's the transferring, (recording), onto the minidisc that requires more time.

Also , nothing in my SS library is copy protected and I put tracks on disc in NetMD mode all the time. Everything I have is a .wav file; line in and mike recordings as well as commercial CD tracks. I just check the box that instructs SS to convert the tracks to .wav when uploading anything. If SS tells me that it can't find or play or import a file that is "not associated with SonicStage" I simply go to the file in my hard drive folder, right click then tell it to play in SS. Then it magically become "associated " with SS and I can import it. I don't claim to understand what's happening, I just know how to make it go.

-jmsla

OK Arvin...I should have known better than to try and second guess a master. I improted the .wav file, convetted it to a 132kbps ATRAC file, checked the box to add copy protection and then purged the huge .wav file from my hard drive. So I have an OMA file in SS that is 149:52 long @ 132kbps. It downloads, w/o conversion, to minidisc in 8 minutes using an MZ-NH900. I'll test if its any faster downlosding to the RH1. Now I can clean up the dozens of second had discs I've got and record confident that if I trash a live recording I can get it back clean. thanks again.

Edited February 14, 2010 by jmsla

[THIS SUCKS]

the answer to your first question about which units transfer fake sp the fastest. is to find some of the older sharp units i believe they had a 4x speed transfer for fake sp...

[jmsla]

the answer to your first question about which units transfer fake sp the fastest. is to find some of the older sharp units i believe they had a 4x speed transfer for fake sp...

Hi there TS,

Thanks for the input. I don't see a lot of Sharp MDs listed and 4X would still be more than 15 minutes. I've have heard that some Sharp units are very good.

Arvin's method, on the other hand, accomplishes my purpose in 4 minutes using my RH1. It's a really good process if you want to start with an unaduterated disc before making a live recording.

-j