From MiniDisc to Smartphone - Thanks!

[JMay]

I was busy with coursework, so I finally installed Sonicstage Ultimate (from this forum, of course) along with the NetMD driver (again, from this forum). Both installed with no problem. I had an RH1 with a regular MD that had some stuff on it, so I tested the software off. I should tell you that I was doing this on a laptop with Windows 7 Home Premium (which was notoriously not working with SonicStage according to some).

Long story short, I managed to get the stuff off of the MD into my Library, then did the WAV conversion and saved it on my desktop. One trip to Audacity later, I got it on my smartphone. So, for those of you who were too nervous to try SonicStage on your Windows 7 Home Premium (64 Bit), I'm here to tell you that as long as you got it from this forum, it'll work just fine - no compatibility mode, no tinkering. It'll work out of the box. You should install the Net MD driver if you want to transfer stuff from standard MiniDiscs. It's really painless. Thanks to whoever fixed up SonicStage so that it could survive into 2013 - big ups.

And thanks to all of you who assured me that this would not break my computer, I feel a lot better now. What sort of cool Minidisc tricks should I try now that I got everything set up?

[PhilippeC]

For your penitence to just join now, read (once again?) all the minidisc.org FAQs : http://minidisc.org/faq_index.html

And try if your ears are not to much sensitive to no-DSP-within-my-Hi-Fi-sound-chain the DFX audio enhancer : http://www.fxsound.com/ with Sonic Stage any audio player (I use foobar 2000). My settings 5 to 8 - 0 - 3 - 3 - 3.

You can listen to your MDs inside your RH1 connected to your computer, using DFX as a sound card with Sonic Stage.

Maybe your internal or external sound card will have some problems using Wasapi or Asio4all drivers while you are using DFX, I have noticed less problems with the DS driver. I use it for my MD recordings (except with tracks originaly recorded in studio with too much dynamics, DFX can make some distorsion). Sadly the Replaygain plugin to normalize all your music collection is not available for Sonic Stage but you can use it with foobar2000.

As a MD trick for your future recordings, I would remind you not to use Sonic Stage to transfer audio tracks in SP mode to your MDs. Instead, any player (like foobar2000 or Winamp) which have a plugin to create one 2 second silence between tracks (creating small tracks that yoy can erase with any Net-MD unit like your RH1). SS create a false SP, looking like SP for beeing more a LP2 quality.