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TRANSFERING FILES FROM MD RECORDER TO COMPUTER

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Years ago I interviewed many family members using my Net MD Walkman MZ-N707, and now I would like to transfer these recordings to my laptop (I have Windows 10).
Yesterday I bought a high speed USB cable Type A to Mini B, and used it to connect my MD to my laptop. I played the recording from my MD player while using Audacity to hopefully record what was on my MD. But, alas, what appeared on my MD window were words in effect that my MD would be downloading info from my laptop, not the other way around. 
How can I transfer these interviews from my MD recorder to my laptop? I also possess old CDs, one from Laplink, "PCmover + PCsync." as well as "MD Simple Burner, Version 3.0 for MD." I don't know if these would be useful or not. Thanks!

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As the old joke goes "If I was you I wouldn't start from here, sorr".

You can never transfer from NetMD to PC, EXCEPT with the MZ-RH1 (and even then only if they were not made by USB transfer in the first place).

HiMD is a different story but the files need to be unencrypted (File Conversion Tool) to start with (before transfer to MD).

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Sonic Stage is a software that is rather badly designed by Sony and even is not supported since MP3 is dominating the field!

Sonic Stage should enable transfer in both directions, but does not. Furthermore, Windows 10 blocks installation of Sony drivers as the signature is missing. What is the result of this? Only Software experts and nerds can manage to transfer Atrac 3 SP and LP recordings directly as oma files from the Walkman to PC.

 

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@wolb1 there is complete procedure explained many times on this forum to install with success Sony MD drivers on a PC with Windows 10. No need of a high expertise. Nethertheless, only the MZ-RH1 and its Mac version are able to transfer an old recordings to the PC with Sonic Stage (as said Stephen, sfbp, and even then only if they were not made by USB transfer in the first place).

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Joining in the chorus of "Oh no, John, no John, no John, no" the principal reason you cannot transfer from NetMD to the computer is hardware limitation. It's not fast enough since it's specced for USB 1.1 (all there was at the time). Even the hack to get it to work TO the minidisc meant they couldn't do SP transfers (too much data). So ONLY the RH1 allows the other direction. Sony was very rigid about one thing in their design and implementation - good sound quality. They never implemented anything that was unreliable. Hence the huge numbers of MD followers that believe in this format. Hi-MD came later and works fine in both directions.

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You need a standalone CD recorder to do this. (Sorry, I forgot to mention that!) Just copy the MD to CD that way and then the CD can be imported to the PC, assuming that the PC has an optical drive. Without the standalone, the PC would have to be able to accept digital or analog input, which requires software, such as Garage Band (Mac). I just use the MD > CD-RW > iTunes method. Since I am not using Sonic Stage, that also eliminates the dreaded faux SP problem.

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If your computer's sound card has a line-in, you can just connect the line out jack, or headphone jack if that player doesn't have a line out, and record using audacity. Since it's voice recordings, I don't think the drop in quality from doing it all analog will be significant enough to cause an issue.

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23 hours ago, PhilippeC said:

@wolb1 there is complete procedure explained many times on this forum to install with success Sony MD drivers on a PC with Windows 10. No need of a high expertise. Nethertheless, only the MZ-RH1 and its Mac version are able to transfer an old recordings to the PC with Sonic Stage (as said Stephen, sfbp, and even then only if they were not made by USB transfer in the first place).

Hi Phillippe,

A link to instructions

I had installed the drivers in November 2017 and February this year,  transferred tracks from Net-MD and now Windows says, 

Device is ready
Net-MD/Hi-MD is set up and ready to go

but in the Device Manager it says

Currently not connected Code 45.

It seems the driver have been lost from alone!

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On 6/5/2019 at 5:13 PM, SpooForBrains said:

If your computer's sound card has a line-in, you can just connect the line out jack, or headphone jack if that player doesn't have a line out, and record using audacity. Since it's voice recordings, I don't think the drop in quality from doing it all analog will be significant enough to cause an issue.

Entirely agree. I've done a few like this without any major problems. Only thing is the time it takes. To allow for the initial recording, then any editing, adjusting levels, labelling tracks and tidying up suggest you allow roughly double the length of the MD. So if you've got a an hour interview allow 2 hours to get it all done.

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