The Web MiniDisc Application

[cybercase 7]

Hello Lewis!

15 hours ago, LewisGamer said:

Signed up to say how amazed I am with this app!

Thanks! I'm happy you liked it

14 hours ago, LewisGamer said:

* Use the software to import a CD (with added cddb information) direct to a minidisc player (i have a daft amount of CDs, and to be able to do this would be sweeeeet!)

I second what @Stachu said. You can use Exact Audio Copy to rip your CDs to flac or wav or mp3.... all these formats are supported by the minidisc app. I've also found a quick guide that should help you to get started https://www.techradar.com/how-to/how-to-rip-your-cds-to-flac . I fear that direct CD access is something that browsers cannot really do for now. However, I'll make some research and see if there's a way to do that. 

15 hours ago, LewisGamer said:

*Atrac3+ support... Might be a long shot, but thought I would ask. Loved cramming a shed load of songs onto one minidisc back in the day

To encode the music I've used an external library that currently does not support atrac3+ (https://github.com/dcherednik/atracdenc/). However, I know that the guy who's developing this library has been asked to support atrac3+ as well. I'll keep an eye on his project and make sure to bring atrac3+ support in case he decided to add it to his library.

[zzzuppp 1]

Stefano - another question. I'm using my MZ-RH1, it's worked successfully in MD SP mode (as opposed to Hi-MD).

However, I'm currently trying to use the app to transfer files to an 80' MD in the MZRH-1 which is set to LP2 mode, so I can get 160' onto the MD. I formatted the disc before pluggng it into my Mac and conncting to your app. However when I 'connect' with  your app, it's showing the blank disc as in the screenshot below - ie 1 hour 20 minutes rather than 160'. Before I go any further, is that just a default setting or can I continue to add files up to 160' without it cutting out after 80'-worth?

I can't see anything in the app itself which overrides the disc format.

[Another MD fanatic 3]

Finally got round to trying this app. I had put it off for a while, simply because I couldn't really be bothered to mess around with the driver business. However, I've recently been experimenting with some alternative operating systems, mainly Linux but one exception - Prime OS. For the benefit of anyone who's not familiar with Prime OS, it's an Android system that can be installed on desktops and laptops. So I tried it on that - Success! And without any problems.

Just for testing purposes I put together a mix of about 10 tracks, some in SP and some LP2. Played the disc back, no issues. Now another test,  I took the disc and popped it into JE480 deck. Deleted couple of tracks, and moved a couple to rearrange the order. No problem, no sign of TrProtect. For me, and I suspect a few other people, that's brilliant.

Possibly the only downside is the length of time it takes. I think if someone just wants to copy a complete CD to MD it's probably still quicker and easier to do it in real time on a deck. But if you want to put together a compilation, in SP mode, from a dozen different CD's, or from a load of music on your PC that you don't have on CD, this is a great piece of work.

I wonder if the process could be speeded up in any way? I was always fascinated by the technology in the MX D-D40, and similar decks. They could copy in SP mode at 4X speed, if I remember correctly. I guess that's a totally different thing to using a PC?

[zzzuppp 1]

1 hour ago, Another MD fanatic said:

 

Possibly the only downside is the length of time it takes. I think if someone just wants to copy a complete CD to MD it's probably still quicker and easier to do it in real time on a deck. But if you want to put together a compilation, in SP mode, from a dozen different CD's, or from a load of music on your PC that you don't have on CD, this is a great piece of work.

I wonder if the process could be speeded up in any way? I was always fascinated by the technology in the MX D-D40, and similar decks. They could copy in SP mode at 4X speed, if I remember correctly. I guess that's a totally different thing to using a PC?

I didn't have that problem - it's not as fast for me transferring via a Mac as Sony's app used to be, (it's the conversion that seems to take the time) but I still made a 160' MD of LP2 tracks in c. 20 minutes - which is way better than real time, which I've had to use ever since Sony stopped updating the Mac app ten years back.

[bluecrab 12]

Yes, the D40 and D400 do SP@4x...the D400 also does LP @4x (D40@2x). Both do mono @4x.

 

[Another MD fanatic 3]

20 hours ago, zzzuppp said:

I didn't have that problem - it's not as fast for me transferring via a Mac as Sony's app used to be, (it's the conversion that seems to take the time) but I still made a 160' MD of LP2 tracks in c. 20 minutes - which is way better than real time, which I've had to use ever since Sony stopped updating the Mac app ten years back.

Interesting. I could see that LP2 downloads were much quicker than SP but I thought the conversion was taking just as long. Certainly took a while to do the few tracks I was experimenting with.

Anyway, I'll probably do some more next weekend, I want to copy a few Pink Floyd tracks to see how it copes with gapless playback. And I'll time it properly next time instead of just using guesswork.

[BearBoy 12]

17 hours ago, Another MD fanatic said:

I want to copy a few Pink Floyd tracks to see how it copes with gapless playback.

Gapless worked fine for me when I tested it.

[BearBoy 12]

Re the duration question, I just did a test with a four track EP (18:44 in length) and that took 5:22 to record across to an MD in SP mode. The source files were 256kbps .m4a (AAC) files.

For comparison I then tried five songs off an album I had stored as .wav files (18:42 in length) and that took 05:56 to record across in SP mode.

[BearBoy 12]

Ran the same tests but using LP2 mode instead of SP and it was much quicker:

4 x .m4a files - 01:47

5 x .wav files - 01:58

With the m4a files, the "converting" stage seemed to take much longer than the "uploading" stage.

[adamkkk 0]

Stachu,

if you look at hifishark.com you can see this Sony model CDP-XE320 in Poland for PLN 60 as well as nearby countries for EUR +20: https://www.hifishark.com/model/sony-cdp-xe-320 

Also you can find well as 2598 units of minidisc players/recorders/media discs at very low prices :-) https://www.hifishark.com/search?q=minidisc 

Good luck !

[adamkkk 0]

Just tested Web Minidisc Application on my Sony MZ-NH700/NH800 with Chromium on MacOS Catalina system 10.15.4.

First test: NetMD disc with SP/LP2 tracks:

Positives - NetMD is discovered, plays, renames discs and adds files.

To do:  - as mp3 was added to an existing disc, it does not recognise which track it is and plays a different track.

Second test: HiMD disc with .HMA (disc is TDK MD80 converted to HiMD)

Positives - HiMD disc is discovered and you can add songs as mp3 mode without any conversion.

To do: the freshly added song is not visible in the TOC, thus it cannot be played. Yet the file is still there, which means that your surplus MD discs can be a "secret" USB disc with files. Few people can realise that you can keep .txt or .docx files on an MD. After MD80 conversion to HiMD it has 305.9MB for storage.

It would be nice to work with HiMD discs with 1GB storage and add playable tracks as with SP/LP2/LP4 discs.

Keep  up good work!

 

 

[alextheangel 0]

12 hours ago, adamkkk said:

Just tested Web Minidisc Application on my Sony MZ-NH700/NH800 with Chromium on MacOS Catalina system 10.15.4.

First test: NetMD disc with SP/LP2 tracks:

Positives - NetMD is discovered, plays, renames discs and adds files.

To do:  - as mp3 was added to an existing disc, it does not recognise which track it is and plays a different track.

Second test: HiMD disc with .HMA (disc is TDK MD80 converted to HiMD)

Positives - HiMD disc is discovered and you can add songs as mp3 mode without any conversion.

To do: the freshly added song is not visible in the TOC, thus it cannot be played. Yet the file is still there, which means that your surplus MD discs can be a "secret" USB disc with files. Few people can realise that you can keep .txt or .docx files on an MD. After MD80 conversion to HiMD it has 305.9MB for storage.

It would be nice to work with HiMD discs with 1GB storage and add playable tracks as with SP/LP2/LP4 discs.

Keep  up good work!

 

 

I am able to get MD mode working fine, but not hiMD mode. could you provide more info on your setup? mine would show 'request interface implements a protected class'

[Jimma 4]

This is a fantastic app Stefano.  Many thanks for all your hard work.  I have just been trying to use it with a couple of Sony MZ-NH600 units and although I've had great success with an MZ-N505, I am getting an error with these.  Has anyone got any idea  what "The configuration value provided is not supported by the device" means and how I can sort it out?

[sfbp 8]

I don't think it works for HiMD, Jimma. (shoot me someone if I'm relaying duff gen here). I would be inclined to set the "Disc Mode" to MD instead of HiMD and see if that does it.

[Jimma 4]

Thanks Stephen but I've tried that.  I get the same error on Hi-MD and MD modes but I see other people have been able to use some Hi-MD units in MD mode successfully so I'm not quite sure what's going on here.  I've not seen that exact error message reported by anyone else either.  It's a mystery.

[Smack My Bishop 0]

i tried this last night with my n505 on my s8+ and it worked great. sp mode did take a bit. I'll probably buy a 3v charger when doing this in the future but in the end it worked great. now it's time to buy more discs and make more mixes for myself and my gf. 

[sfbp 8]

2 hours ago, Jimma said:

Thanks Stephen but I've tried that.  I get the same error on Hi-MD and MD modes but I see other people have been able to use some Hi-MD units in MD mode successfully so I'm not quite sure what's going on here.  I've not seen that exact error message reported by anyone else either.  It's a mystery.

If you put in an already formatted disk it will read and respect what's there (normally, with SonicStage etc). The :disc mode: is only intended to force the decision when the disk is blank, I suspect. So the setting may be irrelevant (not a hippopotamus as we say in my family).

So what I would do is put in a disk that already has some LP music on it. It should read it and show you what's there.

If not, I strongly suspect you are using a "unclean" machine with traces of the unsigned drivers we've all been living with. Best to start with a machine that's never been introduced to SS, if you can manage that. The problem with HiMD is that it uses basic block drivers from Windows (not Sony), and some of them may work ok with the QHiMDXfer libraries, and some not. As long as you never installed a NetMD driver of any kind, you're better off trying NetMD first.

[zzzuppp 1]

After all the things I read about Sonic Stage, I'm glad I'm a Mac user and have never gone near it.

 

[Jimma 4]

The issue with the NH600 now seems to be resolved.  After restarting the pc it is now working perfectly which is great.  sfbp, the old driver/SonicStage thing doesn't seem to be a problem as long as you are using a different unit for Web MiniDisc than you do for SonicStage.  You can use Zadig (https://zadig.akeo.ie/) to switch the driver for just the unit you want to use with Web MD to the WinUSB driver.  This doesn't affect the driver for whatever recorder you use for SonicStage.  I've just done a test and SonicStage will quite happily transfer music to my MDS-NT1 at the same time as Web MD is recording to the NH600.

[sfbp 8]

Right. My problem seemed to be that I had one driver (NETMD760) installed for multiple devices. But it definitely varies as the bitness of Windows. Are you running 64-bit version?

[Jimma 4]

I am running 64-bit and it was NETMD760 that was replaced for both the NH600 and the N505 but Zadig only associates the WinUSB driver with whichever MD unit you select from the devices list rather than uninstalling NETMD760 leaving all others still working with SonicStage.

[sfbp 8]

Wow. The developer told me that it wouldn't work with NETMD760 (because it was unsigned) and it looked to me when I tried that Zadig doesn't know how to handle that. See further up the thread (here). Unless something changed.

I will try again soon, but it would extremely helpful to get from you a list of steps.

Cheers

Stephen

[Jimma 4]

When I started Zadig it didn't automatically detect the NETMD760 driven units (it did detect a Sharp recorder though, presumably because it uses a different driver) so I had to go to Options and then List All Devices and select the correct one.  It then says "Driver NETMD760 (v1.4.0.5270) -> WinUSB (v6.1.7600.16385)" and you hit the Replace Driver button, wait 30 seconds or so and it should tell you it's been successful.  Web MiniDisc should then detect your recorder while any other models should hopefully still work with SonicStage.

[sfbp 8]

Thanks for that. I will definitely give it another whirl.

[adamkkk 0]

On 5/11/2020 at 8:03 PM, sfbp said:

I don't think it works for HiMD, Jimma. (shoot me someone if I'm relaying duff gen here). I would be inclined to set the "Disc Mode" to MD instead of HiMD and see if that does it.

 

On 5/11/2020 at 8:03 PM, sfbp said:

I don't think it works for HiMD, Jimma. (shoot me someone if I'm relaying duff gen here). I would be inclined to set the "Disc Mode" to MD instead of HiMD and see if that does it. 

Hi Stephen,

For HiMD you can run QHiMDTransfer. It works on Win/Linux and Mac Catalina: https://github.com/thp/linux-minidisc/releases/tag/0.9.14.1

Proposal: if you could add libnetmd library from qhimdtransfer to your software that would make many people smile.

best,