Transfer MiniDisc recording to PC digitally?

[dave2010]

[QUOTE=Mr Nad;289076]To answer myself, now that I have a Hi-MD unit... NO

The manual for the unit, and the the guide for the software clearly state that recordings made on a standard MD deck cannot be transferred.

[quote]You cannot import tracks... that have been recorded on a device that does not support Hi-MD mode.

So it's back to s l o w transfers for me for the time being.

Lenny

Unless your machine is significantly different from mine, and Sony didn't make all Hi-MD devices with the same characteristics - it IS doable.

I've been round the whole thing with a few MDs which I didn't create. Some, which may have been done using a computer or on a Net MD machine do not upload. Others do, and they take about 1/8 approx real time.

There are some things to do.

1. Make sure you know where Sonicstage puts its library. Indeed, better still is to force it somewhere you know. Otherwise its default is under All Users (Win XP).

2. When you first connect the Hi-MD unit it may work OK. Later on you may find that in the Hi-MD setting you get a warning that the MD tracks can't be uploaded, and that the MD will need to be reformatted and you'll lose all the data. Don't do that. Instead reset the drop down menu to Net MD (with the HI-MD unit connected) and try again.

3. When you find an MD which can be uploaded you should get a message saying it's possible to import, and asking if you want to convert to WAV. Answer yes! It uploads to the Sonicstage library first, then pauses for a short while, then does the WAV conversion. Don't abort the process after the initial upload.

4. When you've done this you should end up with a track or tracks in Sonicstage which you can play. However you may find that you can't see the WAVs. The files in the Sonicstage library will be ATRAC files.

5. You can do a search for .WAV to track down the files. To save you time I suggest you look in My Music.

I tried this with a friend's computer. We also played around with Net MD devices. If you really want to slow things up (DON'T DO THIS) plug the Net MD machine in, then switch to the Hi-MD machine. The Hi-MD machine will then upload any tracks very slowly, though it will still do it.

There was a reason for doing this - to do with my not wanting to leave the Hi-MD machine with him for a long while as he needs to do track labelling on his MDs, otherwise we'll have a lot of tracks labelled Track 001 etc., which willl cause confusion.
Indeed, that is still an area where I need to check out that we can relabel a track on a Net MD machine without making it impossible to upload later. My advice to others would be to avoid Net MD machines altogether while trying to upload any older MDs.

It CAN be done!

PS: Here are a few images which might just help:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/4895272...in/photostream
http://www.flickr.com/photos/4895272...in/photostream
http://www.flickr.com/photos/4895272...in/photostream
http://www.flickr.com/photos/4895272...in/photostream
This one shows .WAV conversion

[Mr Nad]

1. Make sure you know where Sonicstage puts its library. Indeed, better still is to force it somewhere you know. Otherwise its default is under All Users (Win XP).

Done this.

2. When you first connect the Hi-MD unit it may work OK. Later on you may find that in the Hi-MD setting you get a warning that the MD tracks can't be uploaded, and that the MD will need to be reformatted and you'll lose all the data. Don't do that. Instead reset the drop down menu to Net MD (with the HI-MD unit connected) and try again.

It has never worked for me.

3. When you find an MD which can be uploaded you should get a message saying it's possible to import, and asking if you want to convert to WAV. Answer yes! It uploads to the Sonicstage library first, then pauses for a short while, then does the WAV conversion. Don't abort the process after the initial upload.

I have only ever received this message if the MD is formatted as Hi-MD. No other MDs work.

4. When you've done this you should end up with a track or tracks in Sonicstage which you can play. However you may find that you can't see the WAVs. The files in the Sonicstage library will be ATRAC files.


5. You can do a search for .WAV to track down the files. To save you time I suggest you look in My Music.

Sony Vegas will read the ATRAC files without any problem, and I can prepare CDs that way, to having WAV files available isn't imperative for me.

Still completely perplexed as to Sony's faulty reasoning on the transfer of MD recordings

[dave2010]

Done this.



It has never worked for me.



I have only ever received this message if the MD is formatted as Hi-MD. No other MDs work.



Sony Vegas will read the ATRAC files without any problem, and I can prepare CDs that way, to having WAV files available isn't imperative for me.

Still completely perplexed as to Sony's faulty reasoning on the transfer of MD recordings

Really sorry about this. It looks as though it's either the particular Hi-MD unit, or the Vista Sonicstage then.

I'd hesitate to say that Sony's reasoning was faulty, but it wasn't clever. At the time the MD units were relatively cheap, and arguably Sony were maximising their revenue. They seem not to have given a stuff about the perhaps small fraction of users who generated their own material. I think they did have quite a large number of satisfied customers before the MD system was killed off by new developments such as MP3 players and iPods. They also managed to make a small number very angry!

I didn't know about Vegas, though not sure how useful that'd be for me.

One other thing I don't know is whether Sony actually blocked the optical output from units such as the MZ-N910, which has an optical output, in the case that a digitally recorded disc is played.

[Mr Nad]

MD was designed to allow one digital copy to be made. After that, no more digital copies were permitted.

What really hacks me off is that Sonic Stage will happily rip a copyrighted CD and transfer that to an MD, but not transfer an MD back to PC!

I've tried setting the MD to Hi-MD mode, but Sonic Stage is still having none of it. My disks have never seen a Net MD, and were not transferred to MD from a computer. Most of them are analogue recordings and irreplaceable. And these are, naturally the ones I really need to transfer.

Ah well. Back to Optical on the PC and all the problems that brings with it...

[dave2010]

Lenny

Do you have, or can you borrow a Win XP machine? I actually think that might be cheaper than trying to get a different Hi-MD unit. As yet we don't really know whether the problems you've enountered are due to Sonicstage or to the recorder. I think you could do it on your Win XP netbook. It might not go fast but I hope it should work.

I've noticed that some people have said there are problems with Vista - perhaps due to the different drivers.

[Mr Nad]

I have tried this on my WinXp machine, but with the same result. I'll give it another shot, though I don't hold out much hope.

I'm using Sonic Stage 4.3, FWIW.

[dave2010]

Lenny

I'll see if I can find or borrow other Hi-MD units to replicate your situation.

I was hoping that all/most Hi-MD devices would be similar, but perhaps that is not the case. I wondered if I was imagining my own successes with MDs, but I've done this with several, so I'm sure it's possible.

What kind of material are you trying to transfer? Music, speech, family stuff?
You can tell me to MYOB about this, but it might help to set the context of how vital digital transfers are, and your motivations. For example, you might be wanting to replicate these for other family members, or you might simply want to protect yourself against the future possibility of not being able to play these because of lack of working hardware, as such equipment becomes harder to find. Obviously at present you've only got one set of "masters"' and if you could get these digitally copied then replication in the future will be a lot easier, while the quality loss with analogue transfers might not be acceptable to you.

Lastly, are there any differences between different players(hardware/software) for ATRAC material? According to what I've read most of the differences between ATRAC recordings would arise at the recording stage, rather than playback. I don't know enough about this. With MP3 most players give similar results, at least as regards the digital output stream, though in the past some MP3 decoders did, IMO, give better results. I just wonder if it is worth finding the best ATRAC playback devices (or software decoders) and whether there could be any differences between these and other units. Sony and others have written that there is no difference between different playback systems, at least regarding the digital data, but then they might well say that mightn't they.

[Mr Nad]

I agree that the principal differences should be in the version of ATRAC and the quality of the DAC. There may be other differences such as the ability of some units to stamp the date and time on a recording. So why you can transfer recordings when I cannot is frustrating.

I have a mix of recordings. The music, I'm not so bothered about. I can find most of that again. But I have some recording from television and radio that are virtually impossible to find, and certainly not of the quality I have. Although valuable to me, they are nowhere near as valuable as the others.

These are my home recordings dating back 20 years. My dad, my dogs,my nephews as children, the birth of my eldest, the voices of my children as they learned to speak...

They are the ones that I desperately want to transfer with the highest possible quality. Now that MD has been killed off, I want to make sure that I am not left up the creek should my decks (or the disk, come to think of it) malfunction.

I'll be making backups to CD , data DVD, and hard disks (three copies of each, all stored in different locations). They are are to valuable to me to lose. And I really should have done this sooner. Don't know why I didn't (although I did back up to PC and another minidisc for some of them).

[dave2010]

Lenny

I've seen a black swan. Therefore all swans are black.

[ A variant on the usual... ]

I've seen files transferred using a a Hi-MD recorder. Therefore all Hii-MD recorders will transfer files.


As you've discovered, this is not true - though you've not seen any files transferred.

All I can say for sure now is that I have a particular Hi-MD machine, a model MZ-RH1, and that behaves in a way which would be useful for you.

I have tried another model - an MZ-NH1 and that behaves as you describe. Either a message saying that a disc is write protected appears, or a message saying that it was recorded on another computer, or with NetMD appears.

With the MZ-RH1 the message about the NetMD/computer only appears on some MDs, which presumably were recorded using NetMD.

I am sorry to have led you up a wrong path. According to various forums the Hi-MDs all behave similarly. They do not!

I am now uncertain as to whether any other models of these Hi-MD machines, other than the MZ-RH1, behave in the way which allows uploading of MDs - possibly not.

I do believe that an MZ-RH1 would transfer your MDs, but unfortunately these are relatively pricey.

If anyone discovers another Hi-MD model which will do this, it would be useful to know, but it could be that the MZ-RH1 is the only one. Certainly early Hi-MD units, such as the MZ-NH1, do not transfer back to the PC.

[dave2010]

Now discovered another upload route for some files, but maybe only ones generated on a Hi-MD machine. There's a tool called Hi-MD Music Transfer which has been developed for Macs. As with most of these things it's a bit iffy. When it works it works, when it doesn't .... it just doesn't - no reasons, no error messages, zilch, ingenting.

http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/swu...SMB&mdl=MZM100

Not sure if we're really supposed to know about this or use it in the UK, but it does download, and it does run under Mac OS 10.6.

One possibly useful feature is that it may tell you the codec used for each of the tracks on a disc, which can at times be helpful.

Looks as though any routes out of MiniDisc decks using optical links (mostly - hardly any - maybe Japanese models - or even none - have coax output) are always blocked if the unit detects that the recorded input was digital, though not sure if it's quite that. Depends if the digital SPDIF coding has codes for DRM/copyrighted material. If so, then maybe some digital material could be replicated, but I'm guessing that they took the easy way out and just blocked anything which was marked as having been recorded via a digital channel.

Not quite sure how this affects the one curious twin MiniDisc deck I noted - http://www.minidisc.org/part_Sony_MDS-W1.html Just found another - Denon did a twin deck machine for DJs - the Denon DN-M2300R. Using those machines which are somewhat esoteric, it just might be possible to duplicate discs, and then do something else with them.