Topic: Hi MD PCM upload-YES!

[Brian Skalinder]

Thanks, Roamer, that helps.  Appreciate it.   

[nuclear_ned]

Jeez.. One of you out there in taper land has got to have one of these things.. the whole question behind transfering non copyrighted digi info is the only thing keeping me from buying this product.. DO YOU HERE ME SONY.. those bastards and their vague info piss me off..

[Eight_Tit_Chicken]

There's a real-time solution that catures the digital stream while the PCM is being "played" back on the PC.

I can in no way vouch for this.  I only know what I've read in the forums myself.

Excuse me... but I'm going to re-post some of the discussion here (with full props to the orig author  (not me))
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Minidisc Community Forum Index :: General Format-Related Discussions :: Hi-MD :: Suggested method for uploading recordings from Hi-MD
 AuthorMessagedex Otaku
Versed Posted: Thu Aug 26, 2004 3:44 am | Post subject: Suggested method for uploading recordings from Hi-MD 

This has come up several times already, and I've already posted it in another thread, but I'm doing it again under its own thread so it's easy to find. Perhaps this should be stickied?
After discussion with Jadeclaw and enough personal experience with my NH700 and SonicStage, this is the method I have settled on for transferring recordings from my Hi-MD to my computer.. First and foremost, it requires that you be using Total Recorder. It is available from High Criteria at a rather nominal cost of $11.95USD, which is well worth paying considering what it does. The following assumes that you already have Total Recorder installed.
* Open both SonicStage [SS] and Total Recorder [TR]
* Plug in your Hi-MD via USB and insert the disc to copy tracks from. I'd suggest plugging it in to its AC adapter as well, if it's a model without a dock.
* Press record in TR
* In SS, play the track you wish to record from the Hi-MD itself. DO NOT TRANSFER THE RECORDINGS TO YOUR COMPUTER FIRST.
* Repeat as necessary to capture all your tracks in WAV format, making sure to save each track in TR and start a new one before continuing on with the next track in SS.
* If you are really paranoid, now would be the time to clean up the recorded tracks [removing glitches from beginning and end] and write them to CD-R as a backup. [Note: writing them to audio CD is far less reliable a backup method than as WAVs to CD-R, simply because of the nature of CD audio.]
* When you're done recording your tracks to WAV, THEN transfer the tracks using SS.
I also go so far as to rename tracks on the Hi-MD before uploading, and matching the names on disc/in SS to the ones I save from TR. Please note as well that this isn't the -correct- way to do things. It's just the way I've figured is the safest at this point, since it's obvious that SS 2.1 has some rather nasty bugs that occasionally eat irreplacable tracks when you're trying to upload.
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Derek BF Gunnlaugson [dex]
sound editing & engineering / field & environmental recording / audio format transcription, restoration & archival / videography / video editing / simple post-production / still photography / image scanning, restoration & archival / copy editing / computer repairsBack to top
 

[nuclear_ned]

Its amazing how know one can answer this simple question. Just use the HiMD you bought to run a digital in without the scms or whatever the hell the thing is.. and try and export it to computer via USB.. thats all were asking. Its like recording live at a show and recieving a digital patch... can that go to computer USB .. Doing it real time defeats the purpose of buying the stupid thing to begin with.. 

[Sean Gallemore]

Its amazing how know one can answer this simple question. Just use the HiMD you bought to run a digital in without the scms or whatever the hell the thing is.. and try and export it to computer via USB.. thats all were asking. Its like recording live at a show and recieving a digital patch... can that go to computer USB .. Doing it real time defeats the purpose of buying the stupid thing to begin with.. 

I said fucking NO 5 fucking times in 7 different threads (is that possible?).  Sony said it, I said it, Moses came to me in a vision this morning and said it.

[nuclear_ned]

well the replies never answered the question as to if it was possible for non copyrighted material to pass digitaly.. douche.. but I do have an answer clearly from minidisco that was alot more helpful....

"You can't upload anything recorded via optical input in Sonic Stage. Sonic Stage only allows the import of previously downloaded ATRAC files and analog/mic recordings. If you had an MD deck with optical output, you could do a real time digital transfer to a PC with a sound card equipped with optical input (provided the sound card wasn't equipped with SCMS copy protection.) Complicated, isn't it? Bottom line, Sony wants you to make the transfer analog."
 

[tms]

Its amazing how know one can answer this simple question. Just use the HiMD you bought to run a digital in without the scms or whatever the hell the thing is.. and try and export it to computer via USB.. thats all were asking. Its like recording live at a show and recieving a digital patch... can that go to computer USB .. Doing it real time defeats the purpose of buying the stupid thing to begin with.. 

It looks like HiMD _can_ record optical-in and then you can get the .wav's off over USB and converted using HiMD Renderer.  This guy figured out how to get around Sony's retarded software :

http://www.marcnetsystem.co.uk/

It's free for download, although if you use it and it works there's a place to donate some cash to him so you can sleep at night. :-) 


Also stumbled on this from SP:  http://www.soundprofessionals.com/cgi-bin/gold/category.cgi?category=himdwaveconverter

So PCM upload, YES! But it looks like kind of a PITA.  Certainly not as easy as dragging and dropping from a JB3 over firewire but it can be done apparently.

Why is Sony so freakin' paranoid? 

[Brian Skalinder]

It looks like HiMD _can_ record optical-in and then you can get the .wav's off over USB and converted using HiMD Renderer. This guy figured out how to get around Sony's retarded software :

http://www.marcnetsystem.co.uk/

It's free for download, although if you use it and it works there's a place to donate some cash to him so you can sleep at night. :-)

Also stumbled on this from SP: http://www.soundprofessionals.com/cgi-bin/gold/category.cgi?category=himdwaveconverter

So PCM upload, YES! But it looks like kind of a PITA. Certainly not as easy as dragging and dropping from a JB3 over firewire but it can be done apparently.

Has anyone here actually done this?  Last I looked into it - admittedly about a year ago and just for kicks - all I found were accounts of people running into trouble with HiMDRenderer - no real reports of consistently successful results.  Anyone here able to chime in with their own results?

[tms]

It looks like HiMD _can_ record optical-in and then you can get the .wav's off over USB and converted using HiMD Renderer. This guy figured out how to get around Sony's retarded software :

http://www.marcnetsystem.co.uk/

It's free for download, although if you use it and it works there's a place to donate some cash to him so you can sleep at night. :-)

Also stumbled on this from SP: http://www.soundprofessionals.com/cgi-bin/gold/category.cgi?category=himdwaveconverter

So PCM upload, YES! But it looks like kind of a PITA. Certainly not as easy as dragging and dropping from a JB3 over firewire but it can be done apparently.

Has anyone here actually done this?  Last I looked into it - admittedly about a year ago and just for kicks - all I found were accounts of people running into trouble with HiMDRenderer - no real reports of consistently successful results.  Anyone here able to chime in with their own results?

Dammit, I meant to add that to my post.  I've never tried it and don't even have a HiMD to give it a go. 

It looks like the guy writing the software is cranking out version after version, so if you looked at it a year ago based on the comments on the website a lot has changed since then.  The earliest comments were all people struggling to get it to work.  The latest comments are that the guy's a genius, so things must have improved!

The other problem with it is that it's probably not bit perfect.  From what I read this software recovers the data in chunks and pieces it back together.  According to what the website says, earlier versions had occasional clicks where the chunks didn't fit together perfectly.  Newer versions somehow fixed that, but I did read that one time they were 'smoothed' somehow to eliminate the clicks.  I don't know which is more worrisome, the fact that the data doesn't come over to the pc perfectly, or that the software is modifying the waveform!

So there's definitely some questions remaining to be answered.  If the programmer can get it to be bit perfect it might make a nice option for someone.  HiMD's are about $200 each and the 1GB discs are like $6. That and the recorders are small. 

For someone like me that records analog-in anyway, I would go with a HiMD if I didn't already own 2 JB3's.   

Todd in Buffalo

[tms]

Here's a response from the writer of the HiMD Renderer software on the minidisc forum. 

All recent reports say that it works bug free.  I've got more info coming from him, examples of how it isn't bit perfect.

It sounds like this is turning HiMD into a decent option for recording digital-in.

Todd in Buffalo
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Its not 100% bit perfect, no. But its very close.

The dlls used for the conversion dont allow more than 1 minute to be converted at a time. I get around this by converting in blocks of 1 minute. This, unfortunatly, creates small repeated sections in the resultant audio file. I use various algorithms to seek and remove the repeated bits. This last part may make the output file slightly different to the original

There is no re-encoding / resamping / etc done in my software.

Give it a go, its free! If the result dosnt work out then there's no loss.


--------------------

http://www.marcnetsystem.co.uk/

[dmaster]

So, has anyone found a way to NOT use the horrible horrible shit that is Sonic Stage to transfer a recording from the HiMD to a PC? 

I'm going to seriously break this player in a lot of small bits very very soon if there's not some alternative out there for the transfer process.  Sonic Stage seems to barf on around half of the recordings made.  It's really really pointless, and I'd say that anyone who is thinking of getting one of these things needs to just stop and find something else, because this is absolutely not worth it at all. 

Help!

[poorlyconditioned]

So, has anyone found a way to NOT use the horrible horrible shit that is Sonic Stage to transfer a recording from the HiMD to a PC? 

I'm going to seriously break this player in a lot of small bits very very soon if there's not some alternative out there for the transfer process.  Sonic Stage seems to barf on around half of the recordings made.  It's really really pointless, and I'd say that anyone who is thinking of getting one of these things needs to just stop and find something else, because this is absolutely not worth it at all. 

Help!

My understanding of this is you need Sonicstage to *transfer* the recording to your computer.
Once tranferred, it is still copy protected.  (It is a ".oma" file).  You can use either Sonicstage (analog line or mic) or
himdrender (any file).  Note that himdrender uses the same sonicstage DLLs, it just uses them in some funky preview
mode that plays one minute at a time, so they are stitched together.  Oh yeah, there is a third option.  If you are willing to go realtime, you can use Sonicstage to play the MD and use a program called "totalrecorder" to grab the digital output.

Now to the question of "bit accurate".  There are two problems really.  One is that any digital input (like from an AD20 or UA5) will be resampled.  This is because MD has an internal clock. The second problem is that there may be bugs in the himdrender program stitching together pieces of the file.  I think there are few, if any bugs now.  IMO the problem is the former... the resampling.  So, it will sound OK, and much better than analog in (if you've got a good ADC), but it will resample.

My advice is: use NJB3 if you want digital in.  It is a clear winner.  Use MD if you want either convenience, or clean line/mic input.  Even for line in, the NJB3 seems to have some problems, eg., little glitches when the drive starts and stops.

Oh yeah, I use both NJB3 and MD...

  Richard

[itook2much]

Sonic Stage seems to barf on around half of the recordings made.

What version are you using?  I had endless troubles with SS2.1 but everything works great with the newest version.  Maybe an update/upgrade will solve your troubles?

Good luck, sucks to lose shows +t