Hello Adam! Thank you for your very detailed answer - it helped me get my mind clear about NetMD and HiMD. In the meantime, I have set up a little VirtualBox with Windows XP and SonicStage 4.3 in order to do some simple things with my MZ-RH10. And these things work very nicely - I am just waiting to copy an entire audiobook to it for later use. But the actual problem I had with your software was, that I can not transfer MP3 to a HiMD. I did the following: 1. Inserting the HiMD into my recorder. 2. Connecting it via USB. The volume mounted on my Mac as a FAT file system with an unknown partition scheme. 3. I opened QHiMDTransfer and selected my recorder path - which in my case was: /Volumes/HiMD (I had renamed it). 4. The software now shows me a blank list, as there is no actual track on there. So I select one song by Dr.Dre on the right side. When I do, the <- arrow lights up. But when I click it, nothing happens at all - letting me sit there, slightly confused. So for now, I am using a VM to manage the actual audio transfer - and to work with NetMD. But as I can not transfer NetMD tracks back to my computer, I’ll have to turn back to Audacity and my external sound card (Traktor Audio 6). Why is it, that I can not transfer trivial MP3s to a HiMD? I can even format it - I can hear how the files on the disc are re-written by listening to the recorders activity. But I can not transfer any MP3 unless I use the original SonicStage 4.3. For the building: I have read the instructions - and I don’t use MacPorts. I build everything on my own, thus I use Fink instead :). I am a PHP, C, C++ and Obj-C++ developer myself, so I know how building works. :) Kind regards, and thanks for the explanations, Kevin Ingwersen Am Sa. Jan. 11 2014 02:40:47 schrieb John Paul Adrian Glaubitz: > Hello Kevin! > > There are some misconceptions behind your assumptions which I will try > to clear up before answering your questions. > > First of all, there are two principal formats which are used for > MiniDisc devices, the classic MiniDisc and HiMD. These are fundamentally > different from each other and one should always clearly distinguish > when talking about transferring music to and from these media. > > The classic MiniDisc, which was introduced in the early 90ies, has a > format very similar to a classic audio CD. Each song is stored as > a separate track and they are written in real time while recording > very similar to how a tape recorder works, except that the audio > is stored digitally and compressed in ATRAC. > > Sometime when portable MP3 players became popular with their capability > to transfer music between your PC and the devices through USB, Sony > thought it would be nice to have this functionality added to their > MiniDisc portables as well. So they came up with an extension called > "NetMD". NetMD adds the capability to transfer music tracks from the > PC to a NetMD-capable device over USB with faster than realtime > speed, meaning you can download a 3-minute track in less than a minute. > > While NetMD was a nice addition to the MiniDisc, it didn't cope with > the limit of just being able to store 74 minutes (sometimes 80 minutes) > of music to one MiniDisc and also didn't allow to transfer tracks > back to the PC. Thus, the only real advantage of NetMD over standard > MiniDisc devices was faster transfers to the recorder from your PC, > everything else was still pretty much unchanged. > > Now, when iPods started to push the MiniDisc out of the market, Sony > came up with another to extend the life time of the MiniDisc, the > HiMD. > > HiMDs are a reinvention of the MinDisc format. They do no longer store > audio data as separate tracks. Instead, HiMDs are DOS-formatted like > normal PC floppies and all tracks are stored in a big container > file located on the DOS filesystem on the HiMD. This allows you > to conveniently use the HiMD as an external hard drive, even > though the up 1 GB aren't really that much nowadays with USB pen > drives with 64 GB and more being around. > > HiMDs also introduced new a physical format with higher data densities > allowing up to 1 GB of data per MiniDisc as opposed to a standard > 74-min MD which offers around 250 MB when formatted as a HiMD. > > Additionally, HiMDs offer the possibility to transfer tracks to > _and_ from the device. The latter feature that was previously > unavailable with NetMD recorders. > > As a gimmick, HiMD recorders also support standard MiniDiscs and > when you insert a standard MiniDisc into a HiMD recorder, the > HiMD recorder will switch into NetMD mode meaning it will behave > like a normal MiniDisc recorder with NetMD extensions, meaning > the capability for transfers to the PC are no longer supported. > > So, when talking about transfers, it's really important to know > whether your device is operating in HiMD or NetMD mode as these > two modes are fundamentally different and MiniDisc recorders > behave differently and have different features. > > Now, for your questions: > > On 01/10/2014 11:35 AM, Kevin Ingwersen wrote: >> I recently bought myself a MZ-RH10 off ebay. Everything on it works, except one thing. Transfering music. > > It does work. > > The MZ-RH10 is a second generation HiMD recoders which means the > hardware has the following capabilities: > > - HiMD mode > > * transferring HiMD audio (both MP3 as well as ATRAC3+ and PCM) > tracks to the PC (supported by our software) > > * transferring HiMD audio (both MP3 as well as ATRAC3+ and PCM) > to the device (currently supported for MP3s only in our software > at the moment) > > - NetMD > > * transferring PCM (WAV) audio to the device and recording > them in ATRAC-SP (supported since version 0.9.12 of the > graphical user interface of our software; LP2/4 downloads > are possible, but there is no way to encode them on a PC; > ATRAC-SP encoding is performed by the recorder itself) > > * transferring audio to the PC in NetMD is *unsupported* > by the hardware and will never work, unless you use > the methods using analogue audio cables and having the > devices controlled through USB which is slow and you > need to use a sound card > >> Transfering non-audio files works as expected and is quite useful. > > That's a standard feature of the hardware and independent of the > software being used. You don't need our software for that. > >> But when I try to use the Qt GUI for himdtransfer, it just won’t do anything. > > It does, just not for the MZ-RH10 when in NetMD mode when using > standard MiniDiscs. If you were using version 0.9.12 or newer, > you could at least transfer NetMD audio to the Walkman. > >> And alongside, I can not access the actual „audio-only“ MD’s, as they’re not mounted as volumes. > > That's because those aren't actual volumes containing file systems > but audio discs. You cannot mount audio CDs either, can you? Yes, > I know Windows shows the audio tracks on your CD when inserting > an audio CD, but you can't actually mount the CD and copy single > tracks as files off it. > >> >> I also saw that there are problems with most recent builds of >> the software? > > No, there aren't. As I mentioned before, the virtual machines running > various versions of MacOS aren't currently unable to connect to the > internet and therefore download, build and upload the latest versions > of the software. > > This has got nothing to do with our software, it's just a (virtual) > hardware issue which I hope to have resolved soon. > >> Well I can do the building here, as I have a mac server that runs 24/7. > > Building the code on MacOS X such that it can be distributed and used > on any Mac isn't actually that trivial, but you can have a look at > the build instructions yourself [1]. > > It's important to create the app bundle in the end which will result > in the necessary dynamic libraries (.dylibs) being included in the > app bundle as otherwise the application won't run on any Mac besides > the one that was used to built the code. > >> Will building a more recent version of the application solve the transfer issue? > > It will allow transferring audio to a NetMD device, yes. It will never > allow to transfer audio from a NetMD device unless you have got > the one and only model which actually supports this feature, the > Sony MZ-RH1 (and it's variant model, the MZ-M200). > > Cheers, > > Adrian > >> [1] > https://wiki.physik.fu-berlin.de/linux-minidisc/doku.php?id=compilingonmac