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A netMD Solution for the Mac?
SmackyTheFrog asks: "I recently purchased a Minidisc player with netMD capability. At first this was fine because I always had my trusty PC near by. Now that I have gone off to college, I no longer have the space for my big beige box and I only have my PowerBook with me. Much to my dismay I discovered that Sony has decided not to grace the Mac with any netMD software. Are there ways to get netMD (ie 3 or more hours of audio) music onto a single minidisc using a Mac?"
Is this place of any use to you?
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
First off, fitting 3 or more hours of audio has nothing to do with NetMD, this is the so-called Long Play mode (LP2 fits twice as much audio, and LP4 fits four times as much). Of course you have to accept a less than perfect sound fidelity for the higher compression rate. As for NetMD on the Mac, there's an application called Xmd that can do several interesting things like titling (good! especially if you choose to go with LP4 and have dozens of tracks on your MD) and playback, but it doesn't allow you to download music to your MD. And anyway, NetMD won't allow to download tracks *from* your MD to your computer (even, maybe especially, the official Sony software) which renders it next to useless in any case.
The files are converted to ATRAC and you'll have to deal with the stupid copyprotection scheme.
I use and old, pre netMD, Sony MD recorder and it has served me well but for the cost and trouble you would be much better off getting a 'real' mp3 player.
You have a nice Apple Powerbook, and an unsupported MiniDisc player, and you want to transfer highly compressed 3-subband audio over USB?
If I may suggest a two step solution: 1. Ebay 2. iPod
you get: way more storage, way more quality, way more vendor support, and way more transfer speed. It looks like you're in for about a hundred bucks for an eBay upgrade.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
http://www.tmdc.org/aramk/sandbox/minidisc.html
Here's one excerpt, though you should read the page for all the info:
"Transferring (Analog)
Doing an analog transfer is very simple - first, plug the analog cable from your Mac's headphone out jack into your recorder's analog input (on Sharp model's, this is the same as Line In). Now, open your MP3 player on your computer, and create a new playlist. In iTunes, this is done in the left hand side by pressing the + button.
Now, drag and drop MP3s in to this list and order them how you wish. Once you're done, you might want to add a blank 5 second sound between tracks to better allow your MD player to create the track marks [ Download 5 second blank track ]. Important notes: make sure that the playlist is not longer than the medium yourrecording to; if you're using a 74 minute MD, your playlist must be less than 74 minutes unless you are planning to use LP2 or LP4 compression. Once you're ready, simply press the record button on your recorder and press play in the MP3 program. While it's recording, check to make sure that the sound level is OK. If you think you need to adjust it; do so on the Mac by changing the system volume."
hehehehe was it ever so easy, except on a Mac?
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.