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kyojin_clown
08-12-2003, 03:23 PM
Evening all,

I am trying to record all my old Minidiscs onto my PC so i can mp3 them and generally actually listen to them instead of just having them all stacked on a shelf somewhere.

i have;
*a hercules gametheatreXP soundcard, with optical in
*a japanese-spec MDS-S40 Sony minidisc deck with optical out
*soundforge 6.0b

the problem is, sony have wired anti-copy protection into thier deck, preventing repeated copying of digital replicas. ie; i made a CD>MD copy digitally, i now cannot make a copy of this MD digitally.

hercules have gone along with this and so therefore, the digital signal from the MD deck comes up as 'copy protected' in the gametheatre config app, and soundforge can't record it.

essentially the soundcard is wired to send the optical signal straight to speaker and bypass the cpu altogether, so it doesnt work as a recordable source, i think, i'm not speaking from a position of expertise here, just my personal assumptions.

any smart ideas? i can record them analogue, but since i paid for all the optical gear so that i could copy the MDs i have into mp3s, i feel like i ought to be able to use it.

is it possible to configure soundforge to record at the speaker output so to speak, recording every sound the PC makes? this would be a pain in the neck because inevitably i will get some error message beep halfway through copying something, but better than nothing. or is there software available that can do this?

i also have a Creative Soundblaster Live with the extra part containing an optical in, so i could use that, but windows goes a bit nutty if you install two soundcards i believe, anyone know better?

any help would be hugely appreciated, thanks a lot.

[This message has been edited by kyojin_clown (edited 08-12-2003).]

knowdoubt
08-13-2003, 09:19 PM
There is a nifty little software tool called Total Recorder that should work for this. It basically emulates itself as a virtual soundcard driver, placing itself in the path of any audio that streams through your soundcard & thus is able to tap that digital
audio stream & record it straight to your hard drive as a wav file or even strait to an mp3. Whatever your soundcard plays, Total Recorder can record, even streaming RealAudio over the net that is copy protected to not download onto your computer.
Check it out here - http://highcriteria.com/