NetMD Wizard

A tool like Sonys NetMD Simple Burner to transfer audio from CD to NetMD. It is written in C++ using the Qt framework. It supports Windows 7 64bit and newer, MacOS 10.13 and newer, and Ubuntu (and derivates) 18.04 and newer.

Features

• reads CD Audio through libcdio with optional CD Paranoia support
• reads CD-Text and requests CD information from CDDB (gnudb.org)
• ships with atracdenc, supports the other, well known, alternate ATRAC3 encoder
• supports on-the-fly LP encoding on supporting devices
• supports gap-less audio transfer in LP mode (using external encoder)
• supports gap-less audio transfer in SP mode on supporting devices
• loads Cue Sheets and handles them as CD Audio
• supports drag and drop of audio files
• supports sorting and naming in the source widget
• supports naming and grouping in the MD tree widget
• binaries are available for Windows, Mac, and Linux

Usage

Note: Before using this tool under Windows you have to install the WebUSB library. This can be done using the zadig tool.

Hopefully usage doesn't need much instruction. In a nutshell:

1. Import Audio Data
2. Load the Minidisc
3. Choose the audio quality
4. Press the button "Transfer".

Import Audio Data

You have various possibilities to import audio data into the program:

• CD & Cue Sheet (through button 'Reload CD', 'Load CUE Sheet')
• Drag and Drop Audio Files

In Cue Sheet as well through drag and drop following audio file types are supported:

You can use the audio import windows to remove unwanted tracks (delete key), sort tracks via drag and drop, or rename the tracks.

In Cue Sheet mode and when using a CD Audio, selected tracks will be transferred. If no track is selected, all tracks will be transferred.

Note: If you have inserted audio files through drag and drop all files will be transferred to MD - I assume that you only drop wanted audio files to the program.

DAO / Gapless Mode (Disc-at-Once)

• In LP2 DAO modus the audio content will be extracted and compressed at once. After that, the audio will be split into tracks and transferred to your NetMD device. You have to expect quality loss due to LP2 mode and the usage of an external encoder. Playback is only supported on MDLP capable devices.

• In SP DAO modus the audio content will be extracted and transferred to the NetMD device at once. After that the audio data will be split directly on the NetMD device through TOC edit. This gives you the best possible quality. Playback is supported on all MD devices. Unfortunately, this is only supported on Sony / Aiwa portable type R, and type S devices.

  For DAO SP I'd recommend the usage of a blank MD. While we take care for existing content, you might end up with issues on very fragmented discs. Furthermore, take care that there is no pending TOC edit on your NetMD device before starting the DAO upload. Simply press 'stop' on your device before going on!

Note: In DAO mode when reading from CD all sorting and deleting from tracks done in the source window will be reverted before the transfer starts.

Projects used / Thanks to

• atracdenc - the external ATRAC encoder
• JSON for Modern C++
• Qt - One framework to rule them all.
• webminidisc for inspiration
• PLATINUM-MD for a good start with linux-minidisc
• MSYS2 for the Windows build environment of choice
• libcdio for reading CDs on multi platform.
• taglib for make reading tags much easier.
• ffmpeg to encode xxx to compatible wav files.

Thanks to...

• asivery for his great support with the Sony firmware patching.
• donlazlo - my first tester which even paid me one (or more) beer.
• Sir68k for discovering the Sony firmware exploit.
• Ozzey for his code reviews.
• DaveFlash for the nice program icon and some good ideas.

Support me

In case you find this tool useful, you may consider to buy me a beer.