NetMD Wizard

NetMD Wizard is a program to write audio data to your NetMD device.

View

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:

Import Audio Data
Load the Minidisc
Choose the audio quality
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:

Audio File	File Extension
WAVE (Raw PCM data with wave header)	wav
OGG Vorbis	ogg
Monkey Audio compressed WAVE files.	ape
Mpeg Audio Layer 3	mp3
Advanced Audio Codec and Apple lossless (alac)	m4a, mp4
Free Lossless Audio Codec	flac
Atrac 1 (SP) audio	aea

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

Sorting

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.

Settings

CD Read Config: You can enable CDDA paranoia mode here. In some cases this might give you better audio quality when reading from CD. This drastically slows down the CD read speed.
Transfer Config: In case your NetMD device support on-the-fly LP encoding this will be enabled by default. This gives better audio quality in LP mode then using the external encoder. Currently there are only 3 NetMD devices known which support on-the-fly encoding: Sony MDS-JB980, Sony MDS-JE780, Sharp IM-DR420H.
CDDB: Enable / disable the CDDB request for CD Audio information.
MD Track Grouping: If enabled, a title group for a complete MD transfer is created (after LP transfer).
MD Title: If enabled, the MD will be named after the disc from last SP audio transfer.
Size Check: Enabling this will disable the audio length check. So, you will not be warned if the audio you want to copy doesn't fit on your MD. This setting might be useful if the available disc space is only a bit to small. Try it at your own risk. Your transfer might fail. This setting isn't stored.
Device Reset: If enabled, your NetMD device will be reset after completing the TOC edit (SP DAO transfer). If you don't enable this, you have to re-insert the MD to your device after the TOC edit is done.
Theme: Use the theme you like most.
Log Level: Changes the detail grade of logging.
Del. temp. files: Delete temporary files created be the program. Normally these files will be deleted before the program closes. In case of a program crash (sorry!) these files might persist in your temp folder. Pressing this button will delete these files.
Log File: Opens the log file. Useful for debugging or when I ask you for some more information.

Context Menu

From the MDs context menu you can:

add audio tracks to a group
delete a group
delete a track
erase the MD
export the title list as text file

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

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

In case you find a bug (yes, there are some), please file a bug report on the project page: GitHub.

Support me

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