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Minidisc players with optical out

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marksturdy

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I'm trying to find an MD player with an optical output. Can anyone recommend a cheap'n'cheerful model to me? It seems to be quite a rare feature these days. Other features aren't important really - if there's an old model I can pick up on Ebay for a few beans (or even buy from anyone on this forum who wants to sell theirs...) then I'd be more than happy.

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I know that the MZ-1 has optical out. But those are hard to get.

Yes, this is the thing. It seems that a lot of the very early MD machines had optical out, but a lot of those are collector's items in their own right. I don't really care about owning a piece of consumer electronics history, I just want something I can plug into the SPDIF on my soundcard!

Although both would be pretty cool...

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Here is a tutorial on modifying MD portables to have optical outputs: http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=18416

Not sure how helpful that would be though.

I believe the MZ-1 may be the only portable with optical out (might be one other of that era that does). Otherwise you may have to look into an MD Deck. There are a few of those that have optical out, just be sure it's MDLP if you need it.

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The problem is that ALL of the MD units use compressed sound. SP is good but still compressed. For sound quality you are better off with a PCM recording uploaded from a Hi-MD than you are with SP via optical out. And as above, only the very first portables have optical out--after those, you need an MD deck.

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I'm trying to find an MD player with an optical output. Can anyone recommend a cheap'n'cheerful model to me? It seems to be quite a rare feature these days. Other features aren't important really - if there's an old model I can pick up on Ebay for a few beans (or even buy from anyone on this forum who wants to sell theirs...) then I'd be more than happy.

An MD deck is the simplest way to go for optical out, and many with that feature can be had on Ebay. Some have LP and some do not - the non-LP ones are usually cheaper - you'd have to decide whether you want LP.

Non-LP models that should be fairly cheap:

Sony MDS-JE5*0 series (the 510 can be flaky, though).

Pioneer MJ-D508 (I have one of these from ~1999, a solid machine that I am hanging on to.)

You can find others by checking http://www.minidisc.org/equipment_browser.html

If SCMS is not a problem, then indeed digital out on an MD is a very valuable feature. Good luck.

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  • 4 months later...

Just an update on this - I managed to score a Sharp MD-R1 MKII player from Ebay for about £15, and an Emu 0404 for about £40, and have since been using the setup to optically transfer a huge backlog of minidiscs. The results have been great - there are quite a few recordings that have been brought back from the dead as the original signal was just too quiet and as a result had previously picked up unmanagebale amounts of noise through an analogue transfer.

Only problem is that the MD-R1 doesn't seem keen to play LP discs. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has a solution to this.

(Incidentally, as my new soundcard has an optical output but not an analogue mini-jack one, I've been using the Optical In and phone socket on my Sony Net-MD as a makeshift Digital to Analogue converter to link the soundcard up to my amp. Probably not the best use of the technology, but it works!)

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Only problem is that the MD-R1 doesn't seem keen to play LP discs. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has a solution to this.

The Sharp MD-R1 MKII is not an LP-capable unit. It may recognize, but will not play LP discs.

MD units that both play LP and have digital output exist, but can be hard to find and usually command a higher price.

If you have a portable MDLP with line out, then perhaps you could go MDportable line out > MDdeck analog in > MDdeck digital out > EMU? This is an awkward process and won't help the signal quality much, but that MD-R1 isn't going to play LP on its own.

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If you have a portable MDLP with line out, then perhaps you could go MDportable line out > MDdeck analog in > MDdeck digital out > EMU? This is an awkward process and won't help the signal quality much, but that MD-R1 isn't going to play LP on its own.

Yep, that's just what I'm doing! It sounds OK, probably better than if I'd just gone MDportable line out > analogue line-in on my old soundcard. Obviously the quality of LP recordings isn't so good anyway, so there's less at stake in a way!

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