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New Techmoan MiniDisc Video

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BearBoy

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The MiniDisc featured in the video can be purchased here: http://eox.no/shop/

The website of the company who produced the MiniDiscs is: https://www.bandcds.co.uk/all-others/minidisc-duplication-and-production/

Looks like they can print directly onto the blank discs and will do low volumes (5 discs). Might be of interest to someone planning a MiniDisc project :)

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  • 1 year later...
8 hours ago, sfbp said:

Missing from his video is the easiest of all, connecting with SonicStage/USB and titling from the computer as fast as you can type.

Ah he did prefix the video with "the fastest way to title without using a PC". PS/2 keyboard in the front of the machine is pretty much [*] no different to using same attached to a PC although I guess if you're entering the text into a SonicStage DB you should only ever have to enter it the once...

[*] My Tascam MD-CD1 do support a few more keystrokes than my Sony MDS-E1[02] - for example Home and End work when titling. These don't do anything on the Sony which is a surprising omission by the Sony engineers.

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I guess the reason people want to title is because there are things to title that didn't get there FROM a PC. But taking one of those discs and editing the name information while temporarily connected to a PC seems to me less PC-dependent. More like you're making the PC into a fancy titler. I really hate uploading real recordings and having them given silly unintelligible names by the upload software, too.

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Often the titles dubbed from CDs with CD-TEXT seem to be all uppercase which I’m not keen on. So I grab the PS/2 keyboard to retitle them by hand...

If I write a CD-R from iTunes to dub to MD the titles of some tracks are corrupt (don’t know if iTunes is writing bad discs or my Tascam CD section can’t read them properly) so they need reworking manually with the ‘ole PS/2 once on MD. Bit of a PITA to need to do that. Must work out one day where the issue is (not that I’m likely to be able to fix it)...

 

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2 hours ago, BearBoy said:

I've made quite a few CD-Rs with CD Text using iTunes and have never noticed any issues with the titling. Have you got another CD player with CD Text you could try them on?

I've tried the odd CD-R in the car which has a Sony CD with CD-TEXT. That behaves different again from what I recall. I should do a more "scientific" study. The reason I haven't really is the CD-Rs that I'm recording and dubbing are sound effects for theatre shows rather than music you'd have in the car. This means there can be a lot of short tracks and sometimes the titles can be a little longer than those you might have for typical music. I'm still of the mind that the Tascam MD-CD1 firmware is full of bugs and this is the main cause. But whatever titles it seems to collect from the CD-R end up on the MD. I'm not fully convinced of iTunes either, so it's interesting to hear you have success. The iTunes version I have is generally pretty much up to date on a Win10 machine, although I tend not to update it when I'm preparing material for a show (which isn't happening at the moment of course).

I've recently acquired a Sony CDP-XE530 CD player with CD-TEXT. It also has an S-Link A1 interface, so I could hook that up to my (still :-D) working MDS-JE530 which has an S-Link A1II interface. This should allow me to dub a CD-R to MD with the titles, using Sony machines - although I'll have to do it in real time rather than the Tascam's 4x... (ETA: Found this SIF thread on using Control-A1 link between CD-TEXT CD and MD deck to support title copying, so hoping this should work...)

Might have a play tonight (if I can get away from "day" work...)

ETA: Glad I found that SIF thread! Happy to report that my Sony CDP-XE530 (Control A1) will copy CD-TEXT across to my MDS-JE530 (Control A1II) - track and disc title. This is from an SFX CD-R mastered with iTunes. Per that article, the text copy does only happen when using the CD-SYNC function though, not otherwise, even if the CD/MD are sync'd up such that the CD starts when the MD is started from record-pause. I used an RM-D15M remote - the larger one that comes with the MDS-JE520 (the MDS-JE530 came with a narrower one) which has the CD SYNC section buttons at the bottom. At some point I'll do an A-B comparison to check that the Sony pair have copied the track names correctly and to see if the Tascam MD-CD1 does or doesn't. Thanks for the nudge @BearBoy :-D

ETA2: Text copied correctly by Tascam MD-CD1 too with this CD-R (SFX for Around the World in 80 Days). Need to try a different one!

Wishing you well!

ps Sorry for polluting this thread.

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I've noticed that titles can be corrupted depending on what software you use to rip the CD in the first place. I've seen an example where any apostrophes in the title would display as a weird symbol on the ripped file (sorry, can't remember which software it was).

Every CD I've got with CD-TEXT has it all in upper case, which annoys me as well.

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I thought these things were supposed to conform to the various orange/red/yellow-book standards for CDs. This is one - of many - reasons I moved away from CD back to MD for my theatre work. The number of hassles I had with CD machines not reading the text ever/always/corrupt, let alone CD-Rs being hit and miss, with both domestic and professional CD machines. No such nonsense with MD, it just works, always. Not sure why it took me so long to return (spare cash probably! - actually that's why I've got my MDS-JE530 which was a cheapy, except it didn't work... and you all know the rest!).

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On 5/15/2020 at 7:56 PM, sfbp said:

The only ABSOLUTELY reliable writer of CD-text for me has been Nero.

On the odd rare occasion I burn a CD I use a thing called Cyberlink Power to Go. Simple reason is that it was already installed on my HP laptop when I first bought it, and I've never had a problem with it. It's always written CD TEXT without any issues, you just need to check the music file tags first for any errors.

On 5/15/2020 at 8:08 PM, kgallen said:

let alone CD-Rs being hit and miss

You think they're bad, try CD-RW's. Can be re=written 100's of times, or twice, whichever is the shorter! I vaguely remember using one 3 times before everything refused to read it, but that was a rarity.

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I think he's probably bang on what he thinks the source of them is.

Shame that pile were such a load of junk. However to hark back to his first minidisc video, the range of machine designs is huge even across, just the 5 manufacturers he had here. Of that load of 58 was it - other than a few that looked like colour variants of a model, there must have easily been 40 different designs. 

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  • 1 month later...

I watched it all... and I agree with him on 3 things (portable units)

- buying junk units could make you losing your money after all (but he did that for the demo and by design curiosity) 

- better buy a complete unit set with almost all the accessories than the unit alone cheaper

- Sony is the best even if some brands have done some particular nice looking units or well-built units

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  • 7 months later...

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