Leandro

Can someone tell me if there is a good portable MD player with a "jog wheel" on it to select tracks rather than the + and - buttons that are a pain in the neck if you have an MD with 50 tracks on it. I'm sure I saw one where you turn the dial with your finger and you can access tracks much more quickly, but I can't remember. Does such a portable MD player exist?

I remember reading about an experiment done which involved "accelerated ageing". This involved a lab test in which SP MDs were put in a kind of oven that simulated the effects of decay caused by time. They found that the MD's still worked perfectly after a simulated period of 100 years! If only I could find where I read about this, then I'd show you it, but I swear something like this was carried out.

Because I record mostly in mono, I can get a lot of songs on one disc. A typical example is a minidisc I play a lot right now with 47 tracks on it. The thing is, when using the MZ-R55, there doesn't seem to be an easy way to get back to the start of the disc if you are near the end. For example if I'm on track 45 and I then want to hear track 3, I have to press the "back" button 42 times. It doesn't wrap around like other MD players where you go from the last track to the first. Is there any quicker way on the R55 of getting to the start apart from ejecting the disc?

I've recorded some tapes to MD and they usually sound great, especially with Dolby off. all the high end really adds to it IMO - I don't want noise reduction. The only downside is that tapes don't work in mono, as you get phasing which ruins it. What a damn shame, as I could get twice as much on an MD if it wasn't for that.

I don't know if I mentioned this before, but the thing that sold MD to me was the mono option. Try listening to Rubber Soul in mp3 format, with the instruments coming out one speaker and the vocals coming out the other! With the mono option, everything is crushed together and it sounds much better. Actually there was one Double CD Greatest Hits that I immediately transferred to MD in mono because it improved the songs immensely, and I never put on the CD again! MD FOREVER!!

Tried it, and it worked - thanks!

I've loaned an MZ-R410 MD player from a friend, and I like it, as it's more compact than my MZ-R55 and its single battery lasts for hours and hours longer. However, one thing I don't like about it is the bloody bleep noise it makes whenever you flick through the tracks or press any action button. My MZ-R55 doesn't do this. The perfect MD player for me would be one that has the battery life of the MZ-R410 but without that bleeping noise. Does such a portable minidisc player exist?

This is with regards to uploading old SP MD tracks. How reliable are the SP MiniDisc uploads with the MZ-RH1? What I mean by that is, do you ever get uploads that are corrupted or have clicks and jumps in them, like a bad mp3 conversion? Or is the sound quality (in WAV mode) the same as the source every time?

That does actually sound pretty easy - and enticing

I'm tempted to go for that MDS-W1, but as with you, the money situation at the moment doesn't allow it. I'm going to keep an eye on that in the future though. For future reference, what are the three buttons you press to make it go into service mode?

I have copied many minidiscs worth of vinyl in mono, and I can honestly say that I have never found the result to be negative to the music. I would actually go as far to say that with vinyl, it makes rock and roll music in particular sound better if anything. It seems to blend the sound together, and with 60s music (my favourite) this makes a real difference. The rest of the time I can't tell the difference anyway. The same can't be said for music after about 1984 on CD though: it sometimes sounds better and sometimes doesn't. Overall though, if pushed, I go for mono. When I found out that you could do minidisc recordings in mono, that was the clincher for me, and I've never regretted buying my first MD player in 2000. It still works And now I'd like to ask you a question The "three button push" in service mode that you mention regarding the MDS-W1: is this an easy thing to do, and is it possible on all MDS-W1 machines? Bloody hell, that means I could make ten perfect copies of an old minidisc.

Seriously? You can duplicate SP discs with no degradation? But surely when you transfer from one MD to the next using the MDS-W1, it goes through another ATRAC compression algorithm. Does it actually copy the sound without putting it through ATRAC again?

The noise I'm talking about is the sound of the disc reader moving to another part of the disc during a song. For example, when you record a track at the end of an MD and move it to track 1. When the minidisc player gets near the end of this new track 1, it has to move the disc reader to the start of the disc to play track 2, because track 1 is in fact at the end of the disc. You know what I mean? It's that noise that I want to reduce.

I've got an Sony MZ-R55 player, and the mechanical noise it emits at times can be quite loud. The MZ-R55 is a pretty old MD player though (I think it first came out back in 1999), and I'm assuming in the five or six years afterwards, the portable players got a lot quieter. Can someone out there recommend a portable MD player that has mechanical sounds that are not obtrusive?

Thanks for that - you've sold me on the idea of getting one now. I've got another question though (groan), about the RH1, so I might as well ask it here: Say for example I transfer an old MD with 20 songs on it to my PC as a WAV file. A few weeks later I have an accident and the original MD is destroyed. I want to get the WAV file back on to a minidisc again. When I transfer it back, will there be a significant loss in quality? And also, will the individual tracks still be properly divided, or will it transfer as one huge 76 minute track? Thanks again, your advice so far has been very useful.

When you talk about editing material, do you mean deleting tracks from an MD to make more space? Because I've done that one most of my discs at one time or another. I admit to removing a few seconds from the end of one track on one of my MDs. Would that make it imposssible to transfer to WAV?

Hi folks I'm a big fan of Minidisc because of their durability, editing facilities and ease of use. These little discs have a charisma about them too that CDs completely lack. The disadvantages are the mechanical noises that the older MD decks in particular make, and the problems making backups of minidiscs. Now of course, I hear about the MZ-RH1 and I'm excited. At last, here is a machine that will convert music on MDs to WAV for storage on a PC or CD-R's. However, I have some questions regarding this player: I have some old 74 minute minidiscs from a few years back full of music taken from old vinyl records. I recorded onto MD in mono to get more than 2 hours playing time from each disc. However, will the fact that these recordings are in mono be a hindrance in converting them to WAV files? Is the MZ-RH1 fully compatible with those old 74 minute minidiscs from nearly 10 years ago? Secondly, how noisy is the MZ-RH1? I've got an old portable MD player by sony called the MZ-R55, and it can make a hell of a racket. Are the more recent MD players a bit quieter? I have read on this forum the about problems using SonicStage. Those that use it, tell me -can you hear a difference in the sound quality of the WAV file made from an MD recording? Also, is it possible when transferring music from a minidisc to a PC to corrupt the information on the minidisc and damage the recording? I have been reading up on the MD-RH1 a bit, but some of the information is quite dense and I'm not certain of the answers. I just want to make sure, so I thought I'd ask those that use it. Ta for reading. MD forever!