sfbp

The only difference with prerecorded disks is they use CD technology (read-only) and cannot be erased since the signal is purely made with patterns on the plastic. All MD devices have a whole separate mode to read the CD-like data; all that does is to complicate maintenance and design. AFAIK there's no difference in fidelity whatsoever... the same bit patterns for the same music. I read from time to time of bands that mastered their music with MD. Totally reasonable, since it is a 24-bit format, and therefore with the right editing, is in better shape to survive transformation without rounding errors which inevitably give you the distortion you knew you'd left behind in the analog world.

1. You need 5V LED transmitter (forget the 3.3V originally used by Sony; they simply complicate the whole thing 'cos you need a 3.3V LED which is nowadays impossible to find)2. The main connector to the actual MD board (so-called BD board) has pin 9 with the signal you need. +5 and GND are also on the same connector (of course). One or other end of this connecting cable is the best place to take your "vampire" connections from. Somehow you have to connect to the pins on that ribbon cable (CN102). Don't worry about capacitors or inductors in the circuit which the LED spec sheet shows. In later models there's a dip header type connector which pushes on to stake pins, so this is a tad more tricky than that. I'm assuming you found the service manual already. Just possible the other end has the stake pin arrangement, I can't tell without seeing the unit apart, really. A word of warning. Sometimes pin 9 on one end (usually the DOUT pin on the DSP chip which is on the BD board) is labelled (n-9) on the other end (where n is the number of wires on the cable). Ie the numbering is not consistent across the cable but counting reverses when you get to the other end of it. Having just read your post (which was as I was responding to the previous one), you are out of luck. The overwrite head is busted. Common fault. Keep the 320 for parts and buy something else on Ebay with optical out. Should be well under $100, which is where you may get to if you try to replace the overwrite head.

I agree. I just ordered one since I checked and on all the units I possess it looks the same. The point for you, perhaps, is that the overwrite part is probably the same. At the price Sony charges for parts, I would be inclined to get the whole thing and throw away the optical head (well, put it in a drawer) if you don't need it.

Weird. Caveat emptor, then since he claims this is for LOTS of models. Perhaps you could confirm or deny that Jim. $59 hardly seems upmarket to me, tho.

You're the minority though.... most people here have large or small collections of ATRAC (on or off MD) and like listening to them. Also it's slightly misleading to compare a custom piece of hardware with a small software program that runs on that computer, which all the people who got their ATRAC onto a computer (by definition Windows in the vast majority of cases due to lack of support for/by Macintosh) have already. I'd consider an NAS server like the Synology ones you mention. I will consider....

Too bad you're didn't consider the other solutions the poster-child for which is over in the other thread I am discussing it in. Unlike many of the afficionados in this forum that have the opposite problem, acres of real estate invested with ATRAC and no way to play it on MP3-friendly devices, you seem to have the problem that you want to use MD players to play MP3. 1. Don't bother..... Sony's MP3 walkmen in the last couple of years have become really excellent, surmounting pretty much ALL the challenges posed by MP3 and when trying to sell to customers with good ears (which is most of the readers here, and most MD lovers). 2. Think NETWORK. DLNA enables you to play your sound anywhere (in the house, of course, you'll still be able to transfer/convert to MP3 for gadding about in the fresh air and the world at large). With networks the way they're going I am seriously thinking about a VPN from my roving cellphone back to the acres and acres of ATRAC at MD Central here, and using DLNA that way). Take a look at KooRaRoo. I wonder if it would solve most of your problems, even without the ATRAC support? MD/ATRAC is still a really good way to capture your sounds, edit your sounds, mix your sounds. Best regards, Stephen

I think that's a mis-spelled "Head, overwrite". So not in fact the Laser assembly or "Optical pickup". Hehe you're in luck. There's someone selling the head for an MDS-JA20ES which I noticed a week ago. Hopefully he's still there. It has the same number. http://www.ebay.com/itm/SONY-MD-Laser-Head-for-Onkyo-SONY-minidisc-MDS-series-/251181105373 Looks to me like this INCLUDES the overwrite part (check the picture), but hey.... if you can do it yourself, you're laughing even at $59 You may have to install the whole thing, methinks but that's probably ok. Jim on the board here can evaluate the correctness of my diagnosis since he plays with these things all the time. Or perhaps he can sell you just the overwrite part (overlight)?

FWIW I did some informal "unscientific" tests a while back, and convinced myself that NO highspeed transfer of SP will ever beat LP2. The great thing about LP2 is that it transfers bit-for-bit to and from (mz-rh1 only, of course) md. There's no support for SP on computer, except to make HiSP and Lpcm. I've taken to uploading (e.g. vinyl recordings) to HiSP lately because it's at least internally a 24 bit format. All that is bye-the-bye except that Sony probably figured that for most practical uses, LP2 is "good enough".

NO! Thats a full 3.7 volts. Be very careful you dont provoke an explosion. Right Jim?

Where I said - windowsinf The only trick is that directory is hidden.

You might have to do the extra step of removing all the oem.inf drivers too. The way to do this is to search in the (hidden) windowsinf directory looking for files oem??.inf and containing the text NetMD. These are copies of the inf files of previously installed NetMD units. (you can check by opening each of them with notepad). When you're done, be sure to reboot Windows.

You absolutely do not want any version of SS before 4.3. Best with the one on our board, too. Make sure you use the newest driver I described above. The 4.3 install will either install NO driver for your 780, or the old one, which you really do not want, having just gotten rid of it.

One more thing: when you are done, install the newest download from the downloads section entitled Use it instead of any other driver you may have configured for your 780. That way you'll never have to do the device removal step again.

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The fact that Sony had to remove significant functionality from the 2Gen machines (SP recording) in order to provide MP3 playback probably implies they faced some significant engineering challenges, which were not resolved until the RH1 (3Gen) which has a LOT more NVRAM and DRAM on board. I don't much like conspiracy theories; often there were significant reasons forcing the players in a drama to take certain actions which afterwards someone claims was a conspiracy, by putting everyone's motives through the blender first. I have argued before the same general proposition about Sony's determination to encrypt and protect their uploaded music. It's also possible that the reason the MP3 reproduction wasn't so good in the first revisions of machines which had it, was that the hardware was not quite fast enough. More RAM, more processor power - what's the difference? - in many cases those amount to the same, as many will testify for PC operating systems. Sound Forge can interchange pretty well seamlessly between MP3 and ATRAC without any (to me) obvious shortcomings. Many of the perceived shortcomings of MD and other portable recorders are either a. in the microphones which have limited frequency range or b. In the conversion made to some existing music when the recorder was tested by a listening panel of experts. I'm certain Sony got shafted on the latter; having seen how easy it is to do all by myself. Stephen

Yeah. GP for Gold Peak, the same people who bought KEF.

If tracks have names with same number of characters (and other metadata such as artist, album, date/time) then it will work. Requires a fair amount of discipline to do reliably. But possible.

At first sight what that sounds like is that the AA is pumping up the power supply just a little bit.. equivalent to my tweaking of the voltages. Jim, r u there, care to comment on the electronics of the above machinations? I presume the AA is an alkaline, not NiMH!!!!!!!! Any solution is a good solution when you're stuck

This is one: i just followed my own advice. There are several more.

Sorry to be so brusque but I really am in a rush tonight. Try googling (forget using the search function here) MZ-R91 and NiMH and battery and site:sonyinsider.com. The best solution for the recalcitrant batteries seems to be one of these MD recorders. They're typically not expensive. There may be other ways, including readjustment of the charging parameters for the RH(9)10. Hope this helps Stephen

Read this and weep: MZ-R91 (or R90).

Type-S includes Type-R. Period.

Sorry to say but you need to read a few more back posts in the forum, and/or study the equipment browser a bit more. The RH1 (and its twin the M200) is the only model that permits upload of all formats to PC. I don't personally recommend using the RH1 for any purpose other than that... it's too precious. Hope this helps...

I personally am absolutely overjoyed that I can not only watch all my movies and TV shows on tablets, phone, tv's as well as any PC (some of this I could do before but none of the solutions were very clean or reliable), but also listen to ATRAC anywhere in the house without converting it all first to some other format.

1. If you wanted 1 channel on each then you'd have a problem, since line levels are way different (bigger) than microphones. TBH this is what a mixer is for. 2. You say "external mics"... do you perhaps mean "internal mics"? There's only one socket for input. Miniaturization has a price... 3. Sony's gear going back 20 years all works this way, I think. I can see why you want it perhaps; I can also see why they might argue "this is the Sony way". 4. Microphone mixers are inherently analog devices - maybe you should get one rather than asking Sony to put an extra analog stage inside your handheld device, with all the attendant things that might go wrong with it (switch noise for example). I don't know from direct experience the Zoom line, but most people I have talked to say the Sony beats most competition. There's a price for configurability, too... Have a nice day.