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The many pages of comments on the bottom of that article are quite fascinating.

Very strange. One of these was on sale (from Mexico) as recently as last Monday (18th Sep 2012). And you missed it... how come? Probably you need to set up a search in Ebay that emails you when what you are looking for turns up.

One of the problems with the JE510 is that it lacks automatic error analysis that even the lowly 520 has, which was the next comparable model produced. Reading an MD is, like for CD, a servo system, so the voltages and so on have to be within very tight constraints (writing is about 10 times the power, so is not really so critical). Unfortunately the 510 does not have the LCD showing up with a TOC error (C13 on the later models) and instead tends to immediately eject the disc. This is not conducive to diagnosis. I cannot duplicate because my 510 died a number of years ago. It's the only model I had which failed in this way. You are going to have to learn the servicing procedures the hard way. Sorry.

I'm not sure. The MDS-JB980 should be better than (say) the MXD-D40, yet it doesn't appear to be. I'll try to do some definitive tests soon.

PhilIppe.. there's exactly one Type-S deck marked JB. So maybe better to get rid of your correction. As long as you use optical out for playback, I think it's highly likely there's no difference between R and S. The portables have separate direct analog output, but that's a different issue. (As a side note, the biggest weirdness for MDLP playback seems to me to come when using a PC to play back MDLP, especially LP4, where the sound card has a 48kHz optical output, rather than a 44.1 kHz).

Get a CD changer for $50. The CDX-757MX even plays MP3 CD's.... I have two (not in one car). That keeps the troops quiet alright. Its anti-skip features are outstanding. Your MD headunit will support it nicely - it takes 10 CDs.

Surprised you need that many HiMDs. How many hours of recording do you have?

I second jmsla's advice. You'll need a set of jeweller's screwdrivers, but that's an outlay of about $10

There are plenty of 10-packs (and other packs too!) for between $20 and $25 on Ebay. There's an almost unlimited supply of TDK disks in England, sorry if this seems like an ad (by me) - it isn't: http://www.ebay.co.u...c-/290562407913 As well Babz media had over 3000 10-packs but they seem to have disappeared. Someone bought them, I feel sure, maybe the guy in the link above. His price includes shipping, but only within the UK. There are plenty of deals in the US, if you search ebay for "blank minidisc" you will immediately see this: http://www.ebay.com/itm/10x-SONY-MDW-80PL-80-MINUTE-PREMIUM-GOLD-MINI-DISCS-MD-HI-MD-Sealed-Brand-NEW-/230842484952 Agreed, HiMD 1GB disks are getting very scarce. Sony never sold enough Hi-MD units for them to be sufficiently common. Almost no other manufacturer made HiMD units (the exception is Onkyo) and no other manufacturer made the 1GB disks. However if you keep your eyes open, the best way to buy lots of (used) disks may be with someone disposing of their RECORDER. Good luck!

Have you tried all the usual recipes? No service manual here on the site. I suggest you try the keypresses documented for the RH910.

Really there's no such thing. The technological difficulty is/was very real. At the time CD and MD were popular enough to have CD->MD in a deck, there was no way to simply process all that data in real time and reliably write it to a CD. This is all tied up with the fact that to get adequate performance and reliability you have to write a whole CD (or at least a chunk of it) in one go. Don't tell me about CDRW, the most hugely unreliable medium you could ever imagine. Things have changed quite a bit since then, and I'm sure stringing the h/w together would now be possible. But the world has moved on to flash media. Buy a computer (Windows, because Sony didn't really ever support Mac), get your music into that, and figure out how to burn tracks on a CD. We've all been doing it. I did it before I ever got heavily into MD, by making an MD recording, transferring it (painfully) to computer, and then burning the result.

Here's my question: if you have effectively more data on the disk than the 96dB implied by the 1411/16 what's the point of programs like EAC which "merely" check that there is matching data at that data rate. Or does "dithering/noise shaping" ensure that perfectly copying the bits means that all that "extra" resolution is reproduced when a disk is ripped? For extra credit: how do tools like Nero and/or Wave editors ensure that this extra resolution finds it way back onto a disk when burning CD's? Of course your answer may be that "home made" CD's are somehow "stuck" at 16-bit resolution.

If I've got this right, an extra 4 bits (20 vs 16) is the same as 16x (four doublings). So that would be 24dB with a theoretical max of +120 dB SNR. Check? Everything starts to make sense now... in particular I'd like to know how many bits of real resolution there are on the "average" CD, whatever that is.

The :big: negative is that the 480 has no optical out. Don't panic, someone's added it and written it up. If you can wait, the 780 might be easier, since it has that feature. They both seem to come on sale (in Ebay etc) in Britain - but I have never seen them here in North America. Jim Hoggarth says the 980 and 780 are almost identical, electronically.

Understood. I was talking about Sony, not Apple. Sorry for that.

I kinda like my NWZ-A1200 But it's not clear to me that it has digital out. However I can hear digital out whenever I want by simply playing on my computer (to HiFi receiver), or (in the car) listening to an ATRAC CD.....

ANY lossless codec will regenerate (supposedly) the original uncompressed sound. This is true whether you compress to AAL 132kbps, AAL 256 kbps or AAL 352 kbps..As the bit rate of the lossy part goes lower, there will be more information in the lossy part. Of course playing any of these AAL's on a portable EVEN IF THE PORTABLE CLAIMS TO PLAY IT will consist of playing the lossy part. Face it, portables and their usage patterns really don't demand a particularly high bitrate to sound good. Where Sony (and ATRAC) win (over MP3, and probably some other compressors) is the sheer accuracy and balanced sound even when the sound is much compressed. Even sounds that should be tricky (sustained notes on Clarinet or Horn, loud organ, live opera, solo piano) are frequently (if not always) excellent. However in my personal viewpoint there's very little difference between 256kbps and 352kbps Atrac3+. Others may violently disagree; but there are a significant number of experience posters and listeners here that think that 132kbps ATRAC3 is "good enough" for portable listening. I typically compress WAV (1411kbps) to AAL 256kbps. This converts well to 132kbps ATRAC3. It also allows the 256kbps part to be loaded straight onto MD. You really don't (IMO) need 352. It doesn't play that much better, and it tends to take more overall disk space.

When u xfer to md the lossless part is discarded. AAL is a purely computer based life form;-)

LOL. "I am an honest E-bayer" it says in the ad. Years ago someone told me that anyone who says "I'm telling the truth, so help me, yer honour" is invariably guilty. Maybe this is a new way to launder money........

I did a wee bit of reading. Seems like S/PDIF Is inherently 20-bit, which I had not realised. Duh! Presumably this can be scoped easily enough - it's just that I don't actually own one and would have to get my friend with scope to come by - this may take weeks before he has time. Also - the specs for 980 state an SNR of "over 100dB" Clearly that's not possible with 16 bits only (theoretical maximum of 96dB). I'm intrigued. I took a look at RMAA, strange it was written in 2005 yet there is some comment about XP not yet being supported.........

I don't think for an instant there's actually 24-bit signal coming out the optical port on the 980. There's no setting to allow this, and if it were truly 24-bits, then the devices hooked to it would either a. register 24-bits (my receiver) or b. complain because they are expecting 16. Tweaking it - perhaps, but at the present juncture I don't have the time and energy to delve into the electronics and find out just how the 940 (and presumably other decks) get 20- or 24-bit output. I note that all the ones which do, are Type-R only. AFAIK there's no Type-S deck with word length switchable.

Clean terminals of battery and unit. Solvents (TCE and isopropanol come to mind) and very sharp knives can be used to reduce the contact resistance from the surface of terminals. If no effect, buy an r90 or r91 and try that. Try next a charger such as GP. If the fault is in your portable, try to adjust it. If nothing at all works, repeat from the top with a brand new battery until you figure out which component is not working right. Eventually you will figure out the problem.

Right. Set the disc mode of the rh1 to be himd.

I don't see the point of introducing tables and figures if they aren't even attempting to be scientific. Your blog looks a lot like someone with a lot of knowledge attempting to convey at whatever level some scientific looking measurements for us mere mortals who have mainly our ears as evidence. Perhaps you dispute that all those tables of numbers appear to readers to represent a scientific approach? Now I see the problem. The lack of capitals on the first word of the underline phrase is a giveaway. I attempted to delete everything I didn't want and this lot missed the scalpel. My apologies. It was from another statement about something else. This was not a deliberate attempt to confuse anyone. My quote should stop after "at least". Except that, empirically, it isn't. No worries; I too abandoned LP4 right away (and for 2 years after that) when I first got an MDLP-capable device - for exactly the same reasons you cite. Stephen

But.... direct from high bit rate to LP4 may well have been the "standard" for many comparisons... but it ain't the proper test. My theory as to why low bitrates re-encode well to LP4 is something like this.... most of the bits in the high frequencies are encoding noise. If you already cut out the noise by mastering down to (say) 256kbps by compression, then going from there to 66kbps does NOT waste any of the precious bandwidth (thank you, Sony and Type-R) encoding those noise bits. Make sense? (I know it's just a hand-waving attempt to explain and understand what I have observed, which at first sight does not make sense).