sfbp

Indeed, but what use is that? The fact that you can edit LP2 on some decks is a bit more useful. At least LP2 is "real" stereo.

No idea, to be honest. The way that the clamshell opens could affect exactly where the MD disk actually ends up sitting, I suppose. And that in turn might cause some vertical motion as the unit self-recalibrates. I think all we did by tightening it in this way was to reduce the play at the hinge. After all, how well that fits (and it is pretty tight) is an indicator of how close to original factory condition is. After a lot of insertions, I expect any of these units to show a little looseness. The miracle is the ones that don't. So far the only model that looks 100% is the N910 (of which I had 2) and which is (surprise!) made in Japan. Oh yes, and my R91, also Japanese-made.

No problem, Oz. I checked my own unit, when I got some noises like this. 'Twas not the laser power. And another user recently followed my advice, and got out of the same sticky situation without tampering with the RH1 at all. As you know many people have for a long time suggested avoiding service mode on this machine.

Drivers are reliable under XP. Under other OS not so sure. Vista and Windows7 will work but some functions are not supported. And your unit (N10) will never transfer songs FROM the minidisc TO PC. Just not possible. This might be the first thing to tell us - what is your software setup. With multiple versions of SS lying around, I very strongly suggest you zap the whole lot, and start again with 4.3. This is Sony's last "supported" (hahaha) version.

I believe that what happened was Sony optimized for Hi-LP (64kbps) for advertising purposes. They wanted to be able to say that they could rip a CD in 45 seconds. Evidence for this comes from the fact that the initial configuration of SS is set to 64kbps import. There are other, less charitable, interpretations of Sony's actions here, for the moment I will say that I don't buy them... yet. Never attribute to conspiracy what may be simple error. Hoping to see if you can confirm my results. I disagree almost 100% with Avrin (on this issue). The initial ripping to PCM quality (1411kbps) was enough to put me off using SS for a whole year, when combined with: a. lousy LP2 after transcoding b. incredibly slow UPload (ie RH1->computer) that made me decide not to wear out the RH1 using such a task when I got as good results using optical transfer (albeit at playback speeds). To give Avrin (and his chums in the Russian MD forum) credit, they did solve b. (mostly - I still see the wrong drivers install but it only takes me 30 seconds to get rid of them). I'd also be interested to see if you agree with me on the usefulness of the AAL format. There's a couple of things it will not do - I noted yesterday that one cannot Divide or Combine (within SS) tracks, but for me this is rare anyhow - but on the whole this seems to be the safest container for anything you want to transcode later. Best of all is to avoid transcoding. Until the #linux-minidisc group has got a proper upload and download of SP working (they know they can do it in principle), at least make sure that SP is always uploaded to PCM on anything you really care about, preferably straight to WAV. Now *that* is reliable And RH1 upload of LP2 and LP4 leaves it alone quite nicely. Just (IMHO) don't try to change the format of either of these LP modes "after the fact".

Before you get too too exercised, try discharging until it basically shows empty, and then recharging (using only the wall unit charger) the battery. I think that a lot of strange behaviour is down to people who insist on leaving it plugged into the USB the whole time, and never running the battery down, but never charging it either. This might be a relatively simple test case. Maybe start by swapping in your own battery that you know is good? And simply running on the wall charger with the same disks that were causing clicks and "stuff' you didn't expect. I don't buy Avrin's conspiracy theory (for that's surely what it is), at least for the moment. There are a few other things I am going to suggest but for the moment don't try writing any disks, just see if you can get it to read the ones you have "quietly". Cheers

I think that LP4 is also joint stereo. However LP2 is same scheme as SP, IIRC. Not sure about the higher AC3+ rates. (joint stereo *is* the fake version)

My belief (backed up by some very naive experiments) suggests to me that the external cell actually charges the internal one whilst connected. So don't put the battery case on with a discharged gumstick - better to run completely without the gumstick at all. However as you say the combination of the two appears to be more than the sum of the constituent parts.... sorta odd

Yes, the deck has to be new enough to have LP, but pre-NetMD. Eg on MXD-D400 you cannot do it. But on JE640, you can. Very simple - to get you started you MUST select View All Tracks. All of a sudden E(dit magically has two new options, D(ivide and C(ombine. This is a pain because All Tracks means you don't have folders at all to organise the viewing of what you have. Maybe better to use a completely fresh SS installation on another PC with only the tracks you care about (after un-DRMing them of course). It's all documented in Help file.... if you search Divide or Combine, I think you can find it. Cheers

I suppose that's why I dubbed it a "recording" codec. What I really meant is that stuff recorded on a Type-R machine will still sound good with Type-S playback (better than on the Type-R-only machine), since there is no improvement in the recording on a Type-S machine over that on a Type-R machine. And this includes LP2 recorded on Type-R machine, which I have been doing a lot of lately. Clear as mud?

Are you seriously suggesting that machines without Type-R (eg Atrac 4.5) will not play it back properly?

Sure it does. Position the MD player at a track mark in pause mode. (actually easier to pause during the track before the gap or the track after it, then press >> or << respectively). Now press T-mark. That will remove the trackmark. Of course if you have downloaded said track from SonicStage, you better combine tracks in SonicStage first, because the MD won't let you mess with downloaded tracks. That (combining tracks using SS) is a rather more esoteric operation, so let us not burden ourselves with it unless we have to You asked me about this a while back - you are right, there is no way to get gapless in Atrac CD. Sigh.

Agree 100%. However original poster already has a bunch of LP2 recordings (as do we all).

There's a gentleman here who has been trying to sell one for almost 6 months now. Maybe he would value yours a little higher????

oops - didn't know that. I was just reading Avrin's comment that many items had different components for the Japanese market Also I will say (and it is generally known) of course that the Made in Japan stuff is often better. Eg my JE640 and JE630 are both made in Japan, and both look better and perform flawlessly. The JE510 that died was made in Malaysia. I know, only a sample of 1.........

I guess they didn't add the Atrac3+ (and MP3/WMA/AAC) CD playback until the next model after yours. You can find one for $50 here, something to think about....... My equivalent to the Connects2 didn't work well... Sony design didn't want to communicate to Chrysler head unit so beautifully. Still no idea whether it was the box's makers, or Sony's or Chrysler's (in fact philips) - whenever an MD track gets to 9:59 it stays there for at least the next 3 minutes. Same at 19:59, 29:59 etc etc. Very annoying unless all your tracks are under 10 minutes.

Type-R is a ****recording**** codec, and works for SP (as well as LP). Type-S is for playback (whether of Type-R or not) of LP2. Type-S includes Type-R, according to Sony. Only when you play LP2/4 is Type-S used at all. Most references seem to indicate that Type-R doesn't operate for any kind of high-speed coding or transcoding (eg CD-MD at 4x speed). However if "good" LP2 is captured by SonicStage (transferred :as is: from RH1), it downloads to other places (and plays back) perfectly. This may be at the back of why direct-to-optical sounds good on almost any unit (portable or deck) built since they got as far as Type-R. Even portables at lower data rates than SP???? Your friend's observation might conceivably be related to my other one about bad ripping by SonicStage, instead of a problem with playback. Take a look in the equipment browser. I have seen an X-B8 and it looks very nice.

OLED at the front. Screws at the back. I see Jeff (ShriDurga) is reading this, and I know he has the much praised Japanese-made RH1. I wonder if that has the same issues or not?

Sorry I deleted my reply when I realised it was you - since you know all about tightening up the externals. However I just checked and my own does what you describe on one side (right) but not the other (left). After some moments of observation of where the play (motion) was coming from, I loosened the screw at the back of the unit, then held the joint shut with one hand whilst tightening (only) that one screw with my other hand. Bingo!

The service manuals from Sony are excellent, and most of them are available here. If you are serious about that, suggest that getting a couple of similarly-built decks (not necessarily the most expensive) would allow you to swap BD boards (the guts that plays the MD) easily. What you do NOT want to repair is the MD transport itself - the road to madness lies there, probably. One consideration on the ES series is that you better not be moving very often. They weigh approximately double what the other decks do.

The big advantage of HiMD is that you can put many hours of LP2 music on a HiMD disk (this makes sense if you record internet broadcasts which are rarely at a higher data rate than 128K anyway because now you get 16.5 hours of LP2 on 1GB). Or many hours of 256K onto an ATRAC CD for your car. The big advantage of SP is that you can essentially manage without CD quality. The original reviewers pointed out that SP essentially recreates a CD. ATRAC is a very good codec, subject to the restrictions (because it is so good??) that Sony placed on it. I used SP from the very beginning as a means of making CD's and I have never yet been disappointed. The 9xx series of decks all have current-pulse DAC's, I will be getting my first one shortly to see what difference that makes. For playback it is quite hard to improve on Type-S LP2. The problems are: 1. Very few decks have Type-S (the 480,780,980 and combo MXD-D400 are the only ones AFAIK). You absolutely need this to play back LP modes on a HiFi system. However you can record (Type-R) on another, less exclusive, deck and this will be a very good recording. 2. Sonic Stage has a quirk (again possibly deliberate) where ripping directly to LP2 or via AAL works great but ripping VIA 1411 kHz pcm or wav gives garbage when subsequently transcoding to LP2. I know not everyone here believes me. I abandoned LP2 initially because of the rip problem. Once I got a deck that does the copy from CD directly, I changed my mind. Subsequently realising that SonicStage does just as well under the right conditions. Finally about HiMD decks, there are some models other than the 105 and 133, but you have to also get them direct from Japan. Joint stereo could be a problem, but I assure you the Atrac CD player in my car is as good or better than a real CD. Of course the car is a noisy place to begin with. Hope this helps. Oh yes, one more thing. The JA333ES (although the highest specified LP deck ever made - well maybe MDS-E10/12?) doesn't have Type-S playback. For SP only you don't need this deck, there are lots of others that are as good, in the ES series.

I'm sure that the DPC works great on the NH900. However on the N910 (which comes before the NH900 but after the N505) it does not work great, IMO. I'm intrigued by the idea of hacking a portable for digital out. Can you give me a reference possibly?

The same guy I bought from is selling the Sony XT-XM1 at $50 a crack. Get a Sony headunit for $50 (used) or $98 (refurbished) and away you go. I'll PM you details if interested. The only tricky part was getting Japanese radio (DIN) into N.Am car. You don't have that problem.

I just recently became an XM subscriber, and it is (to me) the greatest thing on the air since I left the UK many years ago. I think the price is quite reasonable, with or without an extra $2 a month (no idea whether that is already included in my Canadian subscription). I look upon it as similar in concept to the current levy we pay here in Canada on blank CD media - something eventually finds its way to the copyright holders, without the necessity to indulge in silly scapegoating lawsuits against individuals in the hope of frightening everyone off. Yes, Sirius XM is (and has been forever) close to bankruptcy. They need our support, at least I would like to think so. The demise of CBC classical in Canada pushed me towards a satellite subscription, and I only hope it attracts more subscribers so that the service survives. I am sad to hear of your decision, especially if it is repeated by (or encourages) others. I seem to have met a lot of folks here who either just signed up, or are thinking seriously about it - most of them for the classical stations, but of course there is quite the variety of other "stuff". I was even beginning to think that maybe the tide was turning.

Let me add my voice of praise, Chris. Initially I didn't notice that the new site was also IPS, which goes to show how much better it looks. Some of the most valuable stuff here is not so much the posted contributions, as it is the well-organized reference to all things MD off the minidisc.org site. Of course it makes sense to have a single BBS. Very good luck with it, and I will continue to lurk quietly and lend a hand whenever I'm asked. Cheers