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I don't think there's a single person on the board here who would agree that 128kbps mp3 is better than ATRAC. In fact I would go so far as to say that the reverse is true - there is no ATRAC bit rate in use which sounds as bad as 128kbps mp3.

To quote Winnie The Pooh, "Crustimony Proseedcake". Actually a piece of sandpaper does a great job provided you don't overdo it. You may need to work on the other (-ve) end of the battery too.

For my vote, bigger is better, and no need to reduce, Sergio. I love your site! Stephen

Huh? That article goes on and on about how the R50 is better, doesn't it?

Two words in that short quote I take issue with: "just" - in my opinion there is never any "just" in technology. Amps have had digital input for 7-8 years and are now easily available on ebay for way less than the cost of the fancy DAC OP refers to. "normal" - receivers mostly have digital IN these days. Ten years ago, I agree it was not "normal". If you don't believe me I'd be happy to take a scan through ebay.co.uk and point out a couple. Here, for example: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sony-STR-DA1200ES-7-1-Channel-100-Watt-Receiver-/161438029899?pt=UK_Sound_Vision_Home_Cinema_Receivers&hash=item259674d84b You may find that this is actually the same model as the STR-DG1000 I refer to (and own). Update: the model I linked to is not available where I live, and when I checked, the closest model to the DG1000 is in fact the STR-DA3200ES. Nevertheless the digital input feature is present in the DA1200ES, priced (for the record) on eBay at a rather reasonable 95 pounds. That's only about 4 pounds per pound, quite the bargain in HiFi, IMHO.

This article may be of interest vis-a-vis R50 vs R55. http://www.minidisc.org/repair_info.html Everyone seems to say the R50 (and its contemporary/near-relative MZS-R5ST) is the best portable Sony ever made. As this is SP-only I have developed preferences on models with the newer codecs, and I think the second generation Hi-MD (RH10 and RH910) sound really good. Unfortunately the RH910(M10) seems to have a lot of problems in almost every case. The drier all-digital amps in EH70 and NH1/RH1 are some people's choice, however the analogue side of the RH10 has a very warm sound. Generally the Hi-MD units play all previous recordings very well. The reason for this may be the use of the more recent Type-S DSP chip in every Hi-MD.

You didn't mention that the C14 was on the 530. In which case it's just possible the error is there. However I still think you have to do an adjust of the IOP value on the CL5MD. I think this condition can result from inability to switch from reading to writing and back again quickly enough. If the BD board is properly adjusted it doesn't happen, and the only thing I ever had to do with a drive that had this fault was to fix the IOP value. Not sure why it happened now though. Has your mains voltage changed recently? Despite all appearances, I think it's the READ not the write power on the CL5MD which is wrong. The read->write->read sequence messes up somehow.

I'm referring to the fact that now you have a standalone DAC with cables to the power amp. Then finally cables to the speakers, right? With an AV receiver you have one cable from MD to unit, and speakers right off the back with speaker wire. So, at the price of having to find space for a big heavy unit (for all the interconnect stuff allowing multiple types of I/O) you get everything nicely shielded, a single massive power supply for everything thereby avoiding hum loops and glitches. In other words, its usefulness is limited by whatever (RCA output, I looked at the back of the ARCAM to be sure) cables you have from the DAC to the power amp, and wherever the weakest link is, there come the possible problems. I once upon a time (when I got the Onkyo) tried out a phono pre-amp for my turntable/cartridge. Admittedly nothing fancy but I tried 2 or 3 before giving up completely and going back to the all-in-one Kenwood which had a PPA. They all had ridiculous problems with signal levels, noise, and on and on, even with fancy cabling which I bought at great cost. Not until I finally got the massive Sony STR-DG1000 was I able to move to a (mostly-)digital amp when using LPs.

C14 nearly always means the laser read power is in need of adjustment. When you record, the disk gets read both before and after the writing. Blanks disks probably read much easier than disks with data on. So it's quite possible to make a decent recording but be unable to finish it because the READ process doesn't work right - you can imagine that to close the TOC, it has to read, write and read again after making the actual music recording.

The only issue I ever ran into of this kind is related to codecs (LP4, not sure if I can generalise) which use joint stereo. A perfectly good stereo signal with a mono announcer comes out really badly, generating weird sibilants on the mono voice. LP2 doesn't have this problem, presumably because it's true stereo. So as long as you avoid LP4 I expect mono to work fine. Philippeb says he thinks the mono MD format is a good archival one. I inherited a complete set of Beatles mono MDs though I am not sure how they were made. I am far from being a connoisseur of mono any more but they sound pretty good.

The JB940 DAC is not in the same league as the 920/930. Current pulse in the two older models, hybrid in the 940. As someone who's never used a standalone DAC (I have an Onkyo, a Sony and an Integra all of which seem to do really decent jobs at optical->speakers), I'm a bit sceptical about all this componentisation (?) on the grounds that anything one gains by having superior performance one loses again by bringing the signal out to analogue interconnects, with all the known problems of varying resistance etc. About the only problem with the all-in-one digital receivers I am familiar with is this business of overheating since they do not have (for reasons of audio purity) any fans. The temperature on my TX-SR605 has been known to reach 50 degrees C (there's a magic menu where you can get it to show you that)!! I'm not sure what it would prove, but I'm willing to try out a 930's output into the analogue side of the SR605. I even have a pre-digital Kenwood sitting in a box somewhere, but somehow I would expect 930+Kenwood to be equivalent to 940+Sony (or Onkyo). How would you design an experiment to compare the two approaches? What differences might you expect to hear?

3V power supplies are standard across a wide range of Sony units including a huge number of MD models. We were going to put tile everywhere until I dropped a (completely unrelated) power supply. But you should have little problem replacing. Bad luck, that's all.

Don't understand - why is it misguided to use the best DAC in the world?

I've been very happy with several different AV receivers where the input is optical or coax s/pdif and sample rate up to 192kHz up to 24-bits. I would imagine this eliminates all sorts of problems with component mismatch. Also the receivers pretty much ignore SCMS. In my case, therefore, I don't care about the DAC in the MD thanks to optical output and the sole criterion for (playback) deck choice is "how well can I reconstruct the compressed signal from the MD". In this case the Type-S DSP chips are better than Type-R for MDLP. It does make a difference as I verified a couple of days back. I know that the current pulse DACs in the 920 and 930 and some other high end models are used purely as DACs by some audiophiles. But that presupposes a need for a separate DAC.

Sigh. Wonder if the data is really there Danny? You might Toc clone and see?

as long as the fault is localised you should be ok. All I meant was that you're stuck with an otherwise very saleable unit.

You've been unlucky - touchwood I've never had a problem with the jog knob on DECKS (portables is another matter entirely and may be harder to fix). I'd recommend fixing it anyway, just on general principles (you can see the ebay listing "OK except for AMS/Jog dial jumps" already).

U replied too quick - my first reponse got edited after a couple of minutes. Contact cleaner is some weird mixture of solvents.

Try cleaning up your USB device map. This involves enabling "Show hidden devices", and I would direct you to the following post: Once you can see all the dangling and unused USB devices, you can start deleting them.

This should be fixable easily. We need to get some input from Jim Hoggarth but I would guess that taking the knob off and spraying some contact cleaner would work wonders. The problem is to make sure that CC doesn't end up anywhere else permanently, with the resulting smell. I'm guessing the proper way to do this is to disassemble the SW board from the 940 and work on it away from the deck, to avoid contamination. That, or replace it (page 61 of the service manual).

If it's doing a digital copy, surely those "silent" LP tracks are what you want? Or are you saying the result cannot be played in an MDLP deck?

If the W1 will copy LP tracks, is this a cute way to get rid of the TrProtect flag on a NetMD disk?

Well... the one disadvantage of recording analogue signals in highly compressed form (LP2 or LP4) is that you may waste a lot of bits recording white noise or hum. That's why optical is better on an "originally" optical signal. Also the filters on deck may help.

Definitely you don't want a loooong analogue cable. Losses and hum/noise. Gold connectors help. The recording circuits in the deck have all sorts of circuitry applied to the signal before it ever hits the main DSP chip, which are not used in portables. Much more stable power supplies too.

These two are essentially the same DSP chip - Type-R (bit reallocation), not Type-S (which logically followed Type-R) which was the last revision of the ATRAC hardware. So a fair question. To give an unfair answer, you can improve the playback if and only if you got a Type-S deck or portable (all HiMD units are Type-S as well as a considerable proportion of NetMD units). However to go back to the question posed: I would tend to use the deck for recording, unless it's super-inconvenient. One thing to be aware of: if the TV box is (likely) outputting a 48kHz-sampled signal, the MD will have to resample it. This resampling is responsible for all sorts of weird artifacts when doing the kind of recording you describe, with sound that has been compressed. It's probably less significant for full (uncompressed) sound. So: 1. See if you can set the output of the TVbox to 44.1kHz. If you cannot, I would hazard a guess that the deck does better resampling than the portable. 2. Consider doing an ANALOGUE recording. Despite all you have read and thought, in this situation you may be better getting the one system to play back "the way it knows how". You'll find out quickly if this improves your results. 3. If you want to get fancy, see about a resampling device that will suck the optical signal and upsample to 176 or 192 kHz and then dither it down to 44.1kHz. Generally this should produce a better result. The Behringer Ultramatch Pro is a standalone example of this technology, though many (up-market) computer sound cards probably have the same capability (unlikely the one IN the machine, you would have to buy an add-on card costing 100 pounds or more). Hope this helps.