BearBoy

Hi @CookieBoy. Welcome to the forum. This part of the forum doesn't get a lot of traffic tbh. You might be better off asking for help over at https://www.avforums.com/forums/sony-tvs.113/

Techmoan having "fun" swapping the belt in a Sony CMT-C5

The second one is a small device for automatically putting Sony portable recorders into the service mode created by a user called puzzlingcaptcha: Basically you slot the PCB into the remote control socket on your recorder and it automatically inputs the right, right, left, left, right, left, right, left, pause, pause commands to enter service mode. There's a video in the reddit thread showing it in action. You can read the full reddit thread here: LINK

Came across a couple of interesting gadgets people had created on the r/minidisc reddit and thought it worth posting them here. First up is a "MiniDisc Titling Machine" created by a user called Numerous-Bullfrog745: You can read the full reddit thread here: LINK

So last week a box turned up on my doorstep from the extremely kind @kgallen containing a new toy to play with: a Sony MXD-D4. It's my first encounter with a dual CD/MD deck and I'm really enjoying it. The ability to copy CDs at 4 x realtime speed and transfer the song titles, assuming the CD has CD-Text of course, makes creating MDs a breeze. I think this was probably as slick as things got in the pre-NetMD world and, even now having the option of NetMD, there's something I find more satisfying about tinkering with MiniDisc with actual CDs and not being tethered to a PC (not that there's anything wrong with computers but I spend all day working on one 🙂). I had been planning to record a compilation disc of a particular group when @kgallen put this in the post and so I held off so I could use it for my inaugural recording on the MXD-D4. The five source CDs all had CD-Text so I had over an hour’s worth of music copied across and automatically titled in under 20 minutes. The song titles all came across correctly, with the appropriate upper/lower case lettering, just leaving me to title the disc itself (I must admit I cheated here and did that in one of my other decks so I could use a keyboard). Recording in MDLP is not quite as zippy as SP but is still twice as fast as realtime recording. As well as the High-Speed CD-MD Synchro-Recording, you can record at normal speed (presumably if you wanted to listen to the music as you copied it as, unlike high-speed dubbing in cassette decks, I don't believe there is any difference in quality). Aesthetically it's a match for the "E" line units Sony were releasing in the late 90s/early 2000s but looks at home with any of the Sony Hi-Fi kit of its time: My office stack is getting a little out of hand (there are more in the unit these are sat on) so I think one or two of the decks will be put away for the time being. The MXD-D4 will definitely be staying though 🙂 Prior to sending me the deck, @kgallen had brought it back to life (including installing a new MD mechanism and replacing the CD belt) so hopefully it'll have many years of service in it. I would like to end by saying a massive thank you to @kgallen for the incredibly generous gift!

That's how the sickness starts 😂

Hi @thrashin. No, I didn't really try it again. I generally use Web MiniDisc Pro and had only installed NetMD Wizard to see if I encountered the same issues as @Distorted Vision. Probably worth a try. I always use a mains adaptor when recording from my PC and have heard of people having issues when using batteries as the power was insufficient.

Thanks @Piotr W 🙂

Nice selection of discs there @Piotr W 👍 Would be great to see some pictures of some of the discs themselves when they arrive (assuming you're intending to unwrap them).

Thanks for posting this @Brad Murphy. Don't have an MZ-EH50 myself but I'm sure someone will find them useful as there aren't any instructions on MiniDisc.org for this player and the ones on the MiniDisc Wiki are in Japanese.

Good luck with the hunt! Would make a fantastic looking, and no doubt sounding, set up.

I'm not really sure where I was going with that train of thought tbh. Just had visions of loads of decks being controlled centrally but not really sure of what practical use that would be 🤔

Ha 😂 I think I meant E10s, rather than E11s, which is an older model isn't it? Nice collection though! What's up with the faulty ones? Assume it's not something simple like a belt change...

How many E12s (E11s?) do you have? Could you control multiple MD decks and the CDP-D12 at once (with the right amount of leads etc)?

So do the D11 commands work on the D12 or did you have to amend them?

500 Euros for a fully functional MDS-JA333ES isn't half bad tbh. Last time I looked on eBay the asking prices for local ones were north of £1000 😯 Looks great with the matching receiver too. Now you just need to track down a SCD-XA333ES to complete the set 🤔 😂

Keep us updated!

Great that the guy from Reddit was able to help with the documentation! Yeah, I'd imagine that could be fairly disastrous if you needed to make on the fly changes quickly. Frantically typing in complicated hexadecimal based commands on a computer probably wouldn't hack it 🤔

Nice work @Piotr W! And a lovely deck. Was this a Japanese model you were converting for use in Europe?

Looks like a fun project @kgallen! How far do you think it might be possible to take this? I know you still use your pro decks for stage productions. Could you somehow utilise this functionality for that? I saw someone over on the r/minidisc Reddit mentioned they had managed to create a C# library for controlling their MDS-E11 and CDP-D11 (LINK). I wonder if the CDP-D12 works in the same way as its predecessor?

I don't have an MZ-R50 but, assuming that the Line Out functions in the same way on that device as on my Sony MiniDisc portables, then the volume control is bypassed. I don't often use Audacity but a couple of things worth checking: 1. Make sure that you have selected your "recording device" correctly from the Audio Setup drop down menu: I'm using a Focusrite Scarlett interface but you just need to select whatever input method you're using on your PC. 2. Make sure that the recording levels (the top level with the microphone symbol) in Audacity are up: If you then press record in Audacity and play on your MZ-R50 you should see the audio being recorded in the left and right channels. Once you have finished recording, save your Project (File > Save Project > Save As). Audacity saves its Projects as *.aup3 files. If you want to create a more universally playable file then you'll need to Export it (File > Export Audio > Export to Computer) and choose the format you want (.wav, .mp3, .aac etc). That should (hopefully!) give you a file you can play back more easily. Hope some of that might help. Let me know how you get on and, if it's still not working for you, we can try to work out why.

Hi @Vienna snitzel. Welcome to the forum. The MZ-R50 only had a digital input, not a digital output, so the only way to get sound from it to your PC is via an analogue connection (use the 3.5mm Line Out connection rather than the headphone output for the best quality). How are you connecting it into your PC? Audacity should work fine but some more information regarding how you are connecting the MZ-R50 to your PC would help diagnose your problem. Is the MZ-R50 your only MiniDisc device? Many of the Hi-Fi decks have digital outputs, which would give you better quality. Additionally, it is now possible to rip the actual recordings from a MiniDisc with no loss of quality using the Web MiniDisc Pro software and a NetMD compatible device.

The display on this one on eBay looks pretty bright too: LINK

There are some photos of an owner's MD-101A on the MiniDisc Wiki here: LINK Always a bit hard to tell with photos on the internet but the display doesn't look dim to me.

The MZ-R70 was released in 1999 and MDLP (ATRAC3) wasn't introduced until the following year. The OP already stated that they had some MDLP discs that don't play back on the MZ-R70. So, yeah, I think that's incorrect.