BearBoy

Yeah, much better to get quality gear you can rely on than risk something cheap flaking out on you mid-performance. I am sure there are many benefits to using a Mac but I think I prefer to see your racks of MDS-E12s 🙂 Wow 😲 I guess they're programmable or something? There was a lot going on with the lights but he didn't seem to be touching anything a great deal.

Nice set set up. Is that a Behringer X32 mixer all the Sony decks are connected to? Sounds like you have a lot to manage throughout the show. Pretty critical that you have confidence that your equipment won't let you down! No MiniDiscs. The guy doing the sound was using a Mac Mini and just hit the space bar when the next number started (it was a dance show with 30 ish routines). No extra sound effects etc that I noticed. The guy next to him had some fancy looking mixer things. Googled them when I got home but it turns out the "Sapphire" and "Sapphire Wing" were for the lights and nothing to do with the sound. Sounds like you were doing both their jobs, with a lot more to do, on your own!

The reverse of how I suspect most MiniDisc decks/CD players were generally connected 😉 I don't have much experience with standalone CD recorders but I've always assumed it was far easier to perform edits etc on a MiniDisc?

This morning I've been watching someone play Tetris on an MZ-N510...

Good to see you again, @PhilippeC 🙂

Great stuff @kgallen Would be interesting to see some shots of your kit getting a proper work out 🙂 My daughters are performing in a local theatre at the weekend. The sound desk's at the rear of the front section of the stalls IIRC so will see if I can get a glimpse of whether any MDs are being used 😉

Yeah, the player itself is in pretty much mint condition. The remote is a tiny bit grubby looking. Perils of being white, I suppose. It might clean up although I'm not sure how much of it is age related discolouration of the plastic, rather than dirt. Re VPT - yes, that was my view too. I gave it another go this afternoon but felt the same way 🙂

It's on a couple of my portables (MZ-N920, MZ-N910, MZ-N710 IIRC). It's some sort of virtual surround sound processing thing that is supposed to simulate the sound in a studio, live venue, club or arena. I think I fiddled with it once and never enabled it again 🤔

Here are a couple of snaps:

Got a new portable today: MZ-E520 🙂 It's a reasonably latish (2004) playback only model with Type-S and a digital amp. The remote is white and backlit. Doesn't have the VPT Acoustic Engine that my MZ-N920 and MZ-N910 have but I don't think that's necessarily any great loss (I never use the virtual surround modes). Haven't been able to find a manual yet (I think it might be a Japan only model?) but I'm guessing the equalizer works in the same way as the 920/910?

I've never tried using it with anything other than my PC but that's useful to know @Maciek Matwiejszyn. Strange it doesn't work with Chrome on an Android device as I thought it had been built specifically for Chrome. I could well be wrong though.

Really nice looking machine @Richard 🙂

Checked the manuals for the Control A1II functionality and, to my dismay, realised I needed a mono 3.5mm cable to connect the CD player to the MiniDisc deck. I had a stereo (TRS) cable to hand so thought I'd give it a go before ordering a mono (TS) one and happily it worked! 🙂 CD Text track titles copied over successfully to the MiniDisc. I was also pleasantly surprised that the ALL CAPS titles on the CD display came over the correct mix of capitals/lower case letters on the MiniDisc. Just need to have a re-organisation of the office set up now to plumb everything in (and hopefully remove some of the surplus black boxes).

Trigger pulled:

Saw this over on the r/minidisc Reddit today. Not usable yet but seems like a promising development:

I had some issues copying (CDs) from Blu-ray players (tried a Sony BDP-S580 and a Marantz UD7007) but the issues were different from what you have experienced. I had no problem with copy protection or gaps being inserted, quite the opposite: the music came over as one uninterrupted track. Details here if you're interested at all: I haven't ever tried copying files from a USB device via a Blu-ray or CD player. I am pretty sure I remember copying some tracks I streamed from a NAS via a Sonos Connect (which has optical/coaxial digital outputs) successfully. I probably didn't try any gapless music at the time though.

Ah, good to know. Thanks @Richard. There seems to be a fair amount of MiniDisc development activity going on if the r/minidisc Reddit is anything to go by. Maybe someone will be able to crack this. Yes, I did recall this after I'd posted the above. Looks like the best solution for now is old school real-time recording.

Does your PC have a digital output? If so, you could record to MD from rips of your CDs in realtime. Have you tried cleaning the laser lens on your CD player to see if that stops the skips/errors?

Tried with Web MiniDisc and got the same very slight "blip" that I got with CD to NetMD. It's not a really gap (i.e. silence) but more a very slight, but audible, stutter at the point of transition. I don't have SonicStage but maybe one of the guys who uses it could advise how that performs with gapless albums.

Actually, I say it worked "fine" but I think I can hear an ever so slight "blip" on the transition between the two tracks I did the test with. I've just done a realtime SP recording using a CD player into a MiniDisc deck and that is absolutely seamless. I'll give Web MiniDisc a try this evening.

I've just done a quick test with CD to NetMD and gapless worked fine in SP. Have you tried it and experienced issues, @Alfred Stuckmann?

Ah, cheers @kgallen 🙂 Interesting. Not sure it's worth messing with my MZ-N710 though given the extras aren't anything I'm really missing 🤔

Welcome back @comspec Good work resurrecting your broken NH900 🙂 Does it use the "standard" Sony NiMH gumstick batteries? If so, there are plenty of replacement batteries available now if you want to power it away from its cradle (take a look on your local eBay for "Sony NH-14WM" and you should find Vapex, Double Pow etc options). What does the mod do to the MZ-N707?

This week I have been trying, sadly without success, to fix a C13 error with one of my decks. Tried the obvious (cleaned the laser, reseated the ribbon cables) and, with some very much appreciated help from @kgallen, tried some of the tests available via the Service Menu. Nothing untoward detected but when I tried to run the Auto Check it just stuck at 00 CHECK and got no further. On a more positive note, I've been picking up some more blanks. Nothing exotic, just some "bread and butter" Sony discs that I used to buy back in the day. Examples below:

Welcome to the forum, Alfred. I'm not Stefano but Web MiniDisc does facilitate "real" SP. It sends the PCM data to the NetMD device, which then does the encoding to ATRAC. Stefano confirmed this back on page two: If you use the MDLP modes then the app does the encoding and then sends the LP2/LP4 data to your NetMD device.