BearBoy

Shame we didn't get them in the UK.

The tinted case looks really nice. I don't think I've got any discs with (coloured, rather than just grey) tinted cases. Seems like such an obvious thing to do with all the coloured discs that were released though. Are coloured cases like that fairly common on Japanese releases @Richard?

I guess they became “collectable” as interest in the format increased. Not sure how rare they are, I don’t remember any of my MiniDisc using friends back in the 90s owning any so maybe not too many got produced (in the UK, at least; Japan could well be a very different story)? Either way, I’m not prepared to pay £75 plus to get an inferior sounding copy of an album I’ve already got on CD for the novelty value.

I completely missed the boat with buying any pre-recorded MDs. I didn't really see the point of them back in the 90s as it was generally cheaper to buy the CD and a blank but I do wish I'd picked a couple up before the prices went completely nuts. I do have a cleaning disc which is pressed that I can use for "diagnostics" but it would be nice to have a proper album or two. Unfortunately any of the ones I was vaguely interested seem to be silly money.

Are these recent releases that bands have been putting out on normal blank MDs?

Yeah, it does seem excessive 🤔 I've probably used 100 or so of those since then. There was a time I'd get a whole bunch of sealed blanks every time I bought a deck or a portable. That was before the prices starting heading upwards and people realised they could make more money selling things separately rather than just offloading everything they had in one go. At least I can rest easy knowing my stockpile is only a tiny fraction of what @Richard must have 😉

Ooof. You have been stockpiling! I think I had just shy of 500 sealed blanks at one point but lost track of how many I'd opened and used so it will be a fair bit down from that now. I certainly don't have any immediate need for any new blanks but just like to keep an eye on the supply in case it starts to dry up and the prices on the secondary market go nuts (like the prices for decent sealed cassette tapes did).

I've been keeping half an eye on Amazon.co.jp over the past few months and, although there are still lots of MDW80Ts available, none of them seem to ever be available for deilvery to the UK. Not sure if it's the same for other non-Japanese addresses. It's encouraging that supply doesn't seem to be drying up but a bit frustrating that I can't actually order them any more without paying the inflated eBay UK prices.

Welcome to the forum @sirbu 🙂 I've never used SonicStage myself but thanks for posting your fix. I'm sure other people will find it useful.

Well, there's one for DCC... DCC Museum

The disc itself is maybe a little dull (reminds me of some old floppy discs I used to have 🙂) but I really like the packaging. Similar to the current day MDW80Ts but it looks smarter, to me, with the dark grey/black. Also, that disc is over 30 years old 😯

🤣Took me a few minutes to work out what you were talking about. I think "Proficient" is already pushing it a bit as far as I am concerned 😂

Doh. Ignore my last question!

^^ They're the ones I've got. Always thought they were nice discs. Do the Flower Mix ones only come in Green and Orange, @Richard?

I've got some very similar to those in your last post, @Richard. Except they're 80 minute ones and have a different shutter logo (no "HO" branding). When I first saw your pictures of the Flower Mix ones I initially thought they were the same but in different packaging. The colour patterns on the discs are quite distinct though. Nice score!

Hey, we're back 😄

I've got a BC-9HP, which came with my MZ-E30. It's a UK model (not sure where you're located). It says on it "charge only NH-9WM and NC-6WM" but seems to work okay with the 1450mAh gumsticks available today. The Sony website lists a number of alternative chargers for the MZ-E30 based on where you purchased it: BC-9HU, BC-9HP, BC-7HT & BC-9HG. I've got another Sony one knocking about somewhere, which came with an earlier cassette Walkman, that looks physically the same. Not sure if would be compatible as I think the gumsticks that came with the cassette Walkman were NiCads. Seem to recall you can charge NiCads in an NiMH charger but not the other way around? Could be completely wrong on that though. I've also got one of those DoublePow USB chargers. Had no issues with it; seems to work well.

Sounds positive 👍 Feel free to share my test information with him as well if it will help. It's clearly not just an issue with your particular set up/hardware.

Doesn't look like the Z-N920 has quite the same functionality as the decks Can't see any mention in the manual of being able to adjust the trigger level for automatic track marking. Just found this reference to recording from non-CD sources in my translated copy of the manual: Page 92 goes on to say: Found this is the manual for the MZ-N910 (which is very similar to the 920): Have you got SYNC REC turned on?

It's been a while since I've recorded from my PC in real time but last time I tried streaming from both Spotify and iTunes resulted in the track splits being in the correct place, as long as there was a gap between songs. If two songs flowed into one another then they came over to the MD as a single track and needed to be split manually. Mine were recorded via a Focusrite Scarlet 8i6 into an MDS-JB980 using digital coaxial. Not sure about portables, but the decks have settings to enable automatic track marking when not recording from CDs. This is from the instructions for the MDS-JB980: I'll see if I can find anything similar for the MZ-N920.

Way beyond my technical "abilities" to offer any advice but maybe someone on here might have some suggestions?

My CDP-XB740 displays CD Text in all caps but, so far at least, recordings to my MDS-JB940 seem to render them on MiniDisc with the correct mixture of capital and lower case letters. Like you say though, using a keyboard to title/correct titles only takes a minute or so anyway. Was a gamechanger for me when I got a keyboard compatible deck as I'd previously been using the remote for my MDS-JE500. Don't really recall it being a huge pain at the time but I cannot imagine going back to it now.

I was having some weird happenings with this yesterday. The MD I recorded came from multiple CD sources. Sometimes it would overwrite the MD disc name with whatever the name of the CD was but sometimes it didn't. Wasn't really paying enough attention to pick up on whether there was any sort of pattern 🤔

Anything salvageable? Although I'm not sure I'd fancy pulling a portable apart with my middle aged man eyesight and sausage fingers... 🤓

Despite having 3 decks connected up in my office, I've spent today listening to my MZ-R909 hooked up via line out into my office system. Variety is the spice of life and all that 🙂 The disc I'm listening to was recorded yesterday using my CDP-XB740 / MDS-JB940 combo so that the CD Text track titles came over with the recording via Control A1 II. I decided to go back to the old school methods after spending a few hours doing some tests with NetMD Wizard and CD2NetMD. Sometimes simple can be more satisfying, I think, even if it is slower 🤔