kgallen

Too many AV decoders hanging round the house in bits have tipped her over the edge...

If he wasn’t the ‘chief mod’ we’d ban him for the shameless sales plug :-P

We don’t care if you’ve ‘spammed out’ (I don’t think you did). What we do know is that’s a great story and the squad here will be delighted you’ve ‘rejoined the fold’. In addition it’s nice to see a different machine in use and hear about how you’ve used it’s features. Thank you also for documenting your approach so thoroughly, I’m sure others will find either direct use or inspiration from your approach, even if they don’t write back on here. So ‘welcome back’ and I hope you continue to get joy from your past recordings and next exploits on your new machine! At some point I’ll find the service manual and attempt to answer your technical questions. Regards the laser use maybe this was used only as a playback deck hence the zero record time? Anyway looks like you have a gem! Kevin

(Off topic) You made me panic now about how much longer my beloved from-new 520 might last! So I went into SM to read the odo meters and the results suggest I've been grossly under-using my machine and I should give myself a good talking to! r=46h and p=174h (Iop=55.8/55.4). My MZ-R700 that I have at work (and I'm listening to now) I suspect will have many more play hours on it as I listen to it for many (office) hours each day. When I find the SM I think I'll have a look at the odo counts (or maybe not, maybe it will scare me too much!). Also off topic (and a random irrelevant observation!) I was just listening to an audio book (Red Dwarf 'The Last Human') which I recorded in LP4 (see elsewhere rambling post) and was interested to hear the laser return home a full 1 minute and 34 seconds before the audio finished. This was a longer memory buffer than I expected and would relate to a SP buffer of about 23 seconds. The MZ-R700 is a "G-Protection" model so it seems they doubled the "usual" 10 second buffer. I'll get my coat...

Interesting. Aren’t they the same e-line flimsy case with the same display and an updated drive chipset but still cost reduced to hell and back?

Should’a saved that for when @NGY gives us the magic recipe to make his fantastic LPM project!

You're gonna have to give us a run down on what you've got now, you've been racking them up recently! You must have half a dozen at least from the 4xx series. You must have a few MDM-7-series drives in stock now.

:-D Love it! I think the next purchase is going to have to be some more Ikea shelving to stack all these machines on! A silver one eh? And with the remote? That's a rarity! What's that silver knob on the LHS of the front panel?

@NGY definitely not chipping in! No one ‘owns’ this thread! This is all good info and as @M1JWR says, we need it!

The EEPROM contents won't match the laser characteristics so some reprogramming will be required to avoid the laser getting damaged. I'd refer to the Service Manual which usually specifies what needs doing when certain parts are replaced. There is usually a section on what to do if the EEPROM is replaced, which is effectively your scenario with the BD board swap.

If you put the 440 drive back in, any different? (The ole tarnished ribbon cable trick!)

Why suspect the spindle motor? As we know lots of things need to happen and be good before the CPU will start operating the drive. As you’ve got the drive out it is easy to put a resistance meter across the big blobs of solder on the motor connections and check for a few ohms of continuity.

Hi. Can you elaborate? What is the ‘safe mode pin’ - the CPU reset jumper or something else?

Indeed, sir.

I'm going to row back on this slightly... I had an idea to try the RM-D15M remote from my MDS-JE520 with these decks - this is the larger remote with the 1-24 number keys. What I found, is that the MDS-JE480 does actually implement Auto Pause and it works, I tried it with a disc, and it tells you on the screen (see photo). You can't access Auto Pause (or Auto Space) from any menu or button on the deck as we found above, but with this larger remote, which has the A.Space button, you can indeed circle Auto Off, Auto Space, Auto Pause. I didn't try out Auto Space - but again, that is not available from the deck menus, but it is accessible from a remote. (From the Setup Menu, you can enable/disable Smart Space, which is the means to get the deck to trim the inter-track space to 3s if there is an audio break of >30s). The MDS-JE440 didn'y play the same game though, so no Auto Pause (or Auto Space) there, sorry folks. (Sorry for the terrible quality photo, I shouldn't have opened the blinds fully - but you can see the "Auto Pause" on the screen and the model is the MDS-JE480.)

Possibly - the axle that the laser sled slides along might need a de-fluff.

Hi. Sorry I did mean to go and do this but got distracted by the pitch/speed question! So I have just done this now. Unfortunately it doesn’t. After playing the one track it goes into STOP. Pressing PLAY plays the same track again. How frustrating. The hunt continues... Kevin

(Off topic, sorry OP!). This is probably the reason, good shout. Our MD would give me their final cut (i.e. a rough-as-a-badgers-hind-quarters cut) with some pitch shift on a chorus and it would be horrific beyond belief - horrible splashy percussion and garbled vocals. So I'd have to start again and try and reproduce from the original (supplied) tracks - but you're right these were probably MP3 from t'internet.

For completeness, the MDS-JE530 (which is the next model along from your 520 and is near identical, but with the newer Type R codec) has pitch shift. As I have a 530 too, I just gave it a go and whilst again it’s pitch+speed, again it does a great job of it. The function is accessed from the setup menu rather than having dedicated controls as on the pro models. This might be a more affordable machine. Kevin

I use Audacity a lot and even pitch and speed shifts using Audacity can be pretty horrific. The shift done by the MD players was pretty impressive if you want the pitch shift with the corresponding speed shift.

I'm not sure you can get these functions truly separate, even on the best decks. MDS-E12 (and MDS-E10) have "Vari Speed" but this alters pitch (and speed creeps with it), +/- 12.5% Tascam MD-350 also has "Pitch Control" but this is the same, alters pitch and speed, +/-12%. I just tried my MDS-E12, MDS-E10 and MD-350 for this. Very nice implementation, sounds good, no distortion or sound aberrations. The portable MZ-B10 does have a speed function, presumably for dictation use, but the sound quality suffers horribly as you slow it down or speed it up. Tascam MD-CD1 Mk1 and Mk2 (NOT Mk3) also have MD pitch function. As I have (a Mk1) these too (what a surprise on this forum!) I'll have a play in a bit, but as it uses the same Sony chipset as above I think the results will be the same. Happy to hear from others who have found a machine that can! Kevin ETA: Confirmed Tascam MD-CD1 Mk1 is the same Pitch Control as the Sony decks. What I also need to note here for completeness, is that these pitch/speed control functions only work with SP tracks - not MDLP LP2 or LP4 tracks. MZ-B10 has a true speed control that does not affect pitch - but this is not a function you'd want to use as a backing track source, since the sound is altered. The machine trims off the bass and the sound becomes a little aberrated at the more extreme settings. It sounds pretty bad through the inbuilt speaker, but actually listening to an Ian Dury MD using headphones, it's not quite as bad as I thought. But it's still not usable for performance, this is a feature to help the transcription of a dictated message.

Auto Pause: MDS-JE440 and MDS-JE480 definitely don't (I just tried on mine with and without disc). Setup Menu options are very limited on these decks. Cost reduced - no headphone socket either. Previous model range MDS-JE520 and MDS-JE530 definitely do and hence the 9xx/7xx/6xx of their respective ranges. MDS-E10 and MDS-E12 do. Tascam MD-350 and MD-CD1 do.

Possibly something more ‘pro’ like the MZ-B10 although we’d have to check the manual... ok just looked, it has a 1- Track mode. Whether this is the same as Auto Pause (which I too use for theatre) on the big decks I’m not sure. As it happens I have a B10 so will have a play when I get home unless someone else confirms in the meantime. Otherwise I suspect the ‘newer’ portable models don’t (indeed the gits removed Auto Pause from the later home decks from the MDS -4xx series just when I needed another MD deck back in 2001 for my drama group). However it is worth digging back to the slightly older portables pre 2000 assuming you don’t want MDLP. Even the mid 90s models with an ATRAC before our beloved 4.5 will be just fine for quality playback - most of the advances in ATRAC were in the encoder/recording side, the decoder pretty much unchanged. Any version of machine/ATRAC will play SP tracks. Don't go too early though - the very early machines had much higher power consumption so had some unobtainable rechargable battery pack. Look for something that takes AA cells, which means it will probably also work with the fairly standard Sony 3V power bricks that are pretty common. Make sure you look in the Players section too as I'm guessing you don't need record on this unit if you're using it "out on the road". Also some of the ‘larger’ and older portables have remote or footswitch inputs. Worth having a browse on minidisc.org - I just looked at the B3 and R3 for example but no 1 track option there. Kevin OK admittedly having had a look around I'm not finding much with A-Pause. I had a browse on eBay to see what was about. Stumbled on this Sharp MD-MT270, which whilst it doesn't have Auto Pause or 1-Track, does look like a chunkier build which might be of interest for on-the-road. No connection to the seller. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sharp-Minidisc-Recorder-Walkman-MD-MT270H-BK/264842411748?hash=item3da9d67ee4:g:AFYAAOSwSYNfQ7Jp Manual is here: https://www.manualslib.com/download/489231/Sharp-Md-Mt270h.html

Great news and great learning exercises too across the range - especially as you document them here for the benefit of others!

Great news, keep it up!