Alfred Stuckmann

For now my solution is the following: Copying all tracks of one CD as one long track (or one long track for each side of a vinyl LP) , transfer all with Platinum MD (which takes about a third to a half of the toal playing time. Afterwards I divide the track (or tracks) with my Sony MDS-JE530 and get a perfect gapless Minidisc. Still hoping for an update which can automatically divide the tracks after the transfer to Net MD - but meanwhile for me this is quite a useful way to record complete CDs, LPs etc.

"ToC editing on a byte-by-byte basis" What's the point in this? I couldn't find anything in the UI which gives me the possibility of TOC editing - except for renaming tracks or discs. I'm using a Sharp IM-DR410 which works fine with Web Minidisc as well as Platinum MD. Can someone explain where to find the "ToC editing byte by byte" and what it's good for?

Thanks, but I'm sure that the counter is correct and shows the frames position. At least I can see the frames changing from 1 to 86 (or from 0 to 85, not sure at the moment), so this is correct. If I skip one or two frames backward, the audio rehearsal always changes to some tiny amount backwards. So that's ok. But at some undefined point backwards (and almost immediately when changing the frames to foreward positions) the rehearsal is muted, although you can hear the disc itself spinning as before. Strange error, that is. It even gets more weird. I tried some divide operations yesterday and came across this error. Then I stopped the divide. Now it really gets spooky: I started the same track for playback to retry the divide and guess what? I heard some of the audio that I've overwritten before - but in slower speed !!! The disc had about 60 mins of a radio play ("Hoerspiel" as we call it over here in Germany). I erased the complete disc before recording new music. And the new recording is about 40 mins. So appr. 20 mins of the old recording are still on the disc, but normally you have no access to this because I erased all track info of it ("all erase") before recording the new content. But the error in the divide operation seems to mess up the (loaded) TOC so that the position of track "2" (which I wanted to divide) suddenly refers to a part of the audio which lays in the 20 mins section that were not overwritten. And as the 530 has pitch control, somehow this error seems to switch to a slower playback speed (about 50% speed). What an interesting machine. 😞 Anyway, I'm a bit disappointed because this was my first choice recorder before the error appeared.

Hi folks, my Sony MDS-JE530 has a strange problem when I want to split/divide tracks. I choose "Divide" in the menu and a track that I want to divide. It doesn't matter which track or if it's a digital or analog recording. This error also comes with any minidisc media I tried. As soon as I get into rehearsal mode and change the position backwards too quickly for the split or if I then move the position in the rehearsal forward another frame or two, the rehearsal stops playing. Huh? There is no sound, although the recorder seems to continue playing the part where I want to split, but without sound. What could be wrong? Has anyone stumbled across the same error before? The recorder itself has no problem writing the TOC after recording or editing a disc. And it has no errors when reading a disc. So I guess it's a software fault. But indeed it's a strange one. The error even occurs when I use the remote control for the divide editing. So it's not an issue with the controls and buttons themselves.

And again what a shame... Tried only one CD (in pristine condition), it stutters half way due to read errors and boom ... a ruined recording on MD. I copied it three (!) times to get a decent one on MD without flaws. Maybe I'd give MD Rec (Windows version) a try. Though it's still real-time, at least the stutters and errors of reading a CD wouldn't mean a thing if you rip the CD before you record to MD.

I looked through your other thread. Seems your BD-Player isn't sending PQ-subcode information over digital out e.g. S/PDIF. So your MD-Recorder doesn't get the track change information it needs to recognize when a new track is playing. Some "normal" CD-Players have the same limits with digital output. I'm glad that the Sony PS2 (as well as my other drives) do deliver the correct subcode data. Maybe I'd try a software music player on the PS2 to check if it's able to send gapless data and (!) send the track change information. I'll keep my eyes open for other players with USB support and digital output. Meanwhile MD recording with my PS2 will keep me busy.

Yes, this seems to be the only way for real SP and gapless recording of CD sourced material. I tried my Sony BluRay player because he has a digital coax output and can play WAV files from usb. Sadly, in this case the scms copy protection forbids the recording with my md recorder. And later I found out that the playback of the files isn't seamless or gapless. The BD player sends a gap before playing the next track. Maybe another media player with optical or coax output would do the trick. But I guess, one of the issues would occur: no trackmarks, scms, gaps. I think I'll stick with my good old PS2 - seems to be the most reliable CD player that I own.

Thanks for your tests and time. I have four devices with digital output to record in realtime, so that's not my point. I just like to be on the save side when transfering my stuff to the minidisc. And therefore netmd would be the (!) best solution, if it would let me record gapless in SP mode. I hoped that this last md limit had been crossed.

Yeah, I tried it a few times. I mostly get some annoying minimal gaps between files. I'm listening through headphones most of the time and the gaps are clearly audible. Every now and then the transition between tracks comes out gapless, but this is probably just a coincidence because of the sector length of the audio tracks. Most tracks on almost any CDs I tested didn't come out gapless in SP mode. This would be a real shame because I sometimes get skips and errors when copying directly from CD (sometimes my CD player couldn't read a CD sector here and there). If recording would be gapless with netmd and SP quality then (audio) life would be so much easier.

I'm still confused - and sadly I don't have a deep understanding of the netmd protocol itself. Why is it possible to do a completely gapless transfer with LP2, but not with SP ("supports gapless audio in LP2 mode using external encoder and disc-at-once transfer.")? What's the difference concerning the encoding of the tracks and setting the correct track marks (or track length in TOC) - presuming I would transfer a proper live CD or maybe Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon", which has merge tracks all over the place? It would be nice if someone could explain this a bit further.

Hello Stefano, what a wonderful piece of software. It's time to re-activate my minidisc enthusiasm once again! Is the transfered quality of your software real SP or is this the fake SP quality (in fact LP quality) of the old net md protocol? One question concerning gapless and (real) SP mode: Afaik the net md protocol doesn't support gapless tracks in SP mode, correct? If so, maybe this concept would deal with the problem: Convert all tracks to one big file before the transfer and send this big file to the net md. As soon as the transfer is done, use the track length of the single source tracks and let your software divide the big track on the md into the different tracks (just like the user could do it manually). This should result in a gapless playback and could maintain appropriate track length for each track. Maybe a simple checkbox in the UI could be added to let the user choose whether the transfer should result in gapless files or not. I must admit I don't know, if the net md protocol you're using contains an implementation of the "divide tracks" md functionallity. But if it does, this concept should result in perfect gapless tracks in SP mode - at least if the source tracks don't contain gaps themselves (like old encoded mp3 files sometimes do). Certainly the best source would be WAV or FLAC files (I'm using FLAC mainly). Anyway - keep up the good work. And thanks for the inspiration to reach out a hand to my long prefered recording media again. I love the minidisc since ca. 1994/95 (got my first recorder then - a Sony MDS 302). Regards Alf