Jimma

I just bought 25 used Sony MiniDiscs from ebay for a buy it now price of £1.45 with free postage and packing. It will be interesting to see if they turn up.

Is the 333ES not repairable then?

I would love to know where all the Sony 60 minute blanks are coming from as I'm sure none have been manufactured for many years. I recently purchased three boxes of five for £6 from someone on ebay who had accidentally bought them for their camcorder instead of mini DVDs. There seem to be sellers on ebay with large stocks of these blanks. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sony-Premium-MD60-blank-minidisc-5-disc-pack-/221173021022?pt=UK_CE_Portable_Audio_Portable_CD_Players_ET&hash=item337ef0795e There are also various other websites with stock starting at 89p per disc, which is not bad. http://www.totalblankmedia.com/minidisc-c-24_52.html http://www.tapecity.co.uk/acatalog/MiniDiscs.html Where have these discs been hiding for the last decade or so?

I think I must have been amazingly flukey but about twelve years or more ago when I knew a lot less about MiniDisc than I do now, the write head on my MDS-JE510 got somehow got so badly bent it was literally folded back on itself. Obviously the deck would not record so I took it apart, saw the bent head (although at that point in time I don't even think I knew that was what it was) and just straightened it out by hand. It was so badly bent it felt like it might snap off as I flexed it back. By some miracle it worked perfectly and has recorded hundreds of discs since and still records flawlessly to this day. I bet I couldn't do that again if I tried!

Wow, the NH1 really is a nice find UK-MD and the 1GB discs are just the icing on the cake! In answer to your question Arr, I don't really have any tips. I'm lucky enough to live near a huge car boots which has literally hundreds of stalls every week. I don't always get there early either and some of my best finds have been when I've turned up near the end strangely. I usually can't be arsed to get up at 7am on a Sunday morning, especially if I've been out the night before.

I would say that's pretty poor customer support from Sony. Obviously there's no problem if you're aware that SonicStage is available from this site, but if you've bought a new MD unit in the last few years, which considering Sony supposedly still manufactured the RH1 until 2011 must be quite a few people, then Sony supporting the software your expensive new recorder uses would seem to be a reasonable expectation. It's bad enough there was never any official update for Windows 7/8 but removing it from the support site all together seems a bit out of order to me.

The AGC will have no effect on a recording made optically, only on analogue recordings as far as I'm aware. I have found the AGC to be very useful when recording DJ sets in clubs and at raves when I'm using a line out from the mixer. DJs (including myself I'm sure) do have a terrible habit of changing the mixer levels, usually in an upwards direction, as the night goes on and the AGC generally does a great job of keeping tabs on these level changes and adjusting accordingly. It means I always get a recording with good levels and no distortion. You do very occasionally notice the gain adjusting but generally speaking it works very well and gives excellent results no matter how much people fiddle with the mixer.

I recently thought I'd try my local car boot sale to see if I could find any MiniDisc items for my collection and I've been pleasantly surprised by what I've found so far. Over the last few Sundays I've acquired: A Sharp MT-MD290 for my niece for £2. A brand new boxed Sony MZ-R410 for £5. A mint (doesn't look like it's ever been used) boxed Sony MZ-N710 for £1, although it is not keen to play so I'll hopefully be sending it to Jim. A wood and metal Techpoint MD rack and 52 discs for £6. A Sony PCLK-U5 usb digital audio converter, brand new in box for £1. And last Sunday I picked up an immaculate Sony MDS-JE530 deck and 3 new discs for £15. I have also tried putting a message out on my local Freecycle group (where people give things away that they don't need rather than binning them) and I received: A Sony MZ-R700 and 15 discs. A mint Sony MZ-R91 and 4 discs. A mint Aiwa AM-NX9 and two new five packs of Maxell Colour discs. Amazing what you can find for little or no money if you look hard enough:)

I had forgotten I'd written a small essay in the comments section of that article in July last year.

I would try contacting him through his website. His contact details are at the bottom of the page. http://www.angie031056.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/

Lens cleaning discs are a bit of a waste of time. The may remove a small quantity of dust but not a lot else. Head cleaning discs can be more useful, especially as the head is generally harder to clean manually than the lense. I've had decks with dirty record heads where I've been experiencing drop outs in recordings where a head cleaning disc has sorted it out nicely. Generally speaking though, unless you've actually got problems, I wouldn't even bother. I have a head cleaner and since 1998 I've had to use it twice. As Philippe corectly says, a very gentle wipe with alcohol on a cotton bud works wonders. I recently repaired a pair of cd decks where both lenses were useless due to being completely coated from the user's heavy smoking. Some cotton buds and tape deck head cleaning fluid soon brought them back to life.

I'm actually transfering to (fake) sp and very rarely use MDLP. The unit I'm using, the MDS-NT1, is designed specifically to be used as a computer drive and can only run off mains electricity. It's strange as I've used this setup for years with masses of different types with no problems until now.

I've just emailed you.

I just tried recording over one of the suspect discs with the CHC-CL5MD to try and test the theory that there could be some sort of TOC hangover from a previous recording. The disc played fine on all decks. I then recorded on it again using my computer and the MDS-NT1 and when I put it back in the bookshelf unit, the lp2 error was back. I'll just have to record those two particular discs using something other than the drive on my computer. It's quite frustrating that I'll have to check discs that have been recorded using my pc for compatibility from now on unless I can figure out what is going on.

The left hand disc has no diagonals, just a fairly standard slightly textured finish.

This picture is of the exact two discs involved. I have used masses of each of these disc models before and have had no trouble with them or in fact, any other type of disc. Very strange. I'm just hoping it's not a sign of an imminent problem with the deck connected to my computer.

I first noticed this problem when I recorded a disc for my five year old niece a couple of months ago. I recorded onto a TDK MD80 using SonicStage in sp mode with a Sony MDS-NT1. When she played the disc on her Goodmans GMD-16RB it incorrectly identified the recording as lp2 and played each track at half speed. I took the disc back home and tested it on various Sony portables and there was no problem. I re-recorded onto the same disc and tried again on the Goodmans and still had the same issue so I just used a different disc which was all good and thought no more about it. Today I recorded an album onto a TDK MD RXG80 using the same equipment and then played it on my Sony CHC-CL5MD bookshelf unit which incorrectly identifies it as lp2 and plays each track silent. I then tested this disc on several portable including Hi-MD units and an sp only MZ-R55 plus an sp only MDS-JE510 deck all with no problems. I then dug out the disc I had previously given my niece that had problems. I had re-used it and listened to the recording in the car on an sp only player with no problems at all. I put this in the bookshelf unit and it wrongly identified it as lp4. All the portables were ok with this disc but the MDS-JE510 only works with it on and off. Half the time it correctly tells me the disc has 11 tracks and lasts 54m 05s, and the rest of the time it says there are 35 tracks with a run time of 148m 11s. It then plays the tracks at half speed and instead of the track titles it just says LP:. This all seems very strange to me, as an sp only deck would normally just remain silent if an lp disc is used. All other discs I've recorded with the MDS-NT1 and SonicStage this week have been fine. Sorry that was a bit long winded. Has anyone else experienced this problem and do you have any suggestions as to what might be causing it. Thanks.

I think that's just a smaller capacity version of the NH-14WM style battery used by many portable MiniDisc Units. It would work in other units but would not last as long as usual as most newer units were supplied with either the NH-10WM or the aforementioned NH-14WM with capacities of 1000 and 1400mAh respectively. Also, if the battery has been around since 1997 or thereabouts, it will most likely hold far less charge than it did when new, if any at all.

Having made a copy of the CD to MiniDisc on a Type-R deck, I compared it to the prerecorded MD using an MZ-NH1 for playback and to be honest, they both sounded excellent. I found none of the thin sounding reproduction from the prerecorded disc that Martin mentioned earlier. Any differences really were very slight, but in my very unscientific test, I thought the recording from the CD just about won. I thought the copy had a slightly crisper and more detailed top end but as I said, the difference really was negligible. As far as which version of ATRAC the prerecorded disc was produced with, I was wondering whether this depends on when the album was released or when the disc was manufactured. The Radiohead disc in question is copyrighted in1998 but if there was more than one production run of that particular album then it could have been manufactured in 2001 for instance. Whether a newer manufacture date makes a difference to ATRAC version is anyone's guess. Sadly I can't even tell how old my disc is anyway as, although I bought it new and factory sealed, I only purchased it about four or five years ago from ebay, not back in 1998 when it was released. It may be the case that so few copies were sold of most albums on the MiniDisc format that all copies in existence were manufactured around the first release date.

That makes a lot of sense Sony_Fan. You could well be right. But Martin, you make a very good point as well. I've got a prerecorded MD and an original CD of Radiohead's OK Computer so I'll make a copy of the CD onto MiniDisc and see if there's any discernible difference between the copy and the prerecorded MD. Not very scientific but it will be interesting to see if I can hear any difference in quality. I'll let you know what I find later.

If you looked at the surface of a prerecorded MiniDisc compared to a recordable one, they would actually look very different to one another. This is because the pressed prerecorded discs have pits and flats in the readable surface within the disc representing 1s and 0s. A recordable magneto optical disc on the other hand has it's read/write surface positively and negatively polarised in minute spots by the magnetic record head to store the data. So for playback, a prerecorded MD is very similar to cd in that the laser light is either reflected or not by the metal layer of the disc due to the pits and flats of the recorded surface, whereas when a recordable disc is played, the sensor detects the polarisation of the reflected laser light. I can't imagine the two would vary in sound quality greatly though. The only reason I can think of that the prerecorded disc could be slightly better is if the pressing procedure produces a lower error rate than recording a disc, although I have no idea if that is the case.

I recently purchased this 1/87 scale diecast model Mini from ebay. It is a promotional item made for Sony Hong Kong in 1998 by Herpa of Germany. For such a tiny model is is very detailed any the MiniDisc insignia and lips design look great. It takes pride of place on the shelving where I keep my discs. I also own a real yellow Mini by coincidence, which I've also pictured. Perhaps I should copy their paint job:)

Here is a link for the Powerstream battery Kona mentioned. This may be better than the Vapex link for those of you in the U.S. http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=251233642090

The best replacements I've found so far are made by Vapex. The seem to work very well and for £3.45 each including postage and packing you can't really go wrong. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/370624715526?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649

I noticed that the free CD on the cover of this week's NME has a TDK MD RXG74 on the cover. I'm wondering whether the CD by the Cribs, entitled "Payola - The Demos" which is a pre-release to their forthcoming album "Payola", was actually mastered on MD as I know they are fans of the format. On September 25th 2012 they Tweeted: @guardianmusic We used to record (and master, unbelievably) all of our early demos (and some later b-sides) to minidisc.