Andy

In that case, can I knock SP mode? Well... not really knock - but it does have a little less definition than CD in bass regions (at least, my MZ-R70 does). Seriously, I recommend getting yourself blind tested to see how much difference there really is. I doubt I'd be able to pick MD/CD without hearing both, but there definately is a difference (unless Type-R fixes all that)

What a coincidence - I'm Me too

kupo - I think you should be flattered I'm 18

See if you can test out the disc on another player. Since the timer stalls, it might just be a patch of the disc which was poorly written and can't be read back. Some players might be better at reading it back (stronger lasers/better lenses/whatever). If you find something which can read it back, make a new copy of it using that other player. Also, see if you can replicate the problem doing some recording that isn't as valuable

In the case that the Record button does double as the track mark button, then I would guess that they introduced the track mark button so they could put it on the remote without exposing us poor mortals to the possibility of accidentally recording something from the remote... which I think is pretty stupid, but in any case, they don't seem to like the idea of being able to start recording from the remote control thus they would justify the track mark button as a solution to the "problem".

Really? I always thought that it was basically a "must have" button. Unless they use another button to get the functionality... maybe the record button? In any case, I apologise... or I lose my bet... or something like that.

Car units are usually always on repeat so they can get away without having a play button. I haven't seen/used a deck, but I bet have a track mark button too. As for end search, my guess is that they think that when you are recording stuff live, you might want to go back and record over some older stuff whereas when you are just copying a CD->MD, then you will always want to start at the beginning and have a whole disk.

I don't have any NetMD stuff on my computer, so this might not work, but you can give it a try anyway: Open up the Windows Sound Recorder. Load the MP3 file. If this doesn't work, then you'll need an mp3 codec which you can get from here: http://rookscape.com/vbgaming/l3codecp.exe Next, click file->save as and down where the format is, click on "Change...". Change the Format to ATRAC3 (or whatever the new codec is called) and set the attributes to whatever you want them to be. Click ok, choose a new filename and then click save. This will produce an ATRAC3 encoded .wav file, which I have a feeling is not the type of file you want. Still, try loading it in OpenMG, it might just work. If it doesn't work, then try renaming the file so it has the extension that the files OpenMG likes. Renaming extensions is often tricky in Windows, so here is a fairly simple way to do it: Click Start->Run. Type "cmd" (NT/2000/XP) or "command" (95/98/ME(?)) and run it. If the file is on the desktop, then type: cdwindowsdesktop if it isn't, then it might be a bi trickier as DOS uses 8 character filenames so: "My Documents" will become "MYDOCU~1". Type dir /ad /w to see a list of folders in the current location and then type "cd foldername" to go into one. When you are in the correct directory, work out the file name (remembering that it is 8 character names), by typing "dir /w". If this doesn't fit on the screen use "dir /w /p". Then ren filename.wav filename.whatever And it is done. Whether or not it works is another story unfortunately. EDIT: Left out url to MP3 codec. You might want to search for a newer one though, that one is pretty old.

I once had to get some stuff from MD to CD, and fortunately for me, I have a brother who does sound "stuff". I borrowed his professional CD burner and used it. A single cable connected my MD to his CD recorder, and all was fine. It did it in real time which was no problem and the recording was fine. Whether or not this is a practical solution for everyone is another thing, but I would have a look around for CD recorders which have a line in. The unit I recorded with was about AU$1200 I think (about US$600 I'd guess)

I seem to remember the Xitel site having a story about how their product was popular because of its minidisc-ness, but the way they made it sound, it was more like MD saved them. Still, I can't find it on their site anymore, and I wouldn't trust my own memory for anything. I'm an MD owner, without any Xitel stuff, and while the thought has crossed my mind, I'd be more likely to just get a nice soundcard.

sullen: the reason you don't have any control over volume is that because by changing the volume (either up or down) you will lose sound quality. It is kind of like digital photos. You can resize them once they are on the computer. If you make them smaller, then some of those pixels that the camera took have to be merged with other pixels. There are now less pixels describing the image and it is now of worse quality. This is kind of like turning the volume down. If instead you make the image bigger, the computer will guess about the pixels to fill in the extra info. What you end up with is an image which is actually slightly blurred because when it guesses, it looks at the neighbouring spots on the image and chooses a colour which won't clash with them all - the "average" colour. Now if you then resized this image back to the original size, I'm pretty sure you will end up with the original quality - but when you turn the volume up, there is a certain maximum instantaneous volume level which can never be exceeded. If ever it is, then 'clipping' will occur. To continue the analogy - if the maximum size of the image is 50x50 pixels, and you have an image which is 40x40 and you resize it to 80x80, you will get a 50x50 image which has the corner of the original. The information lost can never be retrieved again. Now, if your recording never reaches this maximum volume level, then increasing the volume won't do anything bad. But, I would suggest that it would be better to do all of this stuff once the recording is on the computer. You should be able to find some really good software which will sound better than a simple bass/treble control, and there is also software which will go through your recording and find the peak value in it. Once it has found this, it can increase the volume as far as it will go while still avoiding clipping. Of course, if you are happy with your sound quality already, then I'm not going to suddenly change everything, but if you want to get even better results, then that is the way to go. Also, by using digital, you avoid having the signal switch from digital to analogue and back when it goes from the DVD player to the MD. Oh... now I've reread your post, I think a fair bit of stuff I said was irrelevant, but I'm too tired to think, so I'm just leaving it all

One other thing. Some people are mislead by NetMD thinking that it will allow high speed transfers of your music from the MD to your PC. This isn't possible. You must do it in real time, by connecting the line-out of your MD to the line-in on your soundcard and recording it like that. A better soundcard will give better results here as well.

Line out is not supposed to sound nice, it is supposed to be used for transferring sound between machines. There is no equalisation or any type of effect for that matter. The idea is that the machine which your line out is connected to will be able to do exactly that, and if you send it a signal which has been run through a weird EQ setting, then there is no way it will be able to play the original flat sound. Just a question though - why do you have both Bass and Treble turned all the way up? If I remember rightly from one of my older Sony Walkmen, then that would have exactly the same effect as turning up the volume. Why not just turn the volume up and use the EQ for something a bit more useful (like making it sound better )

I'd actually suggest that for now, you have fewer forums, even just News and Readers' Topics. There isn't much need to separate news into different months because the whole forum is searchable anyway. If a person is looking for an old topic, then chances are, they won't know the exact month it happened in, thus naming forums that way doesn't really help them. As for justification towards having a single Readers' Topics forum, it is a bit harder to put my finger on. But basically, as soon as you categorize all the posts into forums, you end up with some forums getting all the activity and others getting very little. Eventually, it seems like the less popular forums are useless just because there is so little activity in them. If you get rid of them, then you need to change the titles of other forums to make them more general and it just gets messy.

Turn the unit upside down and shake it *gently* if this ever happens again. If it does become regular (like it has for mine), then leave it upside down all the time. Whenever you are recording, get everything set up, put hold on and then put it face down - no more troubles When you shake it, make it very gentle, and stop as soon as there is a new sound (when the laser manages to focus properly... or something along those lines - you'll hear it)

That is what intuition would say, but a cheap digital anything will sound as good as an expensive one. With digital, each sample is converted to a number which is transferred. So the sound card sends a list of numbers like: 100, 50, 101, 50. The MD gets those numbers, encodes them as ATRAC and stores them. With a high end professional card, it also sends a list of numbers: 100, 50, 101, 50 which are identical to what the cheap one would send. With analogue, it is a lot simpler, the soundcard sends a continuously varying voltage to the MD. The voltage which it is sending directly corresponds to the sound. For the analogue, the equipment must be very sensitive and precise. The MD needs to be able to tell the difference between 0.0051 volts and 0.0052 volts or it won't "hear" certain parts of the sound. With digital, the MD just has to be able to tell the difference between a light being on and a light being off. There is no light which is 0.0051% on or anything like that. With that said, there are a couple of things which *can* make certain digital sources better than others: * When there are lots of digital devices running at once, they all have their own "clocks" going (which tells them how often to send out the numbers they are sending). These clocks all need to be syncronised or there is an effect called jitter. In professional stuff, there is usually a word clock input, which allows all the equipment to be controlled by a single clock. There is no such input on most consumer gear. * some devices have different sample rates to others, meaning that one might put out a number 44100 times a second, while another might put out a number 48000 times a second. Without sample rate conversion, recording at the wrong sample rate will sound really bad (probably just static). Sample rate conversion is built into my MD (MZ-R70) and most (all?) other Sony's at least, but it is quite a difficult thing to do. Imagine this: List A: 5, 10, 5, 10, 5, 10 List B: A, B, C, D, E Work out values of A, B, C, D and E so that list B is equivalent to list A. Now, especially if you know a bit about how sounds are stored, then you will know that this is a pretty difficult task and one which can be done a lot of ways. Basically, the sample rate converter has a bit of an artistic license here, and usually it is the professional units whose artistic abilities are better than the consumer units. Finally, here is something I just found when searching for info on SPDIF (which is basically the same as the optical TOSLINK for your MD, except instead of using light, it uses electricity): From http://www.epanorama.net/documents/audio/spdif.html