Devilbunny

Open up the disc and *carefully* use a Q-tip to clean the playing (bottom) surface. I bought a bunch of used discs and had to do this to a few of them.

You could try unplugging the car's battery, leaving it off for a good 15-20 minutes, then hooking the battery back up.

It will record in SP mode. Unfortunately, the source file for NetMD from SP is not the CD itself, but the ATRAC3 LP2-quality file on your hard drive. So you can record in SP, but it will only be LP2 quality, because that's the quality of the source. If you record straight from a CD player in SP, and compare that to a NetMD recording, you'll be able to tell the difference.

Most likely it's noise off your sound card. Buy a Xitel MD-Port AN-1 to record in hum-free analog or (better still) Xitel DG-2 to record in digital.

The E40 won't do LP2 or LP4. Record in SP and they'll play just fine on it. Of course, it does make NetMD a lot less useful, because you're getting LP2 quality even if you record in SP over NetMD. If you record direct from CD on the optical input in SP, you'll get high-quality discs that will play properly in the E40.

It lacks the necessary preamp. Just buy a battery box. Cheaper, easier, better.

A noisy DAC stage, perhaps, that the looped playback while recording didn't reveal? Just a guess.

See #4 here.

Pull out the optical cable and look at it. Is the light glowing? If not, there's no signal. How you fix that depends on what kind of hardware you're using to get digital out. I have the Xitel DG-2, and have found that it needs to be unplugged when starting up the computer, then plugged in before starting the MP3 player.

Assuming you'll be doing sound processing on your computer, just make a brief, loud noise at the beginning of recording, then line the sound up when you're done.

I've got an MD-Port DG2, and I've found that it's best to kill every running process before starting your mp3 player. Then start the mp3 player and don't touch the computer - at all - until it's finished recording. Be sure your screensaver is turned off. That works in Windows 98, so it should work for any Windows version.

No, the looser, it is not. You have now voiced the #1 complaint about NetMD. You'll have to record in real time using the line-in on your computer.

No, you won't be able to do that. The microphone amp is not present in the R500. And yes, you understood me correctly about what a battery box is. Your English is considerably better than that of many (perhaps most) of its native speakers.

Guest, just buy or build a battery box to make it line-level. From what I've read, that seems to be their advice even for MD's that have a mic input, if you're trying to do anything serious.

No, I didn't think you were being dismissive at all. It really does sound like a CD recorder would do exactly what you want, though another idea did come to me - you could buy a Nomad Jukebox 3 for $250 (which, as far as I can tell, is about the same as a CD-R). It's portable, useful for other things, and will record directly to .wav from a digital input (unlike, say, the Archos). I don't know much about the software beyond basic features; I don't use music editing software for any of its fancy features (the major project I've done was on Cool Edit, and it was splicing a track together at a precise point). I assume that you meant you wanted more-than-16-bit-depth for processing; I don't know if it will do that or not.

The software I pointed to will do everything you asked for - the ability to cut a large .wav up wherever you want. That said, it looks like you've decided. Good luck!

Well, you could try something like the Edirol UA-1D for your input. That seems to be the cheapest choice (about $100), and it works with both PC and Mac. It's USB, not Firewire, so you should probably leave the machine alone while recording, but otherwise it should do what you want. For software, try Audacity. It's free. I still think you'd be better off with a free computer and a real digital I/O card, but if you don't want to muck with it I can certainly understand.

I'm sure someone out there makes a cd burner with an optical in, but frankly for the money you'd be better off getting a computer and a soundcard with optical in. Then you can manipulate to your heart's delight and burn as many copies as you like. I think optical I/O boards go for maybe $60 or so, which is not really very much at all when you think of the convenience. If you don't have a computer, make friends with someone who has an old one they'll give you (there are lots of slow-but-would-do-the-job computers out there). A Pentium 133 with Windows 98 could do this job.

Yes, but your apps can still create their own sound events - it's just the ones that use the system sounds that will be quiet now. I was thinking more of things like AIM or IRC programs that throw in their own noises.

In older Windows versions (don't know about XP) you can go to Control Panel -> Sounds and select the "no sounds" profile. Then you have to make sure sounds are turned off in all your apps.

Please keep this in one forum, urgent. This is the right one. The other was not.

Daijoubu, that would work, except that for ideal function you'd need something that could record at arbitrary frequencies (e.g., if you played back at 2x normal you'd need an 88.2 kHz sampling rate). Bazirker, it's French. Canadian French, to judge by his location.

I'm fairly certain they can help you at any generic electronics store. Dixons doesn't seem to have it on their website, but I'm fairly sure they'd have it in stock. Best Buy and Circuit City over here do. I'd call it a miniplug-to-RCA adapter, if you're thinking of the one that has one red and one white plug on the non-miniplug end. But RCA stands for "Radio Corp of America", and it's quite likely that it goes by a different name in the UK (phono plug, possibly).

You cannot transfer the MD information from MD to PC with the USB connection. It is not possible. Not even a little bit. Not even if you change the firmware. If you want to rip up an MD unit and design your own custom mechanism to read the data directly off the disc - that is, to design your own circuitry to replicate the functions of an MD-Data drive, then yes you could get actual ATRAC or ATRAC3 data off the disc. If you want to move stuff from MD to PC, hit "play" on the MD and "record" on the PC. SCMS prohibits transfer of songs from one MD to another using digital connections between the two. It has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with USB-based MD->PC data flow, which is simply not possible because the circuitry isn't there. You CAN TOC-clone to be able to copy a disc from an MD player to an MD recorder, but you still can't upload it directly (as the compressed ATRAC or ATRAC3 form) to your PC.

PLAZ SPK NGLISH. And quit spamming the forums. http://www.minidisc.org/part_links.html#mp3.