philippeb

I am one of them.

Hi Steven, I confirm what sfbp said. I routinely restore accidentaly erased minidisc TOCs with a MDS-JB920 deck. I have done it for other forum members, and could do it for you as well. I am located in France. Philippe

You cannot export MD data multi-track recordings from the MD8 to a computer (as a set of computer files). You must play the multi-track recordings via the eight "Track Direct" analog outputs of the MD8, and re-record them. Alternatively, you can mix your recordings down to a pair of stereo tracks, and use the stereo analog outputs of the MD8.

+1. As far as my ears can tell, with Sony decks, digital -> analog -> digital copies always sound warmer (and better) than digital -> digital copies (unless performed lossless in the ATRAC domain, of course). So far, I could not find any use case for digital -> digital copies. I do not mind dividing/titling the tracks again.

Yes, the MDS-E10 records and plays MDLP tracks.

Whatever camera playing the tape, the final picture quality will be the same.

No I am not. I am serious. My wife and I are fond of mono ATRAC 4.5. She taught me the art of mono, soon after we met. We are not alone. There is a community of mono lovers (that includes Radio France sound engineers). We think that stereo is a waste of resource, just like 3D movies. We think that stereo distracts you from listening to music. We know that stereo limits or forbids our freedom of movement. We love the superior signal/noise ratio of mono FM receivers. We love to service two rooms with one stereo amp and two speakers. We love MD74s that hold one hour and a half of mono recordings. We enjoy a yes different, but still incredibly rich, md experience. Just like stereo md lovers do

As does mono

The MDS-W1 is less robust. I own half a dozen of them, use them intensively for moving tracks and duplicating/defragmenting discs. I fully trust three of them, that always operate as expected. Other units sometimes fail to duplicate full discs at once, but succeed if tracks are copied one at a time. The W1 is a symmetric machine, that can copy from disc A to disc B, as well as from disc B to disc A. A machine that fails to copy in one direction will often copy correctly in the opposite direction, preserving the feature. My intuition regarding failures is that the W1 does not retry when it fails to read a frame. The missed frames are rather replaced by silent frames, causing very short sound drops in the copy. In other words, I need not check the copies made by reliable W1s, but I always listen to copies made by W1s I do not trust. Usually, erasing the damaged copy, and copying it again suffices to recover. That being said, let me repeat here that without the W1, I would never have invested in minidiscs, as I did 16 years ago. What does digital recording mean, if you cannot backup your own recordings?

I fully agree. I had to repair mechanical issues of both my JA333ES and JA20ES after a couple of years. Never had a problem with my JB920s or JB930, that have been running day and night for much more than 10 years now.

Just a guess : the total lenght may vary depending on the level at which a low signal is treated as silence by the recorder.

I agree with you that the Denon MD Replicator is the most suitable machine for dumb disc replication. Regarding the versatile MDS-W1, your are wrong : the W1 copies raw data bit for bit in the ATRAC domain, without reencoding. I proved it a while ago in another thread. I uploaded original and copy tracks with MZ-RH1/Sonic Stage to a computer, and compared the resulting data files. They were bit for bit identical, except for the very last frame -- yes, this is a firmware bug, easily worked around or ignored, as the last frame is usually silent. That said, I knew it from the start. My ears are still good enough to distinguish between ATRAC generations, simply by listening to the tracks

LP2/LP4 tracks are designed to fool pre-MDLP machines, that will recognize and play them as silent SP tracks. The W1 will clone them as such, and TOC cloning will not help, because the actual data transfered will be silence. TOC Cloning is usefull for recovery (and resetting SCMS bits ; irrelevant for a W1 owner). I routinely perform TOC cloning with a MDS-JB920 to recover TOCs that I have damaged or erased by accident (I tend to edit my discs like mad). Last remark. I have also helped members of the forum to recover data from poorly recorded disks, with a pro HHb MDP 500 Portadisc, that happens to be a champion at reading out of specs discs that other units fail to read.

The MDS-W1 works exactly like a pair of B5/B6. It transfers raw ATRAC data, bit for bit (with defrag) via its internal optical link (as found by sfbp).

The MDS-W1 clones SP and MONO tracks. LP2 and LP4 tracks cannot be cloned (they are transformed into silent SP tracks).