philippeb

My Sony decks are maintained by S.T.A.V. Service Technique Audio Video a French company, near Strasbourg. Perfect service. They have a nice Sony museum display in the entrance hall.

There should be no problem to recover your recording with TOC cloning, if 1. Data has actually been recorded. Have you been able to play your track once ? 2. Nothing has been recorded on the damaged minidisc since the failed divide attempt. If those conditions are met, I can try to restore a TOC for you with my Sony MDS-JB920 deck. You'll have to send the minidisc. I live in Toulouse, France.

I have been bitten several time by "format disc error". My conclusion is that Hi-MD is not reliable, because of the complexity of hardware and software technologies. Too many obstacles in the way. On the other hand, legacy MD technology is simple and robust. I have never lost SP/MONO recordings. Battery failures and even user errors can be recovered with TOC cloning. SCMS can be defeated. My advice: record in SP on MD formatted discs, with your RH1. You will never again loose recordings, and you will still be able to upload your tracks to a computer.

The difference between two early SP recording generations can definitely be heard. I do not change track levels with SCALE FACTOR because of the sound quality degradation. I prefer to listen to first generation recordings, with their original levels. I occasionally FADE IN or FADE OUT tracks.

The DH10P cannot edit tracks. It can format discs, though. It even demands it after an infamous Hi-MD system file corruption.

I use SP and MONO exclusively. Those legacy ATRAC codecs sound much better to my ears (educated with high-end cassettes and tapes) than any ATRAC3 ones. Another significant advantage is that tracks recorded in SP and MONO can be defragmented and infinitely duplicated without loss or restriction on a MDS-W1 deck.

The MZ-DH10P has a very handy wheel. The MZ-N910 has a very poor wheel.

Got mine today at the office. Already recorded a meeting with it. Thank you all for participating !

I own a second-hand MDS-JB920. I confirm that this is a wonderful unit, superior in hardware and firmware to the MDS-JA333ES (that I have bought new) for SP and MONO recordings.

I have filmed the demo mode screen of a MDS-W1. Warning: this is a 50Mb Apple QuickTime movie. http://philippe.bergheaud.free.fr/mov/mds-w1-demo.mov There is a factual error: during Tr Copy (AKA Tr Move :-) sound level is actually 12db lower than normal.

I love titling with a deck, without remote. I have reached the limit of 1785 characters several times !

I can wait.

I buy one.

I am really a beginner in digital video. I think that definition and output rate equal standard DVD quality. Last Wednesday night, I filmed an outdoor performance by Khaled, with the DCM-M1 equipped with a tele lens 2.0x and my good old Sony ECM-929LT microphone (27 years old, I believe). Believe it or not, I got wonderful images (and enough sound) from the other bench of the river (la Garonne). Then I crossed the river and filmed from behind the security fences, some 100m from the stage. Comparing the images captured by the DCM-M1 with the images from TLT (Télé Toulouse), displayed on a giant screen, I find my takes much better, for several (subjective) reasons: - Unlike theirs, my images are not uniformly bright, and leave much more room for imagination and poetry. - The composition of my images is enhanced by artifacts created by the interposition of fences and trees. - My shots last 30s in average, as opposed to 3s for the professional images. And I enjoy calm. That was my first attempt at filming at night, and from far, and I am very pleased with the result. Sound is very satisfying, too (good old ATRAC 4.5 SP, automatic gain). Now the *real* fun. Towards the end of the concert, when I had already filled up my two minidiscs, I had the intuition that Khaled would end the show singing his world-wide hit Aïcha. I made my decision, grabbed the stylus, and deleted arbitrary tracks of the first disc (mostly shot from the other bench of the river), to free 6mn. That operation took me less than 30s, perhaps 20s. I started to film again, and I won: I captured Khaled's interpretation of Aïcha in one 6mn take. This ability to edit video tracks like sound tracks is really unique to the DCM-M1 (as far as I know).

It is an expensive collector item, a prototype more than a product. I bought a used one from a Chinese Ebay shop (internet-time, highly recommended), and a new one from a Montreal shop (Royal Photo). I payed about 400 euros for each. The second-hand one was the most expensive (but accompanied by 3 extra lenses plus 6 blank md view data discs).

http://www.minidisc.org/part_Sony_DCM-M1.html

Yes I have moved a LP2 track from disc A to disc B on the MDS-W1. The deck is fooled by Sony's trick, which protects SP/MONO machines from emitting random noise when playing LP2 tracks. It sees a silent track (that it would play as silence also) and create a silent copy on disc B. TOC cloning is useless, because there is no sound data at all in the copy.

Another Sony minidisc AV recorder DCM-M1, brand new (should have posted this in the addiction thread :-) I love this machine. It is unique ! It edits video tracks like regular minidisc recorders edit sound tracks !! Sony, please, revive this wonderful technology. I miss a minidisc based AV recorder deck at home, also.

I have bought a second-hand HHB Portadisc mostly for playback. My wife wanted a portable unit similar to the Sony TCD-5M cassette deck, with metallic body, internal speaker, large keys, and comfortable display. The Portadisc delivers exactly that. It is an outstanding player. I have told in another thread that I have used the Portadisc to recover more than an hour of sound from out of spec recordings made with a dying Sharp portable unit. None of my Sony decks could play more than a few seconds from the damaged disc. I have no experience of music recording. I have done excellent voice recordings with a Sennheiser MD-46 microphone.

Since the MDS-JE520, Sony decks do not spin the disc when paused. I do not know the MXD-D40, but as it 3 years younger than the 520, I am pretty sure that it behaves like all modern decks.

There is no line out on the MZ-DH10P. Headphone out provides acceptable level (US and Japanese models). The feature I miss on the DH10P is a 'Track delete' button or menu entry. There is a 'File delete' for pictures !

Great, thank you.

Quoting the minidisc FAQ: I have never tried, because I do not do LP recordings. It seems doable, but tedious: disc copy, followed by TOC cloning, probably followed by track splitting and titling. I will give a try. You will have to be patient, because my TOC cloning MDS-JB920 sits in my office at work, and I will not be able to access it before Monday. I doubt it will work (with my setup) because the MDS-JB920 does not understand LP formats either.

The MDS-W1 is the dream machine without which I would not have invested in minidisc. It offers the same duplication, defragmentation, and composition services as the DN-045R (except for the Windows command software, 100% irrelevant to me). As far as I know, it is also the only symmetric machine, which duplicates tracks from left to right, or from right to left. It can record from two different sources at the same time. It includes a comprehensive built-in timer, which gives you flexibility to program your recordings. It is also 100% immune to SCMS anti-copy protection (except for pre-recorded minidiscs, irrelevant again). It can also chain two discs, for recording or replay, effectively doubling the recording time (5h24m in mono, my favorite format). What else should I add ? That I own three units, just in case, for my old days ? That Sony killed the format pretending that their affordable masterpiece double deck could not duplicate tracks or discs ? That I am thankful for life to the generous architect of this machine ?

The camera plays legacy minidiscs, but cannot record them. However, it records/plays up to 260mn of stereo sound on MD View discs. It has microphone, line in and headphone out. There is also an Ethernet port, which sadly cannot be used to transfer sound (one of the design flaws I was referring to).