MegatronUK

Quick update... the SP recorded tracks play fine in the headunit; sounding surprisingly good considering I've still got the crappy 18 year old Toyota speakers in the car! Honestly I'm im just happy that this headunit still actually plays minidiscs! It could have eaten discs for all I knew! New speakers (Infinity Reference and Kappa), amp, sub and a usb-optical soundcard on the way to see what kind of quality we can get

Ah... just found a cheaper solution than a digital spdif <-> optical convertor... the Xitel DG2 and a 7 port usb hub on ebay for less than £20... I've been needing a hub anyway ;-)

Right, well I won't be having any of that then! Optical it is. Pretty sure I've got an SB Audigy sitting around somewhere that I can use for optical out (if not, is it possible to go from spdif to optical? - as my other soundcard definitely has spdif). So I guess the procedure is: Load up desired playlist in Winamp/other player Make sure Optical Out is selected Set NetMD to record Press play in Winamp Let it go and when it has finished, fire up SonicStage and edit the track names? Will the device detect the individual tracks from Winamp, or will I have to do some of that blank track insertion malarky?

@zeroDB, is that right?!? I don't want to get into the innards of SonicStage here as I know thats another sub-forum... but: I've just done the following: Track 1 'Ooh la la' from Goldfrapps Supernature album in flac format (3m 24s). Written to disk as 44KHz, 16bit PCM via Winamp diskwriter plugin. Uncompressed WAV file imported into SonicStage. Set Tools->Options->Transfer->NetMD->Transfer Settings Checked 'SP Mode' Transfer Settings->Advanced Checked 'Ask me each time' for formats that it cannot transfer directly I then transferred the file (took about 1m, 30s). It appears as 'Stereo' in the right hand column and during playing on the lcd display without LP2. Is this actually encoded at LP2 quality???!!! If it is, then that's madness! BTW, the MZ-N710 seems to work perfectly :-)

Thanks once again, I'll post my results once I get both the NetMD and my headunit setup. I've got all of my music on a dedicated 1Tb raid server up in the attic, so my pc is generally pretty sparse so that I can do video/audio conversion or editing without tons of clutter, there should have plenty of room for ogg/flac -> wav conversions. I guess I've just got to hope that this head unit still actually plays MD's... it probably hasn't been used in 4 or 5 years and never once in the time I've owned it ;-)

Oh well, I just got the MZ-N710 for £23 (~$38?) along with a handful of 80min discs. I'll see what this SonicStage app is like and if it suits the transfer of my music from flac/ogm/mp3 -> SP mode, before I go buying any more new discs. Thanks for the help folks. (btw, I never realised the amount of disc designs out there for these things and how cool some of them look... I guess that's why people collect them!)

That sounds fine. I realise the limitations of the discs and the fact that my head unit won't be able to cope with the latest formats or mp3 encoded files... I'm really just looking to use the md features of it as a more convenient cd player (I get sick of burning cd's... they always end up cluttering the glovebox or storage bins in the car - I generally get tires of them laying around and throw them away!). Cheers for the advice. Since I'm not bothered about using a portable itself to play music etc.. I'll more than likely go with something a bit cheaper... a quick scour of ebay shows plenty of good condition looking MZ-N710 bundles for around £15-£20 ($25-$35)... and also several MZ-N1's. Either of these any good?

Hi folks; first post... be gentle I've got a minidisc compatible head unit that I got with a car I had imported from Japan, now I've never used the MD part of it and purely just used the tuner and CD part (mainly because I had a big cd multichanger and no minidiscs of my own!). Now I've taken the headunit out of that car and put it into another (a dinky little mk1 MR2 ) and I'd really like to use the fact that I can stuff quite a few minidiscs in the glove box and not worry about taking all of the space up! My first admission is that I've never ever used a minidisc device of any sort, not to mention recorded anything or transferred any audio to one. So the question is, what is the most straightforward method of dumping a load of audio tracks onto a stack of minidiscs to play in my car? A couple of things to bear in mind: 1. The hardware in question is a Pioneer MEH-P9000 headunit. Like this one, apart from the fact that mine is a japanese model which seems to have features the EU/US version doesn't (like both an MD and CD slot, for example!). I don't have any manuals for it, so I couldn't tell you what spec of disc it can play. 2. I'd like to be able to assemble discs via my pc which is where the majority of my music is stored either in high bitrate mp3 (>224), ogg or flac format - i guess something needs to convert these on the fly to the native minidisc format and then dump it down to some kind of minidisc recorder via firewire or usb? 3. I have no other minidisc devices at all - no portables, recorders, hifi components etc.. 4. Help! Any advice gladly recieved -John