New to MD...pls explain digital recording process

[jasoncbone@aol.com]

I'm new to Minidiscs. I bought a Sharp MD- MS722 with all the accesories. I don't understand what exterior sources are considered to be digital and when the cord is applicable. Is music from my computer digital. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[watcher666]

Hello! Welcome to the forums :smile:

Well, for recording digitaly you need to have a piece of equipment with an "optical output". Most CD/DVD player's and PC soundcard's have them. There should have been a thin cable that came with your MD unit, with what looks like a standard headphone jack on one end and a square plastic block on the other. This is what's known as a "TOSlink" cable.

So, if you look on the back of your CD/DVD player you should see a connector with a protruding plastic cover labeled as "Digital Out". Plug the squareish end in there and the other end into the "Optical/Line" input of your MD player. Make sure your MD player has "SYNC" recording enabled (see your user manual). Press REC on your MD recorder and it will enter recording mode but wont start recording until it recieves an audio signal. Next press Play on your CD/DVD player and your MD player will start recording! Simple

Also with this method the player will automaticly insert track marks matching the original CD!

Hope this makes sense!

[aeriyn]

Most DVD players, especially cheaper ones, tend to come with coaxial digital outputs, which are not compatible. Even with a format converter in play, the recordings are not optimal--i.e. a coax PCM signal does not send the command to the MD unit to create track marks, and thus it creates marks every 2 seconds of silence. This is especially bad for gapless albums, in which case it will make no marks at all and you have to manually mark the entire disc.

For an inexpensive solution to record music media--CDs, MP3s or other compressed and uncompressed audio--to MD, search Froogle or your favorite e-tailer that sells PC peripherals for a Chaintech AV-710 sound card. This card, while being very cool in its own right, has an S/PDIF optical output. From that you can connect the optical cable that came with your MD unit to the MS722 and record digitally using the method that watcher666 explained.

Oh, and the AV-710 generally runs between 25-30USD. A very attractive solution to this issue, and to the general bad PC sound issue.