Surround Sound from a MD player

[jmsokol]

I'm interested in using something like a Sony MDS-B5 radio spot player to stream 5.1 surround DTS and AC3 files out a digital port for decoding to baseband in an external box. I've done this tons of times with a 360 Systems Instant Replay, so I know as long as a 16-bit PCM 44.1 kHz file can be recorded and streamed out an AES or S/PDIF port as bit accurate, this will work. I've looked in the on-line manuals for the MDS-B5, but don't see if it's possible to disable ATRAC and record or import an uncompressed PCM stream on this unit. Has anyone tried this? Also, I'v been looking for the Hi-MD version of a radio spot player, but haven't found one yet. Does that exist yet?

Thanks...

[Bananatree]

All MD recorders and decks record to ATRAC in one form or another. Only with HiMD can you record in PCM.

[bland10000]

on the topic of surround sound from an md player, my sharp units have a sound-field option of "surround"; what is this specifically?

[Syrius]

That's a DSP changing the properties of the sound to make your brain perceive it as if coming from around, or behind you.

JmSokol: Unfortunately, all MD can record is 2 channel audio. I think, however, that if you record on PCM a stereo signal that has been encoded with Dolby Pro Logic or PL2, it will carry the surround signal with it when played back from the Hi-MD. Not sure if the Atrac compression would affect the surround code if you were to record it as SP, HI-Sp or any of their other flavors.

I wonder if compressing a DPL signal to a lossless format would also mess up the surround info in it.

[atrain]

point is a HiMD is required to record in PCM

[Damage]

Dolby Digital and maybe DTS digital signals are probably incompatible, which requires a separate decoder to decode these signals.

However, the Pro Logic/II/"Surround" type sound where the surround matrix type information in the actual sound wave, I believe this information gets preserved even with compressed audio. You might have better results with those surround signals.

[Bananatree]

Agreed with damage. Until someone can record some DTS or Dolby in PCM, then output it through a MD deck to a decoder, then we can't really confirm nor deny this.

I however doubt that even digital output of the disc encoded with Dolby or DTS would work at all.

[tommypeters]

You can record DTS 5.1 on a CD and play it on a normal CD player that knows nothing about DTS, it's just 16/44,1 PCM of static noise, But if you connect it to an amplifier/reciever with DTS decoding you suddenly have 5.1 DTS sound. So the same track would be possible to record as uncompressed PCM on a Hi-MD and played through Toslink (for example) through something with a DTS decoder.