Issue with playing newer disc on old player, possible codec issue?

[machinerygod]

I was recently given a recording of a live show that I am trying to copy off MD.

Knowing that there are issues transferring digital audio off most minidisc players, I bought an older style Sony deck with an optical digital output.

It read the disc just fine, saw the track structure and played the tracks, but there was no sound. No hiss, no static, just absolute silence. Nothing registered on the VU meter either. I tried both analog outputs to no avail. Next I used a newer NetMD type player a friend had to play the disc to headphones and it worked fine.(so I know the disc is good for sure)

So I concluded the deck might be bad, so I bought another similar one. Well, I'm having the exact same problem with it. I figure this is too much to be coincidence, so I'm wondering if my problem is the result of a codec issue.

I read that there are a couple different codec types, ATRAC and ATRAC3 (and various modes within ATRAC3). Is it possible that the disc I have is recorded in ATRAC3, and the player I have is old enough that it only knows about decoding plain ATRAC? This would seem to make sense with the symptoms (knows about track structure, but cannot put out any audio, perhaps because it doesn't know how to decode it)

Can somebody advise me on whether this may be the cause of my problems? (I'm a novice to MD)

Thanks.

[greenmachine]

You've got that perfectly right. A MDLP capable deck would be the only option for a digital transfer if the recordings are in ATRAC3. Read more about it here:

http://www.minidisc.org/mdlpfaq.html