can I record from old style md digitaly to pc

[CORAMS FIELDS]

Hi Folks.

I am a complete newbie to this forum. And would like

some information if at all possible. I would like to know

if it is possible to record from my minidisc to a pc

digitally. Its just that after reading your FAQ for beginners

FAQ NO6 says direct transfers cant be done. But FAQ NO

13 says that with the right digital cable you can record to

your pc. Am I getting transfer and recording mixed up?

I don't mind at all if I have to do it in real time, it would be

really good to be able to do it digitally.

any help would be appreciated.

regards Chris.

[A440]

It all depends on what unit you have.

MD portables (except for the very early ones) don't have a line-out or an optical out--just a headphone jack. Those require realtime analog (headphone out to PC line-in) recording.

Some MD decks do have optical out, and with those you can record digitally to a PC, assuming you have a soundcard with optical in.

Hi-MD units--MZ-NH* or MZ-RH*--can upload digitally to PCs. MZ-M10 or MZ-M100 can upload digitally to a Mac (and I think to a PC too). MZ-RH1 uploads to Mac and PC. I'm assuming you don't have a Hi-MD.

If you have the $330 to spend, you can get the MZ-RH1, the only unit that uploads recordings made in SP, LP2 or LP4, the old minidisc formats.

[King Ghidora]

There is software available that allows you to bypass the soundcard D/A converter and get as close to a digital recording as possible from your old MD. It's called Total Recorder and there are discussions about it on this board.

There are also hacks that alter certain older MD recorders so that they can be switched into line out mode instead of headphone mode. It's a tricky thing to do but you may consider it to be worth the risk. I used it on my NetMD recorder and I didn't have any problems. One of these hacks is detailed in this thread.

[A440]

I don't think Total Recorder will be much use to someone with an old MD.

Total Recorder records what's coming through your soundcard. With Hi-MD, you can play back the disc through the computer and through the soundcard--so it's a good realtime backup recorder for ultra-important Hi-MD recordings. (Uploading is so reliable now that I don't use it.)

But with NetMD (or Hi-MD playing old MD formats), even when it's connected and controlled via SonicStage, you're still playing back out of the MD's headphone jack, so Total Recorder won't help.

Hacking to line-out is still an analog output.

Another analog method for getting the recording off the disc with a NetMD portable is Hi-MD Renderer (in Downloads) and its MD Recorder function. Connect the NetMD to the computer twice: via USB (to control the playback through SonicStage) and with a stereo plug-to-plug cord from headphone out to computer Line-in, and let Hi-MD Renderer play the disc back track by track, recording an individual file for each track.

[binsley]

Hi, this question is identical to the one I asked yesterday, in the thread below. I'm a little confused therefore that member a440 replied here:

> Some MD decks do have optical out, and with those you can record digitally to a PC, assuming you have a soundcard with optical in.

- whereas a440 told me that I needed, specifically, an MZ-RH1, not just a deck with optical out and a soundcard with optical in - I already have those.

John

[A440]

The difference is between re-recording, in realtime, and transferring a digital copy of the file.

With optical out you can record in realtime.

With the RH1 you can transfer the file as a digital file via USB.

[CORAMS FIELDS]

Hi again.

Thanks for replying so quickly. I have a sony home deck model NO-MDS-JE510.Which according to

the manual has got digital optical out. so I think by what Ive read here I can with the right sound card

re-record my MDs to my pc. Hope ive got that right. the main reason Im asking all this is because my Sony car unit has packed up again for the second time, and am thinking of calling it a day with It.Sorry

to drone on with all this, but Im assuming that once there on the pc I can then re-organise them into different formats? Again thanks everyone. Chris.

[binsley]

Thanks a440 for your replies. Just to clarify though:

> With optical out you can record in realtime.

I don't care whether I have to do it in realtime; mine is probably a one-off project, or at the most an infrequent task. I assume however that this ALSO means that the recording is analogue.

If my assumption is correct - what's the point of the optical connections? Why not just use line-in?

If I've understood wrongly, however, and it IS possible to record digitally (albeit in real-time) with an optical cable from a standard MD deck to a soundcard... then how the heck do you do it?? John

[A440]

A realtime recording can be analog or digital.

The optical out is a stream of digital data being sent out in real time. It should give you a measurably--though not necessarily perceptibly--more exact recording than the analog line-out.

You said your soundcard has optical-in. Otherwise you could use something like this:

http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Transit-main.html

And then you need a cord to connect the optical out to the optical in, and a recording program--like good old free Audacity--installed on your computer. In settings for your soundcard (Settings/Control Panel/Sounds and Audio Devices/Audio) you have to make sure your soundcard is sensing the optical stream for Sound Recording, and then you should be ready to record.

[King Ghidora]

I disagree about what Total Recorder can do for an old MD. People used TR to record the analog output of HIMD discs after Sonic Stage would mess up and not let people upload digitally. So that was always an analog signal coming from a HIMD unit into a computer. What TR does is bypass the sound card and it's electronics which in many cases aren't very good (especially on a laptop for example). It allows recording directly to a program like Audacity from the MD (old or new). If you read the description of TR it says it can be used to record any source such as cassettes, LP's, microphones, etc.. So essentially it does the same thing for an old MD as it does for a HIMD. It bypasses the circuitry of the sound card. The program intercepts the signal before it is processed by the sound card and sends the signal to a recording program. If TR has any benefit for a HIMD disc then it has exactly the same benefit for a MD disc.

The only way to record a true digital signal from a MD disc is to have a MD player that has an optical out and connect it an optical in jack on a computer. Some sound cards have optical input jacks. The recording will be done in real time but it will be a digital copy of the MD disc. With a sound card with optical inputs and the right cable you can make digital copies of your MD's using the MD player you have.

[A440]

The program intercepts the signal before it is processed by the sound card and sends the signal to a recording program. If TR has any benefit for a HIMD disc then it has exactly the same benefit for a MD disc.

Total Recorder will work like Audacity and record analog from the soundcard input, true.

But it's different with Hi-MD and regular MD.

A Hi-MD hooked up to the computer, with SonicStage controlling playback, will play through the computer speakers. That's a digital signal coming through the USB to the soundcard, and Total Recorder can grab that sound digitally on the way to the soundcard.

A NetMD hooked up to the computer, with SonicStage controlling playback, plays through its headphone jack--not through the soundcard. So Total Recorder can record the analog signal through line-in (if the computer has one) or mic-in on the computer--but it's not intercepting a digital signal. A more convenient method is to use MD Recorder in Hi-MD Renderer, which uses SonicStage to control the unit via USB and makes a separate file from each track on the MD, recorded out of the headphone jack into the computer.

[CORAMS FIELDS]

Hi

thanks for all your replies, ive got the gist of what ive got to do

to get my recordings onto my computer. Digital line out from my sony

deck to pc with sound card with digital line in and some sort of sofware

on the pc to act as an interface such as audacity or something similar.

Hope ive got all the information correct people have offered.

thanks everyone.

chris.

[binsley]

Hi again,

Member a440 advised:

> In settings for your soundcard (Settings/Control Panel/Sounds and Audio Devices/Audio) you have to make sure your soundcard is sensing the optical stream for Sound Recording, and then you should be ready to record.

Under Settings/Control Panel/Sounds and Audio Devices/Audio/Sound recording, there's only one device to pick from - something called "C-Media Wave Device"; there's also a tab "Volume" which brings up the usual "Recording Control" mixer, but that has only the usual culprits: Stereo Mix/Microphone/CD Audio/Aux/Line In/Wave - nothing about an optical stream.

Does this imply that my soundcard isn't up to the job? It's a Trust SC-5250 5.1 which I bought especially for this since it has optical-in, but I have to admit that I haven't been impressed; its paper manual is useless, the online help refers to utilities which don't look like the ones I got, and Trust's Tech Support people must be far too important to demean themselves by replying to mails from customers...

Does anyone have any experience with this piece-of-junk card, or with Trust in general? Note that the optical and co-ax connectors are on a daughtercard, and I wonder whether the D-to-A is done on the daughtercard so that the main card never actually sees any digits at all.

I'm piggybacking on this thread since no-one seems to want to talk on my identical one which was started a day earlier - sigh... Anyway, it might be useful for Chris to be aware that it may still depend on how good his own soundcard is. John

[A440]

Well, the good news is that the C-Media Wave Device is the Trust card.

I have no experience with the company or the card. Reviewers at amazon.co.uk seem pretty disgruntled.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/TRUST-SC-5250-5-1-...D/dp/B000177Z5K

You might just experiment. Since the optical part is outboard, maybe it's Aux?

[King Ghidora]

It's possible to connect an audio device through USB though A440. I understand what you're saying and I know that's why people considered TR to be a big advantage for HIMD discs that had already been uploaded once (according to Sonic Stage anyway). But it's possible to bypass the circuitry of the sound card with a device like the Griffin iMic2. Yes it was easy to bypass the sound card with a HIMD recorder because it came with a USB input for an analog signal but converters that allow an analog signal to be input into a computer through USB are plentiful and fairly cheap. TR will allow you to pick up the signal from these converters.

Regardless an analog input is still an analog input whether it comes in via the USB or a line in jack or a mic in jack. I understood that TR could bypass some of the circuitry of a sound card where the signal was processed. I believe it can bypass much of the software needed to process an audio signal also. The web site leads me to believe that TR bypasses circuitry and software that other programs don't bypass. It might be neccessary to use a USB converter to bypass the sound card circuitry as has been described for HIMD devices but that really isn't a big problem. As you can see devices that allow you to do that are common and pretty cheap.

[A440]

I understood that TR could bypass some of the circuitry of a sound card where the signal was processed. I believe it can bypass much of the software needed to process an audio signal also. The web site leads me to believe that TR bypasses circuitry and software that other programs don't bypass.

You may be giving Total Recorder too much credit. From its website, it seems that for Line-in recording, TR listens through the soundcard just like anything else--whether the soundcard is the built-in one or a USB outboard card.

http://www.totalrecorder.com/t8.htm#RS

It looks like it's just a different GUI for the Windows recording mixer, and you have to point it to whatever soundcard is getting the Line-in input.

The iMic is a great device for this purpose--definitely the easiest upgrade for a dinky laptop soundcard input. I used it quite a bit when I was doing realtime recordings from my MZ-N707. But when you use the iMic or other external soundcard, I don't think Total Recorder offers any advantage over Audacity or other straightforward recording software.

I still prefer Hi-MD Renderer's MD Recorder because (as long as you have two USB ports, one for the iMic and one for the NetMD connection) it makes separate tracks from the disc's tracks, so you don't have to edit again later.

[King Ghidora]

The way I understand TR and the way it's explained is that it picks up the signal from the USB connection coming from a HIMD machine. Because the signal comes through the USB cable instead of the sound card the circuitry of the sound card is bypassed. Yes essentially the HIMD recorder is acting like a sound card in that it inputs sound into the computer but according to the conventional wisdom it sends in a better quality signal than going through a sound card.

The iMic pretty much does the same job in that it also sends an audio signal into the computer bypassing the regular sound card of the computer. And yes it is considered to be far better quality than the normal sound cards that come with laptops.

I don't know if you're aware of this but it's possible to hook speakers up to a USB connection and use software to process audio information and play audio through that USB connection. Basically the iMic or any other USB audio input device just reverses that process or that's what I have been led to believe.

At any rate the result is the same as using TR with a HIMD recorder. The circuitry of the sound card of a computer gets bypassed and the audio signal is fed to your favorite audio program. BTW this will only work this way if the sound controlling software for your computer has a wav input as one of the selections. Just as you would select mic input or line in input in the volume control or you mute a mic or a line in a seperate device will have to appear in your properties section or whatever section your software uses to control such things. Not all software allows for wav inputs. Setups are different too and sometimes the wav listing is called something else.

I wish I could remember where this was all explained where I saw it originally. Maybe I'm not making it clear. I just know that TR allows you to bypass the sound card with an audio input in computers that have an audio control program that allows for it.