JB940 doesn't stop recording after CD stops

[damnspynovels]

I just noticed last night when copying a CD via optical that the MD doesn't stop recording immediately after the CD has finished.

 

I'm pretty sure it should, correct?

 

Is there a setting that I've inadvertently changed that would cause this?

[PhilippeC]

This is not the exact answer you are waiting for but in case you don't get it : if you have a Net-MD unit.

 

Listen the MD using >> to the last seconds of the album and press T-mark. Then edit the MD with Sonic Stage and delete the small track you have created wyth the T-mark. 

[damnspynovels]

This is not the exact answer you are waiting for but in case you don't get it : if you have a Net-MD unit.

 

Listen the MD using >> to the last seconds of the album and press T-mark. Then edit the MD with Sonic Stage and delete the small track you have created wyth the T-mark. 

 

Thanks, but yeah - not really the answer I'm hoping for. 

[Jimma]

I have an MDS-JE510 and an MDS-JE530 and neither of these decks stop at exactly the same time as the cd when copying  optically.  sometimes they stop quite quickly, other times they keep going until the disc is full.  I usually keep an eye on them and stop manually or erase the silent tracks after the recording has finished.

I have no idea why this happens and it can be quite annoying.  You would think the deck could detect the end of the cd and act accordingly as happens with bookshelf systems.

[damnspynovels]

I have an MDS-JE510 and an MDS-JE530 and neither of these decks stop at exactly the same time as the cd when copying  optically.  sometimes they stop quite quickly, other times they keep going until the disc is full.  I usually keep an eye on them and stop manually or erase the silent tracks after the recording has finished.

I have no idea why this happens and it can be quite annoying.  You would think the deck could detect the end of the cd and act accordingly as happens with bookshelf systems.

 

Oh so you think it's typical behaviour? Weird. I mean I swear that back in the day when I was using portables to record CDs via optical - they'd stop dead on. 

[Jimma]

That is the annoying thing, I'm sure when I've used portables to record cds they stop at exactly the right time.  God knows why portables can manage it when full size decks can't.  Maybe someone else can enlighten us as to the reason.

[damnspynovels]

That is the annoying thing, I'm sure when I've used portables to record cds they stop at exactly the right time.  God knows why portables can manage it when full size decks can't.  Maybe someone else can enlighten us as to the reason.

 

There's always (in the 940's case) the option of using the smart space / auto cut function that detects when theres 30 seconds of silence, removes it and pauses the recording. But that's not really how it ought to be. I swear also it never used to do this. 

[freddyjollo]

apart from smart space. The option you really want I think is a Sony CD player that has the Control A11 interface that does all that. if u look on the back of the md deck u will see the 2  jack plug type  sockets.  Then  the controls on the cd player controls the md.

 

Also I cant really remember  whether what you want only works thru coax digital & not optical ( or the other way around ) if i can  find my manual I will have a look see

[damnspynovels]

apart from smart space. The option you really want I think is a Sony CD player that has the Control A11 interface that does all that. if u look on the back of the md deck u will see the 2  jack plug type  sockets.  Then  the controls on the cd player controls the md.

 

Also I cant really remember  whether what you want only works thru coax digital & not optical ( or the other way around ) if i can  find my manual I will have a look see

I'm just looking at my manual now - and it looks like it's meant to be this way, ie. it says that to do a sync with a non-sony cd player, you use Music Sync - and it will start, but not stop - unless you manually intervene. It does however say that Smart Space and Autocut will operate regardless of their setting (i.e. if you have them turned off) in these conditions.

It doesn't say if it only works thru optical or coaxial though. I'd be interested to know if that's a factor. 

 

So it would seem that once my CD is finished playing, the deck continues recording - and as smart space and autocut are active, it'll detect silence of less than 30 seconds, replace it with a space of 3 seconds and continue recording. I'm guessing then that as it's going to continue recording 'nothing', auto cut will kick in after 30 seconds, remove all the blank space (again!), and replace it with 3 seconds - and then pause.

So the crux of it is if you're using a non-Sony cd player, your decks will ALWAYS append 3 seconds of space onto every last track of a CD. I suppose that's no big deal, but if you want to make a mix-MD of individual songs from different CDs - it's really annoying to either have to wait 30 seconds after every track for the deck to do it's thing - OR hover over the stop button to do it manually.

 

It's all very weird considering portables don't do this. I can see some logic in having this flexibility on a home deck, but the ability to turn it all off would've been nice

 

But still, mystery solved. 

[freddyjollo]

well since  Sony had the Control A11 interface that does all that you want, they prob didnt want to make it too easy to use a non Sony cd player? Not sure about at the end it goes on recording 3 second tracks of nothing? I think it goes into record pause. I seem to remember  reading some where  not a good thing to allow as it wears out the heads - but that may have been for a certain deck only.I ll have to  try that tonight.

[damnspynovels]

well since  Sony had the Control A11 interface that does all that you want, they prob didnt want to make it too easy to use a non Sony cd player? Not sure about at the end it goes on recording 3 second tracks of nothing? I think it goes into record pause. I seem to remember  reading some where  not a good thing to allow as it wears out the heads - but that may have been for a certain deck only.I ll have to  try that tonight.

 

I'm just quoting the manual as to what it's 'supposed' to do on my deck. i'm going to try it tonight and watch - as apparently the display changes to say "smart space" etc, when that's happening. I've seen it do that before but never paid it an amazing amount of attention. 

But just to recap what I meant:

 

if there's a gap of sound for less than 30 seconds before the sound starts again - it'll reduce that gap to just 3 seconds and continue recording. 

If the silence is longer than 30 seconds, i think it appends 3 seconds of silence onto the last track, removes the rest and then pauses? So this is what would / should happen after a cd is finished. Then if after 10 minutes there's been no sound, recording goes from pause to stop. 

[Jimma]

I'm sure you can stop the deck shortening the silences, i.e. turn off Smart Space.  I recorded a cd recently that had a long period of silence before playing a final "hidden" track.  The deck definitely left the four minutes or so of silence untouched and recorded the cd as it was originally.

I am using a Sony cd player by the way, although it doesn't have the A11 interface.

[damnspynovels]

I'm sure you can stop the deck shortening the silences, i.e. turn off Smart Space.  I recorded a cd recently that had a long period of silence before playing a final "hidden" track.  The deck definitely left the four minutes or so of silence untouched and recorded the cd as it was originally.

I am using a Sony cd player by the way, although it doesn't have the A11 interface.

 

not sure. it does say in the manual that if you're recording via digital using Music Sync - smart space etc is on by default. 

are you using music sync or cd sync? 

[sfbp]

1. it's not "supposed" to work on optical input on most units. However you have to turn it on, the associated term is "level sync". You can test out "level synch" on analogue operation.

2. A few units, it does - the MDS-PC3 is a case in point (one of the least interfered-with/protected). All the function does is to drop the signal completely when it goes below a certain level. IE -50dB (the default) is considered to be -infinity. This should generate a track mark, but not stop recording altogether (you'd complain about that for sure!).

3. Even on the MDS-PC3 and other units, there are problems with this scheme. If you set the level too high (too small negative dB) then essentially there are so many transitions that the system cannot keep up and the track marking stops. However sometimes it generates zillions of tiny tracks, which is very annoying too. Of course setting the level too LOW (larger -ve dB) results in recording continuing as your signal is always over the trigger level.

This is why (IMHO) the manuals usually said you cannot do level synch on digital signal.

You can find it on the 940 under the Setup menu, the entry looks something like "LS(T) -50db" in its default state.

Smart space was then supposed to cut in to compact long periods of space into a single 6-7 second track.

If you have a reasonable level of digital signal, you'll usually want the level between -40 and -50 dB. Unfortunately this level CHANGES if you have a method of changing the digital gain, or if the digital signal comes from sources with different background levels of noise. So it's really only useful when you are recording for long periods from the same source and can get it set up right.

Hope this helps.

[damnspynovels]

1. it's not "supposed" to work on optical input on most units. However you have to turn it on, the associated term is "level sync". You can test out "level synch" on analogue operation.

 

Does it make any difference if the digital signal is electrical? 

 

I'm now wondering if i've inadvertently increased the Level Sync db. However I didn't think it affected auto track marking from a CD source via digital. 

[sfbp]

Does it make any difference if the digital signal is electrical?

No. It is possible that a coax connection might be picking up something from a ground loop. I've certainly seen that on un-buffered S/PDIF circuits such as my first attempt to get data from a CD player off the 2-pin digital connector.

However all the difference in the world may come if the source CD player is designed to drop the signal completely to -infinity between tracks. Or not.

[damnspynovels]

No. It is possible that a coax connection might be picking up something from a ground loop. I've certainly seen that on un-buffered S/PDIF circuits such as my first attempt to get data from a CD player off the 2-pin digital connector.

However all the difference in the world may come if the source CD player is designed to drop the signal completely to -infinity between tracks. Or not.

 

Oh I have it hooked up optically - so it's ok. 

I'll investigate the level sync dB tonight. 

[damnspynovels]

Ok so i can confirm now that my deck exhibits the behaviour exactly as it's meant to be as per the manual.

 

My cause for concern was because its the first time I've noticed the deck continue to record after a CD has finished.

 

I picked a CD to try that is a continuous piece of music - but with track markers - and it copied them exactly as it should. Once finished, the deck continued to record (nothing) for an additional 30 seconds. It then went into Rec/Pause mode, and removed the previous 27 seconds of blank space - resulting in a run time that's approx 3 seconds longer than the CD. 

[sfbp]

I'm curious what you used (I know you mentioned it but I'm too lay-zee) to copy that CD. I've never had any luck reproducing track marks where there's no silence and I am intrigued.

[damnspynovels]

I'm curious what you used (I know you mentioned it but I'm too lay-zee) to copy that CD. I've never had any luck reproducing track marks where there's no silence and I am intrigued.

 

well i'm really surprised you've ever had issues with this. 

 

i mean from memory, when I used to record cd's via optical to my old r30 way, way back in the 90s, it copied flawlessly - with accurate total run time (i.e. if a cd ran to 63:23, so did the MD), and full track marks dropped in automatically - and it didn't matter if it was a live album where the crowd noise would run over the end of one track into the start of another, or a DJ mix CD where the sound was of a continuous level - tracks all got marked accordingly.

 

And my JB940 is no different. I just tried it with a CD by the dance act Orbital - where it's pretty much a seamless piece of music for 80 mins but with multiple tracks obviously - and it marked everything. the only weird thing that is different is what i've been going on about all thread, that it doesn't stop when the cd stops.

 

so what am i using? an arcam cd player connected via optical. nothing special - it's supposed to do this. as long as you start the recording with the 'music sync' button on the remote, which puts it into rec/pause - and then hit play on the cd player (and that'll start the recording). it marks all the tracks every time. it just doesn't stop at the end. 

 

this is all as per the manual too. 

[sfbp]

I'll try this music/sync button.

Maybe the problem is I almost never (lately) did Music CD->MD copies, so perhaps my memory is faulty. Originally when I got into all this I went the other direction, namely MD's as a way to make archive CDs. How obtuse of me is that??

I do know that utilising the volume level of a broadcast via optical is iffy at best. But most CD->MD copies I do using a computer, because the gracenote plugin will capture the metadata for me.

Edit: when I feed optical output to receiver, and back to MD there's no drop in the signal, so no track mark. There must be something special that the CD player(s) does when it sees a track mark. I don't think ALL CD players do it, either. My guess is in this case, the receiver has a buffering thing that it does, so the signal, once set up, doesn't "glitch". Curious, more investigation required.

[damnspynovels]

I'll try this music/sync button.

Maybe the problem is I almost never (lately) did Music CD->MD copies, so perhaps my memory is faulty. Originally when I got into all this I went the other direction, namely MD's as a way to make archive CDs. How obtuse of me is that??

 

Not that obtuse - especially from the perspective of recording analogue stuff for eventual archival on a CD. 

 

[sfbp]

You've inspired me - I just recorded a 2-CD set to MD (at LP2), and to my surprise it even copied all the CD Text (using the amazing MXD-D5C). This is a first for me - I've never gotten that feature to work before, and I read here many times people complaining that using SonicStage was the only reasonable way to get metadata onto an MD.

Mind you the D5C does have a little light that came on and said "Cd Text". I expect you read about all the wars by disk manufacturers who have "uncopyable" CD-Text information. Clearly these commercial disks I inserted were either post-war or by a company that never indulged in the practice.

If I could only hack my "export" D5C (120V) to (instead of the keyboard port) use the PS/2 port on the back to respond to the PC-Link dongle.... the Japanese one clearly is labelled PC-LINK if you look at pictures, I would abjure many other devices. M-Crew is a very very useful piece of MD software, in some ways more than Sonic Stage (although the latter's library and conversion functions are amazing).

[freddyjollo]

hmm cd text. Am I right in thinking that to copy cd text does require coax input than  optical?

[sfbp]

Could be. The issue doesn't arise on the MXD-D5C since it's all in one package.

[punkrockaddict]

copying cd text is done by attaching a sony cd player to an Md recorder via A1 Cable.

I have tried that several times but all i could reach was a text protected message.

That feature is nonsens since most even self burned microphone recorded files are protected.

I was never trying this with a coax cable..just with toslink.But that shouldn´t matter since the data gets transmitted via the A1.

[freddyjollo]

well maybe try a coax.