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Question re Source Players (DVD/Blu-ray Player Related)

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BearBoy

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Having a few issues and wondered if anyone could offer any advice. 

 

My main hi-fi system is in my living room but my MiniDisc deck (Sony MDS-JB980) is in my office. I do not have a dedicated CD player in my office but I do have a number of old DVD/Blu-ray players that have ended up there and I am trying, with mixed results, to use these as a source for recording CDs to MiniDiscs.

 

Sony DVP-S725D – this is my original DVD player. It’s a nice sturdy “QS” model so matches the MDS-JB980 aesthetically, which is nice. It does, however, have two problems with acting as a CD source:

 

1)      It has a tendency to skip every now and again. Nothing major but enough to be a pain when recording MDs.

 

2)      It will not play CD-Rs.

 

Sony RDR-HXD860 – this is my old DVD recorder. I am having no joy with this one at the moment and just get a C71 Din Unlock error message on the MDS-JB980. The device does play CDs (and CD-Rs) fine and the analogue outputs are okay. I am going to connect it up to a TV and check the audio settings in case the digital output is disabled or set to output Dolby Digital or DTS or something.

 

Sony BDP-S580 – this is my old Blu-ray player and also has a couple of issues:

 

1)       When I try to record from a CD the Blu-ray player does not appear to pass track divider information. i.e. if I record a 45 minute CD album I get one 45 minute track on the MiniDisc and not the individual tracks.

 

2)      It plays CDs and CD-Rs okay but I get a C41 error on the MiniDisc deck with SACDs. I think I might just need to change a setting so that it plays the CD layer of SACDs by default but will need to connect it up to a TV to do this.

I know in an ideal world I would be using a dedicated CD player as a source but I don’t really want to purchase another machine when I have the DVD/Blu-ray players gathering dust. Has anyone had any joy getting these machines, or anything similar, to work correctly as a CD source for recording on to MiniDiscs?

I need to shift them to another room to connect a TV to check their settings so any suggestions anyone has as to what to try would be very welcome.

 

Edited by BearBoy
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The C71 Din Unlock msg could be because the RDR-HXD860 has digital out (96?) that is not compatible with MD. I had that happen with a Philips DVD. That's all I am able to guess here. That said, even though I hear you about not wanting to buy another unit, you still may want to consider almost any CDP that has optical out. You will never even need to listen to the CDP. For example, I use a Sony CDP-XE500 to copy CD-Rs on an HHB BurnIT. The XE500 does a great job in that role and that is all it ever has to do. Wish I could offer more!

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Thanks for the reply Bluecrab. I think you're probably right re the digital output on the RDR-HXD860. I need to shift everything down to a room with a TV so I can run through the settings and see if it can be changed to a sample rate the MDS-JB980 can handle. Or it may have been set up to output Dolby Digital or DTS or something for DVD soundtracks. 

Even if I can alter that, however, I am not convinced it will pass the track divide information across as the Blu-ray player doesn't seem able to do this, although maybe I should be a bit more optimistic as the DVP-S725D seems to handle that okay.

If I do need to pick up a dedicated CD player, would I be correct in thinking that, within reason, the quality of the player would not matter too much as I am just using it as a digital transport and wouldn't be using its DACs or anything?

 

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BearBoy, I pretty much think that technically speaking, a CD deck's quality would not be the critical factor in this context. That is what I meant about the XE500. You probably would want one, though, that is at least reasonably well-built. Doesn't have to be a tank or anything. Really all you're doing is passing along a bitstream.

Now, it looks to me like the RDR-HXD860 has an audio output setting called "48kHz/96kHz PCM." I'm not sure what this means. If you were to play a CD (44.1kHz) with the audio out set 48/96, then what would be generated? 48? 96? Don't know. Your MD deck will accept 48 and then downsample it to 44. The  HXD860's manual seems to indicate that the output would be 48/16 bit...kind of an LCD thing, I guess. In any case, 32/44/48 are the sampling rates compatible with MD.

Be interesting to know how you make out. I suppose I ought to mention that even if this works, I'm not sure what effect the 980's downsampling of 48 > 44 might have on the quality of the recording. Worth a shot, though, for sure!

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There is no "track divide information" per se. When a track divides it is because the level drops to the level (or below) specified in the deck's settings (default -50dB) specified from the Setup menu. Also you need to make sure level sync is turned on. Some of Sony's manuals say (incorrectly, I believe) that there is no level sync on digital recording.

HOWEVER, some players (and the PCLK-MN10 Sony USB->Optical dongle/controller) fake out the track mark by dropping the signal altogether when they detect the signal is low enough. Generally the combo decks, and anything using the Control A1(-II) system for interconnecting Sony components (Onkyo has something similar called RiD) will use this trick of dropping the signal altogether to copy the track marks. They will override the Lsync setting I believe.

You can still do it, you just have to fiddle with that level. The problem is stated succinctly: too low (large negative number) and it doesn't divide at all; too high and it gives up trying to divide because there would be too many divisions.

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There must surely be some track divide information otherwise track marks on CDs that have continuous audio, such as dj mixes would lose their track marks when copied.

Whenever I copy from CD to MD or MD to MD, all the track maks are always copied across and are always in exactly the same place.  It makes no difference whether I'm using a bookshelf system, decks or portables, if I'm copying digitally all the track marks get transferred even if there is no drop in audio levels.

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I'm willing to stand corrected. But isn't there in each case either hardware or software (or both) to ensure the result you speak of? For example a CD player "knows" how to interpret the somewhat random run-in to the beginning of the music, and synchronises perfectly so that the sound comes on at just the right moment? (ie it takes some time for the digital circuit to stabilise but the player keeps the sound off during the switch-in). The inverse of this is when people complain about not hearing the beginning of tracks - which can happen when the source and the destination are only connected by optical (with no clever circuitry such as found in bookshelf or combo deck)?

If I am recording from a digital source (almost always except for phono or tape transfers) then I seem to notice that the number of seconds length of the track isn't necessarily the same as printed on the sleeve. I always imagined this was because of this effect.

It's been a while since I have been able to find a CD with one track split into "chapters" (or whatever the Redbook terminology was) - I thought that they stopped using that method of division a long time ago. When I record a disk with Nero, I can set the 2 second gap to 0 but they are still separate tracks. If there is gapless playback (and I don't deny that there can be) it's because some fairly complicated system ensures the data from one track starts playing exactly when the old track finishes?

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Thanks for all of the suggestions and advice.

I moved all of the units (RDR-HXD860  / BDP-S580 / MDS-JB980) down to my living room last night and connected the DVD and Blu-ray players to a TV so I could access their settings.

The issue with the RDR-HXD860 was simple enough to resolve. The coaxial digital output had been disabled for some reason (not sure if this was its default setting or whether I did it at some point in the distant past). As soon as I did this, the C71 error message disappeared and I was able to start copying a CD. 

The track divide points copied across from the CD correctly as well.

 

Now, it looks to me like the RDR-HXD860 has an audio output setting called "48kHz/96kHz PCM." I'm not sure what this means. If you were to play a CD (44.1kHz) with the audio out set 48/96, then what would be generated? 48? 96? Don't know. Your MD deck will accept 48 and then downsample it to 44. The  HXD860's manual seems to indicate that the output would be 48/16 bit...kind of an LCD thing, I guess. In any case, 32/44/48 are the sampling rates compatible with MD.

Be interesting to know how you make out. I suppose I ought to mention that even if this works, I'm not sure what effect the 980's downsampling of 48 > 44 might have on the quality of the recording. Worth a shot, though, for sure!

So I tried switching between the 96/24 and 48/16 settings on the RDR-HXD860 and this appeared to make no difference to the MiniDisc deck. The manual isn't 100% clear but I think this setting may only apply to outputting audio from DVDs and not CDs. When I checked what sample rate the MiniDisc deck thought it was receiving it displayed 44.1

Either way, I left it set to 48/16 in case I ever wanted to try to copy the audio from a DVD (although not sure if this is actually possible).

I did not have as much luck with the BDP-S580 unfortunately. I played around with the audio settings but nothing seemed to address the track divide marker issue. The manual for the MDS-JB980 says that this does not work with some CD players so I guess there is just a compatibility issue here. I did, however, manage to resolve the C41 error issue with SACDs by setting it to play the CD layer by default.

So it looks like I will be able to use the DVD recorder as my "CD player" in my office. It's not 100% ideal as I don't think there is any way of programming what tracks you want it to play back, at least not without being connected to a TV, but I can live with that and it saves having to hunt down a new CD player.

Thanks again for the suggestions and hopefully this information might be of some use to others in the future.

 

 

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  • 4 years later...
On 11/17/2015 at 9:09 AM, BearBoy said:

So it looks like I will be able to use the DVD recorder as my "CD player" in my office. It's not 100% ideal as I don't think there is any way of programming what tracks you want it to play back, at least not without being connected to a TV, but I can live with that and it saves having to hunt down a new CD player.

Turns out I couldn't live with it and quickly became frustrated at being unable to program tracks so I picked up a second hand Sony Super Audio CD player (SCD-XB790) from eBay. This worked perfectly and the track divide information passed across to MDs correctly, even when there is no silence between tracks on the original CD. It was also a nice aesthetic match for my MDS-JB980 as they're both QS machines.

All was good in the world until a couple of months ago when the drawer mechanism on the SCD-XB790 started playing up and eventually deteriorated to the point where the drawer would not stay closed. I did a bit of research and it seemed possible the issue was a degraded belt in the mechanism so I ordered a replacement from eBay. Whilst I was waiting for the new belt to arrive I decided to connect up a Marantz Blu-ray player (UD7007) I had bought and see how that fared. Unfortunately I got the same results as I had with the Sony Blu-ray player and any recordings to MiniDisc came out as one single track. I had level sync enabled and tried changing the thresholds via the set up menu but nothing made any difference. I mended the CD player (it was the belt) and so am back working again now.

As an aside, I made some recordings from Spotify a few weeks ago and, to my surprise given my experience with the Blu-ray players, the tracks were divided correctly on the recorded MiniDisc. I used the Spotify Web Player connected to my MDS-JB980 using digital coax via a Focusrite Scarlett 8i6.

What I don't understand is why Blu-ray players (or, at least, the two I tested with and Stachu's mentioned in another thread) seem to not work.

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Did some more testing this evening with a couple of albums where two of the songs flow into each other (i.e. no silence between tracks):

  • Recording from a CD the recorded MiniDisc had the track markers in the correct place, including for the two songs without a gap.
  • Recording from Spotify the recorded MiniDisc had the track markers in the correct place except for the two songs that flow into each other.
  • Recording from iTunes produced the same outcome as using Spotify.

All recordings were done digitally.

TBH this was what I was expecting to happen but what I still don't understand is why recording from two different Blu-ray players (from two different manufacturers) leads to a MiniDisc with one long track and no track division, even where there are obvious silent gaps between songs.

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I’ve also noted this “lack” of track dividers from certain CDPs and also BDPs.
Also, Spotify connect and Tidal streaming with the fancy gapless technology often fails to divide the tracks on the target MD. Going to check if the Squeezebox plug-ins works better in that regard  

It appears that older equipment fairs better in this regard, ie they simply interrupt the digital stream between the tracks and triggers a new track on the MD. 

These are my finding fwiw :)

/Per

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The level setting for automatic track division turns out to be quite annoying. Either you get no division at all , or a gazillion little tracks which then end up having to be rejoined. The adjustment is quite fussy and once you have a setting that works, it's best to leave it. On my MDS-PC3 for example, I have LS set to -46dB for optical input. However if you adjust the input gain, it will be necessary to tweak the LS by the same amount as you changed the gain.

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Not all optical transmitting devices work the same. The PCLK (MN10 or MN20) seems to do the right thing and I suspect many other Sony devices do the right thing, as well as my Terratec sound card. I *think*, but am not sure, that the issue is the difference between NO signal and a signal which is present but below a certain value.

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