SONY MDS-JE470 - recording MP3 list from PC

[rigsby]

Hi to all and apologies if this has been covered. New here and not so tech savvy

I'd like to record my MP3 collection on my PC to my Sony MDS JE470. I'm aiming to buy a S/PDIF  to Toslink Optical cable  ( from PC card to the Sony Deck ) for transfer.

The problem i think i'm going to have is that when playing back the MP3 collection, and hitting record on MD.. is that the MD will see my MP3's as one long track.

I want them as separate tracks so that when playing back on the MD, i can skip forward between tracks , etc.

According to the manual, i can set the MD to pause between tracks ( presumably it will hear a silence between my MP's ) but does that mean that  this recorded silence is track separation, or just a silence and it will still just record one long track ?

If the MD doesnt record as a separate track using the pause function, how do i get one 70 minute track to be 20 separate tracks on the MD with resorting to downloading software ?  Or is  software my only option ?

 

I'm trying to get this done without having to manually sit at the PC and separate every track manually.  I dont mind at  all having to be recorded in live time, but i dont want to have to be sat there monitoring it.  There's 10 gig of MP3's and i dont want to die at the PC right now. I want to set it to record and then walk away and let it do its thing.

 

I realise i can only do 70 mins at a time ( or whatever a blank MD takes )  but thats better than having to be there permanently

 

Many thanks

 

Pete

[freddyjollo]

in general should be a new track - suck it and see I think. How are your going to deliver the mp3's to the deck - a playlist? then that needs to deliver silent gaps/pauses for the minidisc to detect. A little while a ago I recorded The Day of The Triffids from radio and some sessions ( book broken into 17 days of 30 minutes sessions) were broken into tracks, some very short due to pauses in the guy reading the book, so I had to join them all up. I think the deck settings can be adusted for what counts as silence but that a real hastleand would need experimentation etc. But your problem will be a playlist that doesn't just run one track into another when used? Minidisc by default detects silences and uses that to create a new track.

The best soln is really netmd. not sure yours is that and use Sonic stage to upload ( Sonic stage will handle MP3s, convert to atrac). Sonic Stage will then do the job making tracks. Might be worth investing in a netmd recorder if you have so many to upload. Also faster

[rigsby]

Thanks Freddy

 

Will use the pause function and see if that creates the separation i'm after.  I'm not sure which of the 10 gig of MP3's i have where one track runs into another, but if i do have some, then i guess it will split them and i can live with that

The MP3's on PC are in their own folders ..  EG  Blues, Funk,  Reggae etc  and i will change blanks for each different folder

 

I'd rather not go down the Sonic Stage software or NetMd right now.

[freddyjollo]

not sure you understand what I mean about tracks running into one another. I assume you will set up a playlist in a player to play them automatically on your pc? if so it is the player which will run the tracks together or not. if you can set up the pc player to delay playing each track, not run them together one after another without a pause then the deck should without any fiddling around make separate tracks -the default is to make a new track on detecting a silence, you shouldnt have to adjust the deck at all. if you cannot set up the pc player to add the pause the deck cannot compensate, it needs the silence between tracks to detect whether a new track is to be made or not

[rigsby]

Yes, i'll use VLC to play  each folder

I just played a folder of Joe Walsh tracks and VLC does not push the tracks together, so there are natural gaps between tracks, which is enough to cause the MD to recognise a new track,  i hope ?

 

According to your advice, does that mean i do not need to use the auto pause function on the MD while recording ?

If there are already gaps between the MP3's , what would happen if i use the auto pause function on the MD as well ?

[freddyjollo]

I ve just had a look at my manual - the auto ( pause ) in the setup is normally off and not what you want at all. it is a pause to allow you to find the next track to be recorded ie manually. What you want is already default as I explained - T.Mark automatic track marking and LS(T) the trigger level to detect when to make a new track. There is another settting called smart ( S.Space ) that will delete or cut off excess slience on tracks - that is also by default on and will clean up after a folder of tracks has been recorded and stop the deck. so in my opinion you dont need to adjust the deck at all unless these settings have been changed , just make sure the playlist will add the delays. . so forget the auto pause, it is for when you want to make recordings manually and want to select the tracks one by one and dont want the md just continuing to record while you fumble around - it is equvalent to you pressing the pause button on the deck. I expect it detects silence to pause the deck - portables have this and can be used when you want to record say a debate/conversation etc with a mic, that has natural pauses when people stop talking and you dont want to record a lot of nothing wasting md space - I have used that to record interviews.

I have never used auto pause on a deck so dont know what will happen - the deck might ask for manual input to continue after each track, One difference might be that the default setting will stop the deck when when the folder has been recorded but auto pause might just pause it - you dont want that as with some decks the record head stays in contact with the md and is kept spinning ( = wear & tear)

[rigsby]

Thanks freddy - i'll let the MD record in its natural state, as you suggest.

You've been a great help - thanks

I can start when the cable turns up from Ebay

[PhilippeC]

Could be more simple than a direct recording with 1:1 speed if you import the MP3 tracks into SonicStage and use the Net-MD function. And instead of VLC you also could use foobar2000 + post-track-silence plugin or Winamp + wincue plugin to create a silence gap between tracks. But the SONY MDS-JE470 is not Net-MD... It could be boring to delete some silence-tracks between real tracks if you do not have the net-MD function.

 

[rigsby]

Thats starting to get over my head, technically, so i'll just stick to the regular way of recording

[PhilippeC]

Never mind. Come back when your head will have cooled down with all those technical problems.

[rigsby]

With your sarcastic tone, its doubtful i will

WE can't all be tech wizards, like you obviously rate yourself as

 

Anyway, freddy has posted the most useful advice, so i wouldnt bother adding anymore if i were you

[sfbp]

Cool it guys. Philippe was trying to be helpful as always.  No sarcasm, I am certain.

He's right, you are trying to reinvent NetMD. For a few bucks you could achieve what you want automatically.

 

[freddyjollo]

Rigsby clearly dont want to spend any more money on what is a dead medium. sensible.

[sfbp]

Well.... we're not here because of being sensible.

[NGY]

3 hours ago, freddyjollo said:

dont want to spend any more money on what is a dead medium. sensible.

With all due respect - moving mp3 onto minidisc is not that much sensible (except one leverages on 1GB HiMD as a storage option). Regardless md being dead or not. ATRAC encoding is superior to mp3 in sound quality.

[freddyjollo]

well Rigsby probably dont have a MP3 player only a minidisc.matter of use what he has? The useful Radio Downloader used to download ( before the BBC told them to desist after more years than I can remember, didnt want the competition to their new inferior iPlayer sysytem ) BBC radio shows in Mp3 so no option but to turn into atrac should I for instance want to put on my portables. Matter of what you have to play with? not a matter of what makes sense.

[NGY]

1 hour ago, freddyjollo said:

probably dont have a MP3 player only a minidisc.matter of use what he has?

...

Matter of what you have to play with? not a matter of what makes sense.

Without any offense, but there should be some sense made, or at least showing some sign of consistency (in terms of wishes, objectives and willingness). 

Because then

22 hours ago, freddyjollo said:

clearly dont want to spend any more money on what is a dead medium. sensible.

does not compute for me (in terms of "not spending any more".)

10 GB of mp3 is about 3k songs, that translates into ~150 pcs. of 74min. md discs, that cost too. Unless he gets the discs for free or for less than ten cents each, it would make better sense buying a 16GB mp3 player for about 15 dollars, copy the whole stuff onto it in about twenty minutes or so (keeping all the directories etc.), and avoid a serious amount of man hours spent on transferring mp3 to md.

But anyhow.

[sfbp]

8 hours ago, freddyjollo said:

BBC radio shows in Mp3 so no option but to turn into atrac should I for instance want to put on my portables.

There's no reason you cannot play BBC out the optical port of your computer and record directly to MD. Just takes time, is all. The effective conversion from broadcast to ATRAC will be much more reliable.

Note that the BBC used to use ATRAC for just about everything (they sold off all their workhorse MD units about 4 years ago, they turned up on eBay), so that certainly is a measure of the quality. BBC were renowned in the business for good broadcast quality.

[freddyjollo]

you probably dont know of the Radio Downloader? it was a great little free program that would suck down many shows on radio as mp3 automatically in no time at all, no need to do realtime - before that, in days gone by, I used to use a timer and record them live, that was before radio downloader, took ages.I personally not prepared to go back to those ancient days just becuae the BBC got peeved that there was a better soln to their crappy iPlayer - what riled me they had the audacity in presenting their new iplayer service to the world that they said they had considered all the possibilities and this was the best for the consumer lol big joke, a start of my hatred for the BBC and glad the tories are clipping their wings.


https://nerdoftheherd.com/news/2013/06/26/radio-downloader-and-bbc-radio/

https://nerdoftheherd.com/tools/radiodld/

what is left is a rather denuded program