( Sony) Minidisc deck filters

[freddyjollo]

A question for those with Sony?  minidisc decks.  I have never really bothered with playing around with filters until just a few hurs ago, listening to a recording if a life performance from radio I made a long time ago, comparing my ( superior ) Audiolab 8200cdq  dac with the Sony built in one, trying to get them sound the best and the same. Seems to me that filter 1 ( on JB940 ) comes closest. So what  do other  people here use, if any choice at all?

[punkrockaddict]

well.. i´ve came across these too but ended up disabling them.

for unplugged stuff i used to play with Filter 2 on my 333ES.But that was very few times

[bluecrab]

I agree with punkrockaddict 100%. Have tried the filters where they are available, but have found that my preference—at least to this point...my hearing loss is worsening—is to not use them.

[freddyjollo]

you mean  you use the standard filter?

[sfbp]

I was about to ask the same thing, of you, Freddy.

The biggest reason to use a deck, IMNSHO, is that all recordings on either input to a deck appear to get filtered in such a manner as to ensure good recordings at the data rate the recording is made. As well, lots of "stuff" (Jim Hoggarth tried to explain to me, and I can see them on the schematic, but I wouldn't really know a filter circuit from a female Ursa Minorian's bra size) is there to clean up the signal and generally get rid of noise. The same recording made on a portable is often not as good, although it may well be that HiMD portables have already implemented some of the "stuff" in the massive ASIC which is the brains of the MD recorder.

Bottom line - many of the artifacts I'd get by a straight line-in (or optical in) to a relatively simple computer backplane sound card are gone. To me this is the joy of a minidisc deck. It may be that very fancy I/O cards on a PC are compensated, I have no idea. But Sony did a fabulous job. The biggest trick is cutting off frequencies above the threshold (I believe this is referred to as "mastering" but NGY or someone will correct me on that point and all the above rather wishy-washy explanation, I'm sure) so that bits are not wasted, and then reallocating bits using Type-R, in order to make good recordings EVEN IN LP4 mode.

Stephen

PS I have never used a filter by pushing buttons. I think they're implicit in editors like Sound Forge when you transform the sound, but again that may be my fanciful imagination.

[bluecrab]

Freddy, just speaking for myself...yes, Standard. It would be interesting if Sony had told us the specs of each filter, instead of using somewhat vague descriptions.

[freddyjollo]

20 hours ago, sfbp said:

I was about to ask the same thing, of you, Freddy.

The biggest reason to use a deck, IMNSHO, is that all recordings on either input to a deck appear to get filtered in such a manner as to ensure good recordings at the data rate the recording is made. As well, lots of "stuff" (Jim Hoggarth tried to explain to me, and I can see them on the schematic, but I wouldn't really know a filter circuit from a female Ursa Minorian's bra size) is there to clean up the signal and generally get rid of noise. The same recording made on a portable is often not as good, although it may well be that HiMD portables have already implemented some of the "stuff" in the massive ASIC which is the brains of the MD recorder.

Bottom line - many of the artifacts I'd get by a straight line-in (or optical in) to a relatively simple computer backplane sound card are gone. To me this is the joy of a minidisc deck. It may be that very fancy I/O cards on a PC are compensated, I have no idea. But Sony did a fabulous job. The biggest trick is cutting off frequencies above the threshold (I believe this is referred to as "mastering" but NGY or someone will correct me on that point and all the above rather wishy-washy explanation, I'm sure) so that bits are not wasted, and then reallocating bits using Type-R, in order to make good recordings EVEN IN LP4 mode.

Stephen

PS I have never used a filter by pushing buttons. I think they're implicit in editors like Sound Forge when you transform the sound, but again that may be my fanciful imagination.

 

 

I think the  4 filters I am referring to  only work on the output? if you use the  analogue output, is to do with the  dac digital to analogue conversion and  is inescapable as its part of the technology as digital  has artifacts not part of the music?  I bet  minidisc uses a circuit as it is  old hardware, the Audiolab 8200 cdq does it in software I read, as I bet all modern devices do. So  the filtering  you are referring to is maybe  due to the  atrac compression system? and not that  due to the button on the 940 front.

[punkrockaddict]

yes they were only used on the analog output stage.So any recording is the same wether the filter is on of off.

That´s the Big deal on the 333ES-> it´s analog output.I really like it