This week/month/day/year I’ve mostly been…

[Andrew Hinge]

2 minutes ago, BearBoy said:

Nice work!

 

Although it reminds me I have a load of discs I need to sort out labels/inlays for 🙁

Thanks! How do you do yours?

Pix?

 

[BearBoy]

So a few years back I bought a load of the mini jewel cases and started to use a free template that was online (www.minidisccover.com). Unfortunately I'd only made a small number when they started charging a fee to access the template (I think it was something like £50 for 6 months) and I haven't really found a suitable alternative since.

 

I'm not really up to speed with design applications etc so don't really know the best way of creating one of my own.

 

Anyway, here's one I did whilst the site was still free:

 

[BearBoy]

I had a little play about in Microsoft Publisher and have managed to pull together a template for jewel case inlays using the measurements from https://www.bandcds.co.uk/minidisc/minidisc-duplication-and-production/

 

Might try to make an insert to go in the MDW80T slipcases next.

[BearBoy]

I made a template for the MDW80T slipcases. It fits well enough but the sort of frosted finish on the cases means that the inlay doesn't show through terribly well, at least not with the test one I made. Might need to experiment with different colours/fonts a bit and see if I can make it more legible.

[kgallen]

Mike Lindup Changes2 CD just arrived in the post, so a little SP dub job for my MXD-D4 today…

 

 

…yes I am sad and try to match the MD colour to the album artwork!

 

https://mikelindup-official.bandcamp.com/album/changes-2

[BearBoy]

On 7/29/2023 at 12:38 PM, kgallen said:

Mike Lindup Changes2 CD just arrived in the post, so a little SP dub job for my MXD-D4 today…

 

 

I've been wondering where I knew that guy from as he looked familiar. Was even wondering if it was someone I actually knew before I finally twigged 🤦‍♂️

 

On 7/29/2023 at 12:38 PM, kgallen said:

…yes I am sad and try to match the MD colour to the album artwork!

 

One of the little pleasures the format brings 😀

 

[Richard]

I should probably do some proper pictorials for these, but I'm a bit lazy, so for now I'll just throw in a selection of random shots of some recent (well last 6 months let's say) acquisitions.. .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[BearBoy]

Wow. Nice (not so) little haul there @Richard!

[kgallen]

On 10/28/2023 at 3:58 AM, Richard said:

I should probably do some proper pictorials for these, but I'm a bit lazy, so for now I'll just throw in a selection of random shots of some recent (well last 6 months let's say) acquisitions.. .

"I'll just chuck in some shots" he says, then proceeds (as always) to upload studio-grade pictures! Nice!

[BearBoy]

9 minutes ago, kgallen said:

"I'll just chuck in some shots" he says, then proceeds (as always) to upload studio-grade pictures!

 

🤣

 

It's always a bit embarrassing when I see @Richard's professional shots compared to my feeble "taken on my desk with a phone in bad light" efforts.

[Richard]

18 hours ago, BearBoy said:

 

🤣

 

It's always a bit embarrassing when I see @Richard's professional shots compared to my feeble "taken on my desk with a phone in bad light" efforts.

 

Nothing to be embarrassed about! All photos are appreciated! I have a kind of standardized setup that I have been using for a few years, with a light tent, my handheld camera and some minor edits on the computer afterwards. Far from pro, but it still takes a while sometimes. I usually go through short "spurts" of output, often punctuated by months of having no time and / or laziness😅

[BearBoy]

Here's another one of my dodgy photos 🤦‍♂️ 🤣

 

I made a couple of MiniDiscs of "deluxe" versions of a pair of old PJ Harvey albums. Plenty of space using LP2 to get the original albums, bonus tracks, B sides, radio sessions and demos etc on each. Just need to print out a couple of inlays for them now.

 

[BearBoy]

On 10/30/2023 at 8:29 AM, Richard said:

I have a kind of standardized setup that I have been using for a few years, with a light tent, my handheld camera and some minor edits on the computer afterwards. Far from pro, but it still takes a while sometimes. I usually go through short "spurts" of output, often punctuated by months of having no time and / or laziness😅

 

Well, you might not consider them "pro" @Richard, but they certainly look very professional to me. And your pictorial posts are always very much appreciated.

[kgallen]

It’s pantomime season in the UK and hence for me with my local drama group. For the past two productions I’ve not run sound on the performances (as well as lighting, set, …) as I’ve been bringing on the husband of another member to lessen the burden on me trying to be an octopus. 
 

A week before our show went up (a few days before our tech and dress rehearsals) he told us he couldn’t do the shows. The sound wasn’t well prepped (grrrr) so I had a mad couple of days and some long meetings working out and editing up the music and sound effects.

 

As others here will know I use minidisc and the reasons are many including that doing lighting as well I don’t have time (or space) for fannying around with laptops and mice: I need a play button I can hit and the required sound comes out on cue and a machine that auto-stops at the end of the track. 
 

Hence I have a number of MDS-E12 ‘pro’ Sony decks. A pair, specifically, that handled the music and sound effects for the show, plus another as a backup that is racked with a Sony CDP-D12 that I used for interval music.

 

I had a slight panic at the get-in (when we rig the show) when machine #1 wouldn’t eject, but fortunately was reading the disc reliably. I had chance to take the machine home that evening to replace the load/eject belt. After then, solid performance from the machines, which is what I need. No time for technical hitches with 100 lighting cues and over 50 music and SFX cues - plus radio mics, to juggle on my own. 
 

So that’s been my past couple of weeks. In prep now for the next production in May - when I’m not expecting to have to do the sound last minute, so it will be full on with the lighting and set, and the E12’s get a brief rest!

[BearBoy]

Must have been stressful getting thrown in at the deep end at such short notice like that but it sounds like you, and your trusty MD decks, managed to get Cinderella to the ball (or whichever panto it was you were doing 😉 )

 

I wonder what the life expectancy of an eject belt is? I've only ever replaced mine when they've failed (or sometimes as a precaution if I happened to have a deck open and know the belt is old). Bit different if you're reliant on them for something like a live theatre show.

[kgallen]

 

On 1/22/2024 at 7:00 PM, BearBoy said:

Must have been stressful getting thrown in at the deep end at such short notice like that but it sounds like you, and your trusty MD decks, managed to get Cinderella to the ball (or whichever panto it was you were doing 😉 )

It was Aladdin. I got "lucky" in that I had a couple of days annual leave I needed to burn (use or lose), so that was those two days written off! I have done sound for the best part of 20 years and it's all my kit so in that respect it wasn't an issue - other than the last minute notification, needing to do all of the prep double quick and then running what was a lot of cues for one person (intense concentration for 2.5hrs is hard going at my age!).

 

On 1/22/2024 at 7:00 PM, BearBoy said:

I wonder what the life expectancy of an eject belt is? I've only ever replaced mine when they've failed (or sometimes as a precaution if I happened to have a deck open and know the belt is old). Bit different if you're reliant on them for something like a live theatre show.

Usually I replace them when I get a new machine, but possibly I had this one before Charlie got those 0.7x17 belts made for us. The one I took off looked a bit thicker, so either I didn't replace it or I used some "A.N.Other" belts that I was using at the time. I guess my machines get it a little harder than your typical machine as they are stored (albeit in rack cases) in an outbuilding, where it gets pretty cold (and warm in the summer). I usually put a label on the back with the date when I replace a belt, but there wasn't one, so again, either I didn't replace it or it was before I got into the habit of labelling them!

 

[BearBoy]

I thought I had recorded somewhere which belts I had replaced and when but I cannot find it now 🤦‍♂️

 

Probably should have used stickers on the back rather than a spreadsheet, which I now can't seem to locate.

[BearBoy]

Despite having 3 decks connected up in my office, I've spent today listening to my MZ-R909 hooked up via line out into my office system. Variety is the spice of life and all that 🙂

 

The disc I'm listening to was recorded yesterday using my CDP-XB740 / MDS-JB940 combo so that the CD Text track titles came over with the recording via Control A1 II. I decided to go back to the old school methods after spending a few hours doing some tests with NetMD Wizard and CD2NetMD. Sometimes simple can be more satisfying, I think, even if it is slower 🤔

[kgallen]

Any why not!

 

In a stack I have a 520, 940 and 770 (plus a 530 CD player). Whilst I admit I tend to use the 940 most (and probably the 770 least) I do move around them, even if just to listen to a particular track that I'm intrigued with in respect of how ATRAC handled it!

 

Plus, pah, my 909 no longer works! 😞

 

Being a non-NetMD kind of chap, my CD dubs are all done with a Sony MXD-D4 or Tascam MDCD1... and which, depends on how lazy I'm being - the menus on the Tascam are more of a faff than the button on the D4 (for switching between SP and LP modes), but the Tascam copies the disc name as well as the track names whereas the D4 never copies the disc name. Go figure!

[BearBoy]

26 minutes ago, kgallen said:

Plus, pah, my 909 no longer works! 😞

 

Anything salvageable? Although I'm not sure I'd fancy pulling a portable apart with my middle aged man eyesight and sausage fingers... 🤓

[BearBoy]

27 minutes ago, kgallen said:

the Tascam copies the disc name as well as the track names whereas the D4 never copies the disc name. Go figure!

 

I was having some weird happenings with this yesterday. The MD I recorded came from multiple CD sources. Sometimes it would overwrite the MD disc name with whatever the name of the CD was but sometimes it didn't. Wasn't really paying enough attention to pick up on whether there was any sort of pattern 🤔

[kgallen]

36 minutes ago, BearBoy said:

 

Anything salvageable? Although I'm not sure I'd fancy pulling a portable apart with my middle aged man eyesight and sausage fingers... 🤓

It's annoying because I can take it all the way through the calibration process and it passes (and have done this a couple of times). But then it won't read a disc. Game over.

[kgallen]

35 minutes ago, BearBoy said:

 

I was having some weird happenings with this yesterday. The MD I recorded came from multiple CD sources. Sometimes it would overwrite the MD disc name with whatever the name of the CD was but sometimes it didn't. Wasn't really paying enough attention to pick up on whether there was any sort of pattern 🤔

Really for me it tends to be a non-issue because usually after a recording a disc I just whack it into one of my MDS-E12 with a keyboard and title the lot up in a minute or so! 🙂 Some CDs seem to have the track titles all in caps which I'm not a fan of...

[BearBoy]

My CDP-XB740 displays CD Text in all caps but, so far at least, recordings to my MDS-JB940 seem to render them on MiniDisc with the correct mixture of capital and lower case letters.

 

Like you say though, using a keyboard to title/correct titles only takes a minute or so anyway. Was a gamechanger for me when I got a keyboard compatible deck as I'd previously been using the remote for my MDS-JE500. Don't really recall it being a huge pain at the time but I cannot imagine going back to it now. 

[BearBoy]

1 hour ago, kgallen said:

It's annoying because I can take it all the way through the calibration process and it passes (and have done this a couple of times). But then it won't read a disc. Game over.

 

Way beyond my technical "abilities" to offer any advice but maybe someone on here might have some suggestions?

[kgallen]

This month we've... mostly been trying to resurrect the Forum from suspension!

 

Well done to @sfbp, @Richard, @BearBoy for persevering with contacting the owner!

 

We're good for now, let's hope we can secure a more stable future 🙂

[BearBoy]

On 2/5/2022 at 9:13 AM, kgallen said:

@BearBoythanks for the follow up! I think we’re concluding iTunes CD burner is definitely where the bug lies…

 

Fast forward a couple of years...

 

I burned a CD-RW from iTunes earlier and all the track titles came across correctly. It was only a six track CD so I tried again with an 11 track one and, again, all CD Text titles present and correct.

 

I then pushed my luck with a 20 track playlist and it all went wonky again. So they've clearly not completely fixed the issue but it does seem to be better than when I burned a load of test discs a few years back.

 

Might not be much help to you though @kgallen as I think your issue was with sound effect discs with high numbers of tracks?

[kgallen]

1 hour ago, BearBoy said:

Might not be much help to you though @kgallen as I think your issue was with sound effect discs with high numbers of tracks?

Yes that’s right. I gave up with iTunes and paid money for Nero Burning ROM. However whilst titles are fine with that, I have a different bug with it, that when I add tracks beyond about 20, it sometimes swaps the position of one or more. I’ve raised this as a bug report but they claim they can’t repeat it - but it happens for me regularly (but not always in the same way). Obviously I’m just trouble…

 

I’ve a show coming up in August so I’ll be revisiting this all again soon…

[BearBoy]

Oh, that's a bit disappointing that you're having issues with Nero too. I can sort of understand that Apple might see the CD burning functionality in iTunes as an increasingly redundant feature, and therefore it wouldn't be much of a priority to fix, but you'd have hoped that Nero would ensure it worked given that it is the primary purpose of their software.

 

Hope you manage to work out what's going wrong.

 

Any chance you could use something like Web MiniDisc Pro and bypass the need for a CD-R in the first place? Can't remember if you were just using the CD as a method to get the sound effects onto a MiniDisc or whether you used it at the shows as a back up or something.

[BearBoy]

18 hours ago, BearBoy said:

I burned a CD-RW from iTunes earlier and all the track titles came across correctly. It was only a six track CD so I tried again with an 11 track one and, again, all CD Text titles present and correct.

 

I then pushed my luck with a 20 track playlist and it all went wonky again. So they've clearly not completely fixed the issue but it does seem to be better than when I burned a load of test discs a few years back.

 

Continued with my not very scientific testing this morning. Just tried a 14 track playlist and it got as far as track six before the titles started getting out of order. 

[kgallen]

Yea I’m only using CD-R as a means to get stuff off the PC and onto MD. Other than the pain points of titles (iTunes) and unintended track reordering (Nero) going via CD-R isn’t too much of a pain (*) as I can just chuck it into my MXD-D4 (or Tascam MD-CD1) and roll off primary and backup discs.

 

(*) The other pain point (and I don’t know if this would be solved my WMDPro or similar)  is where I have short tracks that I need to play quickly back to back in the show. CD has a minimum track length - Nero seems to enforce 4 seconds (iTunes was 6 seconds). So where I have say a doorbell sound effect (say 1 second long) quickly followed by another sound effect I need to manually trim the doorbell track once I’m in MD land. This is a pain if I need to change something and have to go around the loop again plus the manual edit(s).