Need suggestion to fix MDS-NT1's problem that it can transfer a song but no sound from a disc when playing

[Aaron Theeranit Pongtongmuang]

Hello everyone

 

I have just got Sony MDS-NT1 (Net MD deck).

I can use it to write a blank MiniDisc in LP2 mode without any issues.
 

However, when I played a disc with other players. There is no any sound at all.

Then I tried to use NT1 to record a song with many blank discs including a new disc, second-hand disc, Sony and TDK brand but none of these work, still no sound.
 

Finally, I recorded a song in SP mode and there is error sound which you can listen to by clicking the link below.

https://vocaroo.com/15UyVy4FeWSs

I know someone fixed this issue by changing a capacitor but I don't know which exact capacitor that I should change or it will solve the problem I have.

 

In addition, when I used NT1 with Web MiniDisc it shows as JB980 model.

I would be glad if you could help me on this or give me an information to fix this.
 

Thank you.
Aaron

[kgallen]

Hi Aaron,

 

Welcome.

 

Could be a number of issues. Firstly, if you are recording LP2 or LP4 then the playback machine also needs to support MDLP (so decks MDS-x40 and later). If you play back an LP2/4 track on an SP only machine then you will get silence.

 

When you say no sound, I think you're saying there is a track recorded, it's just there is no audio - I'm wanting to rule out an overwrite head issue. If the OWH is broken then the disc will get corrupted, since the laser will erase data but there is no new data recorded. The TOC can get corrupted in this way which makes the disc, or parts of the disc corrupt (usually this disc can be recovered by erasing the problem tracks or doing a title modification and thus rewriting part of the TOC).

 

First steps, can you record a track on a known good machine, and then does this play back on the NT1?

 

If there is really "just one capacitor" that fixes this then we'd be pleased to know (personally, I'm sceptical but happy to be proven wrong!).

 

Kevin

[Richard]

Welcome to the forum Aaron (I think I recognize you from the Facebook Minidisc group). 😉 

 

* I'll move this one to the general Minidisc forum for now as it's not strictly a technical tip or trick (yet!)

[Aaron Theeranit Pongtongmuang]

@kgallen Hello Kavin
Thanks for you reply.

- I played a recorded disc with my other MD players that can play LP2 format which are MDS-S500 and LAM-Z05.
- What you understand is correct, there is a track. A player shows playing status, running time, song title but no audio.
   It is only silent except when recording SP mode which has only noise.
- I can confirm you that there is only silent when I play a good disc on NT1 . A disc is recorded from other good player.
- I just have got a Sony MDS-NT1 SERVICE MANUAL PDF file (attached to this reply) from my friend and we are going to check if we can get some useful information from it.
 

(admin: see here https://minidisc.org/part_Sony_MDS-NT1.html  )
Thank you so much.

 

 

[Aaron Theeranit Pongtongmuang]

3 hours ago, Richard said:

Welcome to the forum Aaron (I think I recognize you from the Facebook Minidisc group). 😉 

 

* I'll move this one to the general Minidisc forum for now as it's not strictly a technical tip or trick (yet!)

@Richard Hello Richard. It's good to see you here. Thanks for your warm welcome.
This is my first post on this forum.

[kgallen]

Edit: Just looked at the SM, this machine has very little I/O, we might struggle. @sfbp is good with this sort of ‘software’ machine. Much of what I wrote below is irrelevant with this machine. 
 

Hi Aaron. So this sounds like an audio path issue rather than a disc read/write issue as such since the disc seems to have good TOC information. 
 

Do the VU meters show anything during record or play? If you go into monitor mode (eject disc then press record) do you get any output from either the phono sockets or headphone  socket? What about input/output using coax or TOSLINK, can you get any audio in either direction there? Ie known good disc played on the NT1 or disc recorded on the NT1 via TOSLINK or coax rather than analogue. 

[sfbp]

Good morning Aaron.

 

I need to understand something. Where is this sound (your recording) coming from?

 

When you play a NetMD track, the sound cannot travel over USB to anywhere at all. You must connect either headphones or an analog cable to one of the two 3.5mm jack sockets on the back of the device. This appears to be a severe limitation for the NT1. See page 6 of the MDS-NT1 user manual.

 

BTW no need to upload the manual, everything (Service and User manuals, both) at https://minidisc.org/part_Sony_MDS-NT1.html

 

OTOH, if you can record something on it successfully, the recorded disk should play wherever you want. But..... this presumes that you got the connection TO the NT1 correct, flowing with USB data from PC to MD deck. How did you do that? Did you set up the 64-bit driver in Windows? If not, expect some very strange results.....

 

Kind regards

Stephen

[Aaron Theeranit Pongtongmuang]

@kgallen Hello Kavin.

When you say "this sounds like an audio path issue rather than a disc read/write issue as such since the disc seems to have good TOC information", it is so interesting if we can fix this by only software part because I don't have any knowledge about hardware and it is difficult to find someone to repair MD players in where I live.

I am sorry that I don't have any VU meters to test or the player NT1 does have any monitor.
NT1 has a few outputs and buttons, it relies on Net MD and can write a disc with Sonic stage or alternative Web MiniDisc or PlatinumMD only.
I have attached the picture of the front and the back of NT1 which can be useful for you.

I can confirm you that I can write  a song to disc with SonicStage and Web MiniDisc. Everything looks okay on a computer, there a list of song on a disc.
However, when I played a disc on other good players, there is no audio for LP2 mode and only noise for SP mode and there is no audio from NT1 when playing a good disc recorded by other recorders. 

My other Net MD players that I used in this experiments are:
- Sony LAM-Z05 
- Sony MDS-S500

Thank you so much for your help.

 

[Aaron Theeranit Pongtongmuang]

@sfbp Hello Stephen.

I transfer a song to a disc by connecting MDS-NT1 to a computer via USB and use SonicStage copy a song (*wav format) on my computer to a disc.
I also used Web MiniDisc to transfer a song to make sure it is not a problem from SonicStage.

I can confirm you that there is no audio from headphones or an analog jack of NT1 when I played a good disc recorded by other recorders which are LAM-Z05 and MDS-S500.

Thank you so much for your supporting and useful information about where we can find service and manual files.
 

[Aaron Theeranit Pongtongmuang]

@kgallen @sfbp
There is something interesting today after I have turned off MDS-NT1 for many days.
1) I started by playing SP, LP2, LP4 mode discs that recorded from other devices and it worked. There was audio from output port on NT1.
2) Then I tried to use NT1 to write a disc again with SonicStage (LP2 mode) and played a recorded disc on other players. It did not work again, no audio.
3) Playing a disc recorded from NT1 on LAM-Z05, it showed "READ Error" status and automatically ejected a disc as attached image.  
4) Then I tried step 1 again and it did not work. I think I will not touch N1 for a day and see if I can play a disc and get audio again.
 
Thank you.

[Aaron Theeranit Pongtongmuang]

@kgallen @sfbp
FYI, after I have turned off my MDS-NT1 for about 5 hours, I can now play a disc which is recorded from MDS-S500 deck.
NT1 can play a disc with audio without any issues.

This issue will happen whenever I use NT1 to transfer a song to a disc.


 

[kgallen]

Now indeed that does sound like a capacitor! Although a rather large one with those timescales!

[Aaron Theeranit Pongtongmuang]

@kgallen Since you have mentioned about a capacitor, is it possible for to give me more details or how to figure it out which capacitor that we need to change?
In addition, one of my friends has mentioned that the issue may be from heater on something inside a player. He will try to get more information as well.
I will let you know after I have an information from him.

Thank you so much.

[sfbp]

All good information

I'm wondering about the USB circuit itself..... Kevin?

[kgallen]

53 minutes ago, Aaron Theeranit Pongtongmuang said:

@kgallen Since you have mentioned about a capacitor, is it possible for to give me more details or how to figure it out which capacitor that we need to change?
In addition, one of my friends has mentioned that the issue may be from heater on something inside a player. He will try to get more information as well.
I will let you know after I have an information from him.

Thank you so much.

No idea, sorry. The current diagnosis is too vague to pinpoint such a component.

 

I will at some point see if there are schematics but I'll be stabbing in the dark. 5 hours is a very long time for any sensible RC time constant!

[Aaron Theeranit Pongtongmuang]

@kgallen

Thank you.

[sfbp]

46 minutes ago, kgallen said:

No idea, sorry. The current diagnosis is too vague to pinpoint such a component.

 

I will at some point see if there are schematics but I'll be stabbing in the dark. 5 hours is a very long time for any sensible RC time constant!

Without being a whiz like you, I thought from the bird's eye view that USB connectors can take power and get hot. Over several hours...?

[kgallen]

32 minutes ago, sfbp said:

Without being a whiz like you, I thought from the bird's eye view that USB connectors can take power and get hot. Over several hours...?

This thing's not powered from USB though is it?

[kgallen]

Hmmm, if anything from your reports it feels a bit like it could be a hardware reset problem. Looking at the schematics, and I've not seen this in the "normal" decks, is there is a dedicated reset chip, IC420 with cap C420, 330nF. However capacitors don't gain capacitance over time, their capacitive abilities deteriorate. Anyway at 330nF, this is likely to be a ceramic or similar type of cap, and they are stable and last forever (unless physically abused) as there is no electrolyte to dry out or deteriorate.

 

Otherwise this is superficially a fairly straightforward unit. Most of the audio path is on the MD drive, which looks a lot like an MDM7S1A using CXD2664 Type-S DSP (SM says it's an MDM7S2B which must be the next iteration). The DAC is unremarkable and there is no ADC (no analogue record path). The power supply is very straightforward in comparison to most decks and the USB/NET functionality is wrapped up in a single chip with virtually nothing external. All that's left is the microcontroller, again very little external.

 

What is there, two buttons and 3 LEDs on this thing?

 

If I was inside I would check the power supply voltages, the reset generator, then I'm struggling a bit. Maybe 12MHz clock on the USB chip and 10MHz on the uC. Then I'd be suspecting the USB really, and quite possibly the PC end or driver issues. There is nothing much inside here to look at USB-wise as it's all wrapped up in IC901 (CXD1873).

 

USB doesn't supply power although the USB VDD is sensed by the microcontroller via D901 and the potential divider of R904/R903 which will give (5-0.6)*47/(47+22)=3V on IC301 pin 77 when USB is connected.

 

Sorry, that's all she wrote. If you have any more observations on behaviour, post 'em here. 

[kgallen]

One other check - the lithium battery, BT420, and that the link, CN420, is in place (and not dropped off). I can't find the battery listed on the parts list, but in the other decks it is a Panasonic ML2020. If this is dead then maybe the NT1 looses config information which means the USB driver doesn't detect it properly. Just guessin' (no 'g'...).

 

Just saw the comment above about a "heater". Not sure what the heck this is. Not in this machine! (And I certainly wouldn't describe the laser in record mode as a "heater"!).

[sfbp]

One more time: this looks consistent with some sort of failure to transmit the sound data correctly to the drive. Are you certain that you got the 64-bit driver working correctly? I could imagine the machine getting in a tizzy if somehow Windows tried to run data through the 32 bit driver.

[kgallen]

3 minutes ago, sfbp said:

One more time: this looks consistent with some sort of failure to transmit the sound data correctly to the drive. Are you certain that you got the 64-bit driver working correctly? I could imagine the machine getting in a tizzy if somehow Windows tried to run data through the 32 bit driver.

Wot he sez ^^^^^^^^ Get's my vote over anything in the electronics.

[Aaron Theeranit Pongtongmuang]

@kgallen Thank you so much for useful information for diagnosis a root of problem. I must accept that I am not full understand this because I am lack of electronic background. I will transfer this value information to my friend who are good at this. Thanks again. I appreciate your help.

Sorry for make confusion about "heater", I mean a high temperature on the device that can cause issue.  This is because we assume that writing a disc makes a device get higher temperature which cause a problem.

@sfbp FYI:
- This MDS-NT1 uses an externa adapter to power it. The original adapter is 9V 0.6A (attached image to this reply) but I use a replacement one which is 9V 2A.
- I can confirm that I use 64bit driver and it works with Windows 10. My computer can connect to MDS-NT1 without any issue and I can use SonicStage to write a disc.
Here is the link to down a driver that I use.

 @kgallen@sfbp I would like to give you more information that I can play music on MDS-NT1 about 30 minutes and after that no audio again.
Stop, pause and play again does not help to get audio back. It is only silent.
However, turn  off it for hours, I can play a disc with audio out again.

Thanks.






 

[sfbp]

Great, you got the driver, all is good.

 

That's a 100V adapter. Are you in Japan? I didn't check but I didn't think there were many places outside Japan that used 100V mains. Kevin would have a better idea about this, but putting a 100V adapter in 120V (that's ours here, right now) might WELL cause some overheating possibly just in the power supply itself.

[Aaron Theeranit Pongtongmuang]

@sfbp Sorry to confuse you. The attached image is not my adapter, I only want to show the original adapter image and its specification. 
I use a replacement adapter (not a genuine) which is AC 110-220 9V 2A.

[kgallen]

42 minutes ago, sfbp said:

Great, you got the driver, all is good.

 

That's a 100V adapter. Are you in Japan? I didn't check but I didn't think there were many places outside Japan that used 100V mains. Kevin would have a better idea about this, but putting a 100V adapter in 120V (that's ours here, right now) might WELL cause some overheating possibly just in the power supply itself.

Yes @sfbp is somewhat correct. There are a number of linear regulators in the power supply that will dissipate power proportional to the voltage drop across them ie input voltage minus output voltage. However from what I recall there was a switched mode regulator to 5V which would be more immune to a higher input voltage with respect to power dissipation.

 

Upshot is I expect there will be slightly more heat dissipation as a result. However I wouldn’t expect this to cause an issue, unless the ambient temperature in your location is very high (say above 40degC, don’t know what that is in old money sorry!).

 

But none-the-less the info on timescales is interesting…

[kgallen]

Ah your adapter is a SMPSU. Output should be notionally 9V for the input voltage range. Scratch that then!

[kgallen]

Just to check: when the audio stops after 30 minutes is the unit still operational just without audio?

 

1) you can eject and insert discs and the NT1 will read and ‘play’ but there is no audio

or

2) the unit powers and will take a disc but there are disc read errors

or

3) the unit is unresponsive from front panel and/or PC

or

4) something else

[Aaron Theeranit Pongtongmuang]

@kgallen Interestingly, today I haven't used my NT1 to connect to a computer or transfer a song to a disc at all.
I only used it to play a LP4 disc and it ran for 3 hours to the end of a disc with audio.

After that, I turned it off for about an hour and it can later play a disc without audio.
There is no any issues for today. I can eject and insert a disc normally.

I can also play a song directly from SonicStage as attached image.

[Aaron Theeranit Pongtongmuang]

@kgallen 
FYI, I have just transferred a song to a disc with SonicStage successfully again.
The recorded disc is completely no audio as usual.  However, I can play a song from a good disc with audio by controlling from SonicStage.

It seems the playing part is okay but the recording part is broken.
It can record a disc, show a table of content but no audio while playing a disc.

[kgallen]

5 hours ago, Aaron Theeranit Pongtongmuang said:

It seems the playing part is okay but the recording part is broken.
It can record a disc, show a table of content but no audio while playing a disc.

That's computers for you. They drive you potty!

 

Still things look like they are going in roughly the right direction. For inexplicable reasons of course!

[Aaron Theeranit Pongtongmuang]

@kgallen  @sfbp 
Thank you for your supporting.
I've got a lot of useful information for fixing it with my friend.
If we can fix it or find something which is useful to the community, we will post it here.

Thanks.

[kgallen]

Great thanks. Feels a bit like a software issue rather than hardware though. I could well be wrong. 
 

Come back to us with any more info you learn and we’ll continue to brainstorm it with you. 

[sfbp]

There's no way the OWH is bust or you would not be able to see the track listing on the destination.

 

This looks more like something in the sound path is simply not connecting through, as the data path and hardware look to be working

 

To confirm, the disk you write with the NT1 has a table of contents and can be played in another machine (with no sound)?

[Aaron Theeranit Pongtongmuang]

@kgallen It nice to discuss with you thank.
@sfbp You are right. A disc that is written with the NT1 has a table of contents and can be played in another machine (with no sound/audio).

Thanks

[sfbp]

in that case, I think the device is recording whatever reached it along the audio path

 

is it possible the NT1 is not smart enough to know there is an SCMS violation?

[Aaron Theeranit Pongtongmuang]

Hello @sfbp @kgallen

We found that the problem is about MD drive. 
Please check MD parts link.
As you see, it has NT code in their model name but I don't know what it NT stand for.
N may be "Net MD" but for T I have no ideal.

Therefore, we are going to move some parts or MD drive from CMT-M333NT because it is very similar to NT1.

I will update the progress with you.

Thanks.





 

[kgallen]

From your parts link, drive is MDM-7S2B which is one of many MDM7 variants using Type-S DSP CXD2664, but not one I’ve come across before. As you can see from your list MDM-7S1A is typical for MDS-JEx80 decks. 

[Richard]

Hi Aaron,

 

Thanks for keeping us updated. I like your website too, it seems like a very useful resource for Thai MD users. You probably weren't aware but the section on remotes actually originated here: 

 

 

I probably need to tidy it up a bit, but the info is still good I think. I guess so as it has been copied on to various other websites lots of times over the years. 😉

 

If there is anything we can help you with in regards to software or other MD related info, just let us know. I like the guides you have with screenshots etc.. We should probably update some of our own software section here at some point.. 

[Aaron Theeranit Pongtongmuang]

Hello @Richard 
Thanks for letting me know where the origin content from, I have updated where original content from already. Please accept my apologies for this.

For software/content/manual/instructions, I would like to gather these people for what we can share our resources or do something together.
I don't want to duplicate work if other has already worked on it. 
- Admin of SonyInsider forum
- specialk the creator of https://www.minidisc.wiki/
- Stefano Brilli the creator of webminidisc
- Aaron from https://mdburner.com/

It would be nice if we can connect each other and do something useful to people who love MD.

Thanks.