help required for absolute minidisk novice!

[ruxton28]

Can anyone help a complete minidisk rookie?

My son is after one for his birthday.

The Sony that he likes is the MZ N505

He wants to be able to record from downloaded mp3s and by ripping tracks from existing CDs

I am familiar with burning music cds from mp3s using nero. this converts mp3s to wav files in the process.

With minidisks is the process of transferring files from the PC to the minidisk purely copying or is there a burning process which converts the mp3s to wav?

How is the minidisk connected to the PC? By USB? Is the information transferred by this method or what requirements does my PC need?.

Next question. This model is on sale for about £150 in the UK and yet I see the same model on sale on the internet in the USA for a lot less. I eralise that in the uSA the voltage is 110v and in the uK its 240v

I guess the unit will have a power adaptor with two pin socket entry. In the main the unit will be used with batteries only but to connect to the mains could I buy a power adaptor in the UK for it?

If thisis the wrong subject for this forum please advise where I should re post it

[drew_]

Can anyone help a complete minidisk rookie?

With minidisks is the process of transferring files from the PC to the minidisk purely copying or is there a burning process which converts the mp3s to wav?  

How is the minidisk connected to the PC? By USB? Is the information transferred by this method or what requirements does my PC need?.

Next question. This model is on sale for about £150 in the UK and yet I see the same model on sale on the internet in the USA for a lot less. I eralise that in the uSA the voltage is 110v and in the uK its 240v

I guess the unit will have a power adaptor with two pin socket entry. In the main the unit will be used with batteries only but to connect to the mains could I buy a power adaptor in the UK for it?

If thisis the wrong subject for this forum please advise where I should re post it

hi,

the mz-n505 is probably a good unit for your son's purposes. to answer some of your questions, i believe that cds or mp3s are converted first convertd to openmg (.omg) files before being transfered to the unit (please, correct me if i'm wrong).

programs that are usually used to do this are OpenMG or SonicStage (Sony software, one of these programs will be supplied with the n505) but many people don't like them because they leave files on the hard disk. there's another program called SimpleBurner (should also be supplied with the n505) which directly transfers a cd to the minidisc unit without creating files on your hard disk. you can also couple the mp3 'burning' process you mentioned along with SimpleBurner to get mp3s to minidisc (read more about this in the NetMD forum where they'll probably explain it more clearly).

the minidisc unit is connect to the PC via usb. not sure able what specs are required to run the software.

if you do get a unit from the US, you'll either need to buy a new power adaptor or get a step down transformer. also, be aware of warranties. a US model may not be covered in the UK (don't quote me on this, check with whoever you buy from).

hope this helps,

drew.