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Minidiscs in PC
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Posted by: George

A few years ago it was possible to get a minidisc drive to fit in a PC, however, despite the fact that Sony now offer a laptop with one of these fitted as standard I cannot find anyone who sells them.

Does the panel have any suggestions?

Posted by: TMW2N

which laptop is this?

as far as i have seen, data minidiscs (which are different to audio ones) were totally dropped a few years ago.

you may be able to pick up media and a drive (with SCSI connector) off e-bay, but it's likely to be over 500 quid.

i thought sony were putting memory stick in everything these days

Posted by: chimaera

I think subsequent PC drives have been external units with a USB connection, like this one:

http://www.avland.co.uk/sony/mdspc3/

Posted by: Automan

I did not think they ever got launced in the UK but http://www.riverproaudio.co.uk/acat..._Data__139.html sell the media!

Also http://www.esdl.co.uk/index.htm make mention of the drives (in Bristol).

http://www.minidisc.org/md_data_table.html is also of interest.

Automan.

Posted by: George

I actually want someting to transfer MP3's to Minidisc to use in my existing minidisc player in the car after recording from DAB on the PC. Therefore the USB drive solution pointed out by chimaera is just what I need.

Cheers

George

Posted by: sjg

The PC3 is basically a Minidisc deck that can be controlled from the PC - the recording itself is in realtime with the PC "pressing the buttons".

The NetMD units now fire everything over the USB cable and are quite a bit quicker. The Sony N505, N707 and N1 (in order of price) are such models, also available from avland. The cheapest/most basic one will do the job of recording just fine.

Posted by: Sneals2000

One of the current (or current last time I looked) Sony VAIO laptops allows a MD drive to be fitted in one of the removable media slots, in place of a CD (CD-RW?) or DVD drive?

Some of the Sony Net MD pocket recorders with USB connections seem to allow faster than real-time transfer of audio files. I assume that this is done by ATRAC compressing the file on the PC and then transferring the file as data rather than raw SPDIF audio over the USB/Optical link? (I think that the fastest transfers are at the lowest quality new MDLP settings - where there is more compression?)

Posted by: pob

I have a NetMD MZ-N1.

The connection to the PC is via USB. The songs are transferred as encrypted ATRAC files. If you are recording as a standard play MD, it will transfer between 2x-4x. If you are using MDLP2 it will be about 6x-8x. MDLP4 is quite fast, and Sony claim it goes up to 32x, but I've never really used it for that.

The software is a bit "clunky" - you have to convert your MP3s/WAVs, to ATRAC, then each ATRAC file is given 3 "credits". When you copy a file to a MD, the file drops a credit. When you copy the file from the MD back to the PC you gain a credit. The means that you can only copy the ATRAC files to a maximum of 3 MDs. (The whole processes is called "Checking Out and Checking In").

However, there is a Sony program called "Net MD Simple Burner" - this will copy the contents of a CD to a MD via USB, without the rubish Checking Out/In method mentioned about. It doesn't do Text Titles on the MD tracks though...

Hope this helps - a better description of the NET MD system can be found on the www.minidisc.org site.

The Sony Laptop mentioned above with a MD Drive in it is a Net MD Drive I believe. It is fitted to some new Vaio Laptops advertised in recent magazines.

Data MD is a completely different format from Music MD - there is a 8 track mixer at work that has a Data MD drive for recording up to 8 tracks of audio. However, it only takes DATA MD discs and they will only play back on Data MD drives.

Cheers

Phil

Posted by: rayed14

I have the mds pc 2, which has the link to a PC. This has been replaced by the pc3 then the pc 4. Ive seen them in most Sony shops in the uk Ł200.

Most of the current ordinary Sony MD players (and CD players) have the PC link port and you can just buy a connection kit (Ł100).

Its also know as vision touch and A1 II.

Posted by: feldon23

Having a minidisc IN your PC never caught on, so they have long since been discontinued. As has been stated above, the best way to go minidisc seems to be to get one of the NetMD units that can be written to from your PC thru USB at faster speeds than 1x (real time).

Posted by: sjg

quote:
Originally posted by pob
However, there is a Sony program called "Net MD Simple Burner" - this will copy the contents of a CD to a MD via USB, without the rubish Checking Out/In method mentioned about. It doesn't do Text Titles on the MD tracks though...

It does, provided it can connect to CDDB and the track exists in the database. The one thing it won't do is stereo (non-LP) recording - I got so fed up with using OpenMG for stereo discs I replaced my car MD player with a nice new one that supports LP modes!

quote:
The Sony Laptop mentioned above with a MD Drive in it is a Net MD Drive I believe. It is fitted to some new Vaio Laptops advertised in recent magazines.

It is NetMD, and uses the same software. It's just connected on a proprietary system rather than USB - don't think it's any quicker.

Posted by: rayed14

Just to be c;ear on this they have not been discontinued, MDS PC4 is the current model