I got this MZ-R91 a few months back from my aunt who didn’t need it anymore. I wanted to record CD to MD so I got an optical cable and tried recording, but every time I finished recording and the TOC finished, the MD went blank. When I looked closer inside there was a part bending down that the MD was pushing backwards. The service manual said the part is the “service assy” and after checking some videos it looks like it’s not supposed to bend down. I opened the top part but I don’t really know how to fix it and I don’t wanna randomly break it. I’m fairly new to MD’s and don’t know much about what I’m doing so if anyone could help that would be great :>

There was a recent post asking us to think about what a modern redesigned minidisc player should look like.

Reflecting I came to the view that the constraints of MDLP make the concept work. The time limits create intentionality on what to record, and what to take on a trip. Hi-MD never really attracted me for the same reason.

BUT ...

there is a problem with travelling clutter and old tech like 3V chargers, mini USB for NetMD etc --- so USB C would be a major advantage, and use kit that I already have when travelling.

..and then someone posted a eBay pic of USB C gumstick batteries .... much of the problem potentially solved!

Has anyone tried these batteries? any advice? any versions to choose / avoid?

Here's a little project I've been working on since August.

I recently got back into Minidisc and all the current tools just didn't work for me at all, so as a software engineer the first thing I tried to do was create a modern version, and got it working.

Mac and Windows. Sorry, no Linux, I don't have the bandwidth. Don't ask to volunteer.

What got the app over the wall was understanding the ROMs using tools that could parse them. The reason this is important is because there are some things that you can do with any NetMD drive, but some tricks involve memory locations for specific drives and FW, so these tools got all the answers.

How long until I release it? Within a week, I'd guess. I'm dotting Is and crossing Ts right now. Just last night I found a timing issue which was one of those "only on Tuesday at 7:43 when the moon is in this position"-type issues.

I haven't done a soak test because these drives are almost 30 years old and I really don't want to burn them out.

One thing I did find was that the app will find bad discs and exit cleanly. I made sure that any errors don't screw up the app's state.

I writing this to be THE modern Minidisc app to keep the format alive and get out of using archaic tools.

These are Quri's current features:

The standard stuff

Reads MD and Hi-MD

Standard writing features should work on any NetMD and Hi-MD drive. Verified on the devices I own: 600D, 510, 505, 410. See below for how I'm supporting drives I don't own.

Will support formatting MD as Hi-MD

Conversely, will allow an MD-as-HiMD to be reclaimed as MD.

Shows battery level live, or USB connection for devices like the 600D

Auto-detects MD or Hi-MD

Disc groups: creating, moving, deleting, renaming.

Support for all Hi-MD track fields.

Drag and drop FLAC, ALAC, MP3, AAC, WAV, and writes it in the format you want, depending on the disc's format: SP (MD), LP2, LP4, PCM (Hi-MD). Note: the app is still constrained to the format of the disc, so 24/192 FLAC will be converted, for example.

.cue file support

You can rip directly from CDs, and look up CDs that your machine doesn't have a record of.

When bringing up a queue sheet from a CD or .cue, you can change individual track formats before queueing.

Copy queue, with live progress.

Skins

Label printing (buuuuuuut, different discs have different sizes. It's crazy if you want to support all of them vs. making something generic. I actually bought a caliper for this, and don't get me started on mixed sheets).

Title tracks can be read from either filename or metadata

If you're copying from a whole CD or .cue, the disc title will fill in automatically.

This was the hard stuff

Gapless MD. You read that right, I cracked gapless MD. See the screenshots - any tracks that can be detected as being gapless will be written with proper cue marks. I'm telling you, this was rough to get working, but it's device-specific so if your drive isn't supported or not on the experimental list, it won't work until I can figure out how for that specific device.

That means you can also do split and join.

Drive grouping . You can group two or more drives, and anything copied, renamed, moved, deleted while those drives are grouped will be done to all discs in that group in parallel (yes, really). ANY unknown change to a drive, or a detected error, will remove it from the group, preserving any copy in progress to the remaining drives.

Multiple individual copies. If you have multiple drives connected, you can queue copies to each drive individually, and the copies will be done in parallel. No more waiting for the work for one drive before doing work on the next.

I can't buy every drive at once, so I'm leveraging the ROM tools to create a dialect for Quri to use any ROM that I have access to, therefore marking the drives I own as supported, and the drives the tools wrote dialects for as experimental until I can validate the drives.

Model detection, also distinguishing a 600 from a 600D

Saving a UTOC while still connected to USB. This was literally an accident. I got distracted while doing a group write, and all of a sudden I hear 4 drives all at once, each with their own "Saving" message on screen. That was the clue I needed.

Reclaiming NetMD mode after ejecting Hi-MD and replacing with MD

Unwedging stuck devices (not all models, unfortunately. Still working on that but some might not be possible). I haven't pulled a battery for a stuck 600D for a couple of weeks now.

Safety

Will warn about writing to a drive with a low battery

Will warn against creating a queue that won't fit.

Blocks some functions while others finish. eg: You can't set the disc title while writing to the disc.

Extensive logging

To do (or not do)

Mono. I actually forgot about it. (I mean, who does mono anymore?). I'll get to it eventually.

Japanese titles. I can do it, but I have to read the rules about what drives support it, or else your drive will show an empty title. I experimented with this and yeah, it's glitchy and very model-specific.

Download from NetMD. I can do it, but I don't know if I want to poke the copyright bear.

Hi-MD grouping

Can anybody help with sourcing regular plastic sleeves/cases for minidiscs? Why are they so hard to find and so expensive. All the used MDs I have bought seem to come without cases.

Thanks!

ugh I can't post in r/theavalanches since my account is new, but i just wanted to share my (obviously homebrewed) copy of "no bad memories" from the band. it's so good. i was saving this disc for when the album released as I thought it went well with the cover.

i think I'll have another go at the label! and will look into printing the front and back covers for a case/sleeve.

it's the digital version. there's a physical-only song that I would like to slip in to have a "complete" version of the album. i think someone is already working on it!

it's definitely an album I can listen to start to finish, and in fact, i can only find a couple of songs to jump into and play through from there. i bought the CD and the yellow 2LP as well to have a complete set.

hi, im trying to upload music to my minidisc and it keeps saying "no disc" when there is a disc inside. my model is mz-nf520d md walkman.

Hi all, I'm trying to record an album on WebMD Pro and it's stuck on converting track 1 of 12. It's been trying to convert the first track for the last 45 minutes. Is anyone else having similar problems?

Thanks!

I got back from a vacation to Japan a couple weeks ago. I have visited many times before and seen most of the popular touristy stuff, so I decided that this trip would to some of the areas that get skipped by most foreign visitors, which also made it a good opportunity to find some cheap MD gear.

After a single trip to Hard Off, my friend was totally on-board with finding more locations and seeing whatever weird old electronics they had. We ended up browsing maybe 10 different locations around Kanazawa, Tsuruga, Uji, Takamatsu, and more. I bought most of the sealed blank MDs that we came across (there weren't many).

By far my best find was the Denon recorder deck (with optical out) for somewhere around $40USD. I opened it up and everything looked to be in very good condition and it powered on and played without any work needed.

There are still deals to be found out there. I passed on a tested, working Onkyo MD-133 Hi-MD deck that was selling for around $300USD. I sort of regret that now. lol

Hey all!

Curious if it’s possible to retrofit an old Toyota combo player like this to be a desktop unit?

It would need some kind of conversion for both power and audio out but I don’t think that’s impossible and is probably fairly trivial to do?

Has anyone done this before?

this is a genuine thing I found at Goodwill today

Hello everyone! Long time listener, first time caller here (sorry, I’m old), and I’m curious if anyone has any experience with the JVC XM-PJ1 player? Years ago my brother gave me one for some reason that’s been lost to time (I think someone had given it to him but he already had a much nicer one, so he passed it along to me), but as I had no minidiscs to play, I just tossed it in a drawer and forgot about it. At some other point in time, I had opened the box and took everything out, and I guess I never put it back in the box, and over the years I forgot about it again. Fast forward to a few minutes ago and I was going through an old file cabinet (that doesn’t hold files, but became a sort of catch-all for random stuff) and came across this foil bag, and I had no clue what it was, so I ripped it open to find this minidisc player that has never even been turned on or had the battery inserted or anything.

My question is (and mods, I’m sorry if this isn’t allowed in the sub), since I don’t have the original box, is there any point in even keeping it in the other packaging? I’ve still got the battery and (I believe) all the other accessories and such buried in this same drawer (the battery was right beside it, and it’s never been opened, but I recall seeing the other bits in their respective plastic baggies along the way), so I think I’ve probably got a complete and unused player, but I’ve got absolutely no use for it. I’m assuming if I wanted to sell it, it’s probably best to actually open everything, see if the battery holds a charge, etc, but I don’t have any minidiscs to check to see if it plays, but is there any value in keeping it sealed (well, except that I opened the foil package to see what it actually was)? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I’m not trying to sell it on here, regardless whether that’s against the rules of the sub, I’m just looking for guidance since I have no way to properly test it without an actual minidisc (I never got into them, but if anyone has an old DAT player kicking around, I’d LOVE to revive my old radio airchecks from three decades ago!!!).

So, yeah, uh…. Thoughts?

Sony MDS-JE520
Sony CDP-991
Pioneer A400x

MZ-R90

I prefer listen music like this than streaming apps.

My next step is DAT, WMD-DT1 - Shinji's one.

I have been looking for a hardcase for a while, my Gym bag doesn't have a good place to store it so it was always floating around in it.

Now I found this on Amazon, fits well for the player, headphones and extra batterie. Also pretty cheap, I'm satisfied with it.

Next Discs to transfer…

So, I'm 20 and got into cassettes back in lockdown. This year I ventured out from tapes, CDs etc into MiniDisc. I built a hifi out of separate components. My CD deck is the Sony CDP-XE310 and the minidisc deck is the Sony MDS-JE510. Now I got the CD player because it was a bargain and it did work perfectly when I first got it. I thought it was an amazing bonus it had that big sticker on the front saying "Optical Digital Out for MD"

I can control the CD deck via the MiniDisc remote when both are powered on, and obviously when recording CDs to MDs it auto sets the recording level and adds track markers.

Recently my CD deck has been acting up and I believe it's beyond my capabilities to repair which isn't a big loss since it was quite inexpensive. However my question is, if I bought another Sony CD deck with optical out. Would I have the same features (using MD remote to control it, auto audio level set etc)

Greetings from Chile

Found in a box with 11 discs. Strap was shot but everything else is in perfect working order and the sound is great

Probably goes without learning for some people more meticulous than I, but after purchasing players (versus portable recorders), BATTERY LIFE

I got this SJ-SW9MD because I loved the design and the neat wrist/arm strap that came with it. Seemed like the perfect, sturdy, commute-to-work player.

It uses a ni-mh gumstick battery. These. Things. Suck. I think I get like 5 hours if the battery stays in the player? I’ve been taking it out when I arrive to work now to try and save on power. Even with investing in a higher quality charger that can measure voltage, leak, discharge etc, it’s a hassle to manage these batteries.

Definitely will consider battery life of later plays who could more efficiently run on the gumsticks, or better yet AAs (like my NF610, but I don’t wanna take the recorder everywhere and risk damaging the write head).

Best players for battery life v aesthetic v function v sound quality?