I have a stack or so of MiniDiscs that I want to transfer (and more coming, likely from a band I know who'd like me to do some transfers and uploads for them), and I was wondering what the best way to do it would be.
Originally, I would just hook the headphone out of my recorder (Sharp MD-MT15S) to the line-in on my soundcard, and use its analog recording capability. This required levels to be set and monitored, and relied on the (maybe not-to-great) A>D conversion of my sound card.
Recently, I've been hooking the headphone out of the recorder to the inputs of my Edirol UA-5, with its optical output going to my Nomad JB3, and then from there to my PC (via SB1394 from the JB3 to my Soundblaster). While the A>D is better, it still requires levels to be set and monitored.
I saw a listing for a Pioneer home MD deck (MJ-D707), and it's got an optical digital out, so I'm thinking that if I could get it for a reasonable price, I could use it for purely digital (optical) transfers, either to the PC (I have the "breakout" faceplate with all the connectors) or to the JB3 (and from there to the PC).
First up, is this a good idea? For convenience, it seems like it is, as hooking up the MD to the UA-5 to the JB3, then sitting there and starting/stopping it while I get the levels set correctly gets really old, really fast. But am I right in thinking that I'll get the same kind of output from the MJ-D707 as I would from the UA-5 (i.e., what could be dumped directly to a 44.1kHz 16-bit stereo WAV file on the JB3)? Will I run into any problems with SCMS? I don't think I would if the MDs were originally recorded from an analog source, but what about those that came from a digital source?
Any help/advice would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Brad