Topic: Copy MiniDisc with MixPre

[morst]

So I'll pull the signal to channels 1 and 2 and record those. I'm wondering about fading though – should the channels be centred or panned left and right, respectively? My guess is centered given that the incoming right and left channels end up on their own recorded track, but I'd liek to be sure.

I would record the ISO (isolated) tracks of ch 1 and ch 2, and NOT bother with the "mix track."
(in firmware 9.02 go to second page of home menu, to the Record menu, and the top left box gives control over Rec L,R, turn it off, or off + linked is fine too)
1 will be left, 2 will be right, it should give you stereo WAV files at your desired rate & depth.


As to record levels, if you can find the max level and make it come in just below -0.0 dB (digital full scale) that will be great.
You can leave a couple dB unused if you like, but I'd have peaks higher than -12dB.
In fact if it's not peaking occasionally above -6 dB, then you are not utilizing the final available bit of the recorder.
I figure once you're using that bit, you might as well use it a lot!


If you are talking about actual AVERAGE levels, trying to gauge those from meters which read peaks might be tricky.

[philipus]

Thank you very much for your thoughts. I am not recording the mix set to Off and just arm channels 5 and 6 so I'm happy to know that I did that right I take this to mean that I should leave the faders on 5 and 6 centred to not mess up the stereo image.

The peaks are tricky to find, I find (haha), but from what I've seen so far the red lines usually hover around 1/3 from -12 to 0. This is with gain set to 5. Interestingly enough the meters on the mix reach higher and are frequently red (but not past 0). To my ears the results sound good enough with a signal that lends itself to some EQ when listening, too.

It's a bit of work to split the WAVs and name the tracks but hey that's just fun stuff, really.

Cheers
Philip

[morst]

Thank you very much for your thoughts. I am not recording the mix set to Off and just arm channels 5 and 6 so I'm happy to know that I did that right I take this to mean that I should leave the faders on 5 and 6 centred to not mess up the stereo image.

The peaks are tricky to find, I find (haha), but from what I've seen so far the red lines usually hover around 1/3 from -12 to 0. This is with gain set to 5. Interestingly enough the meters on the mix reach higher and are frequently red (but not past 0). To my ears the results sound good enough with a signal that lends itself to some EQ when listening, too.

Depending on the recorder mode (basic, advanced, custom) the level and pan controls may not matter at all in regards to the ISO tracks you have coming in on channels 5-6 and which appear on WAV files as channels 1-2.


I'm in Custom mode on my Mixpre6 I and the level and pan controls only have anything to do with the Mix track. Recording to ISO is all about the Gain setting for each channel or pair of channels, when linked (I link stereo pairs.)


If the fader levels are not set to 0, then the mix track will show as a different level than the iso, but with the fader levels on 0, the mix track should show as the same level as the input track.
You can touch the level meters on the touch screen to toggle to the mode where you can see LR and channel inputs at the same time, if you are not there already.

[philipus]

Depending on the recorder mode (basic, advanced, custom) the level and pan controls may not matter at all in regards to the ISO tracks you have coming in on channels 5-6 and which appear on WAV files as channels 1-2.

I'm in Custom mode on my Mixpre6 I and the level and pan controls only have anything to do with the Mix track. Recording to ISO is all about the Gain setting for each channel or pair of channels, when linked (I link stereo pairs.)

If the fader levels are not set to 0, then the mix track will show as a different level than the iso, but with the fader levels on 0, the mix track should show as the same level as the input track.
You can touch the level meters on the touch screen to toggle to the mode where you can see LR and channel inputs at the same time, if you are not there already.

I'm using advanced mode for this and don't record the mix. Having done a bit more recording I'm now setting gain on ch 5 and ch 6 at closer to 10 to get peaks at about -6dB. But I adjust a bit for each disc of course.

See the screenshot about the difference in level on the LR mix vs channels 5 and 6. The mix is a lot louder. I have no gain set in the Record menu for the LR mix. If this difference would be due to the increased gain on ch 5 and ch 6 then I'd expect the same level to be reflected in their meters, or? It's not a big thing though. I'm happy with the recorded quality on the two channels. Still I'm curious as I'm learning the device.

Btw I'm recording this in 32-bit float at 96kHz which may be an overkill but I suppose it can't hurt as long as there's space on the card.

cheers
Philip

[lukpac]

I've thought a bit more about it and decided to record to the MixPre's recorder. It's the easiest option with the gear I have.

What MiniDisc machine(s) do you have?

[RyanJ]

I use a Mac as well and was able to consolidate my collection by pulling the raw data from the Minidisc via USB to my computer and converting the OMA files to WAV.

At the time I used linux-minidisc (https://wiki.physik.fu-berlin.de/linux-minidisc/doku.php?id=start) QHiMDTransfer (https://community.linuxmint.com/software/view/qhimdtransfer)....

However this looks to be the most updated version of those two apps in one - https://github.com/jyw321/MD-Project/blob/main/Hi-MD.md

I would suggest Web MiniDisc Pro:

https://webmd.pro/

It will extract the raw data from the MiniDiscs; in the case of discs encoded with ATRAC (rather than ATRAC3 or ATRAC3plus), that's AEA files, not OMA files.

Faster than real-time (much faster than real-time with my MZ-M200) and you get the original data, not a transcode or decompression.

This is the way. An unreal web tool for minidiscs.

[morst]

Btw I'm recording this in 32-bit float at 96kHz which may be an overkill but I suppose it can't hurt as long as there's space on the card.

From a digital source this does not sound like it will be helpful but who knows? I'd be inclined to stick with the original sample rate of each MD
Check the resultant files for audio above the original sampling range and see what kind of noise the analog transfer is inducing maybe? You should not find any program signal up there.