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Converting old Mini Discs

  • 19-05-2009 5:15pm
    #1
    DublinWriter
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,560 ✭✭✭


    Firstly, apologies if this is in the wrong forum.

    Secondly, I'll qualify the following question by saying that the material I'm attempting to rip is my own copyrighted material, so the 'naughty' button is in the off-position.

    Basically I have a load of old Mini Discs containing various bits and pieces that I want to copy down onto MP3s and store on my NAS.

    Although I have a pretty good PC audio card, I've decided that the best way in terms of preserving fidelity and getting the optimal SNR is to go from my Sony QS reference Mini-Disc to a CD-Recorder (Marantz CD700) via optical link.

    I'm at a loss as to what to do once I get it to the CD stage.

    The sound is already compressed on the source Mini Discs due to Sony's ATRAC compression, so once they transferred to CD (yes, I know this won't 'upsample' the quality), I was wondering what would be the best software to rip the sound off the CDs and what would be the best compression setting when converting them to MP3s.

    Many thanks.


Comments

  • #2
    artvandulet
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,301 ✭✭✭artvandulet


    Why not get a sound card with optical connection? only gonna set you back about €50 for a PCI one and you'll save yourself half the work!

    in terms of bit rate when converting to mp3, it all depends on what the source is really. Speech? Music?...


  • #3
    DublinWriter
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,560 ✭✭✭DublinWriter


    artvandulet wrote: »
    Why not get a sound card with optical connection? only gonna set you back about €50 for a PCI one and you'll save yourself half the work!

    in terms of bit rate when converting to mp3, it all depends on what the source is really. Speech? Music?...
    My CL x-fi has optical ins and outs.

    I'll also be recording lots of old cassettes too.


  • #4
    madtheory
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,892 ✭✭✭madtheory


    It's a long winded way of doing it, but the big advantage is that you'll have an uncompressed back up in the form of an audio CD.

    So whatever bitrate suits you, you can always rip the CD again if you feel the need.

    I hate data-compressed audio personally. I have an 80 Gig iPod, so I feel there's no need to compromise sound quality so I use Apple Lossless. This reduces file size to 60%, while retaining full quality. Windows Media Player lossless and FLAC do the same thing.

    And as a further complication, I used to use DCC, and that puts out a 20 bit signal over S/Pdif. It certainly sounds better than 16 bit transfers I did with an old machine. Minidisc might have the same "feature"- it's worth checking out. In that case, you'd have to use a soundcard with optical in.


  • #5
    DublinWriter
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,560 ✭✭✭DublinWriter


    madtheory wrote: »
    I hate data-compressed audio personally.
    Me too, to my ears Minidisc ATRAC encoding takes a lot of 'top' from music and can make cymbal noises, such as hi-hat and crash, sound fuzzy and undefined.
    madtheory wrote: »
    And as a further complication, I used to use DCC, and that puts out a 20 bit signal over S/Pdif. It certainly sounds better than 16 bit transfers I did with an old machine. Minidisc might have the same "feature"- it's worth checking out. In that case, you'd have to use a soundcard with optical in.
    Minidisc doesn't, unfortunately.


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