How do copy music I have on a minidisc to a CD? How do I copy music I
have on a minidisc to Creative Play Center (NoMad Jukebox 3). Is there
any degradation of music? It would be easier to copy to cd first, then
to Nomad. Any degradation?
Thanks,
John

Hello jedwardr,

Copying music from minidisc is certainly possible. I will start out by
discussing the impact of quality this will have on your music (if you
are not interested in this discussion and want to get started right
away, jump down to PART 1 of the answer.)

The quality of the transferred music will depend on the quality of
your original music, and the type of equipment you use to transfer the
music onto your computer (or the device used if not using a computer,
although I will be focusing on using your computer to achieve this).
In some cases, the quality of your music will actually INCREASE if you
modify and optimize it up with retouching software when you complete
the transfer to a digital file (usually mp3).

I will be discussing some of this software, and doing a few reviews of
some popular packages in Part 2 of this answer below, but the ultimate
choice of choosing quality hardware and software is up to you. If you
use decent equipment and software, you will find that losing quality
in the conversion will not be a factor.

I found an excellent article that discusses the process of
transferring from minidisc to CD in detail. The approach used is a
microphone plugged into a computer and they recommend a Sharp MT-15 as
being a fairly decent recorder. You can read this article to get a
good idea of the steps involved, but I do not recommend this approach
myself.
“Transferring audio from a MiniDisc to CD”
http://www.ciampa.it/music/md2cd.asp

On the second page of the article from http://www.ciampa.it you will
see various suggestions that can maximize quality, and be introduced
to the terms normalize, equalize, compress/maximize, and noise
reduction. These are some of things software can do to modify your
music and make it sound better (and reduce the quality lost).

Normalize: Normalizing a file results in the file being converted to
an optimal volume level. The software package you purchase should be
able to normalize your files so that a low volume or high volume file
can be adjusted to sound more like the others. “You've been using
normalize on all your wav files before you encode them, your
collection is normalized to the default volume level, and you want
these new additions to be at the same level.” (by Chris Vaill)
“Normalize”
http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~cvaill/normalize/README.html

Equalizing a file “helps eliminate pounding bass or treble in your
sound file.”
http://archive.devx.com/projectcool/developer/audioz/AZediting/equalize.html

Normalizing a file will take out background noise (perhaps noise added
when recording). “Utilizing sophisticated software it is removed or
reduced by sampling the offending sound and adjusting the software to
recognize its unique pattern.”
http://creativeforensic.com/whatis3.html

I have given you these examples to show you just some examples of what
software can do to your file once you have it converted to your
computer. Depending on the level of sophistication of the software,
you will get different results.

Windows comes with a free sound recorder, and you could then record
the file into your computer with a $5 microphone and convert it to mp3
using a program downloaded from the internet. If you use this method
however, chances are that your quality will suffer (versus buying a
high quality audio package) and that is why it is important to:

PART 1: Select Decent Equipment to transfer from your Minidisc to your
Computer.

The first thing is to have a decent computer. If you have a computer
with minimum of 400MHZ you should be fine, anything lower might result
in problems. Second thing you should look at is how much space your
hard drive has available. You are looking to use up 11mb for every
minute of audio (according to the CNET article quoted just below). You
might need to add a new hard drive to your computer before continuing.

Method A: Digital to Analog to Digital. “digital-analog-digital
recording, […] lets you use any normal sound card with a mic or
line-in socket.”
“How to… Record Minidisc to Mp3 (in Analog)” 
http://electronics.cnet.com/electronics/0-3219397-8-8738177-1.html

This involves selecting a decent cable that will connect your minidisc
player to your sound cards input. Most cables will work reasonably
well and you can find these at your local electronics store. You can
also use a microphone connected to your computers sound card to record
your music onto your computer but this is NOT recommended, because it
can seriously reduce quality.

So basically you want a cable like this one selling for about $3.29 at
RadioShack: http://www.radioshack.com/product.asp?catalog%5Fname=CTLG&category%5Fname=CTLG%5F002%5F001%5F002%5F000&product%5Fid=42%2D2497

Basically you are now set if you want to use the
digital-analog-digital method, and can continue to Part 2. For a
higher quality capture you will want to use:

Method B: Digital to Digital. It is easy to understand how going from
digital without converting to analog, straight to another digital
format will result in a higher quality file to start off with. You
might need a new sound card though, because most sound cards do not
come packaged with a digital in line. The upside to buying a new sound
card is that you can get awesome software packages with the top end
sound cards (much cheaper than purchasing the software retail.)

Here are the PCWorld reviews for sound cards:
http://www.pcworld.com/resource/browse/0,cat,1057,sortIdx,1,00.asp

I am going to go as far as to say that any sound card will do for your
purposes as long as it has a digital in connector. There are all kinds
available, but you should not have a problem if you go for a lower end
one, or a medium end one.

CNET recommends this card:
http://computers.cnet.com/hardware/0-7073-404-7029828.html?tag=txt

Let’s move on to the software optimization and encoding aspect:

PART 2: Select Decent Equipment to transfer and optimize the file on
your Computer.

After you have your equipment ready and hooked up, you will want a
decent software package that is capable of capturing the sound onto
your hard-drive, optimizing the quality, and encoding it to mp3 and
other formats to play in Nomad Jukebox 3 or to burn it to a CD. It is
probably a good idea to use the mp3 format because it uses little
space while maintaining high quality (Nomad Jukebox 3 supports MP3).

Here are some good software packages to edit, record and optimize your
audio:

My personal ideal choice would be CD Architect 5.0 by Sonic Foundry:
http://www.sonicfoundry.com/products/newshowproduct.asp?PID=780 This
product is expensive and is a high end editor, so depending on what
you are using the conversion for, this may or may not be a good choice
for you.

MP3 Audio Mixer 2.02 has a very good rating from Cnet and an
affordable price of $23:
http://www.cnet.com/software/0-3227898-1204-8801575.html?tag=pdtl-list

You might want to visit a computer store and read up on some reviews
online for the product you are planning on buying. Make sure that the
software you get supports recording, optimizing and encoding, or you
might have to buy more than one software package. If you don’t mind
using more than one package of software, you can probably achieve your
end result by downloading free and shareware software from here:
http://download.com.com/3150-2169-0-1-3.html?

My personal preference would be to have an all-in-one package and
depending on how much you want to spend or what the quality has to be
like, the best software package for you will vary. Probably best to
stick to products with good reviews in your price range on websites
like http://www.pcworld.com or http://www.zdnet.com

I hope this is the answer you were looking for. If you need any
clarifications let me know and I will do my best to further assist
you.

tisme-ga


Search Strategy:

"minidisc to cd"
://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22minidisc+to+cd%22&meta=

“minidisk to cd” (yes I realize the misspelling but it did come up
with useful info.)
://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22minidisk+to+cd%22&meta=

"what is normalize"
://www.google.ca/search?q=%22what+is+normalize%22&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&meta=

equalizing an audio file
://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=equalizing+an+audio+file&meta=

"what is noise reduction"
://www.google.ca/search?q=%22what+is+noise+reduction%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

sound card reviews
://www.google.ca/search?q=sound+card+reviews&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&meta=

"digital sound cards"
://www.google.ca/search?q=%22digital+sound+cards%22&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&start=10&sa=N

Here's a caveat for digital-to-digital recording. Some minidisc
recordings are set up to not copy through a digital connection.
Encoded inside the digital signal is a flag that can limit the number
of times the music can be digitally duplicated. I personally have only
seen this come into play if the mindisc was already copied from
another minidisc, (making the MD to PC copy the second/final copy) but
its something to consider.

I did this with a sound blaster live audio card, and an inexpensive
Hoontech optical digital connector. Otherwise, you can just run a
stereo adapter from the MD player to the PC line-in to get the music
on your computer.

Just some ideas, not nearly every step necessary.  You should provide
what type of sound card you have, and if it has a digital connection
(unlikely unless it is expensive), and what type of MD player you
have, and if it has an optical OUT (again unlikely, unless it is
fairly expensive).

Incidentally, no matter what there will be *some* degradation, as
Minidisc uses ATRAC lossy compression, and you will be converting to
MP3 lossy compression. A good ATRAC recording is indistinguishable
from CD, but conversion from one lossy format to another will cause
degradation. In my experience however, it is minimal.