Hi Matt.

Understood.

If you ever buy a MD Deck, and you want to record from PC to MD, get one that can accept various sample rates. Not all of them can "understand" what's coming from the Soundblaster/Audigy.

Good luck and best regards.
Arnaldo

Arnaldo,
When you use the MD deck to make the digital transfer, do you need a separate box to strip off the SCMS copy protection coding before connecting to the optical in on the sound card? I have read a number of places that you do, with the C03 made by M-Audio being recommended.

Hi Marco.

No, unless the MD you are trying to copy is bought allready recorded (i.e. music).
If you take a blank MD and record it yourself, you can latter do a digital transfer.

Regards Arnaldo

Really? That's great news. I thought that everything recorded using the mic in jack was encoded with SCMS protection.

No. Mick in is an analog input, no SCMS protection.

Regards
Arnaldo

You can skip the sound card altogether. For $100 Edirol makes an adapter model ua-1d that allows you to do a usb transfer. Pure digital from your deck. Still real time though.......................

I'd seen that thing. Have you tried it? What kind of software would I need to use it with my Mac?

yeah i have it and use it. works good. you need a sound editing program to get the transfer. i'm not a mac guy, but i would guess that just about any sound editing program will do the trick...........

Hi everybody,
Many things are true here just to add to that.
I have both portable MD (no optical out) and the first ever MD Sony MZ1 - portable with optical out. It's a bit larger though and you can't find it now I guess.

For recording (this is the right word) down to computer you can use sound card or better USB audio interface (as Edirol mentioned). I use Onkyo - cuts out any interferences from the computer as it's separate box and power adaptor. Has in/out digital and analog, even MIDI.

Once you digitized your MD you can't make digital copy if you don't use code breaker.

And finally there is now Net MD portables that you can use just like CD-RW via USB. I really think you get digital copy via the USB as the speed is over 10x. You can't achieve this if there is analoge decoding and coding back to digital from the MD to computer. Usually the USB port is on the cradle but you need proprietary software which comes with the MD recorder.