Sony MZ-N1 MiniDisc Recorder Questions
 

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!

Here's the question, I recently bought the MZ-N1 on Ebay. Well I recieved it, it works great for uploading and listening to music. It will even record to the MD when a mic is attached, which is of course what I bought it for. The problem is when I try to import the audio file to my computer. The software that came with the MD Recorder was Sony's Sonic Stage, which Imports music and uploads it to the computer, and you can do the opposite by uploading music to the computer from the MD. The problem comes when I try to upload the recorded files, I get an error message saying, "Files can't be uploaded". Does anyone know the problem, or know what I am doing wrong, that's the problem with buying things new, they don't come with the original manuals, or at least mine didn't. I looked at the online manual and it didn't tell me much. Any responses would be very greatly appreciated.

Bad news -- no digital upload with MD. That wasn't added until HiMD. You'll have to do an analog transfer (all together now -- Boo Sony!).

Here's a link to the manual: http://www.minidisc.org/part_Sony_MZ-N1.html

That's supposed to be a real nice unit though. Where did you find a new one?

I found a used one on Ebay, the owner invested in an Ipod and was getting rid of it.....

You say analog transfer....how would I go about doing that?

Set the minidisc to line out and connect it to the mic input on your soundcard and capture using Audacity or other program. If you don't have a mic input, I believe there are A/D converters you can get that will connect to the USB. There are desktop units with digital outputs you could use to the transfer if you wanted to get around the quality loss of an analog transfer. That's what we do. We bought a Sony MXD-D400 some time ago.

Alright, I know I have a mic jack on the back of my tower, I will see if it works. Is that the mic jack that goes into the soundcard. I don't have Audacity, however I do have Adobe Audition which should suffice.

Audition will do just fine <g> - Audacity is an excellent freeware sound editor that's quite nice but it's nowhere nearly as sophisticated or full featured as Audition. You want to make sure the levels of the output from your miniDisc recorder and the input to your computer match. I don't know anything about the jacks on the Sony recorder you have but if it has a jack marked "line out" that should be connected to the "line in" jack on your soundcard, NOT the soundcard's mic input. If your recorder doesn't have a line out jack, use its headphones or external speaker jack to connect to the line in on the soundcard but be careful of setting the volume too high or it might overload the soundcard's input - that won't damage anything but the resulting sound file sounds terrible with distortion. With Audition watch the waveform as you record and if the peaks are cut off so they look flat instead of pointy, you're overdriving the input so try it again with the miniDisc volume set lower. If the soundcard only has a mic level input (most have both mic and line inputs but I don't know if it's universal), you'll need to go over to Radio Shack and get an attenuating patch cord, about $5 I expect, to drop the high level headphone output down to the low level mic input.

I believe thats only on portable models tho, on Minidisc Desks, there's a digital output for recording back.

"I believe thats only on portable models tho, on Minidisc Desks, there's a digital output for recording back."

I did mention that, and keep in mind that very few decks have digital outputs.

In reference to plugging the minidisc into the mic input, shouldn't it be the line in input on the computer instead ?

Definitely use the line input on your soundcard if you have one. My soundcard only has a mic input, but it seems to handle the line out signal from the minidisc pretty well.