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So my dumb obsession with minidisc continues. A few weeks back I got a box from Japan of 300 used Minidisc I won off of ebay for a pretty decent price. Spent the past two weekends listening to tunes and peeling tons of stickers off of them. Here are some of the Maxell MDs.  Here is the rest of them sorted by Maxell/TDK/Sony discs. I'll most likely sell a good chunk of these off and keep like 60 of them  My collection of recorders/players have grown a bit as well, I'll thin these out most likely. I really enjoy the R-700s for generic MDLP duty. The R55 is nice, but I prefer the MZ-E44 the best for SP playback, I swear it sounds better but could just be cause I think it's prettier. I really enjoy the MZ-RH1, it's the first recorder I got, got it and six MDs on facebook market place for 75 bucks, hell of a deal.  I know it's not the greatest format, but it's so drat cool.
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Aug 15, 2021 23:35
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I think I’ve still got an MZ1 somewhere at my parents house. That thing just felt so solidly-built. Too nice to take portable. I wish they’d kept the onboard keyboard to make track labels on later recorders.
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Aug 15, 2021 23:41
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NetMD just makes it so much easier, I just run Platinum MD on my old Mac Pro. Easy to import from CD or MP3, I honestly thing if Sony had made it a lot easier to send music to the MD it might have almost had a chance.
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Aug 15, 2021 23:56
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Found an old eico color organ at the thrift store yesterday. Back side  Inside  Close up of the "brains"  I have to go do adult stuff now but I'll hook it up to the stereo and test it out later tonight. I built a diy version of one of these years ago into a coffee table it's in storage right now as my current place doesn't have room for it. Here's an old YouTube of it running https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbwmxlI6kNs
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Aug 16, 2021 15:57
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Thumposaurus posted:Found an old eico color organ at the thrift store yesterday. As one of my cool goons at the learning electronics thread mentioned, the diffuser film inside of broken flat screen televisions is a really great material for this kind of project.
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Aug 16, 2021 18:06
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Thumposaurus posted:Found an old eico color organ at the thrift store yesterday. That's awesome! Now just fix it up, wait for Techmoan to make a video about it, and sell it a day later for extreme profit.
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Aug 16, 2021 18:28
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It lives! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPKDAqAPJDA Still gonna clean up the pots with deoxit cause they feel scratchy but it works fine all the bulbs light up.
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Aug 16, 2021 23:13
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TooLShack posted:NetMD just makes it so much easier, I just run Platinum MD on my old Mac Pro. Easy to import from CD or MP3, I honestly thing if Sony had made it a lot easier to send music to the MD it might have almost had a chance. For sure. I remember trying to use Sony's garbage-rear end Windows program to transfer music over USB and it was enough to push me into the warm, expensive embrace of an iPod. (The student discount on the iPod didn't hurt, either.) The actual MD hardware was pretty cool. I can't imagine having the patience to only record music in real-time over analog or optical, though.
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Aug 19, 2021 02:24
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Marketing minidisc as a portable music format was a mistake. It owned for a lot of production/broadcast/journalism/bootlegging purposes. At the time, the alternatives were like Digicart, which used Bernoulli and Zip100 discs, DAT or cassette, maybe.
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Aug 19, 2021 02:32
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eddiewalker posted:Marketing minidisc as a portable music format was a mistake. As always, Sony's engineers were on a higher plane than the executives and marketing people.
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Aug 19, 2021 03:31
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TooLShack posted:So my dumb obsession with minidisc continues. A few weeks back I got a box from Japan of 300 used Minidisc I won off of ebay for a pretty decent price. Spent the past two weekends listening to tunes and peeling tons of stickers off of them. What sort of stuff is on these? Are they all just mixtapes, or do any of them have actual recorded content? quote:I know it's not the greatest format, but it's so drat cool. I have a soft spot for them too. In the early 2000s they were far and away the most convenient portable thing to record on that didn't cost an arm and a leg. And surprisingly they've held up pretty well; I have several dozen that I went back and transferred over the past few years and I think the only one that had problems was the one that literally had coffee spilled all over it (and it was mostly fine). I just wish it were easier to get the raw files off of them; the recorders that can do that cost an arm and a leg on eBay.
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Aug 19, 2021 04:20
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I always wanted a minidisc player purely because a friend of mine had one and when we would go snowboarding he could listen to music vs. me with my loving discman in my inside pocket picking one mix CD for the whole day of riding.
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Aug 20, 2021 19:32
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DoesNotCompute posted:I always wanted a minidisc player purely because a friend of mine had one and when we would go snowboarding he could listen to music vs. me with my loving discman in my inside pocket picking one mix CD for the whole day of riding. Not sure I fully follow you here. Minidisc originally had the same recording time as a CD, 74 or 80 minutes. By 2000 or so there were recorders that could do LP2 and LP4 modes, which were twice the capacity and four times the capacity with a corresponding loss of audio quality; I remember finding LP2 to be acceptable but LP4 to be... not.
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Aug 20, 2021 22:55
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This may be a bit out of the ordinary here, but I've just acquired a barn synth badly in need of repair. Anybody that likes to restore electronics hardware may find it interesting. I just put it in the gear trades thread. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=1&threadid=2851542&pagenumber=106&perpage=40#post517135237  This backs up its patches to audiocassettes.
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Aug 21, 2021 22:41
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strtj posted:Not sure I fully follow you here. Minidisc originally had the same recording time as a CD, 74 or 80 minutes. By 2000 or so there were recorders that could do LP2 and LP4 modes, which were twice the capacity and four times the capacity with a corresponding loss of audio quality; I remember finding LP2 to be acceptable but LP4 to be... not. This would have been like 2001 or so, the idea of being able to do different play lists every day was wild. Blank CD's weren't cheap and my RW's were incompatible with just about everything so I was mostly jealous of the form factor and ability to change it up.
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Aug 22, 2021 00:54
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strtj posted:What sort of stuff is on these? Are they all just mixtapes, or do any of them have actual recorded content? A bunch of Jazz and classical, after awhile I just pulled stickers and cleaned them. So I got a new to me Sony MDS-JE480, it's a MDLP Minidisc deck, so I can toss in the discs I make using LP2/LP4. I figured while I got it I would swap some gear I had laying around and make a new black stack.   Also I think I might be done with 60/70 era gear, I've had my fun by I might sell off my G-8000 and 8080DB, I just don't use them anymore. TooLShack fucked around with this message at 01:04 on Aug 22, 2021 |
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Aug 22, 2021 01:02
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TooLShack posted:Also I think I might be done with 60/70 era gear, I've had my fun by I might sell off my G-8000 and 8080DB, I just don't use them anymore. I hadn't looked at prices for these in many years. Given that you can get well over $1k each for those if they're in good shape, I'd absolutely sell them. That sort of money will buy a modern two-channel receiver with equivalent or better specs that will have many more features and be much more reliable, with plenty left over to buy another component or two.
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Aug 22, 2021 18:05
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strtj posted:I hadn't looked at prices for these in many years. Given that you can get well over $1k each for those if they're in good shape, I'd absolutely sell them. That sort of money will buy a modern two-channel receiver with equivalent or better specs that will have many more features and be much more reliable, with plenty left over to buy another component or two. I haven't seen many modern 2-channel receivers that put out an actual 120 watts per channel at 0.03% THD with a solid phono section that are less than $1k. The G-8000 is just very cool, I do see the appeal of downsizing though, and little things like sub-outs and remotes are nice. I wouldn't say anything new is necessarily going to be more reliable though, definitely not more repairable. Looking at you, Onkyo/Integra HDMI board scourge.
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Aug 22, 2021 20:20
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DoesNotCompute posted:I haven't seen many modern 2-channel receivers that put out an actual 120 watts per channel at 0.03% THD with a solid phono section that are less than $1k. The G-8000 is just very cool, I do see the appeal of downsizing though, and little things like sub-outs and remotes are nice. I wouldn't say anything new is necessarily going to be more reliable though, definitely not more repairable. Looking at you, Onkyo/Integra HDMI board scourge. I can't say enough good things about my Yamaha AS-801. It puts 120watts into my speakers at 0.019%thd and has an excellent DAC and good phono stage. It's also beautiful and I got mine used like new for $650 Canadian
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Aug 22, 2021 20:33
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large hands posted:I can't say enough good things about my Yamaha AS-801. It puts 120watts into my speakers at 0.019%thd and has an excellent DAC and good phono stage. It's also beautiful and I got mine used like new for $650 Canadian Yamaha really is one of the only big companies still putting in the effort, a friend has the AS-801 and I was super impressed by it. The bigger ones with the VU meters also speak to me because needle go boing boing and I'm very stupid and immediately think "yes this is worth 2x the money".
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Aug 22, 2021 20:35
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DoesNotCompute posted:Yamaha really is one of the only big companies still putting in the effort, a friend has the AS-801 and I was super impressed by it. The bigger ones with the VU meters also speak to me because needle go boing boing and I'm very stupid and immediately think "yes this is worth 2x the money". Yeah their high end integrateds have really picked up the Sony-ES torch.
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Aug 22, 2021 20:39
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When I ditch the Sansui monsters I'll prob take my den system apart and move it into my stereo room. It's a Denon PMA-2000IVR which is modern enough to have the inputs I'm gonna need. I'll cut down my current turntable count from 5 down to 2. Just gotta make the choice if I move my Klipsch KFL30s or run with the ghetto pair of Yamaha NS-590s. I've drooled over the newer Yamaha stuff like the Yamaha AS-801, but can't fathom spending that much money on stereo stuff. I'm spoiled and found most of my stuff for dirt cheap, living in a town where a lot of retired military has it's perks sometimes.
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Aug 22, 2021 23:58
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DoesNotCompute posted:I haven't seen many modern 2-channel receivers that put out an actual 120 watts per channel at 0.03% THD with a solid phono section that are less than $1k. The G-8000 is just very cool, I do see the appeal of downsizing though, and little things like sub-outs and remotes are nice. I wouldn't say anything new is necessarily going to be more reliable though, definitely not more repairable. Looking at you, Onkyo/Integra HDMI board scourge. I've been drooling over the NAD C388. I know it's not under $1k, but I'm not sure why you put that limitation on there. If I'm selling two receivers for at least $1k each, I have at least $2k to play with.
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Aug 23, 2021 12:32
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strtj posted:I've been drooling over the NAD C388. I know it's not under $1k, but I'm not sure why you put that limitation on there. If I'm selling two receivers for at least $1k each, I have at least $2k to play with. Ah fair enough, brain didn't process the pair of them. That NAD is very pretty, I'm hesitant with the newer NAD offerings though since my d3020 v2 had some glitchy touch sensitive buttons that made me want to throw it through a wall on occasion.
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Aug 23, 2021 15:40
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 Currently sitting here listening to a system made entirely of things I've restored that people have thrown away, even down to the headphones. All of these were acquired from one of the local rubbish dumps over the last year or so. The most recent addition was the Rotel RA-820BX, which had primary filter caps that failed... Epically:  They were doing more shorting than filtering, and blowing the supply rail fuses in the process, so I replaced them with some new higher value caps (10000uF vs 8200uF), and swapped out every other electrolytic and tantalum capacitor in it with better quality ones, cleaned all the controls, and reset the bias. Not a particularly difficult diagnosis and repair, but satisfying because now it's making beautiful music instead of rotting in a landfill somewhere. I've just packed and carted over 50 of my other hifi components into storage during a house move, so I don't really need another amp, but I'll keep it, of course. 
Bass Ackwards fucked around with this message at 14:59 on Aug 24, 2021 |
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Aug 24, 2021 14:56
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metaxus posted:
 It's the only way to play the game. I supported myself all through high school by restoring vintage gear that I found on the side of the road. It did help that I lived in a very upper class area, and this was the late '90s when people would still dump tube stuff without a thought. quote:The most recent addition was the Rotel RA-820BX, which had primary filter caps that failed... Epically: That's not bad, but I recently had a largeish cap in a Marantz 2215B literally explode. There was electrolyte everywhere. I wish I'd thought to take a picture but I was too busy worrying about cleaning that crud out of every nook and cranny. It made the full restoration job much more challenging that I was expecting. Nice Rotel though. I wish I still found stuff that nice in the trash around here, but unfortunately I now live in a part of Ohio where things get thrown away for good reason.
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Aug 25, 2021 17:35
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large hands posted:I can't say enough good things about my Yamaha AS-801. It puts 120watts into my speakers at 0.019%thd and has an excellent DAC and good phono stage. It's also beautiful and I got mine used like new for $650 Canadian The AS-701 is the 801 minus the fancy DAC (and therefore minus the ugly extra buttons + LEDs) and it goes on sale for even cheaper For me, a 701+Schiit Modi or similar is a  combo
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Aug 25, 2021 19:38
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Ok Comboomer posted:The AS-701 is the 801 minus the fancy DAC (and therefore minus the ugly extra buttons + LEDs) and it goes on sale for even cheaper Yeah if my local hi-fi place had had the 701 on consignment I would have picked it up happily and used it with my Topping D10s, which is now gathering dust (anybody want to buy it?) That being said it's convenient plugging a USB cable directly into the amp and the difference is hardly off-putting. Especially with the relatively dim and tasteful (imo) amber LEDs.   Is there even an extra button? Thought it was just a spot for "USB" on the input selector 
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Aug 25, 2021 19:48
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large hands posted:Yeah if my local hi-fi place had had the 701 on consignment I would have picked it up happily and used it with my Topping D10s, which is now gathering dust (anybody want to buy it?) yeah, it's not nearly as bad as my initial take made it sound, and I do think 801s are much easier to find/less likely to sit around in a warehouse for years the weirdo in me worries that the DAC would "become obsolete" (but like then just don't use it, dummy!) I wonder if anybody's successfully made a wooden box for an ASxxx yet
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Aug 25, 2021 20:29
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I have a couple of DATs here that were recorded in a mystery format. I have two TASCAM decks, one DA-30 and one DA-P1, and both of them can read the TOCs and the indices but not the audio. Does anyone have any ideas about what format these might have been recorded in, or what I might need to play them? I do not have a Sony deck right now and I'm very wary of them after the last "restored" one I had ate a very valuable tape. The content creator unfortunately could not very helpful; I get the feeling he had very little idea what he was doing with a DAT deck. Oh, and I know that these were recorded successfully, as they were used for LP masters.
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Aug 25, 2021 20:56
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Also just a quick public service announcement to say: please don't buy anything from Sony having to do with tape. I've had the prosumer DAT deck I mentioned eat a very valuable tape, I've had two good condition ES-line cassette decks eat tapes, and I've had a prosumer VCR eat a tape. I don't know what they were using for belts, or what the other common factor might have been, but they seriously could not manage to keep reasonable tension.
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Aug 25, 2021 21:01
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Man anything with aged rubber is gonna have a good chance of eating tape. But gently caress Sony reel to reel decks, gently caress them hard. Also, if replacing belts, remember to do the pinch rollers as well. TooLShack fucked around with this message at 01:46 on Aug 26, 2021 |
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Aug 26, 2021 01:30
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Or just realize that rubber gets old and needs to be replaced eventually. When you get something that is going to have rubber belts, buy a belt kit for it and replace them.
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Aug 26, 2021 01:38
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large hands posted:Yeah if my local hi-fi place had had the 701 on consignment I would have picked it up happily and used it with my Topping D10s, which is now gathering dust (anybody want to buy it?) I have an A-S301 and an A-S700 (and a CA-610 if we're having a Yamaha amp dick waving contest) and I can highly recommend them. Fantastic amps, clean power to spare and an understated style that pairs very well with older gear. strtj posted:Also just a quick public service announcement to say: please don't buy anything from Sony having to do with tape. I've had the prosumer DAT deck I mentioned eat a very valuable tape, I've had two good condition ES-line cassette decks eat tapes, and I've had a prosumer VCR eat a tape. I don't know what they were using for belts, or what the other common factor might have been, but they seriously could not manage to keep reasonable tension. I have a DTC-59ES and it's one of the most fussy, finicky pieces of gear in my collection. Early Sony DAT decks are very well built, with a machined or die-cast chassis, Delrin mechanism guides, and solid brass rollers. Later decks, like mine, are made with a pressed steel chassis, ABS/nylon mechanism guides, and nylon rollers. It was a bastard to get working correctly in the first place (even with a set of the very rare alignment tapes) and even now it still has it's moments where it will stop reading TOCs, or start dropping timecodes, or randomly decide to attempt to cycle through threading and unthreading the tape in a neverending loop. This is after recapping the RF amplifier, a new old stock mode switch, and replacing the capstan/mecha drive motor. The heads are absolutely fine, it just seems to have the math skills of a toddler when it comes to reading tapes.
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Aug 26, 2021 13:14
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I just had my old technics 1200 mk3’s repaired finally, they had taken some abuse through a couple moves. Now I need some new needles and I’m looking for some advice. I have stock Technics headshells with an old Stanton DJ Craze cartridge on one and an Audio Technica at92ecd on the other. Both seem to be discontinued now but there’s needles available on lpgear.com. I’m tempted to just get some new cartridges so they match, but I’m also feeling cheap at the moment. Are there any thread favorite budget cartridges that would hold up to occasional light DJing?
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Aug 28, 2021 05:30
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Snowy posted:I just had my old technics 1200 mk3’s repaired finally, they had taken some abuse through a couple moves. what's your budget? IMO you're better off getting inexpensive hifi carts + shells and inexpensive DJ carts. I don't think there's any contemporary hifi cart that can really put up with scratching/backcuing/etc. They're 1200s so hot swapping should be trivial, and the cost of the headshell is also minimal. You could do a pair of VM95e for like $130 (or AT95e for $100) mounted, and then choose from the whole market of DJ carts. Alternatively, you could get some "hifi"-focused DJ carts like Concorde Clubs, but those are like $300/pair.
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Aug 28, 2021 06:00
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Ok Comboomer posted:the cost of the headshell is also minimal. You could do a pair of VM95e for like $130 (or AT95e for $100) mounted, and then choose from the whole market of DJ carts. Forgive me for my ignorance here but I’m a little confused. I was always more of a record collector than an equipment guy until a friend owed me money and gave me his 1200s and mixer instead. I just stuck with the headshell/cartridge/stylus combos they came with. The VM95e-AT95e price range sounds great and I had been looking at them on lpgear. But that’s the cartridge not the headshell right? I assumed I’d use it with my current headshell. Are you saying I could get a dj stylus to go with that? If I could keep everything under $200 I’d be happy. My DJing is very limited and clumsy but since I’ve got the setup it’s fun to mess around once in a while when I bust out the old hip hop and electronic stuff. Honestly I should just stick to straight playback but 
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Aug 28, 2021 16:05
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Snowy posted:Forgive me for my ignorance here but I’m a little confused. I was always more of a record collector than an equipment guy until a friend owed me money and gave me his 1200s and mixer instead. I just stuck with the headshell/cartridge/stylus combos they came with. Speaking from a similar "not a DJ" perspective: 1) WRT the VM95e, it is predominantly sold as just a cartridge, but it can be purchased as a cartridge+headshell combo for like $20-30 more (probably not worth it if you can pick up preowned or less expensive headshells on their own, or if you already have some, as the cart would still need to be aligned and adjusted for your specific table, etc anyway. But if you need extras that's not a bad way to get them). Generally when people hot-swap out cartridges they are swapping out the whole cart+headshell assembly. Google tells me that a pair of pre-mounted VM95es comes in at about $200, so again, not worth it IMO if you're gonna have to align them anyway. 2) DJ carts come in two main flavors these days: there's the cheaper kind that resemble standard-mount hifi carts and require a headshell (you'll often see these bundled with DJ tables, especially if they're more "budget" oriented) and the more "professional" style that are all one piece and mount directly to the tonearm with zero adjustment, like the Ortofon Concord line. This latter kind is predicated on the assumption that there are two kinds of DJ deck: turntables copying the style, function, and geometry of a Technics 1200 and genuine Technics 1200s. So if you wanted two sets of carts (lets say that you decided that you really wanted to do a lot of DJ poo poo) you could do a pair of VM95e, mounted to your existing headshells or new ones, and a pair of Concorde Mix ($99/pop) with no headshells necessary. Both are very respectable in the sort of "prosumer"/"decent-to-high end of 'entry level" way at their respective roles, but that would also double your budget. Now, from what I can see, Audio Technica makes a line of budget DJ carts called XP (XP3, XP5, etc) that share the same cartridge base assembly as the VM line, meaning that the styli are interchangeable. XP3s seem to cost in the ~$50 range alone and $80 mounted. Styli aren't made to be hot-swapped or changed out repeatedly, but you do have an excellent upgrade pathway if you stick with the line and you have flexibility in case something breaks and/or you decide that DJing was stupid and you want to convert your DJ carts into hifi/78/conical/etc carts. If I were you, I'd stretch my budget by like $100 and get a pair of VM95e and a pair of XP3 with two (or four? if you wanna keep your old carts) headshells. Then down the road I'd upgrade the 95es to the Microline or Shibata styli and maybe upgrade the XP3s to XP5s if I stuck around with the DJing/started streaming on weekends or whatever. If I quit DJing or moved to Concords I could always turn the XP3s into 95es (or anything else in the VM line) for spares/as a pretext to get more turntables for like an office or bedroom. trilobite terror fucked around with this message at 16:51 on Aug 28, 2021 |
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Aug 28, 2021 16:44
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Ok Comboomer posted:Super helpful info Thank you for the great post, I’m not sure yet what I’m going to do but that helps a lot.  Might just have to grab the ortofons to get started. I’ve gone too long without a working turntable but kept buying records in the meantime so I’ve got catching up to do 
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Aug 28, 2021 23:20
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Also, if you don't already have one, get a Technics overhang gauge/tool. It makes it an absolute breeze to get cartridges aligned correctly.
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Aug 29, 2021 11:12
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