At 01:18 PM 2007-05-18, Jim Sam wrote:
>Hi All,
>
>Does anyone have experience with non-real time ripping of 
>minidiscs?  Standard MDs mostly; not so much HiMD.  We're getting a 
>ton of minidiscs in soon, and I've been looking into the subject.
>
>On a more micro level, I know that at least one company makes a 
>product to accomplish this, MD Studio: 
>http://www.esdl.co.uk/body/mdte/mdte.htm.  I'm not so much worried 
>with the theory of ripping MDs as in practice.  Has anyone seen 
>and/or worked with one of these?  If so, any thoughts you could 
>share on how well it works?  Importantly, does anyone know of 
>another product designed to rip MDs that doesn't involve real-time 
>playing?  At this stage, I'm more worried about the efficiency of 
>systems than budget.
>

Hello, Jim,

I have sent several people -- and received only one feedback (and it 
was positive) -- to the ESDL folks in the UK.

As far as I know, their system is the only one that will no 
data-based ripping of minidiscs. Depending on how many you have, 
however, building up a few digitization stations with inexpensive 
SPDIF inputs and MD players with SPDIF outputs could get the job done 
quickly. I would look at multiple workstations rather than a single 
multi-channel workstation due to the difficulty of synchronizing the 
clocks on the MD players.

Of course, making up a half dozen MD workstations would cost as much 
or more than the ESDL package. On the other hand, the ESDL package 
relies on an out-of-production (as I understand it) MD drive from 
Sony. ESDL refurbs and modifies the drive and sells it as part of the 
package (again as I currently understand what they are doing).

Even if you only set up one MD chain separate from your main 
digitization chain, the real-time ingest could be done as a 
background task in your main lab. That is how I do it, actually.

If you did two MDs per day as background, you could do 500 per year 
with no real increase in workload.

How many do you have and I hope you've stopped making new ones. 
Substitute compact-flash recorders for the MD recorders if the people 
are still generating MDs. I think everyone will be happy you did. I 
think you can pay for the CD recorders out of the labour savings <smile>!

Cheers,

Richard


Richard L. Hess                   email: [log in to unmask]
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