optical digital recording to minidisc

[neil lall]

am i stupid or is this really complicated? my new computer has an optical digital s/pdif output and my minidisc recorder has optical digital input. i try to play a cd in windows and record it on to the minidisc by connecting them, but the minidisc gets no signal. do i need some special driver or something? maybe i need to use a certain program? please help me out.


ps. i am working on a gateway solo 9300 if that is useful information.

 

[Rhoadz]

mabey i'm stupid, but i thought that S/pdif and optical were two different flavors of digital I/O. I think that the midiman CO2 is a converter between the two digital formats.

if i'm right i hope it helps, and if i'm wrong...bummer.

 

[neil lall]

um....that's what i thought too, but in the book it calls it an s/pdif output. it looks exactly like the optical output on my dvd player, which i have used to record minidiscs before. what is that co2 thingy you speak of? i'm confused. it's not the coaxial output type if you're wondering, it's optical for sure.

 

[sonusman]

The Toslink connector can carry the S/PDIF data stream. Many DAT and stand alone CDR burner use it. It works fine.

The problem you are having is that when you play a CD on your computer, the CD drive is supplying the D/A conversion, and there is a little cable from the D/A converter running to the soundcard. The soundcard is just supplying an interface for the line out to go to an amp or computer speakers. So, the audio is not making it to the S/PDIF output on your soundcard.

Try ripping the CD to the hard drive so that you have .wav files, then make sure that what ever software you are using to play back the .wav files is using the S/PDIF port to playback. GoldWave will work just fine for this, and is a decent application for this purpose ( www.goldwave.com ), plus it's demo version is fully functional and free to try. It just limits how many commands you can execute in any one session.

Anyway, try that, and you should be transferring audio to your minidisk player just fine.

Ed

 

[neil lall]

thank you so much!!
i love you sonusman! you kick ass! i hope this works!

 

[sonusman]

"I love you sonusman"?

I am becoming a homophobe now....

No problem. Hope it all works out. Oh, GoldWave may not be able to rip CD's to your hard drive. You will need a ripping software to do that. Try going to http://www.mp3proclub.com/main.htm and downloading a ripper.

Ed