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VoiDeT
Mar 17th, 2002, 04:20 PM
Hello,
i am getting my playstation 2 soon :laugh: yeah!
i also have a mini disc which supports an optical connection. I also notice so does the PS2. I am wondering what this optical actually means, is it like a link, so you can virtually drag and drop the files? instead of recording the audio in sync with the playback. In other words how does this optical thing work, and what does it do?

Spank-A-Thon
Mar 17th, 2002, 08:07 PM
In order to explain what an optical cable does I feel it may be worth explaining how MiniDiscs record.

MiniDiscs use a method of compression called ATRAC. The ratio is somewhere in the region of 1:4, and similar to MP3 it is a 'lossey' compression format. I.e. it discards information that it perceives to be inaudible to the human ear.

When using a normal analogue lead to record from CD to MiniDisc you can lose even more information. The digital information on the CD is converted to analogue sound. This is passed through the cable down to the MiniDisc unit, which in turn re-samples the analogue signal into digital again to record.

Now this presents various problems. One of the biggies is setting the recording level, another is track-separation. Perhaps the biggest problem though lies with your leads and CD player. If either of them are poor (i.e. CD converts to analogue badly or your leads are 'noisy') then the signal being sampled will be of less quality.

Optical cables eliminate this. It sends the digital information direct to the MiniDisc unit. It also sends the TOC (Table of Contents) info too which makes track-separation a non-issue. Obviously because there is no sound being sent per se, you don't risk unwanted 'noise' either.

Basically because the digital information is being directly compressed by the ATRAC system, and thus there is no digital to analogue conversion happening, you gain much better sound quality.

So that answers what it does. But you ask does it enable drag and drop. I have not seen this but I know PS2 doesn't support it.

However, there is one big problem with using optical cables to record to MD. If CDs (or DVDs) are protected then you cannot record via an optical link. Your MD recorder will recognise the copy protect signal and not record at all - in which case you will have to switch back to normal analogue cables.

Hope this gives you the info you need. If you wanna know anymore then drop me a PM.

- S

DEADPOOL623
Mar 18th, 2002, 01:48 AM
I hokked up my minidisk player to my PS2 and recorded a few songs to my minidisk and it worked fine. It was an older cd though. I usually just record to my house deck, but I got one of those LP minidisk recorders and I don't feel like taking apart my system everytime I wanna make a mix. I also got some game sounds on minidisk....I got the soundtrack from spyhunter on minidisk and I'm looking to get some soundeffects on minidisk and transfering them to the PC or keeping them on the MD so I can freak people out on the street. either way, it's pretty fun.

by the way, I had to turn the optical out option in the system config menu on for it to work and it recorded like any other source to the minidisk, a 4 minute song took 4 minutes to record.:ghost: