Can I copy my Minidiscs to my PC?
For many years I was singing in a duo around the pubs and clubs of Liverpool using backing tracks on Sony Minidiscs. I’m planning to get on the road again and I’d like to copy all my backing tracks to a laptop. Is there a way to ‘burn’ a Minidisc to a computer, as one can with a CD? Kevin Hudson
Yes, but it can be a faff. First, we should say that during the demise of Minidisc Sony did make a free tool to convert its ATRAC files to the popular MP3 format. This is still available, at www.snipca. com/39444, but it requires additional components to work – some of which won’t operate well (if at all) with a modern Windows 10 PC.
That brings us to the manual method. Basically, you’ll need to connect your Minidisc player to your computer by a cable and then use software to capture the audio as it’s played. Depending on your player, you’ll need either a phono-to-3.5mm or 3.5mm-to-3.5mm jack cable – with the 3.5mm end going into the line-in port on your PC’S sound card. On desktop computers, this is usually coloured light blue. Many laptops have a single ‘combo’ port that will act as both audio-out for headphone/speakers or line-in for recording.
To capture the playback you can use Audacity, which is a free download from www.audacityteam.org. Though the program itself looks complicated (and in some respects it is), there’s nothing particularly difficult about using it to achieve what you want.
With your Minidisc player duly connected, you’ll need to click the red Record button in Audacity shortly before pressing the Play button on your player. Next, you’ll just need to wait for as long as it takes for the Minidisc to play through. When that’s done, saving the entire recording to MP3 format – which is really the best bet for playing back on your PC, or pretty much any other modern device – is as simple as clicking the File menu, pointing to Export and then clicking ‘Export to MP3’ (see screenshot 1 ). Finally, type a name for the recording and click Save.
However, that will save the whole recording as a single track. That might do for you but, if your Minidiscs contain multiple tracks – as is likely – then you might want to split the captured recording accordingly. So, prepare for a bit more faff!
First, click to open the Select menu and then choose All. Now, from the Analyze menu, choose Label Sounds. The dialogue box lets you set parameters to search for the breaks between tracks, based on silence level and duration. You might need to play with these settings to get things just right. Type some text for the break labels and then click OK.
Next, click File followed by Export and then Export Multiple. Finally, use this dialogue box to refine the export, choosing MP3 from the Format menu and how the split files should be named (using the labels as track names, for example 2 ), then just click OK.