Hello Graham,

My Sony Register your product for software updates and lifetime support or sign up for Sony newsletter and exclusive offers Register on My Sony. Α Universe Inspirational stories. (Walkman) MiniDisc Portable. MiniDisc Portable. Where is the model name located on my product.

Thank you for posting your concern in Microsoft community and welcome to the windows 10 Family.

From the description provided, I understand that Windows is unable to configure the drivers for the device you are referring to.

I suggest you to follow the below methods and check if it helps to resolve the issue.

Method 1

Perform these steps to run the Windows in built troubleshooter to identify any potential driver related issues present in your PC.

a) Write Troubleshooting in the search box and hit enter.

b) Click on Troubleshooting tab.

c) Click on view all option on the upper left corner.

d) Select the Hardware and Device option from the list.

e) Click Next to run the Troubleshooter.

Also, try to check through Windows update if any compatible drivers are available.

Reference: Update drivers in Windows 10

Method 2

I tried to visit the manufacturer's website to locate the Windows 10 drivers, however the driver support available for the device is up to Windows Vista operating system.

Source: Model MZ-N510

So, I suggest you to download the drivers for Windows Vista and then install the same using Compatibility mode.

Follow the steps to install the drivers in compatibility mode.

1. After downloading the driver, go to the location where you had saved your downloaded setup files of the drivers and right click, then select Properties.
2. Select Compatibility Tab.
3. Place a check mark next to Run this program in Compatibility mode and select the Windows Vista operating system accordingly from the drop down list.
4. Let the driver to install and then check the functionality.

Additionally, I also suggest to place the same query in the Sony contact support for more information on the same.

Hope the above information is helpful. If you need further assistance, feel free to write to us.

Thank you.

MiniDisc (MD) is a magneto-optical disc-based data storage format offering a capacity of 60, 74 minutes and, later, 80 minutes, of digitized audio or 1 gigabyte of Hi-MD data. Sony brand audio players were on the market in September 1992.^[1]

Sony announced the MiniDisc in September 1992 and released it in November of that year for sale in Japan and in December in Europe, Canada, the US and other countries.^[2] The music format was originally based on ATRACaudio data compression, but the option of linear PCMdigital recording was later introduced to meet audio quality comparable to that of a compact disc. MiniDiscs were very popular in Japan and found moderate success in Europe.

Sony has ceased development of MD devices, with the last of the players sold by March 2013.^[3]

• 3Design
• 4Format extensions

Market history[edit]

In 1983, just a year after the introduction of the Compact Disc, Kees Schouhamer Immink and Joseph Braat presented the first experiments with erasable magneto-optical Compact Discs during the 73rd AES Convention in Eindhoven.^[4] It took, however, almost 10 years before their idea was commercialized.

Sony's MiniDisc was one of two rival digital systems, both introduced in 1992, that were targeted as replacements for the PhilipsCompact Cassette analog audio tape system: the other was Digital Compact Cassette (DCC), created by Philips and Matsushita. Sony had originally intended Digital Audio Tape (DAT) to be the dominant home digital audio recording format, replacing the analog cassette. Due to technical delays, DAT was not launched until 1989, and by then the U.S. dollar had fallen so far against the yen that the introductory DAT machine Sony had intended to market for about $400 in the late 1980s now had to retail for $800 or even $1000 to break even, putting it out of reach of most users.

Relegating DAT to professional use, Sony set to work to come up with a simpler, more economical digital home format. By the time Sony came up with MiniDisc in late 1992, Philips had introduced a competing system, DCC. This created marketing confusion very similar to the Betamax versus VHS battle of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Sony attempted to license MD technology to other manufacturers, with JVC, Sharp, Pioneer, Panasonic and others all producing their own MD systems. However, non-Sony machines were not widely available in North America, and companies such as Technics and Radio Shack tended to promote DCC instead.

Despite having a loyal customer base largely of musicians and audio enthusiasts, MiniDisc met with only limited success in the United States. It was relatively popular in Japan and the United Kingdom during the 1990s, but did not enjoy comparable sales in other world markets. Since then, recordable CDs, flash memory and HDD and solid-state-based digital audio players such as iPods have become increasingly popular as playback devices.

The initial low uptake of MiniDisc was attributed to the small number of pre-recorded albums available on MD as relatively few record labels embraced the format. The initial high cost of equipment and blank media was also a factor. Mains-powered hi-fi MiniDisc player/recorders never got into the lower price ranges, and most consumers had to connect a portable machine to the hi-fi in order to record. This inconvenience contrasted with the earlier common use of cassette decks as a standard part of an ordinary hi-fi set-up.

MiniDisc technology was faced with new competition from the recordable compact disc (CD-R) when it became more affordable to consumers beginning around 1996. Initially, Sony believed that it would take around a decade for CD-R prices to become affordable - the cost of a typical blank CD-R disc was around $12 in 1994 - but CD-R prices fell much more rapidly than envisioned, to the point where CD-R blanks sank below $1 per disc by the late 1990s, compared to at least $2 for the cheapest 80-minute MiniDisc blanks.

The biggest competition for MiniDisc came from the emergence of MP3 players. With the Diamond Rio player in 1998 and the Apple iPod, the mass market began to eschew physical media in favor of file-based systems.

By 2007, because of the waning popularity of the format and the increasing popularity of solid-state MP3 players, Sony was producing only one model, the Hi-MD MZ-RH1, also available as the MZ-M200 in North America packaged with a Sony microphone and limited Apple Macintosh software support.^[5][6][7]

The introduction of the MZ-RH1 allowed users to freely move uncompressed digital recordings back and forth from the MiniDisc to a computer without the copyright protection limitations previously imposed upon the NetMD series. This allowed the MiniDisc to better compete with HD recorders and MP3 players. However, most pro users like broadcasters and news reporters had already abandoned MiniDisc in favor of solid-state recorders, due to their long recording times, open digital content sharing, high-quality digital recording capabilities and reliable, lightweight design.

On 7 July 2011, Sony announced that it would no longer ship MiniDisc Walkman products as of September 2011,^[8] effectively killing the format.^[9]

On 1 February 2013, Sony issued a press release on the Nikkei stock exchange that it will cease shipment of all MD devices, with last of the players to be sold in March 2013. However, it would continue to sell blank discs and offer repair services.^[1]

MD Data[edit]

MD Data, a version for storing computer data, was announced by Sony in 1993 but never gained significant ground. Its media were incompatible with standard audio MiniDiscs, which has been cited as one of the main reasons behind the format's failure.^{[citation needed]}

MD Data could not write to audio-MDs, only the considerably more expensive data blanks. In 1997, MD-Data2 blanks were introduced, which held 650 MB of data. They were only implemented in Sony's short-lived MD-based camcorder (the DCM-M1) as well as a small number of multi-track recorders; Sony's MDM-X4, Tascam's 564 (which could also record using standard MD-Audio discs, albeit only two tracks), and Yamaha's MD-8, MD-4, & MD4S.

The Hi-MD format, introduced in 2004, marked a return to the data storage arena with its 1 GB discs and ability to act as a USB drive. Hi-MD units allow the recording and playback of audio and data on the same disc, and are compatible (both audio and data) with standard MiniDisc media - an 80-minute Minidisc blank could be formatted to store 305MB of data.

Recent evidence has emerged that early MD Data discs were recorded in such a way that the resulting tracks could be played back as 14.4K modem data which muted audio on normal players to protect hearing and speakers in much the same way that CDROM players do. This also meant existing R/W optical hardware could read them but not the player's audio circuitry explaining why the format was very short lived due to the data being essentially stored uncompressed and as such could be 1/8 or less i.e. 29MB actual storage capacity. Hi-MD were more analogous to a CDROM.

Design[edit]

Physical characteristics[edit]

The disc is permanently housed in a cartridge (68×72×5 mm) with a sliding door, similar to the casing of a 3.5' floppy disk. This shutter is opened automatically by a mechanism upon insertion. The audio discs can either be recordable (blank) or premastered. Recordable MiniDiscs use a magneto-optical system to record data. A laser heats one side of the disc to its Curie point, making the material in the disc susceptible to a magnetic field. A magnetic head on the other side of the disc alters the polarity of the heated area, recording the digital data onto the disk. Playback is accomplished with the laser alone: taking advantage of the Faraday effect; the player senses the polarisation of the reflected light and thus interprets a 1 or a 0. Recordable MDs can be recorded on repeatedly; Sony claims up to one million times. As of May 2005, there were 60 minute, 74 minute and 80 minute discs available. 60 minute blanks, which were widely available in the early years of the format's introduction, were phased out long before and are rarely seen.

MiniDiscs use a mastering process and optical playback system that is very similar to CDs. The recorded signal of the premastered pits and of the recordable MD are also very similar. Eight-to-Fourteen Modulation (EFM) and a modification of CD's CIRC code, called Advanced Cross Interleaved Reed-Solomon Code (ACIRC) are employed.

Differences from cassette and CDs[edit]

MiniDiscs use rewritable magneto-optical storage to store the data. Unlike the DCC or the analog Compact Cassette, the disc is a random-access medium, making seek time very fast. MiniDiscs can be edited very quickly even on portable machines. Tracks can be split, combined, moved or deleted with ease either on the player or uploaded to PC with Sony's SonicStage V4.3 software and edited there. Transferring data from an MD unit to a non-Windows machine can only be done in real time, preferably via optical I/O, by connecting the audio out port of the MD to an available audio in port of the computer. With the release of the Hi-MD format, Sony began to release Macintosh compatible software. However, the Mac compatible software is still not compatible with legacy MD formats (SP, LP2, LP4). This means that using an MD recorded on a legacy unit or in a legacy format still requires a Windows machine for non-real time transfers.

At the beginning of the disc there is a table of contents (TOC, also known as the System File area of the disc), which stores the start positions of the various tracks, as well as meta information (title, artist) about them and free blocks. Unlike the conventional cassette, a recorded song does not need to be stored as one piece on the disk, it can be stored in several fragments, similar to a hard drive. Early MiniDisc equipment had a fragment granularity of 4 seconds audio. Fragments smaller than the granularity are not kept track of, which may lead to the usable capacity of a disc actually shrinking. No means of defragmenting the disc is provided in consumer grade equipment.

All consumer-grade MiniDisc devices feature a copy-protection scheme known as Serial Copy Management System. An unprotected disc or song can be copied without limit, but the copies can no longer be digitally copied. However, as a concession to this the most recent Hi-MD players can upload to PC a digitally recorded file which can subsequently be resaved as a WAV (PCM) file and thus replicated.

Audio data compression[edit]

The digitally encoded audio signal on a MiniDisc has traditionally been button has been pressed, the MiniDisc may continue to write music data for a few seconds from its memory buffers. During this time, it may display a message ('Data Save', on at least some models) and the case will not open. After the audio data is written out, the final step is to write the TOC track denoting the start and endpoints of the recorded data. Sony notes in the manual that one should not interrupt the power or expose the unit to undue physical shock during this period.

Copy protection[edit]

All MiniDisc-recorders used the SCMS copy protection system which uses two bits in the S/PDIF digital audio stream and on disc to differentiate between 'protected' vs. 'unprotected' audio, and between 'original' vs. 'copy':

• Recording digitally from a source marked 'protected' and 'original' (produced by a prerecorded MD or an MD that recorded an analogue input) was allowed, but the recorder would change the 'original' bit to the 'copy' state on the disc to prevent further copying of the copy. A CD imported via a digital connection does not have the SMCS bits (as the format predates it), but the recording MD recorder treats any signal where the SMCS bits are missing as protected and original. The MD copy, therefore, cannot be further digitally copied.
• Recording digitally from a source marked 'protected' and 'copy' was not allowed: an error message would be shown on the display.
• Recording digitally from a source marked 'unprotected' was also allowed; the 'original/copy' marker was ignored and left unchanged.

Recording from an analogue source resulted in a disc marked 'protected' and 'original' allowing one further copy to be made (this contrasts with the SCMS on the Digital Compact Cassette where analogue recording was marked as 'unprotected').

Of those recorder/players that could be connected to a PC via a USB lead, although it was possible to transfer audio from the PC to the MiniDisc recorder, for many years it was not possible to transfer audio the other way. This restriction existed in both the SonicStage software and in the MiniDisc player itself. SonicStage V3.4 was the first version of the software where this restriction was removed, but it still required a MiniDisc recorder/player that also had the restriction removed. The Hi-MD model MZ-RH1, was the first such player available.

Format extensions[edit]

MDLP[edit]

In 2000, Sony announced MDLP (MiniDisc Long Play), which added new recording modes based on a new codec called ATRAC3. In addition to the standard, high-quality mode, now called SP, MDLP adds LP2 mode, which allows double the recording time - 160 minutes on an 80-minute disc - of good-quality stereo sound, and LP4, which allows four times more recording time - 320 minutes on an 80-minute disc - of medium-quality stereo sound.

The bitrate of the standard SP mode is 292 kbit/s, and it uses separate stereo coding with discrete left and right channels. LP2 mode uses a bitrate of 132 kbit/s and also uses separate stereo coding. The last mode, LP4, has a bitrate of 66 kbit/s and uses joint stereo coding. The sound quality is noticeably poorer than the first two modes, but is sufficient for many uses.

Tracks recorded in LP2 or LP4 mode play back as silence on non-MDLP players.

NetMD[edit]

NetMD recorders allow music files to be transferred from a computer to a recorder (but not in the other direction) over a USB connection. In LP4 mode, speeds of up to 32× real-time are possible and three Sony NetMD recorders (MZ-N10, MZ-N910, and MZ-N920) are capable of speeds up to 64× real-time. NetMD recorders all support MDLP.

NetMD is a proprietary protocol, and it is currently impossible to use it without proprietary software, such as SonicStage. Thus, it cannot be used with non-Windows machines. A free *nix based implementation, libnetmd, is being developed, but it cannot be used to upload music (as of December 2005).

Hi-MD[edit]

Hi-MD is the further development of the MiniDisc-format. It was introduced in 2004. Hi-MD media will not play on non-Hi-MD equipment, including NetMD players.

Recording modes[edit]

Sony Net Md Walkman Software

Modes marked in green are available for recordings made on the player, while those marked in red are only available for music downloaded from a PC. Capacities are official Sony figures; real world figures are usually slightly higher. Second generation Hi-MD players also support MP3 compression natively, in a multitude of bitrates. Recently, 352 kbit/s and 192 kbit/s ATRAC3plus have also been made available for 1st and 2nd generation Hi-MDs.

See also[edit]

Sony Walkman Mp3 Player Software

• Capacitance Electronic Disc (SelectaVision) - an RCA developed format that uses a disc inside a sleeve, like MD, created in 1964
• Universal Media Disc (UMD) - a similar Sony format, but read-only

References[edit]

Sony Md Walkman Mz-nh700 Software Windows 7

1. ^ ^ab'Sony To End Shipments Of MiniDisc Players'. The Nikkei. Retrieved 4 February 2013.
2. ^Sony history Retrieved 01 June 2016
3. ^'Sony says sayonara to MiniDisc, will sell its last players in March'. Engadget.com. 1 February 2013. Retrieved 16 May 2016.
4. ^K. Schouhamer Immink and J. Braat (1984). 'Experiments Toward an Erasable Compact Disc'. J. Audio Eng. Soc. 32: 531–538. Retrieved 2 February 2018.
5. ^Sony MZ-RH1 User Manual
6. ^'Sony MZ-M200 Hi-MD Recorder with Stereo Microphone'. CNET. 5 December 2007.
7. ^'Hi-MD Music Transfer for Mac Ver.2.0'. Sony. 15 July 2006.
8. ^Sony To Wind Up MiniDisc Walkman Shipments
9. ^'MiniDisc, The Forgotten Format'. The Guardian UK. 24 September 2012.

External links[edit]