Pioneer MJ-L77 About the Table of Contents, About MD System Limitations, Symptom

About the Table of Contents

When you load any kind of minidisc into the recorder, the first thing it does is read a section of the disc called the Table of Contents, or TOC. Just as the contents page of a book tells the reader what each chapter is about and where to find it in the book, the TOC tells the recorder where the tracks are on the disc, the name and length of each track, the name of the disc, and so on. In the couple of seconds it takes to read all this, the recorder’s display shows the message MD TOC READ.

Since you can change what’s on a recordable MD, the Table of Contents is rewritable, and so is called the User Table of Contents, or UTOC for short. If you have a recordable disc loaded in the recorder and hit eject, the recorder automatically updates the

UTOC before giving you the disc back. In both cases, the message MD TOC WRITE appears in the display during the UTOC updating process.

The UTOC is vital for the recorder to be able to play a disc correctly. Until you hit eject, the recorder stores all the current session’s recording and editing information in its memory. If there’s a power failure or you accidently unplug the recorder before it’s had a chance to write the UTOC there’s a danger that all that disc information will be lost. To prevent this, plug the recorder back in as soon as possible and eject the disc. If you leave the unit unplugged for more that a day, you’ll lose the UTOC information stored in memory and with it, that session’s recordings/edits.

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About MD System Limitations

The sophisticated playback, editing and recording features available to you with MD are possible because of the way in which the sound data is stored on the disc together with the system of TOCs and UTOCs described above. There are times however when you might encounter odd side-effects of the way the system works. These are not malfunctions, but limitations of the system. Below is a list of symptoms you may run across depending on the way you record or edit discs.

Symptom	MD System Limitation
The recorder shows the message	Although when you listen to a disc it appears that each track sits end to end in an
TOC FULL even though there are fewer	unbroken sequence, the actual audio information may be scattered all over the disc in
than 255 tracks on the disc (the maximum	different places. The more times you record and edit things on a disc, the more scattered
possible).	the information becomes. Usually, this doesn’t affect the user; the recorder keeps track of
	everything using the UTOC. However, because the recorder needs to know where every
	little gap is on the disc (and counts each one as a track, although you don’t see it), the
	UTOC eventually fills up, and the recorder won’t let you record anything else on that
	disc. Erasing a complete track, or the entire disc cures the problem.
The recorder shows the message DISC	If a disc is scratched or damaged in some way, that part of the disc becomes automati-
FULL before you’ve reached the maximum	cally unavailable for recording. In this case, the recorder shows the reduced recording
recording time of the disc.	time available.
The amount of recording time available	If you erase a track which is less than 12 seconds long, the recorder can’t add that time
doesn’t increase after erasing some short	to the available recording time.
tracks.
The total recorded time, plus the recording	Recording time on a disc is divided into two second blocks—the smallest ‘unit’ of a
time remaining, appears to be less than the	minidisc. Although a piece of audio data may be shorter than this, it still takes up two
length of the disc.	seconds on the disc, and the remainder is ‘lost’ (until the whole block is erased). As the
	number of these partially used blocks builds up, you might notice that the total disc
	length appears to shorten. (See also the note about damaged discs above.)
The recorder won’t allow you to combine	There are two situations where you can’t use the combine edit feature:
two tracks into one during editing.	❖ When one of the tracks was recorded using the digital input, and the other using the
	analog input.
	❖ When one track was recorded in long-play mono mode, and the other in normal
	stereo mode.
The sound is interrupted during fast	As we mentioned above, the more re-recording and editing you do on a disc, the more
forward or reverse.	scattered the audio information on the disc becomes. During fast forward or reverse this
	may show up as interrupted sound.

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