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Magneto Optical (MO) disc scratchpad

Source reference · needs review · MiniDisc Wiki, September 2026 snapshot · Source edited 2024-07-28

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Original source · Source edits are not technical review dates. Original credits and licence notes remain below.

Source: MiniDisc Wiki contributors · September 3, 2026 snapshot · CC BY 4.0, except where otherwise credited.

Attribution and changes

Adapted from “Magneto Optical (MO) disc scratchpad”. Links, layout and file names normalized; missing database fields restored; remote embeds replaced with links. Manufacturer manuals and separately credited photographs retain their original attribution.

One cluster is 36 sectors, 32 sectors for data 4 for link and sub data. The 4 are different between MO and premastered discs.

Each sector contains 2352 bytes, 20 for addressing+control and 2332 byes of which are data bytes. • The first 12 bytes are a unique sync pattern.

• The next 4 bytes are header bytes, containing three address bytes (two clusters, one sector) and a mode byte.

• The mode byte describes the nature of the data fields.

• Between the header bytes and the actual data bytes, four all zero bytes are inserted.

Sound group's are the smallest division containing 424 bytes (212 left, 212 right channel). A sound group gives ATRAC-compressed audio data equal to 512 uncompressed samples at 44.1 kHz sampling rate.

0xdc4 sectors - 3524

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