Shawn wrote:
| Both a unit with "automatic" ES and "manual" ES behave identically.
| When you press STOP, the optical block is parked at the
| innermost "zero" position.
| The difference being that with the "automatic" ES unit, the address of
| the last position is not stored in memory anywhere. When REC is
| pressed, the unit starts recording at the first free space.
| The unit with "manual" ES keeps the last position in a small memory
| space. When REC is pressed without first pressing ES, the unit moves
| the optical block to the last remembered position and starts recording
| there. If ES is pressed first, the last position memory is
| cleared and the unit starts recording at the first free space.
[I'm breaking my promise of not continuing this thread, but plenty of other
people have given it 'artificial respiration' so here goes.]
Thank you for explaining this Shawn. I didn't read your last post carefully
enough and hadn't realised at all that a "manual" ES unit actually stored
the physical address of the last postion of the optical block. I had
assumed it simply defaulted to writing from the physical start of the disc,
unless you pressed ES in which case it just searched for free space (like
the automatic operation on the decks). Now that I fully understand it, I
agree that it does work like a tape ;-)
Presumably this means that if you have just recorded, say, three tracks
sequentially on the disc, and then you 'delete' the middle one, then
pressing REC (without using ES) will continue recording from the end of the
third one. If this is the case, then does this mean that the recording
continues sequentially and NEVER returns to use the free space formed by
deleting the 2nd track?
| So "manual" ES takes up more resources by requiring an extra small bit
| of memory to save the last position memory.
Yes, compared with "automatic" ES.
| Only an MD portable with "manual"
| ES can start overwriting at the last position that playback was last
| stopped, even if that happens to be the middle of a track.
Yes, and that makes Sony portie recorders even more dangerous than I
realised. I thought that if you pressed REC without ES, then they would
only ever overwrite stuff recorded at the BEGINNING of the disc. Thus, on a
previously recorded disc, you would aIways be aware that you were
overwriting something. I also thought that pressing ES invoked a search
for the next free space, (which would probably use more processing/battery
power than defaulting to recording at the physical start of the disc).
Thus, this would have equated to searching for the 'logical end' of the
recording which would not necessarily be the same as the physical end.
Thanks to your clear explanation, I now see that the Sonys actually default
to recording to the physical position of wherever the optical block was
stopped (be that in REC or PLAY mode).
You say it's only porties with "manual" ES, that can do what you described
above, but surely non-Sony portables can do PLAY-PAUSE-REC-UNPAUSE (like the
decks), which would produce a similar result? However, that is a sequence
which is not the default and is far less likely to be done by accident !!
By the way, you can now tell by this that I have no personal experience of
using ANY brand of portable recorder ;-) I do own a player though, (Sony
E30) which does continue PLAY from where you stopped, like a tape (which can
be useful). In general I feel that for RECORDING, though, defaulting to the
last physical position on a random access media is pretty unintuitive,
especially if you've prior experience of a deck or a Sharp portie. With a
disc, you've got the inherent feature of potentially utilising all the free
space (and not at the expense of overwriting), which most users want IMO, so
why not use it?
Regards,
John --> (Now firmly in the anti "manual" ES camp ;-)
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