After seeing the $185.00 price for the Sony MDX-D3, I went to read some reviews. The reviews were fine. Some poor schmuck paid $400.00 for a unit whose list price is supposed to be $299, but what can I tell you. It was the second review where something struck me. The reviewer stated "The sound quality of the MD is impressive. It may not quite be CD quality (it's inherent to the compression scheme used for MD and not limited to the MXD-D3), but it is quite excellent." Come on!!!!! He didn't really hear a difference, his mind told him they were "not quite CD quality" because he mind told his ears that these were "compressed" and therefore could not sound as good as the original CD. He didn't do any A/B testing. He just "knew". I'm beginning to think that Sony did not do itself a favor by explaining how it was able to fit all that stuff from a CD on to the tiny little MD. If we were left in the dark or given an explanation that would not automatically cause any hi fi buff to assume that the MD could not sound as good as a CD, would this whole "is it as good" thing ever have come up in the first place?? OK, until about version 3.5 or 4 of ATRAC, each generation might have had some need for improvement. But by version 4, they had come pretty close to perfect. Even the CD isn't perfect. The dynamic range of a CD is still not as great as some of the music recorded on it. This is probably best found in classical music. I'll bet that a live version of the 1812 Overture, if they had canons firing would have a dynamic range that exceeds 100 dB. One last thing, will some other old fart in this list tell this old fart why they changed the nomenclature for frequencies?? It used to be 20 to 20K cps (cycles per second). That made sense. What the hell is a Hertz?? A rent a car It's like someone deiced that HZ looked great even though it has absolutely no meaning and started tacking it to the end of numbers. "How fast is your computer?" Why it's 500 hz. The only hertz I know of are people that come into my office with abcessed teeth. That hertz! Larry ----------------------------------------------------------------- To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
