Re: Clip: MP3 article from today's Boston Globe

[Brad Bechtel]

I have to admit some curiosity. One of the reasons Sony's MiniDisc has been met with disdain is that it uses a lossy format. MP3 doesn't strike me as all that different, and I do wonder why many people seem to feel so differently about the two. (I'm not implying you have, Brad, just taking off on your comments.)

The MP3 file format is different from the Sony MiniDisc delivery format, just as an Microsoft Excel spreadsheet file is different from a lined sheet of accounting paper. Both can be used for the same purpose, but in different ways. I couldn't see buying a MiniDisc player unless I were doing a lot of recording. I could see buying an additional hard drive (or a Jaz drive) to store MP3 files on my computer, if I were into that sort of thing, which I'm not.

I would expect that bands will end up doing a lot of recording to hard disk in whatever format they see fit, but I wouldn't be surprised to see MP3 being the delivery format for a while. The Diamond Rio MP3 player is actually pretty cool (see http://www.diamondmm.com/rio). I don't see an MP3 recorder anywhere in the near future. You have to record in AIFF or WAV format, then translate to MP3 format.

np: Nine Pound Hammer, by the Robby Robot Band (http://www.mp3.com/music/folk/7023.html) - featuring Stacy Phillips on Dobro, Tony Trischka on banjo.