Re: MD: CD-DA
=== = NB: Over 50% of this message is QUOTED, please = = be more selective when quoting text = === Once again I have to go along with Ratman. CD's are digital storage. Sound is analog. Your ears are analog. Speakers produce vibrations that are analog. BUT it is still my understand that no matter how comes in or goes out, the "stuff on the CD is digital information. The stuff on a CD are ones and zeros. That sounds like digital to me. You can copy a CD straight to another CD and have a "clone" not just a copy. At least that is what I was always taught. Larry "James S. Lee" wrote: It seems to me that a medium is analog if, upon inspection, one can discern a pattern in the medium that is analogous to the source event. Thus the grooves in a vinyl LP can be seen to vary in proportion to changes in frequency and amplitude of the source. One can even, with a microscope, discern similar patterns in the magnetic particles on analog tap, video tape, granules on celluloid film, movement of speaker diaphragms, etc. Digital media show no such "analogous" patterns. In fact, there is no necessary connection between a particular frequency or amplitude measure and the code needed to represent it. The code can be totally arbitrary for any value as long as it is consistent and "understood" by both recorder and player. You can inspect a CD until you are blue in the face and you will not be able to discern a pattern that is analogous to the source. It only becomes analog again when it is converted. The underlying substrate in CDs is not "ultimately analog." Am I missing something in the traditional definitions of analog and digital? Stainless Steel Rat wrote: * "J. Coon" [EMAIL PROTECTED] on Tue, 22 Aug 2000 | PCM is digital. CDs are digital. All true. But the underlying substrate is ultimately analog, as is just about any recording medium, which is the point the twice times previous poster was trying to make. -- Rat [EMAIL PROTECTED]\ When not in use, Happy Fun Ball should be Minion of Nathan - Nathan says Hi! \ returned to its special container and PGP Key: at a key server near you! \ kept under refrigeration. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- == James S. Lee| Net: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Communication Studies, CB# 6235 | Phn: 919-962-4963 University of North Carolina - CH | Fax: 919-962-3305 Chapel Hill, NC 27599-6235 | Web: www.unc.edu/~jimlee/ == - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: CD-DA
Jim wrote: If it is coding ones and zeros, then it is digital. You are just playing with semantics. A strong one or a weak one is still a one. A strong zero or a weak zero is still a zero. IF it is out of tolerance then you get crap and skips if the error can't be corrected. PCM is digital. CDs are digital. That's the way I was always taught it was. What the hell is a weak one one or zero?? To the laser and the electronics it is still either a one or zero. Larry - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: Pre-Rec MDs
Remember the Recoton optical someone mentioned with the mini adapters? I got a pair at Sears tonight for $13.99 plus tax. Larry - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: CD quality compared to MD quality
--- Les [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Try hooking up a JVC CD player in your system and compare that to your NAD.. As I said earlier - all bets are off unless you compare like with like. In other words, the digital feeds from CD source and MD copy routed through the *same* DAC (and one that is good enough to be relatively immune to cable loading, jitter, etc). Without doing that we just can't say with any degree of confidence that the apparent degradation in sound quality is due to ATRACing alone (or even at all). there is near zero difference when listening at any real volume at all. I'm still trying to get my head around this. If there are audible artefacts associated with ATRAC, how come they show up at low volumes, but all but vanish at high volumes? This seems pretty counter-intuitive. Mike. __ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - Free email you can access from anywhere! http://mail.yahoo.com/ - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: CD-DA
You could use a vinyl LP and record a digital signal on it or an analog signal. A record player runs a needle in the groove and picks up that analog vibrations. However, a person could record just one tone and silence instead of the full range of audible frequencies. (It would probably use two tones and one would be the "Marking" tone and the other the "Spacing" tone) The pattern of that tone being on of off can represent the full audio spectrum using PCM (pulse Code Modulation) or it can represent written text as used in RTTY. (Radio Teletype) Or it can represent the information that your computer is sending over it's modem. That connection to your analog telephone line is digital. Even though the telephone line only recognizes analog signals the MODEM modulates the digital signal, converting it to analog for transmission, on the other end the modem demodulates the signal and converts it back to digital and uses error correction to make sure what it reconstructs is exactly the same as what was sent. That way when I type this, you read what I wrote, and not some gibberish. "James S. Lee" wrote: It only becomes analog again when it is converted. The underlying substrate in CDs is not "ultimately analog." Am I missing something in the traditional definitions of analog and digital? Rat was playing word games and sort of made a mistake. -- Jim Coon Not just another pretty mandolin picker. mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] If Gibson made cars, would they sound so sweet? My first web page http://www.tir.com/~liteways - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: CD-DA
las wrote: Jim wrote: If it is coding ones and zeros, then it is digital. You are just playing with semantics. A strong one or a weak one is still a one. A strong zero or a weak zero is still a zero. IF it is out of tolerance then you get crap and skips if the error can't be corrected. PCM is digital. CDs are digital. That's the way I was always taught it was. What the hell is a weak one one or zero?? To the laser and the electronics it is still either a one or zero. Larry That is pretty much true. The problem is when a signal isn't recorded properly and the one isn't written as strongly as it should have been. There is a certain tolerance and if it is in that range, it will be interpreted as a one. If it is out of that range it will either be interperted as a zero or an unkown, I am not sure which. -- Jim Coon Not just another pretty mandolin picker. mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] If Gibson made cars, would they sound so sweet? My first web page http://www.tir.com/~liteways - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: CD-DA
* "James S. Lee" [EMAIL PROTECTED] on Wed, 23 Aug 2000 | the source. It only becomes analog again when it is converted. The underlying | substrate in CDs is not "ultimately analog." Am I missing something in the | traditional definitions of analog and digital? Yes, you are. The *patterns* of light reflecting off of the pits in a CD are analog, even though the *signal* those patterns represent are digital. -- Rat [EMAIL PROTECTED]\ Warning: pregnant women, the elderly, and Minion of Nathan - Nathan says Hi! \ children under 10 should avoid prolonged PGP Key: at a key server near you! \ exposure to Happy Fun Ball. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: CD-DA
Larry wrote, S Once again I have to go along with Ratman. CD's are digital storage. For a change I'm going along with Larry, with whom I've disagreed in some other recent threads. The rodent had written, r All true. But the underlying substrate is ultimately analog, as is just r about any recording medium, which is the point the twice times previous r poster was trying to make. Yes, but are there any media for discrete storage that couldn't have been used for continuous data, and about which we can't say the same thing? The underlying substrate of a CD is a cuttable medium into which a groove could theoretically be etched representing an analog waveform, just like a phono- graph record. But it's used to write discrete information, not continuous information, so the medium could go either way but the storage is digital. There's nothing amazing in that: given any particular pencil and any particu- lar piece of paper with available space, you can use them to represent the value eight by drawing a bar eight centimeters long or by writing the numeral 8. There is an "underlying analog medium" because within the limits of the precision of the pencil tip and your dexterity you can darken or leave bare any point on the page, but by choosing to write a numeral 8 (or the word "eight" for that matter) you've used it for discrete, rather than continuous, information. If you don't close the upper right extreme of the numeral it's still recognizable as an 8 rather than any other digit; if you forget to dot the `i' it's still recognizable as the word "eight" rather than any other word. But if you try to represent it with a bar 8 cm long and you make it a little too long or a little too short, it reports a different value. Larry asked Jim, S What the hell is a weak one one or zero? I think Jim meant "weak" as imprecise and unsure, and "strong" as highly ac- curate and certain. In digital storage, a value of .0001 or -.0001 can be trusted as a zero: poorly written or poorly read, perhaps both, but still a zero; and a value of 1.0001 or . can be trusted as a one. But in analog storage . could be a precise . or an imprecise .9998 or 1.. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: CD quality compared to MD quality
On Tue, 22 Aug 2000 10:39:46 -0700, "Les" [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Guess what, any music in the hands of a consumer is in the end converted to analog since standard speakers can not convert digital information. This means each piece in the system used to reproduce sound has an effect and you have almost proved my point. You are asking a standard JVC deck to compete with your NAD. It aint gonna happen. Try hooking up a JVC CD player in your system and compare that to your NAD.. While HDCD units themselves should not make a difference on non HDCD CD they usually do for all the same reasons; the internal circuits are usually far superior on these decks than a standard one. Not necessarily true. JVC has a reputation for having some of the best "consumer-grade" CD and MD players on the market. In fact, for years JVC was the only mass-market company to have one of their players listed in Stereophile's "Recommended Components." My NAD CD player isn't top-of-the-line by any means. Is there a difference in quality? Sure. Is it the *real* reason I can hear differences? Not solely, and possibly not at all. I do have a receiver that has its own D/A converter. Maybe sometime I'll plug my MD player and my CD player into that, then run that line to my "main" stereo, just so that both will be using the same D/A converter. But back to the real topic of this discussion, as I mentioned in my initial message, the comparison I outlined was just *one* example of situations where I can tell the difference between CD and MD. It's not the only one. My CD portable sounds better than my MD portable (even though the MD portable has a better headphone amp). Even on our JVC 9000 mini-system with PSB speakers (which uses the *same* D/A converter for CD and MD), I can tell the difference. I was simply trying to provide one example that would, to some extent, be a bit more methodologically sound The single largest difference folks are going to hear from MD to the next is the deck that was used to record it. This is not necessarily the ONLY difference but it is the largest difference. So, you can also try someone else's MD recorded on at least an ES machine to listen to the difference. As I've said, I disagree. Simply because of the compression involved, the CD and MD are going to be different. And as I've already mentioned, as long as there *is* a difference, there are going to be some people who can hear it. But (also as I've said before), this is really a silly argument, because we all agree that the sound quality is excellent ;-) - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: CD quality compared to MD quality
Michael Jones [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: there is near zero difference when listening at any real volume at all. I'm still trying to get my head around this. If there are audible artefacts associated with ATRAC, how come they show up at low volumes, but all but vanish at high volumes? This seems pretty counter-intuitive. While I disagree with the previous poster that "there is near zero difference when listening at any real volume," he's correct to some extent that differences are often more "muted" the louder the volume. The human ear becomes less sensitive the louder the surrounding environment. You can easily hear a whisper in a quiet room, or even in a room with a bunch of people talking softly, but in a noisy room you can't at all. Not the best analogy, but similar -- if the artifacts of ATRAC compression are subtle, you may be able to hear them at low volumes but as the music gets louder it masks them. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: CD-DA
Hello List, I'm reading this list for quite a long time now, but never had anything special to contribute. But now I saw this Posting about CD-DA and it is definitively full of errors. Oh, if my english may contain some mistakes, you are asked to excuse this. I am from germany, you know. ;-) * "Timothy P. Stockman" [EMAIL PROTECTED] on Tue, 22 Aug 2000 | CDDA is *not* analog! It is as digital as CDROM, your computer hard drive, | etc. CD-DA is Compact Disc Digital Audio. That means Linear PCM (pulse code modulation) 16 bits wide at a sampling frequency of 44.1KHz, which is a digital signal. The ones and zeros are coded on the disc media as ones (light reflects one way) and zeros (light reflects another way). Nearly. The digital one is coded as transition from pit to land or vice versa. A remaining pit or land is zero. The amount of zeroes is counted by timing and there is a run length limitation. ie. After a certain amount of zeroes there must be at least one (digital) one. To reach this goal, they do a code translation. If I remember it right, the 16Bit PCM Data is converted to 20Bit CD-Data. But the media itself is analog in that the intensity of a given "one" -- that is, the ammount of light reflected from a given pit representing that bit of data -- is variable within a given tolerance. Ok, you could say that the media is analog in this way: You can measure the depths of pits and lands in an analogue unit of measurement. But: The information contained is and remains digital. | CDs use a sprial track (similar to an LP) that was originally designed | to be played continuously, not random accessed. No. The Compact Disc has always been concentric tracks (rings) divided into sectors, intended for random access, just like analog LaserDisc from which it descends. CDs have one spiral track. Full stop. It was not intended for full random access. Unless you count track skipping as random access. | Unlike computer disks, which have a header on each sector containing the | sector number so the drive can be 100% certain which sector it just read, | CDDA contains no such identifying information in each frame. Wrong again. Each sector of a CD has a numerical sector count, which can be used by the playback mechanism. No, he nearly is right. CDDA has sector information. CDDA has blocks with a length of 1/75sec. The specification allows drives to seek to a block with an accuracy of +-3 _Blocks_. Oh, excuse me, I took the words from my previous poster. So replace blocks with frames. ;-) Really good computer CD-Rom drives are doing this with 100% accuracy, when ripping DA. example: Plextor. But not all of them. ;-) | As long as you play CDDA continuously (like an audio CD player does) | there's no problem. Since the frames are in order on the disc, the data | in the resulting audio stream will be in order. The problem comes in | when one is extracting the digital audio information to a WAV file. The problem with "ripping" audio tracks is that CD-ROM (CD data) has three layers of inherent error checking, whereas CD-DA requires only two. That extra layer is what makes CD-ROM useful as a data storage system. The lack of that extra layer makes it difficult for CD-ROM mechanisms to read CD-DA as data because the frequency of "soft" errors exceeds the mechanism's threshold. ok, this comes near to it. The continous problem: When ripping CDDA, the reading problem is buffering the data, then stops reading, writes the data to disk, and then restarts reading. When it restarts it can not be sure where the laser starts reading. Why? See above. So the program starts reading a bit before the point it stopped reading and compares it with its previously saved data to find the point the new data begins. Error Correction: The Error Correction implemented in CD-Data is just more complex. It is able to even cope with a certain amount of successive bit errors. You can easily see this when looking at a disk frame: CDDA uses 2304Bytes of raw data +Header +ErrorCorrection which add up tobytes. damn, I forgot, I have to look it up. ;-) CD-Data just 2048 Bytes of raw data +Header +Errorcorrection +the remaining 256 Bytes which add up the same framesize as above. | In this case, the player does not read continuously but instead reads the | data in "chunks". Those chunks are called "blocks". Each block is a single sector of data on the disc, or two sectors for some operating systems. No frame. There are just frames on CDDA. To clearly point it out. You can address a CD-DA disk in a maenner of hours:mins:sek:hundreds which is translated into a frame number. As you can easily imagine, the time index you require might be in the middle of a frame plus you have to cope with inaccurate seeking, as described above. | After each "chunk" it has to seek back to where it left off before | reading the next "chunk". Since there is no header to unambiguously | identify the
Re: MD: CD-DA
Stainless Steel Rat wrote: snip Am I missing something in the | traditional definitions of analog and digital? Yes, you are. The *patterns* of light reflecting off of the pits in a CD are analog, even though the *signal* those patterns represent are digital. snip What are they analogs of? A medium is analog if its trace on a medium is a physical analog of the source material instead of a mathematical coding of that material. The patterns of light are not analogous representations of the source material. jsl -- == James S. Lee| Net: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Communication Studies, CB# 6235 | Phn: 919-962-4963 University of North Carolina - CH | Fax: 919-962-3305 Chapel Hill, NC 27599-6235 | Web: www.unc.edu/~jimlee/ == - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: CD quality compared to MD quality
--- Dan Frakes [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You can easily hear a whisper in a quiet room, or even in a room with a bunch of people talking softly, but in a noisy room you can't at all. Not the best analogy Well, not really an analogy at all. The whisper remains a whisper while the noise-level in the room goes up and swamps it. But here, we're talking about some kind of change in the character of the signal due to ATRAC (whether it's weird artefacts accompanying low bass, HF hash, loss of stereo imaging, whatever) - surely the louder the playback volume, the more apparent the deviation from the original reference? if the artifacts of ATRAC compression are subtle, you may be able to hear them at low volumes but as the music gets louder it masks them. But you're raising the volume of the *whole* thing - surely the artefacts are preserved (rather than obscured) in this process. Unless [a] I've completely misunderstood the principles of 'masking' or [b] you're using an amp which really struggles to drive your speakers at high volume, and fidelity decreases anyway. I'm confused now. Mike. __ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - Free email you can access from anywhere! http://mail.yahoo.com/ - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
MD: CDDA
Not wanting to get into a flame war with Rat, but I stand by my previous explanation of CDDA. For those interested, there's some information online: http://www.howstuffworks.com/cd1.htm Also, Ken Pohlman's book, "Principles of Digital Audio" has in-depth explanations of many formats, including CDDA and MD. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: CD-DA
* "James S. Lee" [EMAIL PROTECTED] on Wed, 23 Aug 2000 | What are they analogs of? A medium is analog if its trace on a medium is a | physical analog of the source material instead of a mathematical coding of | that material. You are using a different definition of analog than the rest of us. We are talking about the definition applicable to electronic circuits: a device having an output that is proportional to the input. | The patterns of light are not analogous representations of the source | material. But they are proportional to the "input" that stamped out the medium. It just so happens that what was stamped out a pattern of ones and zeros. The compact disc can store analog data without ever undergoing any form of digital conversion. The CD/Video -- 5 minutes of LaserDisc video and 20 minutes of CD audio on a compact disc, not to be confused with the Video CD, MPEG-1 video on a CD -- does exactly that. -- Rat [EMAIL PROTECTED]\ If Happy Fun Ball begins to smoke, get Minion of Nathan - Nathan says Hi! \ away immediately. Seek shelter and cover PGP Key: at a key server near you! \ head. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: CD-DA
Stainless Steel Rat wrote: snip But they are proportional to the "input" that stamped out the medium. It just so happens that what was stamped out a pattern of ones and zeros. snip Are you saying that the depth of the burn is proportional to the intensity of the laser that burned it? Well, that is true. Are you then implying that the strength of the reflected light (on playback) is also proportional to the depth of the stamped pits on the surface of the disc? Just trying to get clear. jsl - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: should we wait for lp.
I am trying to help my friend buy a stereo system. Is it worth waiting for the lp. Do you think there is a good chance that there will be a noticeable difference in sound quality when you record in the lp mode. If so, I think it is probably not worth the wait. More to the point - do you need the extra play-time, and are you willing to sacrifice compatibility with everything else to do it? (and pay more for it?) If not, don't bother. Also, does anyone have opinions as to md-cd combo decks as compared to two separate units. If you think the combo, which one do you recommend. I think I know which separate md decks are good. They're pretty good - if your MD recording is mainly from CDs and you don't need/want the extra frills than a standalone deck offers (fade in/out, extra inputs/outputs, pitch control, etc.) then a combo deck is a very good idea. The Sony MXD-D3 is a very good choice - reasonably priced (as little as 180ukp here), the MD part has many of the features that the decks do - time-shift recording, digital level control - plus it'll copy CDs at up to 4x quicker than normal. It also got a 5-star review from What Hifi? magazine, with them commenting that the CD part is as good as the budget Sony standalone players and that it makes excellent recordings to MD. If you can find a Sharp MD-R3 (the 3CD+MD deck) cheap, they're meant to be good as well (realtime recording though..). I've heard that several places in the US have been discounting them. -- Simon - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: CD-DA
James S. Lee wrote: Stainless Steel Rat wrote: snip But they are proportional to the "input" that stamped out the medium. It just so happens that what was stamped out a pattern of ones and zeros. snip Are you saying that the depth of the burn is proportional to the intensity of the laser that burned it? Well, that is true. Are you then implying that the strength of the reflected light (on playback) is also proportional to the depth of the stamped pits on the surface of the disc? Just trying to get clear. Yes, that is what he is saying. One thing, though; commercial-type CDs aren't burned; they're pressed, much like vynil records. ,xtG .tsooJ -- Joost van de Griek Applications Developer Yacht ICT http://www.yachtgroup.com/ - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: CD-DA
* "James S. Lee" [EMAIL PROTECTED] on Wed, 23 Aug 2000 | Are you saying that the depth of the burn is proportional to the | intensity of the laser that burned it? CD is not burned by a laser. Neither is LD. | Well, that is true. Are you then implying that the strength of the | reflected light (on playback) is also proportional to the depth of the | stamped pits on the surface of the disc? Just trying to get clear. More a matter of angles. If you shine a laser at a reflective surface at a fixed angle, the focal point of the beam (I think that is the correct term) will vary depending on the distance of the surface from the emitter. For example, the angle of incidence is 45 degrees, the distance from emitter to land is 1cm and the depth of a pit is 0.5cm. When the laser shines on a land spot, the beam is reflected to a point 1.414cm away from the emitter (assuming a nice right triangle). When the laser shines on a pit, the beam is reflected to a point 2.121cm away from the emitter. To use this hypothetical medium for digital storage I could say that any pit from 0.0cm to 0.25cm deep is "1" and any pit deeper than that is "0". To use this medium for analog storage, such as a video stream, I say that 0.0cm is pure white, 0.5cm is pure black, and anything in between is a proportional color value. That is not exactly how CD and LD work, but it should give you an idea of how "digital" media is often really analog media used in an interesting manner. -- Rat [EMAIL PROTECTED]\ Ingredients of Happy Fun Ball include an Minion of Nathan - Nathan says Hi! \ unknown glowing substance which fell to PGP Key: at a key server near you! \ Earth, presumably from outer space. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: CDDA
Hmmm... methinks I was thinking of an MD's structure, there :). Still, each "sector" of a CD exists as a discrete, numbered entity as far as computer systems are concerned. -- Rat [EMAIL PROTECTED]\ Warning: pregnant women, the elderly, and Minion of Nathan - Nathan says Hi! \ children under 10 should avoid prolonged PGP Key: at a key server near you! \ exposure to Happy Fun Ball. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: CDDA
What a great site. Thanks "Timothy P. Stockman" wrote: http://www.howstuffworks.com/ -- Jim Coon Not just another pretty mandolin picker. mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] If Gibson made cars, would they sound so sweet? My first web page http://www.tir.com/~liteways - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: should we wait for lp.
Simon said: "More to the point - do you need the extra play-time, and are you willing to sacrifice compatibility with everything else to do it? (and pay more for it?) If not, don't bother." There is no question that the extra play time would be ao value to many people. People who drive a lot and spend a lot of time in their cars. Background music. Convenience of having a large collection of music readily available without having to search through dozens of MDs to find the one you want. But to me sound quality is the most important thing. If the sound quality is not going to be as good as an MD in the present mode copied from a CD, that is not going to be acceptable to me. Now we keep getting on the debate as to whether there is a noticeable difference between the original CD and the first generation MD copy. Personally with the equipment that I have, I really don't seem to hear any. But if I am playing music in the house, why would I want to play the MD if the CD was available?? The MD is not a replacement for the CD. It is a convenience (for the car and portability. Now before cd writers were available for a reasonable price, You could use the MD to compile a bunch of songs and eliminate the 90% of the CD that you ended up disappointed with. But since you can buy CDRs for fifty cents and CD "burners" for under $200.00. What would be the purpose of an MD in the house being played through your stereo system? You can now compile the songs you really like on a CD for use in the house and even make a copy of the "master" CD and put the original away for safe keeping. No matter what you say, I do not hear any difference between the original CD and its clone. As a matter of fact, often you may have a CD that gives you trouble tracking on some players. If you have a CD ROM drive that will track it without any problems, the copy you "burn" will be playable on all of your units (assuming that the players themselves are working correctly. Larry - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: CD-DA
=== = NB: Over 50% of this message is QUOTED, please = = be more selective when quoting text = === One thing, though; commercial-type CDs aren't burned; they're pressed, much like vynil records. That's because a commercial CD is not magneto optical. It is straight optical. Don't they use glass for the master CD?. Larry - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: where to buy new mz-r50...
hi Jim, Crak Therapy wrote: i am going back to the future to purchase a new mz-r50. [i am interested in minidiscs mainly for live recording of gigs etc. i bought a mz-r90 but it's not the best for live recording(distorts too easily, skips sometimes when recording, and it had its first recording failure last week)] You might try the Sony Outlet Stores. http://www.online-sony.com/terms.asp yeah, i had a look but they didnt seem to have any r50s at the moment and they only ship to the USA anyway.[as i said i'm in australia] Try setting the record level manually for loud gigs. i have. distortion still occurs on a regular basis before the level goes 'over'. i think it's due to this problem as reported on this list a few months ago: I a couple of other guys have been measuring the inputs of the R50, R55, R90. The R50 on low sensitivity clips at 150mV, The R55 on low at 170mV, The R90 (no switch) at 28mV. They removed the high/low sensitivity switch on the R90 and it's far too easy too overload. I have pretty weak mics (sens. -48dB) and they will clip the R90 at about 110dB SPL. If you have mics based on the ubiquitous Panasonic WM60 or 61 they will clip much earlier. (NB: This clipping is irrespective of record level setting, it's the input stage clipping before any gain control, they are absolute limits.) So you really have to buy or make a battery box use the line in. i have been considering trying to do something to increase the output from the mics so they reach line-in level, but i dont have the knowledge to do it myself without interfering with the sound quality[although it would still be better than distortion...!] Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: should we wait for lp.
=== = NB: Over 50% of this message is QUOTED, please = = be more selective when quoting text = === My 3 1/2 cents says i dont need lp, i like md sounding good and crisp, not like a nasty old tape or mp3's. if i wanted that i wouldn't use MD. - Original Message - From: las [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2000 7:26 PM Subject: Re: MD: should we wait for lp. Simon said: "More to the point - do you need the extra play-time, and are you willing to sacrifice compatibility with everything else to do it? (and pay more for it?) If not, don't bother." There is no question that the extra play time would be ao value to many people. People who drive a lot and spend a lot of time in their cars. Background music. Convenience of having a large collection of music readily available without having to search through dozens of MDs to find the one you want. But to me sound quality is the most important thing. If the sound quality is not going to be as good as an MD in the present mode copied from a CD, that is not going to be acceptable to me. Now we keep getting on the debate as to whether there is a noticeable difference between the original CD and the first generation MD copy. Personally with the equipment that I have, I really don't seem to hear any. But if I am playing music in the house, why would I want to play the MD if the CD was available?? The MD is not a replacement for the CD. It is a convenience (for the car and portability. Now before cd writers were available for a reasonable price, You could use the MD to compile a bunch of songs and eliminate the 90% of the CD that you ended up disappointed with. But since you can buy CDRs for fifty cents and CD "burners" for under $200.00. What would be the purpose of an MD in the house being played through your stereo system? You can now compile the songs you really like on a CD for use in the house and even make a copy of the "master" CD and put the original away for safe keeping. No matter what you say, I do not hear any difference between the original CD and its clone. As a matter of fact, often you may have a CD that gives you trouble tracking on some players. If you have a CD ROM drive that will track it without any problems, the copy you "burn" will be playable on all of your units (assuming that the players themselves are working correctly. Larry - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
MD: Yet ANOTHER Sony MZ-R900 question.....
New to listSorry if this question was asked already on this board... Does anyone know what version ATRAC the Sony MZ-R-900 will use when recording in non-LP mode?? WLMCBuzzed in South FLA (who is hoping the answer is "DSP-Type R") - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: should we wait for lp.
Matthew Wall wrote: My 3 1/2 cents says i dont need lp, i like md sounding good and crisp, not like a nasty old tape or mp3's. if i wanted that i wouldn't use MD. Why can't they make an MD that will work the way that a DVD does? The quality of a DVD is at least twice as good as a VHS tape. The DVD can hold several hours of both video and audio. The audio track is digital. DVD players comes with a digital audio out. There is all of that extra space on a DVD. If it wasn't used for video, couldn't it be used for audio? Now take the MD. It is much smaller then a DVD, but if the same technology used on the audio track of a DVD, could you have hours of extremely high quality audio? Larry- showing his lack of knowledge. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: CD quality compared to MD quality
Well I do not believe Mike is confused but sounds like someone is and the last direct reply to my explanation "rested my case" for me whether you knew it or not, LOL... I never said ATRAC degraded anything people can hear and do not believe the modern versions do to any extent that a human ear can hear it. Next time you are in a hi fi shop ask for a demo and compare the same cd on a high end Onkyo or HK unit with high end speakers then listen via the same amp and speakers to a Technics or JVC and you will see (hear) EXACTLY what I have been talking about. The differences are so subtle you will only notice it at a very low volume...The guys jumping on the volume issue and claiming they never listen to theirs "that loud" have no idea what I tried to explain because anyone will listen past the 10% level unless they are perhaps pushing thousands of watts.. Consumer reports and others who do honest evaluations will claim there is zero sound difference in CD players. I believed this for a long time but now realize their tests were flawed because they were listening to average speakers which are not capable of producing the differences. The same should be reasonably expected from MD decks if such high end units even exist. I have 26 years experience in this stuff and some of the "analogies" just floor me. I have one customer that pays double the price to get his CDRs colored red because he KNOWS they sound better when they are the same disc and dye; just a different reflective coating (which the red color reduces reflectivity by the way) so if they sounded different at all (they do not) he has the quality backwards, LOL... In any case, nothing should ever be noticed on an average system and only those of us willing to spend the bucks on speakers alone that most would flinch at for an entire home theater including a large screen tv would (or should) even care about such minute differences.. Now I am resting my own case because I am tired of trying to explain this and think I gave it my best shot anyway...Anyone who thinks they can hear a difference would not believe anything other than what they hear anyway; never mind that very expensive test equipment can't measure a lot of what we "think" we hear, LOL.. Les Music Mixers www.musicmixers.com - Original Message - From: "Dan Frakes" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2000 7:34 AM Subject: Re: MD: CD quality compared to MD quality On Tue, 22 Aug 2000 10:39:46 -0700, "Les" [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Guess what, any music in the hands of a consumer is in the end converted to analog since standard speakers can not convert digital information. This means each piece in the system used to reproduce sound has an effect and you have almost proved my point. You are asking a standard JVC deck to compete with your NAD. It aint gonna happen. Try hooking up a JVC CD player in your system and compare that to your NAD.. While HDCD units themselves should not make a difference on non HDCD CD they usually do for all the same reasons; the internal circuits are usually far superior on these decks than a standard one. Not necessarily true. JVC has a reputation for having some of the best "consumer-grade" CD and MD players on the market. In fact, for years JVC was the only mass-market company to have one of their players listed in Stereophile's "Recommended Components." My NAD CD player isn't top-of-the-line by any means. Is there a difference in quality? Sure. Is it the *real* reason I can hear differences? Not solely, and possibly not at all. I do have a receiver that has its own D/A converter. Maybe sometime I'll plug my MD player and my CD player into that, then run that line to my "main" stereo, just so that both will be using the same D/A converter. But back to the real topic of this discussion, as I mentioned in my initial message, the comparison I outlined was just *one* example of situations where I can tell the difference between CD and MD. It's not the only one. My CD portable sounds better than my MD portable (even though the MD portable has a better headphone amp). Even on our JVC 9000 mini-system with PSB speakers (which uses the *same* D/A converter for CD and MD), I can tell the difference. I was simply trying to provide one example that would, to some extent, be a bit more methodologically sound The single largest difference folks are going to hear from MD to the next is the deck that was used to record it. This is not necessarily the ONLY difference but it is the largest difference. So, you can also try someone else's MD recorded on at least an ES machine to listen to the difference. As I've said, I disagree. Simply because of the compression involved, the CD and MD are going to be different. And as I've already mentioned, as long as there *is* a difference, there are going to be some people who can hear it. But (also as I've said before), this is really a silly argument, because we all
MD: CD-DA
OK, I finally found a page with a good technical expanantion of CD-DA ripping and the problems involved: http://www.cdpage.com/Audio_Compact_Disc/daextraction.html Also some interesting general info on CD, CDROM, MD and DVD here: http://www.sonydadc.com/pr_handbook.asp I've got K Pohlman's book somewhere around here. I'll look and see if he gives the definitive answer about CD-DA track format. (He probably does.) - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: CD quality compared to MD quality
Michael Jones [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Well, not really an analogy at all. The whisper remains a whisper while the noise-level in the room goes up and swamps it. But here, we're talking about some kind of change in the character of the signal due to ATRAC (whether it's weird artefacts accompanying low bass, HF hash, loss of stereo imaging, whatever) - surely the louder the playback volume, the more apparent the deviation from the original reference? That's what I meant by "bad analogy" ;-) Yes, the louder the volume, the louder the artifacts, but what I was trying to say was that the human ear lowers its sensitivity the louder the "noise" it hears. The louder the music, the less sensitive your ears are to "subtle artifacts." - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
