MD: types of discs (was buying cheap blanks)
Larry answered Adam, | There are basically only 3 different types of MDs. If you're going to call the three capacities of recordables different types, you have to count premastered MDs as a fourth type. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: buying cheap blank mini discs from over seas.
Adam wondered, | i live in sydney australia and i was just wondering if i bought mini disc | in england could i use them on my australian mini disc. | | or are they like dvd and have different regions. There are no regions for MD; if it works in one place, it works in the rest of the world. The only concern is the varying settings for electrical power, and that would apply only to hardware, not to blanks. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: Q about MDLP - ATRAC3
Rat, you were off the mark on a couple points. | The dummy data is required so that MiniDiscs recorded in | LP modes will not damage older players. Damage? There would be no damage, just pointless noise. | That is why you get slightly less than 160 minutes in LP2 mode out | of an MD-80 disc. False. You get exactly the same duration in LP2 as in SP mono, which is exactly double that of SP stereo and half that of LP4. Anything less is due to fragmentation and will affect SP mono and LP2 identically. I strongly recommend that you take an empty 80-minute disc and allow it to fill with a single track of LP2. You'll find it holds 161m58s, which is not slightly less than 160 minutes. | Sony had to do it that way becuase they left no room for expansion in the | MD storage algorithm. Admittedly, they never foresaw a time where anyone | would want to *reduce* recording quality. Yes, there you were right. | Looking at ATRAC in bits per second is somewhat inaccurate because it | doesn't work that way. But it does work that way. One second of audio is encoded to a fixed number of bits (different for each mode), even in LP4. | Standard ATRAC removes 4 bits out of every 5 | from the signal resulting in a 5:1 reduction ratio. No, it does not remove four bits out of every five while keeping one. It encodes the audio into decoder data that occupy about 1/5 the space of the PCM representation of the audio. You can view that if you like as throwing out all bits and replacing them with data for an ATRAC decoder to read on playback. | There is no data compression in any MD ATRAC algorithm. Agreed. Compression is a poorly chosen word for what ATRAC does. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: MZ-R90 not writing TOC
Jim asked, | Will the 940 deck do toc cloning? Maybe you can save the recording. Yes, it can; perhaps that's why Steve didn't express any concern about losing the recording. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: Nude Ex cord length
Jinx asked, | Anyone know where I can get a pair of those great Nude Ex earbuds with a | NORMAL SIZED LONG CORD instead of the annoying short cord that minidisc | users love so dearly. I hate only being able to use a pair of headphones | with my MD player and not my CD player as well. If the cord is too short and the package didn't include an extension as Richard was describing, you can buy a headphone extension cords at an electronics supply store. Just be sure to get a stereo (three-conductor) extension cord, because mono (two-conductor) models exist. I bought a five-meter cord at Radio Shack back in 1993 or 1994 and still use it from time to time: five meters is a lot more extra length than you need but there likely are shorter ones available, or you could knot up the excess length. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
MD: transfering .exe self-playing sound file to MD
I've a Windows program that plays a song, and I'd like to have the song on MD. Lacking digital output on my soundcard, my only route appears to be connecting the speaker output of the soundcard to the analog input of an MD recorder. A DG1 was included with my MZ-R900, but it took me a lot of time and frustration to get the two USB ports on my computer to work with the two devices on them now, so I don't want to risk messing that up: I'd rather go the analog route than do that. If there were some way to get the sound into a .wav file, though, I could burn it to CDRW and then take it to my CD player (I've two that read CDRWs reliably and have digital output) to dub it digitally to MD. Is there a program for Windows ME that can wedge into soundcard output and record it to .wav (or something convertible to .wav)? Thanks. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: transfering .exe self-playing sound file to MD
Jinx suggested, | Usually a program comes directly with your soundcard. What kind do you | have? If its a sound blaster, the sound recorder has a wave out option | that records everything. (at least it does for me.) I don't know what the heck it is; it's whatever piece of junk came with the computer when I bought it back in 1998. Changing cards or things inside the case is out of the question for me (that's why the CD burner and the backup hard drive that I added are externals that occupy the two USB ports instead of internal models), so I've never considered upgrading the soundcard. Maybe someone near me has such a program, and I could bring the .exe on floppy and a CDRW (or my external hard drive) to copy the .wav to. That's a possibility; thanks. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
MD: retracting the question
There's a saying that the only stupid question is one to where the person asking already knows the answer. All I had to do was go into recording properties and select Wave Out as the source, and then use any of the recording software I have (such as Sound Grabber or GoldWave) to record it. Problem solved. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: MZ-R700 and MD first impressions
Brian asked, | The other thing that bothers me is that I have yet to find a way | to return to the first track on a disc without repeatedly hitting the | button. Is there a way to do that? Eject and reinsert the disc; or since your model is a Sony portable with an END SEARCH key, press END SEARCH, PLAY, STOP, PLAY. (That works even if you've reset Rec-Posi to from end instead of from here.) - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: MZ-R700 and MD first impressions
When I told Brian how he could skip to the start of a disc in a Sony MZ-R700, Mike commented, | Which doesn't help if you're using the remote, which has no end search | button. :) Neither does the alternative of ejecting and reinserting the disc, which also can't be done from the remote. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: case for MD (was jogging with MD)
Aileen asked, | I've been on here for quite sometime, mostly lurking... I was wondering if | any of you knew of a carrying case or something to hold an MD player at | waist level. Something like a fanny pack, but light and simple. Does | something like that exist? Camera bags come in a variety of sizes and styles. I bought a Samsonite KH202 at Target for $US 5.99 and it's just right for me. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: STI blanks at Circuit City
F.L. wrote, | Someone just told me about STI blanks for $1.20 from Circuit City, | see today's (10/4) minidisc.org news. Has anyone tried these STI | discs? I've never heard of them. When I bought them in May, they were $US 1.40 (actually, $34.95 for a box of twenty-five [with slip cases]); they were briefly on sale for $29.95 (which would be $1.198 per disc) but last I checked in the store, the price had risen back to $34.95. The web site has them for $29.95 again today (just my luck that they're never on sale when I have a need for more blanks). They're labeled with the brand name DigitalMedia with no space. They seem fine, which is more than I can say for STI's CDRWs. I've used about eight from that box so far with no problems except that the narrow labels for the edges tend to curl off. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: CD copy protection question
Matt Wall asked, | OK, from what i have read [about] the audio cd's with protected content ... | you can still make a single generation digital copy via toslink cable. That is not definite. It might be the case. For the rest of this post, let's assume it is, but we are *not* sure yet. | um please someone correct me if i'm wrong but doesn't this just mean i | make a copy of the cd in my dual deck cd recorder from | philips/sony/pioneer/etc (dont actually have one) then rip that cd? It will be easier to address your question if I answer a similar one first. It would certainly mean that if you used a CD player with S/PDIF output connected by a cable to a separate CD recorder with compatible S/PDIF input, you could make a rippable copy. It would certainly mean that if you connected such a player to a soundcard with compatible S/PDIF input, you could record directly to hard disk. But note that each is real-time recording and no faster, so there is absolutely no coolness factor in it and many people will refuse to stoop to it. But as to whether it will copy in your dual deck, I don't know. If your deck transfers data over an internal bus, it's anyone's guess whether the protocol it uses for that type of copying will be affected by the protection. If it does a bit-for-bit copy instead of a digital audio transfer, any protection might (again, might) be copied as well. Again, the preceding two paragraphs depend on the assumption above. | does my idea hold water or not? We don't know yet. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: Copy protection?
Stuart posted (as quoted in Pekka's follow-up), | In reply to the ORIGINAL question, no, this will not affect CD to MD | transfers, as highlighted on the Minidisc.org page My understanding is that this type of protection is strictly ripproofing and is not *expected* to impair S/PDIF transfers, but nobody knows positively yet. One regular on alt.audio.minidisc bought the Charley Pride CD (which uses a type of ripproofing) but he had no equipment with S/PDIF output and was out to see only if he could defeat the ripproofing. Unfortunately, he was too antsy to return it as defective to look for someone nearby with a machine with S/PDIF output to see whether that was affected or not. If it isn't, then anyone with a standalone CD recorder or with a soundcard that supports S/PDIF input can make a rippable copy. Fewer people have either of those than have CD-ROMs that support DAE. Moreover, there should be even a further reduction in copying from the sacrifice of coolness by having to do that first transfer in real-time; that may sound sarcastic, but it seems that a large number of people won't put up with it. (There's a running joke about the collegian stealthing a concert who fumes that the band won't play faster than real-time.) - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: Portable MD recorders with optical out
| Maybe some professional recorder does (although I highly doubt that). No need for doubt, Stuart. The HHB Portadisc, for one example, is a professional-grade portable MD recorder with optical (and I believe also coax) output. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: need _brand_ for optical cable with slim grip ends
Mark Gadzikowski wrote, | I have an RCA six-foot optical cable that properly fits my MD | recorders and my CD player. ... When an | audio card is NOT in the computer, the cable clicks into place as | expected; it's the computer housing that physically prevents the | cable finger-gripper part from entering sufficiently deep to allow | the cable to lock into place within the optical receptacle. | The optical cable bundled with my JE530 fits the PCI card when inside | the computer, but that cable is only three feet long. Three feet is | too short to reach from my floor-standing computer to my desk or | audio rack. Another solution might be to get a TOSlink coupler. Insert the short cable into the card, couple its other end to the long cable, and you'll have a nine-foot optical connection that fits the card and reaches the desk and the rack. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: Net MD (slightly OT)
Shawn Lin wrote, L I personally haven't noticed any stability problems with Win98SE L either. I tried WinME and it was a big, bloated, and crashed a lot. Just the opposite of my experience with those two ... anyhow, Matt Wall wrote, W ... with the implementation of W burnproof (and whatever else they want to call it) you pretty much W need to turn your computer off to create a coaster any more. I don't know about that. The only thing burnproofing adds is a way to cope with buffer underruns. Since I'm not about to open my case and thus have used only external burners, which can't run that fast because of the connection speed, I've never faced a buffer underrun; at least, that's my guess as to why underruns have never happened to me. Yet I had a nasty coaster only a few days ago. Before burning I had killed just about everything else that was running, except ZoneAlarm, Systray, and Explorer. As the disc was being finalized, ZoneAlarm crashed, something I had never seen it do before. Result: the first coaster I ever had for a reason other than track mark locations. No buffer underrun was involved, and burnproofing would not have helped. One could classify it as equivalent to turning the computer off involuntarily, I suppose. Anyhow, I restarted, killed all other applications including ZoneAlarm, and got a perfect burn on the next try. None of that ever happens with MD. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: MD good enough for vinyl archiving?
Jim Coon joked, | Maybe we could invent a scratch crackle inserter and sell them. People | could make oldies but goodies out of any kind of music. There's nothing to invent; just get some crackle noises and mix them into anything you like or play them at the same time. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: recording not in realtime?
Gerard Naude wrote, | At the end of the day ATRAC is just a big math algorithm. The speed at | which the algorithm is applied does not matter. It does for processing power, and as Graham Baker has pointed out, for the write mechanism to keep up. But please read on; Gerard continued, | The only other | limit I can think of is the speed at which the platter of the actual disc | can be spun, but considering most MD players/recorders use a buffer, it | means that they spin the disc faster than 1x anyway. It's not MD writing but rather the signal that has been limited to 1x. There already, before Net MD, have been ways of writing to MD faster than 1x, such as copies between MD-B5s, track moves on an MDS-W1, or CD-to-MD copying on combo units. The trick was that the data did not go over a regular cable nor, except with the B5s, even between devices. An analog transfer or an S/PDIF transfer is a relatively narrow tube through which audio can move only at 1x, no matter how fast the source can try to pour it in or the destination can try to empty it. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: Advice on Inexpensive MDR for Field?
Stilson Snow wrote, | Mostly I use the 'mono' record mode that | doubles the length of recording time (not as long as MDLP, of course) ... There are two MDLP modes: LP4 and LP2. The capacity of SP mono is less than that in LP4 but exactly the same as LP2. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: TOC Cloning on JB940
Ed Heckman asked, | I just recently received a new Sony JB940. Does anyone happen to know if TOC | cloning is possible with this unit? It most certainly is. I use my JB940 for all the cloning I do (recoveries for other people and, well, stuff for myself). The instructions for the JE520 work identically on the JB940. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: recent addition to the world of MD
Jinx asked, | How long did it take for your armcase to come? | I ordered mine a while ago and it never showed up. Mine took about two months; around the midpoint I got email from them saying they had received my form. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: Future MDLP with variable compression?
Rick wrote, | Hi Le! Hello, the? | Which brings up a question: What's the edit point accuracy of an MDLP | machine in LP4 mode? Is it 11.6*4 == 46.4ms, or 11.6*2 == 23.2ms? On my JB940, 46.4 ms. In divide mode it uses f for the duration of an SP stereo frame, and on LP2 or LP4 recordings each click of the knob jumps 2 or 4 fs respectively, each being one real frame. I don't remember what it does for SP mono: I know that my other Sony decks, when you try to divide SP mono tracks, offer eighty-six notches per second, but every other one is fake and will just round to one side or the other if you confirm division there. So you really get actual frames of about 23.2ms of SP mono. | I would guess the latter since the smallest addressable unit of the MD | TOC's 3 byte Cluster/Sector/Group disc address is one SP mode | soundgroup (see http://www.minidisc.org/md_toc.html#sec0) which is 212 | bytes, and two stereo LP4 frames fit in there. The smallest division is 424 bytes: 11.6ms of both channels of SP stereo, 23.2 of SP mono or of both channels of LP2, or 46.4 of joint stereo LP4 information. You can't separate the left channel and the right channel of an SP stereo frame into different tracks from one another. | And the SP mono editing interval is 11.6 ms also, right? 23.2ms. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
MD: who came up with the cloning procedure
Jim Coon wrote, | David Tamkin came up with the procedure that I used ... The original idea of cloning TOCs, the notion to use it for recovering data, and the basic procedure did not originate with me but rather with some users of longer standing. All I did was write up the instructions for the MDCP when Rick asked me to. Only a few of the details in there were of my own discovery, such as that one didn't need to dirty the TOC before going to test mode. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: Md recorders smaller than the actual disc?
Gerald wrote, | I was just wondering when md recorders are going to become smaller than | the actual disc. In theory only half of the disc needs to be covered by | the MD recorder(to reach the middle of the md to turn it, and to cover the | disc opening). Are current MD recorder sizes restricted because of the | size of the disc? It would need to be more than half the disc. The unit has to cover the entire right edge to operate the latch and shutter as well as to access the opening, the lower left corner to read the state of the write-protect [and that of the second hole, which is the primary indicator of premastered-vs.-recordable], and of course the entire spindle. About all that could stick out would be the upper right corner (and possibly the middle of the lower edge, but a concavity there would not reduce the outer dimensions). - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: Resume Play on JB940
Tugrul asked, | On every MD deck and portable I owned there was | this resume play option. Every deck? I've never heard of a deck with that feature. On portables it's standard. My experience with CD players is similar: portables resume (or have a switch to enable resumption), while decks do not. | ... every time I stop the deck it restarts from the beginning. That's how the 940 (and every other MD or CD deck I've ever used) operates. | Can this deck resume playing? Only if you pause instead of stopping. Otherwise, if you want to pick up where you left off, you'll need to find the spot somehow. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: Resume Play on JB940
Tugrul followed up, | I'm a bit upset now to see that JB940 doesnt | have this feature. I worked a long time with 50ES which might convinced me | that all decks had resume function. Well, people get used to what they have. When I listen on a deck, the interruptions are usually brief enough that pausing does the job. Having never had a deck that resumes, I don't miss it. Maybe once or twice in all these years I've marked a track temporarily where I was leaving off listening on a deck so that it would be easy to find the spot again. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
MD: Maxell MiniDisc jewel cases at JR
JR's Back to School 2001 catalogue came today. On p. 65 there is an item coded MAX MDJC and described as a six-pack of Maxell MiniDisc jewel cases for $US 2.49. The illustration is unclear, and I couldn't find the item on JR's web site, so I don't know whether these are slip cases, flip cases, or (probably not) prerec boxes. Minidisco has sold flip cases for years, but if these are slip cases -- all the Maxell MDs I've ever seen have had slip cases, after all -- then at last there is a way to buy extra slip cases. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: Sharp MD-R3 go boom?
Larry explained to Will, | Sorry, I thought that you were referring to the Sony MD-R3. Can't believe | that Sharp would use the same name as Sony. What were they thinking? They didn't need to think anything. The vintage-1995 Sony portable that you were thinking of is the MZ-R3. The model names are uncomfortably similar but they are not identical. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: Grouping
Simon Mackay wrote, | Also, has anyone put up on the MDCP any manuals for Group-enabled MD | equipment? Apparently not yet. | This can help people to understand how the function works and its | limitations, including compatibility with legacy MD gear such as the Sony | MDS-JE520 deck. I should hope that older units would just ignore it and see all tracks on the disc without subsets as they do now. Anything else would cause a problem in playback. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: long-lasting MD
John McLachlan wrote, | Stumbled across this whilst surfing c-net. Had never heard of it, | and the site gives no clue how they get 5 hours on one MD - more | compression? Yes. | Anyone else heard of this? Where have you been, John? MDLP is news from over a year ago. The best information I can give you about it is to recommend Rick Woudenberg's MDLP FAQ on the MDCP: http://www.minidisc.org/mdlpfaq.html. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
MD: MD at Wal-Mart
Rick Woudenberg quoted Bruce Yarbor, | I'm still waiting for our Wal-Marts to start carrying them, | when that happens, I'll know they have arrived! There are blank MDs (Sonys only, last I was there) at the Wal-Mart in Niles, Illinois. I didn't see any MD hardware there, though. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: too much of a god thing: a drawback of MDLP
Stuart Howlette wrote, | Titling, to me, is | more of a novelty than as a compulsory part of recording. And for me it is a nicety rather than a necessity. That's why I called hitting its limit a drawback of MDLP in the subject line and not the downfall of MDLP. | Maybe the best idea, though, is not to complain to the MiniDisc list, | but actually to Sony or whichever companies form of ATRAC is in use ... Not for a minor point like this one. The best idea is to note it in passing as one's opinion (as I did) and then to live with it (as I will). Such expression of an opinion is better done in a discussion forum like MD-L than in mail to Sony or Sharp. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: POLL: How many of you will buy/upgrade to the MZ-R909?
Stuart Howlette answered Act444's poll, | PASS | I will not be upgrading, because the 900 is a beasty piece of equipment | anyway, and if I want to use Type R, I'll use my deck, simple as that, | which leaves the group function, hehe, bunch of crap Stuart and I are in very much the same position, already owning a 900 and a Type-R deck and not being interested in the group function. (When you like long titles as I was saying last night, you don't put enough tracks onto one disc, even with MDLP, to need to group them.) Being of a different continent and a different generation from Stuart I wouldn't phrase it exactly as he did, but we seem to feel the same way. I'll add that the three-line display is nice but isn't enough to change my mind, and that the jog dial doesn't sell me either: I'd rather hold a jog lever at one end of its travel and wait for my choice to come up than use a dial. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
MD: too much of a god thing: a drawback of MDLP
Dang. It's nice to put loads of music and lots of tracks onto a single MD. But when it's a compilation and each track needs to be noted with song title and artist (in contrast to copying an album or several by one artist, where the performer need be named once in the disc title and not on every track), there isn't enough titling space! The 255 seven-character cells just don't cover it. Tonight I was titling a disc of fifty-five LP tracks (some LP2, some LP4) and made it to about the fortieth track before running out of title space, and that was without having yet titled the disc itself. I had to go back and do some egregious abbreviating and to continue the practice on the remaining tracks. The results are adequate as reminders to me but would be pretty uninformative to anyone else. David - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
MD: pointer to explanation of joint stereo?
Does anyone here have a reference for an explanation of the concept behind joint stereo? Because of the way LP4 narrows the separation of stereophonic material, I had the impression that joint stereo encoded an (L+R)/2 channel and an (L-R)/2 channel, allotting more bandwidth to the former. But something I read elsewhere said something about using the full bandwidth when the channels match and splitting it when they differ. That would imply that, for perfectly balanced monophonic input, LP2 would record two channels of it at 66kbps each, while LP4 would record a single 66kbps channel with double the capacity instead of the redundant copy. So one might record monophonic input at SP mono to get better quality or to have it playable on non-MDLP hardware, but recording it at LP2 would be no better (just more wasteful) than recording it at LP4. Off-center mono is another story. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: titling
When I listed reasons I wouldn't want titles from the CDDB copied automatically to my MDs, Michael Hoffman added, | The titles shown on the CD case may even be wrong and mislead the typist. | I have a couple CDs like this. So have I. It just goes to show that even when you use an MD for a copy of a CD with all tracks in CD-issue sequence and nothing else on the MD, you shouldn't let anyone else's decisions on titling get slammed onto the MD. I do title my discs, and that's why I bought a Sony RM-D20P qwerty-style titling remote and later a deck with keyboard input. I still occasionally title with a five-column remote when a disc is in deck B of my W1 (where the RM-D20P doesn't work) and I want to leave it there while I enter or edit the title, but there's no way I'd title on a portable any more. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: MP3/MD recording
When Jon [I think that's his name -- sorry for the short memory] wrote, According to the docs it does have CD-RW capability. Larry responded, | I don't think that this unit records!! It what they're saying about | CD-RW is that it can read CD-RW discs. I'm sure that's the meaning (that it can read CDRWs). - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: Choice between Aiwa AM-F70 and Sharp MD-MT90
Stilson Snow wrote, | I like the Automatic Level Control of the Aiwa for speech, and the Sharp | doesn't have that. I like the bass boost of the Sharp for live music and | the Aiwa doesn't have that. The F70 has bass boost on playback, though you may like the MT90's implementation better. If the MT90 can apply bass boost during the recording process, that's a new one on me. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: MD and MP3 technologies are merging / titling
Thanks to Michael Hoffman for the links to 8-cm CDRWs for sale at cdr4less.com and yesbuy.com. I'd never yet heard of those companies and had not seen 8-cm CDRWs for sale before. On cdr4less.com's home audio CDR page they perpetuate the myth (repeated to me last week by a Circuit City employee) that home audio CDRs do not work in burners; I hope that isn't an indication of their competence, because it certainly is tempting to get a spindle of 8-cm CDRWs from them. | But what Earth still lacks is an external Mini-CDRW (8-cm only) burner. | It will be at least 5 minutes more before there is such a thing. It | should include headphone output and bass boost, and built-in MP3 | decoding. I think there might be a confusion of terms here. To me a burner is a computer peripheral, and an external burner is one that connects by cable to a USB, parallel, or Firewire port on the computer instead of needing to be installed inside the case. What you're saying there, Michael, doesn't seem to make sense about external burners but could about a portable component recorder. One obstacle is such a device would be required to use only consumer audio discs, and 8-cm consumer audio CDRs don't seem to be available yet. The 8-cm rings in the trays of today's CD recorders (again, folks, I'm talking about audio components, not about computer peripherals) go to waste because there are no 8-cm consumer audio CDRs to record on nor to trick the machines into recording onto 8-cm data CDRs. I wonder if it's possible to swap-trick a CD recorder with a 12-cm consumer audio CDR into recording onto an 8-cm [data] CDR, as long as the music fits? Michael has also written, | Why should I have to title my MD tracks when the titles have already been | entered and uploaded by someone else in CDDB? 1. The tracks on the MD may not be exactly the set and sequence of an album listed on the CDDB. 2. The tracks may not yet be listed in the CDDB. 3. The person who provided the titles to the CDDB may have made mistakes in information or in typing. 4. The person who provided the titles to the CDDB may have entered them in a format that differs from your preference in some varying or unpredictable fashion, such that the editing changes cannot be pre-coded into your title transfering software. 5. You might have made your own mix or edit, or your own microphone recording, or your own computer-composed tune, so the track couldn't possibly be in the CDDB. | MD does titling in the most stupid, boneheaded, manual, tedious, | time-consuming way possible. Apparently, Mr. Hoffman, you have only a portable MD recorder and don't know how titling is on decks with full remotes, let alone on a deck with keyboard input. I find titling on portables to be as bad as you say, but it's not the only way to title a MiniDisc. | MDs are a dead-end for trades and each time you do copy an MD you lose the | titling ... There are ways to transfer titles from MD to MD. For example, many Sharp portable recorders have the Name Stamp feature that copies the disc name and all track titles from any recordable MD to any other with the same number of tracks, and the Sony MDS-W1 dual MD deck can copy titles between discs. If the tracks are at the same addresses, in many machines one can clone the entire TOC, titles and all. | ... and introduce another generation of lossy compression -- unlike MP3s. Yes, another layer of ATRACking is introduced (unless you have pro-grade equipment that can transfer bit-for-bit in the ATRAC domain). In normal personal copying you won't have too many generations and the effect will be negligible, but it is a drawback for trading. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: MP3/minidisc recording
Jon Martin wrote, | I download LOTS of OTR (Old Time Radio) shows from usenet. | I just picked up a MP3 CD player at Target for $60 From Koss. | That is used as the input to a MDLP unit - Works decent so far. | One of my computers is not tied up, solution is all AC based, (no batteries) | small desk space, just all analog. I don't know how many computers you have, Jon, and maybe one of them isn't tied up -- in fact, all but one of them wouldn't be tied up -- but another one has to be in order to write the MP3 file onto a CDR before you can move the CDR to the Koss player to dub to MD. Does the player read CDRWs, by the way? That would be even better because then you could reuse the CDRWs instead of going through CDRs. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: The MP3 versus MD stuff - a factual comparidon
Robert Lynn followed up that when the phrase the audiophile MP3 community appeared in his previous post, | That's a quote from the article at the URL I gave. Not from me at all. Thank you for explaining. That wasn't clear before. | All MDs hold 60, 74, or 80 (and I've seen 85s on the minidisc.org site). The 85s ... 86m28s at the optimum ... are actually hacked 80s. Or are there now 85m MDs manufactured as such? - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: MD inferior to MP3: it's not computer-literate
Michael Hoffman wrote, | A Mini CDR blank is now $0.67 and should become $0.25, for 180 MB. Is that in US dollars? I've yet to see them below $.50; with what crystal ball do you see them dropping to $.25? They'll be useful to me only if they show up as rewritables (in fact, a CDRW that size would be very useful to me, especially if they're under $1), but only for data. For audio recording MD does the job, and it will continue to. | MD needs to get better, which is why Sony is working hard on making it | more computer-literate. MD needs to get more computer-compatible, because a significant market, not only Michael, equates that with better. | Any new compressed-music technology must be fully computer literate. Agreed. The RIAA has set up a barrier between computer-compatible formats and audio-recorder formats that is very hard to straddle, and the last several years have shown that there is more market on the computer-using side. Besides, for the non-computer side, there isn't much that any new compressed format can have over MD. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: titling is a red herring
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote, | As I said before, I think the whole titling argument is a red herring. That's for sure. Transfering titles from CD-Text or MP3 ID tags onto my MD copies of the tracks would be useless to me. I don't want my MDs to bear the screamlocked or misspelled titles (as they often are) that came along with the source audio; even when the information and the presentation are correct, they're likely to be of a different format from my preference, and I'd still need to edit or re-enter them. Titling on portables, or on decks with skimpy remotes, is a pain. But on decks with full remotes or better yet with keyboard input, it's easy. Entering or editing a title at the computer's keyboard would be no easier. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: The MP3 versus MD stuff - a factual comparidon
Rob, when you call your post a factual compilation, you're holding yourself to an exacting standard. | MiniDisc is always separate stereo in SP mode. No, SP can be pure mono in SP mode as well as fully separate stereo. Also, LP2 is fully separate stereo. (LP4 is joint stereo.) | 212Kb/sec is standard for ATRAC. I trust that you just mistyped the number and are not calling something ATRAC never does its standard. SP stereo is 292 kbps; SP mono is 146 kbps, but note that both SP modes are 146 kbps/channel. LP2 is 132 kbps (66 kbps/channel). LP4 is 66 kbps, but I don't know how much of that is allocated to the (L+R)/2 component and how much to the (L-R)/2 component; it might be variable. | Later, [Xing] rewrote their codec to handle frequencies up to 20kHz | (probably at the behest of the audiophile MP3 community). The audiophile MP3 community? That's a juxtaposition I never expected. Of those who call themselves audiophiles, many reject digital audio outright; some demand 96-kHz sampling and 24-bit samples; and after a couple other subgroups we get to the laxest of them, who grudgingly tolerate 1.4112-Mbps CDs. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: PCLK-U5 in Europe
Nick Wall cut and pasted a message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] that called the PCLK-U5 Xitel's DG2 analog [sic]. [EMAIL PROTECTED] responded, | 1) the DG2 is not analog its digital(the an series is analog) I think this 5703171-person meant analogue, not analog: that is, that the PCLK-U5 is an analogue of the DG2. It was an extremely poor choice of wording; it would have been far clearer to call it a counterpart or an equivalent to the DG2, and misspelling the noun to match the adjective made it worse. (In the UK, the adjective also carries the -ue suffix.) Yes, the DG2 is not analog; it's digital. Yes, Xitel's AN1 (there appears to be only that one model, no series) is analog. But the PCLK-U5 might be an analogue of the DG2. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: Solution to mp3 md track marks?
Gerard wrote, | My xwave 7100 card is now working fine. Now to get automatic track marks | when doing mp3 md via my optical out, can I write a small app to switch | off the optical out between tracks, to force the md to start a new track? | Or is this not such a good idea? Go ahead and try it. I've heard that some MD recorders are too slow to respond when signal resumes and miss a fraction of a second at the beginning of the track in the type of setup you have in mind, so good luck. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: Computer Editors
Jinx asked, | After I record any upload the huge wav file onto my computer from my | minidisc recorder, anybody have any ideas on what program to use to split | into tracks and edit the recording for distribution onto full sized cds? | I'm using Cakewalk Homestudio and Sound Forge XP. They're not so good. | If anybody knows of any good progs PLEASE tell me, I'm rather desperate. CDWav at cdwave.com (yes, `e' on the name of the domain, no `e' on the name of the program) is designed primarily for breaking long .wav files into chunks that are multiples of the size of a CD frame so that they can be burned to CDR without the problems some burners have with incomplete frames. The current version is shareware, but I understand there's an old version on another site available for free. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: Timed MDLP Recordings
Nick Wall asked, | Second, if I use a timed plug to turn on the power and start recording, | will the deck remember the MDLP setting, ie the fact that it's on LP2? My JB940 does: you set the recording mode, input setting, and gain level and it stores them in non-volatile RAM. If you have it disconnected from power for so long a time that the RAM fades, it would probably revert to defaults, but in order to use the deck while it's not doing timer recording I have the timer on most of the time: it switches off one minute before the time to switch on. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: Just bought
I'll tackle one of Jinx's questions: | First of all, how does the auto recording level feature work? Does it | adjust the sound if the level gets lower automatically or does it do it | just when you start? How does it know that what you're recording isn't | just crowd noise or something? It keeps readjusting as the input goes along, and no, it cannot distinguish sounds that we'd consider important from those that we would not. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: net md
Matt Wall posed, | so i'm curious how many of us are holding out on any new md equipment till | netmd arrives? i know i'm one. NetMD will be of no use to me. Depending on how intrusive and impeding the security measures turn out to be, it will be a real boon to a lot of people, but I won't be among you. What's going to keep me from buying any new MD equipment for a while is that in the last few months I've spent on an MDLP deck and and MDLP portable, so I'm tapped out. Group function? I'll live without it. NetMD? Won't help me anyway. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: Sharp MD-MS702 AC adapter
Rick wrote, | Depends upon what you mean by inexpensive. Radio Shack sells a 5 volt | adapter for about $20. The sell all varieties of the actual DC | connector individually, so you're sure to be able to connect it to the | Sharp. Certain models of adaptor at Radio Shack include the price of one such connector: that is, you get one connector for free when you buy the adaptor. The sales personnel tend to forget that and charge for the connector, so be careful. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: How to make audio CDR out of Computer CDR
I mistakenly sent my reply privately to Jim, but Shawn covered everything I wanted to say. What some of us are wondering is why, if Jim has a burner in which he hopes to alter the type byte of the CDR, he needs to change the type byte at all. He could just burn the audio tracks in the same device. Maybe he's trying to prepare discs for someone else's use on a consumer-grade CD recorder or for his own use in a place where he'll have a recorder available but no burner (perhaps no computer)? The cost difference between data blanks and music blanks has shrunk consider- ably, but it's still nonzero, and data discs are easier to find than music discs (particularly if you want something a little bit out of the majority, such as rewritables; until recently eighty- minute write-once music blanks were not so easy to find as they are now, and rewritable music blanks are still uncommon, even in seventy-four-minute lengths). - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: How to make audio CDR out of Computer CDR
Jim explained, | Because of the RIAA, my consumer grade stand alone CD burner will only | use audio CDR or CDRW. I tried using the media from my computer and it | rejects them. That's what it's supposed to do. So the reason for your question is that you want to find out whether the deck is going to be any good to you at all? Is it hard to find music blanks there? | The consensus is that the information is stamped on the CDR and can't be | duplicated. There may be a way to defeat that function on the recorder, | but I don't know for sure. Maybe there is a web page about hacking | them. Which model do you have, Jim? Certain Pioneer and Philips models can be tricked; first you need to insert a taxed music blank of the same capacity (74 or 80) and rewritability (R or RW). Then there might be a trick for swapping in a data blank in such a way that the recorder remembes the value of that byte from the music disc instead of reading it afresh from the data disc. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
MD: er, wrong attirbution
That wasn't Shawn, it was the Rat who explained to Jim that the type byte on a CDR is not alterable. Apologies for the misattribution. (Had to stay up late taking care of my mother, trying to use the computer between tasks, falling asleep at the keyboard and making lots of mistakes.) - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: MDLP Titling question
Simon Mackay wrote, | This ability to title MDLP tracks and discs on non-MDLP decks is useful if | you have a Sony JE500, JE510, JE520, W1 or other Sony MD deck where you | are able to type the title into the unit using its remote control - the | deck has the large remote control with many buttons. Yes, though if your MDLP deck is a JE640, it has keyboard input, and if it's a JB940, it has both keyboard input and a full-layout remote. Even with a Sony MDLP deck that doesn't have a full-layout remote, if you have such a remote from another deck it should work with the MDLP machine, so you could even listen while you title if you want. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: MDLP Titling question
Fredrik asked, | I know you can't play your LP-recorded stuff on a regular player but is it | possible to title the songs on one? As Stuart has already said, yes; it will play back as silence but you can still title it. That's covered in the MDLPFAQ as well. One thing I'd like to add about it: MDLP recorders will put the three charac- ters LP: at the start of any title you give to an MDLP track (unless you're editing an existing title that didn't have it). MDLP machines (both record- ers and players) won't display the LP:, but a non-MDLP unit will show it so that you'll know why you're getting no sound from the track. Also, if you change a track title on an non-MDLP recorder, the LP: will appear, and you can delete it if you like. Also, some MDLP recorders can be set to display titles as non-LP machines do: then they don't automatically prepend LP: when you title a previously un- named MLDP track, they display LP: if it is present, and they allow delet- ing the prefix. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: MP3 downloading via NetMD
Dan explained that if NetMD software is available only for Windows, | Users of other platforms will assume | that MD isn't compatible with their systems, and will just buy MP3 systems | (just like they did while Sony was saying our MD recorders are only | compatible with Windows). However, Sony has a history of being quite | stupid when it comes to marketing. So when you said that MIniDisc will become platform-dependent you meant that bad marketing -- or false rumors left unchallenged by weak marketing -- will allow people to get the impression that there isn't anything to MD except NetMD, so MiniDisc will *seem* platform-dependent to them? Let's hope it doesn't come to that, but in places like alt.audio.minidisc and MiniDiscussion posts asking whether one can record onto an MD from a source other than a computer are common. It's not hard to imagine that the next step beyond thinking that one can record only from a computer is to think that one can record only with the advertised software. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: Sony and their damned end search...
Of course you'll get no argument from me, Timothy. Nothing in the instructions for Sony portables with manual end searching warns a user to put the hold switch on, press the END SEARCH button, open the write-protect, or just remove any disc first when leaving the unit unattended. The last two would not have helped when manual end searching ruined a track on my R3 because my finger slipped and pushed REC instead of EJECT (I'd been editing the disc, so the write-protect had to be closed), and I doubt that the hold switch would help when an R55 goes into poltergeist record mode. Manual end searching came in with the MZ-R2. Its manual touted default recording from the current point as a feature, for surely it is what people will usually want to do (!); afterward it discussed pressing the END SEARCH key in order to append instead of overwriting as an available function for the rare occasions when one might want to do such an odd thing. I was quite glad to see that the R900 not only has automatic end searching selectable (yet not the factory default; admitting error is as hard for engineers as for lawyers) but also has REC and EJECT well separated from one another, operating in different directions on different faces of the unit. In fact, EJECT is all by itself, so if you miss it you can't possibly press or slide something else instead. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: MP3 downloading via NetMD
When Dan Frakes said that Windows-only NetMD software from Sony would make MiniDisc itself platform-dependent, I asked, T How would that make MiniDisc platform-dependent? Are you predicting that T people who use other OSes will stop all MD use in a huff over being left T out of the first release of NetMD? I'd hope not! and Mike Lastucka has commented, L Possibly, although I question why they would do such a thing, because at L the very least they have analog inputs. It's not like their OS's can't L do that. At the very least, they have sources to record from other than their computers and are not limited to what their OSes can do. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: Sony's Net MD - high speed ATRAC download via USB
Simon Mackay said about NetMD and editing in the computer, | You have a perfect compilation MD which segue-shuffles well in Sony car | and portable MD players! If the MD hardware doesn't do proper segues in shuffle mode on its own, you still won't have it, unless you reshuffle on the computer every time you want a new sequence and write it to a disc (which will then be played in continue mode). Even at faster write speeds, that is just too big a pain. [It also means keeping a copy on the hard disk all the time (a decreasing problem as hard disk capacities grow, granted).] - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
MD: AM-F70 sound quality
Larry asked, | Regarding the AM-F70, have you found the sound quality with headphones as | good as other units (say Sharp)? I've never compared side by side. The quality is good enough; the Swoops headphones that come with it are uncomfortable, so I rarely used them. I don't have any Sharp units anyway. Other than the F70 all the rest of my MD hardware is Sony. Sharp service around here is not to my liking, being farmed out to independent repair shops, none of which seem to care about they job they do nor about their customers, while Sony has a factory service faci- lity near me. | Maybe it's in my mind, but the Aiwa never quite sounded as good to me as my | old Sharp (actually, Denon/Sharp clone). Of course comparative sound quality is in our minds. Where else would it be? | Also, I think that's the only portable MD recorder I have seen that has an | external battery pack that just dangles there. It doesn't, clip, screw, | slide, slip, etc. on the a place made for it on the main unit. That is a lousy design, agreed. I never used the external pack and now that I have an MZ-R900 to use on the go, the AM-F70 is likely to stay home and run on AC. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
MD: R900's carrying case
Mike Lastucka wrote, | ... the thing comes with a decent carrying case ... You're fortunate where you are. In order to get an R900 with a warranty valid in the US, I had (1) to buy a bundle that includes a Xitel DG-1, for which I have no use; (2) to take the model in red, red, red, red, or if I begged for special privileges, red; (3) to get, instead of an included case that goes around a belt or through a belt loop, a mail-back offer [meaning I supply the envelope, the postage, and the waiting time until it arrives] for a free armband case (under the assumption that I will use it in a skateboard park, wearing shorts with no belt loops, rather than in venues and attire common for my age), on which I had to select small or large with no information about the dimensions. The phone number on the offer (for redemption status only, but I called anyway in hope they'd tell me where else to find out; as it turned out, they handled my question) reached someone who told me her instructions were to advise women to buy the small and men the large and that they are adjustable (but how adjustable, from what starting point?). And Sony scratch their heads why MD does so poorly here. Treating something as a lost cause usually is a self-fulfilling prophecy. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
MD: legality of recording concerts (was home made mics)
| My only other question would be about the legality | of it. I'm assuming it's, well, not legal. When the artist's management (or the artist, if the management contract leaves it up to the artist) specifically permits it, it is legal. Even then, sometimes you'll have trouble from the venue or the security firm. The above is gleaned from posts I've read over the years; I neither have nor claim any personal experience. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: spine labels
Ken Clinger wrote, | This is another question, rather than a response. Are the very thin spine | labels actually to be put on the MD itself? I'd always assumed that they | were for the case ... They're for the case or the disc, or one of each if there are two and that's how you want to use them. | I have horrible visions of the label catching on something inside the | deck. Is this unlikely? I've never had a problem from putting a spine label on the edge of the disc that has the write-protect tab. Some are packaged to imply that one could put it onto the opposite edge (the one that faces inward when you insert it) but I've never put one there: *that* would be asking for trouble. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: length of a '74' MD
Gaz wrote a bunch of correct stuff, but then, | If you really need to get every last scrap of space out of a disc, if | copying tracks from eg. several CDs, by leaving the record session in | pause mode instead of stopping it whenever you change the source disc | will avoid the loss of a second or so each time. No, that won't work; whenever you pause recording the recorder will jump to the start of the next cluster, and when you release pause it will continue from there. The only ways I can think of off-hand to get active tracks to share a cluster are these: 1. to mark a track manually while recording; 2. to let a change in subcode bits mark a new track during recording from digital input; 3. depending on the unit, to let sync mode mark a new track when sound re- sumes after silence; or 4. to divide a track after recording. In my experimentation with Sony's Smart Space, it starts the track after the silence at the beginning of a cluster when it truncates a longer silence to three seconds. | Whenever the TOC is written to the MD, that will close the current cluster | and lose any free space in it. Yes. Unavailable partial clusters (and unavailable runs shorter than six whole clusters) are recovered when the track[s] using rest of the cluster is/are deleted and the contiguous open space is at least six whole clusters. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: Minidiscs
Mike Lastucka asked, | Does the choice of minidisc basically boil down to which | one do you would find more impressive to pull out of your player in the | vicinity of others? Largely. There may be differences in build quality and durability (more of the shells, latches, shutters, and hubs than of the actual platters); sometimes a unit will be picky about which shutters it can open or close properly. There is no difference in sound quality; theoretically there could be if a platter were so bad that there were too many errors for the error correction to overcome, but I'm pretty sure nobody has ever run into that. If you did, you'd hear clicks or pops or silence rather than a poor rendition of the audio. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: USB-cable in the Sony MZ-Rx00PC's
Christoph asked, I'm wondering what wonderful things the USB-cables that come with the Sony MD-recorders (e.g. MZ-R700PC) will do for me. As I understand the naming of the tracks on the MD will be easier. Rat answered, | No, it won't, since none of that information is carried on the PCM signal. Even worse, the 700PC comes with a USB-to-analog link (it's the 700DPC that includes a USB-to-optical link), so it provides an analog signal (rather than an S/PDIF signal; is it technically accurate to speak of a PCM signal?) to the MD recorder, and that certainly doesn't carry titles! So where's the difference to just connecting the line-out of my Soundcard with the line-in of the MD recorder? | A noise-free digital connection, assuming you get the DG2 model rather than | the AN1 model. No, just a lower-noise analog connection, as Danny-K has said, than Christoph would get by going through the soundcard's line-out. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: RESCUE
James Caran asked, | I have an MD that I recorded on my Portable that will not play | back, even on my MDS-JB930 deck. I suspect that the very end of the write | did not work, and the TOC is screwed up. | | Can I rescue this disk with my MD Deck, or is it a more difficult | maneuver? There was some pretty important material on there. (The disk | still gives a track length time, it just won't play.) Hmm. If you do see a track with the correct duration, and it doesn't play, then likely the portable did update the TOC but didn't lay down the audio, in which case you're out of luck: that material was never recorded. The JB930 *can* clone TOCs, so you can try a recovery. The instructions for the JE520 on the MDCP at http://www.minidisc.org/cloning_procedure.html will work on the JB930 (in the side note about the usual way to exit test mode that you don't want to take during cloning, substitue DISPLAY/CHAR for REPEAT), so you can fill a scratch disc of the same capacity with a single track that occupies the entire space on the disc and clone its TOC to the disc that is giving you the problem. Be sure you don't dirty the TOC of the cloning source disc before cloning, because I have a hunch that you might want to keep the original TOC on the problem disc. So don't write the single-track TOC to the problem disc: rather, without saving it, use the JB930 to play through the entire duration of the disc. Any areas on the disc that have never been recorded on will be tough to play through, and you may end up fast-forwarding across them, but I think on the off-chance that your portable did record the valuable audio somewhere on that disc but put the wrong addresses into the TOC entry, you need to check the entire length. (Normally, once you hit a stretch that has never been recorded on, the rest of the disc [in order by physical addresses on the disc surface] has not been recorded on either, so you can stop looking there, but all bets are off if the disc has been written by a malfunctioning recorder.) If you do find audio that you want to keep, divide each piece off into a track by itself; then delete the tracks containing material you don't want to keep or never-recorded stretches. If you don't find the missing audio anywhere, don't save the cloned TOC onto the problem disc; rather, leave the TOC clean and eject the problem disc without updating. Good luck, but if you do have an unplayable track where the missing audio ought to be, I wouldn't hold out much hope. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: DCC?
Danny-K asked, | I also get the feeling that maybe DCC is not compressed sound? Sorry, but it is compressed (under an algorithm known as PASC). - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
MD: color of the MZ-R900DPC
Thanks, Richard and Rat. That bright red is too much for me, and I'll wait for the silver model. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: Sony MZ-R900DPC in stock at etronics.com
After I'd seen Richard's and Rat's replies and thanked them, another came in from Greg Schwabacher, the person who had originally told us about the etronics.com offer. Thank you as well, Greg. | The picture of the MZ-R900DPC shown at etronics.com is incorrect. | First off, they show a Sony MZ-R700DPC. Secondly, the color | in the etronics.com is incorrect. If you want to see what the | MZ-R900DPC really looks like, go to planetminidisc.com or crutchfield.com. Yes, I'd already seen it on (in retina-burn red) on their pages. | The MZ-R900DPC's red color is brighter than the picture at etronics.com | indicates, but it's not at all obnoxious. Obnoxious is a stronger term than I'd use either, but it's still too much for my tired old eyes. | AFAIK red is the only color that the MZ-R900DPC (with PC-Link) is going to | be available in. If you want a silver MZ-R900 AND a PC-Link device, you're | going to have to buy them separately. Red is certainly the only color so far, and if what I heard about other colors later this summer doesn't come to pass, I'll have a decision to make. The PC connector is unimportant to me, as I have another way to go from PC to MD for the very rare occasions I want to do so; the reason I don't buy an imported MZ-R900 in a milder color right now is the lack of local warranty service. So if no other color of MZ-R900 or MZ-R900DPC is to be sold in the US, I'll have to select among (a) tolerating the color, (b) settling for a non-local warranty, (c) buying an MDLP portable with fewer features, or (d) saving the money and not buying an MDLP portable at all. One possible realization of (c) is to get an MZ-E900 [if you classify recording as a feature] because the MDS-JB940 that I already own can record MDLP and I have no portable MDLP recording needs. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: Sony MZ-R900DPC in stock at etronics.com
Greg Schwabacher let us know, in Rick's care, ... etronics.com ... now have the Sony MZ-R900DPC in stock for $329.99... Here's the link: http://www.etronics.com/product.asp?stk_code=sonmzr900dpcr The picture on that page shows a deeper brick color for the 900DPC than the painfully vivid reds in other photographs of it on the web. Is there anyone on the list who has seen one and can describe the color? If the real color of the red MZ-R900DPC is like Etronics' illustration, perhaps I'll buy one now and not wait for the silver model promised for late summer. Thanks, David - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: no more MD at best buy
Matt Wall wrote, | OK, here is my prediction. Let's say that MD does go away inside the US. | there is still a huge asian market that can not be denied and so if us | models go away you will still be able to get units. My concern isn't buying units or blanks, but rather getting service if some- thing goes wrong. I've wanted an MZ-R900 since it first came out, but I've waited for it to reach the US before I buy one because I want a locally valid warranty; now let's see if it will be sold here in some color other than retina-burn red. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: mds-pc2 / mz-r55. cloning 74mins to 80mins??
Heiko asked ... | how to clone a 74mins MD to a 80mins MD.. i don't know how to get in | service/test mode of the mds-pc2 or mz-r55... | anyone can help me out? Good luck; you may have to get a hold of a service manual to find out how to get into test or service mode, and even then the unit might not be able to clone TOCs. | also i got a problem. everytime i send a mail to this list with outlook | express then the email is on the package, but empty. so strange. noone of | you can read it proper and resulting : i get no answer. You must have Outlook Express set to send mail in HTML instead of plain text. This list is set to accept only single-part posts. Fix your Outlook Express options. As you can see from this post, it certainly is possible to post to MD-L using Outlook Express. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: problem with the sony md r900
Federico Windhausen wrote, W I have a problem with my new Sony MD R900. When recording with a mike, I W can hear what it's recording through the headphones and I can see that the W counter is ticking off when I've begun recording. But I can't hear a thing W when I try to play back what I've recorded. And Stuart Howlette asked him, H I know this may be a presumption on my behalf that you haven't looked at the H obvious things (sorry if I have), but were u on record/pause without taking H the pause off? Federico said that the counter is ticking off -- in other words, that the time display is advancing -- so apparently the unit is not staying in pause. Also, if the recorder were staying paused, there would be no track laid down; since Federico said he can't hear a thing when he tries to play it, rather than that there is nothing to play back, I'd gather that he's getting a track, but either it's silent, or his machine is not rendering the sound on playback. So it seems that staying in pause is not the problem. H Probably not, but to find the the answer to a problem, the best way is to H start from the ground upwards. Yup. Sometimes even Stuart and I agree. As to the other matter between him and me, I'll respond off-list. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: Anyone tried a G-Protection player?
| I suspect you're correct, but CD-portable's don't use a time buffer, do | they? They must, Richard. How else would they have data to keep playing smoothly while the head is repositioned from a dislodgment (or a ,,dislodgement'' in New Zealand)? There has to be some read-ahead, and there has to be somewhere to store the data read ahead. Otherwise all that the advertising for any type of shock protection could claim would be how brief the interruption is, not that there's no interruption at all. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
MD: lowering our standards
Kevin Cramb wrote, | I've always read that MP3 doesn't sound as good as the original, Neither does MD. Its compression is lossy as well. | I'm no audiophile but I like to know the music I listen to is the best | reproduction I can get on my system, so I'm not into MP3 for that reason. And yet you use MD (presumably, since you must have some reason for joining this mailing list). MD sounds plenty good enough for me -- I can't hear a difference from CD -- but if it bugs you just to know that you're getting anything other than the absolute best, MD must go against your grain. | Are we the first generation of people who lower their standards of | listening? No, categorically. At every point in the history of recorded music some people at some times would accept a poorer-sounding copy for free over a better-sounding but costly copy. For a first-hand example, in my teens we taped off the radio rather than buying the record if our funds were strapped or if the song was not too important to us. The vinyl would sound better than a tape recording of an AM broadcast with a blabbery DJ, but to save the money we lowered our audio standards. For another, consider used record stores that sold scratchy, worn-out vinyl at bargain prices; they've been around longer than you or I have, catering to those who would take poorer sound for a lower price. I'd also disagree with using a term like "lowering standards" for it: includ- ing the speed, the cost, and the ease of acquiring the music in the standard as well as sonic fidelity to the original isn't necessarily "lowering". By your own admission, | I am into free music but that's a different issue. It is not a different issue! Those who want music for free also want free delivery, and it providers who give away the product and bear the costs of transfer are motivated to use cheaper delivery (say, of a small file) rather than expensive delivery (of a large file or worse, of a tangible medium car- rying the data). - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
MD: MDLP portable with smooth single-cycle shuffle?
I'm looking to buy an MDLP portable with the following playback characteris- tics; the MZ-R900, per Brian Youn's review, meets the criteria but I'm hoping for something less expensive. Recording is not necessary; I never record in the field and I've an MDS-JB940 at home that can lay down the tracks. What's important is the shuffle play: I want a unit that can play one cycle of all the tracks and then stop on its own instead of starting another cycle if nobody stops it, and which can segue smoothly from track to track without an interruption between them. So far every unit I own either inserts a si- lence between tracks or won't stop after one cycle. Program play would be really nice to have as well. Any suggestions for such a machine? Thanks. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: problems with my MZR-50
I'm deliberately replying from Outlook Express rather than Elm to see if it hits me too. Steve Luckabaugh wrote, in the care of Jim Coon, | hello all. this is really strange. my R50 was working fine until about a | week ago when out of the blue, i'm getting no sound IN or OUT of the unit. | i pop a disc in, hit play and the display looks fine. it LOOKS like it's | playing the MD perfectly but NO sound comes out through the headphones and | no sound out through the line out. | | i put a blank in and hit record, looks like it's recording fine but NO | SOUND from the LINE in either. neither of the 3 things work, headphones, | line in, line out. and they all 3 went out at the same time. Do the level bars seem to register while you record? Do recordings made in the R50 produce a sound when they're played in another machine? At first I wondered if you had just accidentally set the volume down to silence, but that wouldn't affect the line-out. It could be just the output stage (maybe the DAC is shot), so I think the next question is what happens when a recording made in the R50 is played in another machine. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: problems with my MZR-50
| MS Outlook and Outlook Express are two different animals, Dave. So are Dave and I, Jim. Outlook and Outlook Express share a lot of characteristics and some of their faults, plus a lot of people say just "Outlook" when they mean Outlook Express, so the test was worthwhile. | In any case I am sure Steve is happy to see his message on the list even | if it is second hand, and I am sure he is glad to see some replies | besides mine. :) I hope the responses will help him. David - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
MD: Andrew's email trouble (was can't get my message ...)
Mike advised Andrew, | Reconfigure your AOL email to not sent HTML mail. If you're | not sure how to do that, contact AOL support. They won't tell you, or so I've heard. A customer has a page in his area at http://members.aol.com/adamkb that explains how to send plain text mail with AOL 6.0. It's a two-part procedure, one part needing to be done only once as setup and the other to be done for every message that to be sent in plain text. Perhaps a simpler way is to avoid AOL's mail client and use their webmail at http://aolmail.aol.com. From there one can send plain text easily. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: Longer than 80 minutes - is it possible?
Simon Mackay asked, | Is it possible within the MD standard to make discs that go longer than 80 | minutes in SP mode by tightening the "pre-groove" spiral on the disc? When 80-minute MDs were about to come out and Rick gave us the news, wasn't part of it that getting 80:59 required tightening the spiral to limit of the standard? If that's true, tightening it further would require a new spec and might be incompatible with most existing hardware. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
MD: skips in rips (was recording to CD)
Charlie Redell asked, | My problem is that when I record it to my hard | drive, there are skips in the sound that do NOT exist on the MD. Sometimes the ripped file is fine, but the playback software skips while you're playing it, especially if you have other programs running or a net connection open (as Ken and payvand have said). The only ways I know to tell for sure are (1) to replay the passage where you heard the skip, and if it's fine on the second try, the file is probably all right at that point or (2) to burn to CDRW as an audio track and listen to the copy in a CD player [not on the computer], but that works only if you have a CD player that reads CDRWs reliably. | I've been told to lower the bit rate on my editing program (Sound Forge | 4.5) from the default 44,100. When I did (the next lowest setting is | 32,000), the recording came out fine, but the CD burner software then | told me that the files were not "of CD quality" and wouldn't burn to CD. That isn't the bit rate; it's the sampling rate. I doubt that lowering either will help with this problem. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
MD: holding STOP and CLEAR on MDS-JB940
Josh asked, | If you hold down STOP and CLEAR for a while you get some sort of test mode, | any idea what this is? Do you get the same thing if you hold STOP without CLEAR? Then it's Retry Cause Display mode. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: Read ahead on MD.
Gerard wrote, | I own a JVC XM-R70, which ever since I bought it have not had one single | complaint. In anyway, when I listen to a MD without skipping around too | much, I notice that the md starts playing the desired track. Then it reads | like crazy for say 10 seconds. Then suddenly it stops all mechanical | movement completely (while the music is still playing). It continues to play | music for a while (+/- 30 seconds), then it spins up again for a while, then | shuts down again. This continues for the duration of the disc. The unit also | has a built in 40 second anti-shock. Does this mean the unit buffers more | than 40 seconds, maybe like even 1:30, and only spins up when it needs more | data? (While keeping a anti shock buffer as well). If it spins for ten seconds and is quiet for thirty seconds, that totals forty seconds, the size of the buffer. I don't see how you calculated 1:30. It's also possible that you notice the mechanical noise only when a track is fragmented or when the playing sequence requires significant shifts across the disc surface. When the next forty seconds' worth physically follow imme- diately where the current forty seconds' worth end, there is no head position shift to go with the spin-up, so it's harder to hear. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: A (theoretical) good thing about End Search
Steve Corey wrote, | I would also like to join the "AVLS is Stupid" crowd I'll wave to you from across the aisle, where I sit with the "AVLS Is for the Stupid" crowd. | But at least Auto Gain has its uses. Just let me turn it off, | and remember that its turned off. That's another nice thing about Aiwa portables: they remember that you've selected manual gain control. (Sharps do by default, since they don't offer auto gain at all.) Aiwas, unfortunately, cannot overwrite, so what I said before about pause-then-record on a Sharp can't be done on an Aiwa. There was one tiny plus to manual End Search: on a Sony portable you can zip to the start of the disc by pressing END SEARCH, PLAY, STOP, PLAY without having to eject and reinsert. Does that still work on an R900 that's been set for automatic end searching? If it does, then the End Search key's only benefit is for Start Search. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
MD: AVLS isn't a nickname for AGC, Jim
When Steve Corey wrote, : I would also like to join the "AVLS is Stupid" crowd and I replied, I'll wave to you from across the aisle, where I sit with the "AVLS Is for the Stupid" crowd. Jim Coon responded, totally mixed up, | I have to disagree with you on this. I find AVLS very useful, It allows | me to record something quickly, without having to mess with the record | level. ... The Sony lets me do that, and I also have the ability to | change to manual level control if I want to. Jim: Taky Cheung's right, incantelu's right, Francisco Huerta's right, and I'm right. You're right about AGC but wrong about AVLS. AVLS (for Automatic Volume Limiter System) is Sony's term for the feature that keeps a user from turning the headphone volume up too loud. I say that it is for the stupid because the rest of us can set our listening volumes without need to be restrained electronically from self-inflicted harm. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: AVLS
Taky wrote, | I found AVLS stupid because the volume from the little portable MD | player isn't loud enough. There is no need to limit the volume. Maybe i'm | getting deaf, I most of the tiem have to turn up to 90% of the volume. ... which is higher than AVLS allows! For tabletop speakers, my portables are too underpowered and I need to turn them up nearly or fully to the maximum volume, which means AVLS has to be off. With headphones, however, they can get loud enough to hurt my delicate ears; still, it takes no genius to soften the volume without needing Sony to keep me from turning it up too high in the first place. Sheesh -- anyone capable of turning AVLS on is capable of cutting the volume! - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
MD: writing audio CDRs (was copying audio CDR to MD)
Brent asked, | Is there a way to turn data CD's into music CD's, so a deck will record | them? No, but with some decks one can simulate the effect. I'll get back to that. | Or are the disks physically different? No; the difference is a read-only indicator prewritten on the disc that tells whether it is authorized for recording in standalones. | I assume if I do an erase of these on my computer burner, I'd be turning | them in to a data CD, You wouldn't, as I can swear from personal experience. The indicator is not affected, and it remains a music disc. | as rewritables would erase the scms that the deck needs. SCMS is not a property of the disc. It's a property of the storage format. Use a CDR or a CDRW, even if it's authorized for audio, for data files in- stead of audio tracks, and there won't be any SCMS bits on it. Burn audio tracks onto a data blank with a computer's CDRW drive, and it will have SCMS bits. A major differnce is that if you burn a track on a computer the SCMS bits will be set the way the burning software dictates (or allows you to select), while if you record a track on a deck the SCMS bits will be set according to the rules of SCMS and possibly those rules will prevent writing the track at all. But either way, if the track is written, SCMS bits are written for it; and when a track on a CDRW is deleted, its SCMS bits are deleted as well. Back to Brent's first sentence: | Is there a way to turn data CD's into music CD's, so a deck will record | them? There is no way to alter the indicator, but some decks can be fooled by the "swap trick." It involves loading a music CDR, letting the recorder read in its characteristics, and somehow -- the exact procedure varies from model to model -- exchanging it with a data CDR in a way that prevents the recorder from rechecking the authorization marker but keeps it content to rely on the information that it read from the first disc. Because the discs really are not physically different, the deck will treat the data blank as if it were the music blank that you had inserted first. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: audio and data CDRs
Brent asked further, | I'm just wondering, is it possible to change this byte to make a CD usable | in a deck, No, the byte is read-only and is pressed in permanently in the manufacturing process. The only thing you can do is the "swap trick" and that only if your recorder is suspectible to it. You insert an audio blank, let the machine read in its characteristics, and then -- the procedure at this step varies from model to model -- switch it for a data blank in a way that keeps the recorder from rechecking the type byte, so that it will treat the second disc as it would have treated the first disc. | ... as I was thinking of getting one, but with the thought I can't | copy for editing, I might not unless I could digitally get it on something | editable. You can't edit CDRs at all; the only editing on CDRWs is to erase all tracks, to erase the last track, to erase from a given track to the end, or to wipe the disc completely clean. To do any editing beyond that, you need to work with computer files or MD tracks. | Does it work to hook digital out to the sblive card? Or will this | not accept scms final recordings? If you mean connecting the digital output of a CD recorder to a soundcard, the card will accept it. It won't care about SCMS status, and you can record any track to a file with no interference from SCMS. If you have a CD burner or a CD-ROM drive capable of digital audio extraction, though, it's faster and less error-prone to put the CD in there and rip tracks through its hard- ware connection to the CPU rather than recording an S/PDIF feed (and again, it will ignore SCMS, being computer hardware rather than an audio recorder). | I suppose it has to work because you can use digital speakers, which | obviously you'd hear nothing if they supported it. The SCMS status doesn't affect the behavior of the source device, which just sends out the signal without comment on the SCMS bits. It's the target de- vice that uses the SCMS bits it receives to decide how to act. Since speak- ers are not recorders, they are permitted to render digital audio into audi- ble sound regardless of SCMS. By the same token, a home CDR or MD deck that won't copy an SCMS-final track can *play* an SCMS-final track just fine, and if the digital output goes to a pro recorder (or through a stripper to ano- ther consumer recorder), you'll get a copy. The source device won't refuse to play the track. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: Digital Conversion
Linus wrote, | All of the resampling will occur flawlessly in | the digital domain without analog conversion in any of the transfer. Huh? Doesn't resampling involve recreating the analog waveform and slicing it at a different interval? Except for having no (potentially lossy) travel during the analog stage, resampling strikes me as being very much like DA-AD conver- sion. That's why I was asking a couple weeks ago about whether units with SRCs gratuitously resample digital input that is already sampled at 44.1 kHz. (BTW, Pioneer tells me that my CDR recorder [the PDR-509] bypasses the SRC when the input signal is already sampled at 44.1 kHz, but that some of their earlier models resampled everything. I've been unable to get an answer out of Sony about MD decks.) - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: Digital Conversion
I asked, Doesn't resampling involve recreating the analog waveform and slicing it at a different interval? Chad responded, | No, it creates a *model* of a waveform. What counts is that there's still conversion from discrete to continuous and back to discrete. If, because the representation in continuous form is used in place and not transmitted anywhere, you don't like calling it a waveform and prefer "model of a waveform," that's fine, but it has no bearing on my question. Yet on those grounds you said no: I asked whether resampling reslices the form of the analog wave and you said no. I think yes. Supposed I'd asked, "Doesn't resampling involve creating a representation of a continuous waveforem and then slicing it at a different interval?" Is your answer still "No"? A sampling rate converter has to interpolate values between samples to gene- rate [a model of] a continuous waveform just as a DAC does, and then it has to sample that [model of a] waveform just as an ADC does. Most if not all of the samples coming out of the SRC are values generated by the interpolation rather than numbers that were in the SRC's input. | But that's what sound is; a waveform. There is no other real way to express | it. There is no such thing as a digital sound. We know that. Digital representations are approximations (though they can be extremely good ones). If they were perfect representations of the sound, I wouldn't have asked the question. | This is because of the fact [that] sound, in general, is analogue. Yes, of course. Almost all sound begins analog and it all ends analog (if we're to hear it). That's 100% true and also 100% unrelated to my point a- bout resampling. | The only thing that is digital is the CD/MD/DVD whatever,and that is only | to stop degrading of the signal, which is does on a way, while in another | way it kind of destroys it. Yes, there is degradation in going from the original analog audible sound to digital and in changing it back to analog for our ears, but while it is digi- tal it can be transmitted and copied perfectly. Keeping everything analog avoids the infidelities of conversion but suffers degradation in transmission and in copying. The theory is that the former is the lesser evil, but resam- plings and lossy compressions can reduce, neutralize, or even reverse its ad- vantage. My question, again, is this: isn't resampling equivalent, except for there being no analog travel in the middle, to DAC+ADC? -- Back in first grade a classmate asked Chad, "Is three and four seven?" He replied, "No, the question should be `*Are* three and four seven?'" - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: Digital Conversion
Peter directed me to Julius Smith's web pages: | see http://ccrma-www.stanford.edu/~jos/resample/ for a detailed examination | of bandlimited interpolation. Thank you. Unluckily, the stuff there was way over my head. | assuming a sound with no sound components above a certain threshold (eg for | 44.1kHz audio, nothing above 20kHz or so), Yes, of course; a pitch higher than half the sampling rate cannot be properly represented. I was taking it as a given that the signal would not have any components higher than half the lower of the two sampling rates so that that would not be a consideration, but I should have said so specifically. | resampling to a higher sampling rate (eg 32kHz-44.1, or 44.1-48) can | be done with almost no degradation of quality. ^^ | the original wave can be almost perfectly modeled, so ^^ | that if you then resample it to 48kHz, the sound will be almost identical. ^^ | similarly, if you have a 48kHz sound that also has no sounds above 20kHz | [it] can be almost perfectly downsampled to 44.1kHz. ^^ | while there is a signal degradation in theory, it is extremely minimal, ^^^ Four almosts and a minimal, so there could be some. Resampling is very faithful but not perfect. Maybe I understand part of it now: in an actual DAC+ADC passage, analog out- put has to come out of the DAC within the limits of its ability to generate the detail in the voltage changes, and the ADC has to read it within the lim- itations of its ability to sense the voltage readings; plus, as I said be- fore, there is potential lossiness in the analog travel between them. Those are three weak points not present in a sampling rate converter. Nonetheless, resampling has to go from discrete samples to a representation of a continuous waveform and then back to discrete samples, true? | completely unlike passing through a dac-adc. You still don't have me on the "completely" part, Peter. I do see similari- ties. But your point seems to be that the worst part of DAC+ADC would be the analog communication rather than the interpolation or the resampling, and a sample rate conversion is not a dangerous thing; thank you for explaining that. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: Sample Rate conversion
Linus Sweers followed up, | We oversample the input signal at a very high rate (we place samples in | between two regular samples). Yes, like all other resampling methods and like DACs, you interpolate. You have to. There's no other way. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: mp3's on MD
When I wrote, T Only the most confused people would copy from CD to MD by encoding the CD T track in MP3 format first. Markus Laurin believed he knew of an exception: L Unless you don't own a digital linked cd- mdplayer, but do own a soundcard L with a digital out. (And can't make the CD work directly with your L Soundcard) My immediate reaction was just as Chad Gombossi said: that you'll get a bet- ter recording with less work by copying from CD to MD over an analog connec- tion than by ripping to computer, encoding to MP3, and dubbing the MP3 file's otuput to MD. Anyone who would do that instead of just using an analog con- nection from CD to MD qualifies as among "the most confused people." And if for some reason you absolutely must go through the computer, why would you degrade the track to MP3 quality instead of ripping it to an uncompressed format (like .wav) or to a compression format with no loss (like .shn)? You would have to be one of the most confused people to do that. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: PClink coupon!?
Mark was so concerned that he asked us three times, | Can someone enlighten me as to where I could find the free PC-link USA | coupon featured on minidisc.org? When I first heard about it on the net, I saw the same thing: an original coupon was required. I called Sony Customer Service, explained that I had just purchased an MDS-JB940 by mail order but the dealer did not include the coupon, and the rep there said he'd send me one. It came about a week later. I was lazy about sending it in, but the PC Link came about five or six weeks after I finally did. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: transfer to/from PC...
Timothy Stockman wrote, | ... MD recorders could easily handle that interruption caused by Windows | *if* there were some sort of flow control with the transfer. Flow control | implies two-way communication, so S/PDIF is the wrong transfer standard, | since it is one-way and does not contemplate how flow control might be | implemented. A deck with native USB (not an add-on USB to S/PDIF | converter) could fill the bill. ... The first manufacturer to offer a | *good* computer interface will provide the answer for which many have been | searching for the last couple years... Maybe that new protocol over USB could also implement a true track mark signal. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: chopping off headphone jack
First, I'm pretty sure *no* Sony portable playback-only MD unit has ever had a separate line-out. Second, there are Y-adaptors for 3.5mm stereo connections. I have several among my tangle of connectors, and here in the US they're easily found at Radio Shack or even Best Buy and Circuit City, so I'd expect Niels to find one without difficulty in the Netherlands. Whether the output from the E900 would behhave as a headphone-out or a line- out if you use a Y-adaptor and put the remote on one side and these head- phones on the other I cannot guess, but it would certainly solve the problem of having the remote's weight in the middle of the cord from the headphones to the unit. I must be missing something here; the Y-adaptor is such an obvious solution, yet nobody else has suggested it yet. Is there some reason it wouldn't help? - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: mp3 to MD - DIY
John advised Tim, | I think the most elegant soln is not to record from the soundcard or even a | digital out esp since it's real time recording to MD. Rather buy an | inexpensive cd-rw and copy the mp3's to a cd-rw disk, which you can use | over and over. Take the disk to your hifi system and play it, recording to | MD from their (either portable or a deck). Otherwise hiccups from your PC, | as you do other things, will barf up the mp3 to MD transfer. | | This is what I do. It's also what I do, lacking digital ports on my soundcard. However, it requires a CD player (where John mentioned the "hifi system") that can read CDRWs reliably. - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
