RE: MD: MD..Re: Excellent Speaker System For MD And Just About Anything Else
I have a set of these speakers and they really do sound VERY nice. Normally, I only use the front speakers, which I have connected to a Mackie mixer which takes inputs from my computers and Sony MXD-D3 (CD/MD). The back speakers are connected directly to the rear outputs of the Xitel Storm Platinum on my desktop PC, which I can use to play DVD's in surround sound (using CyberLink PowerDVD 2.5), or 3-D games. However, I have noticed one big problem.. perhaps it's a defect in the set I have. There's a subtle hiss (sounds like white noise) coming from the back two speakers that I can't figure out how to get rid of. It doesn't matter if I have the rear input connected to my computer or not plugged in at all, it doesn't matter what the volume knobs are set to, and it seems to be coming out of the rear outputs, because I can hear it with either set of speaker wires or any of the four satellites. There is also a *VERY* quiet hiss coming from the front speakers, but I can only hear it if I put my ear right up to the speaker, so it's not a problem.. The hiss from the rear speakers, OTOH, is easily drowned out if I'm actually playing music, but in a quiet room, I have to unplug the rear speakers or else it starts to get really annoying! Has anyone else with these speakers noticed anything like this? I'll have to send some mail to Klipsch and see what they have to say... -Jake - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: OT, anyone know how to title tracks on a CDR?
Howard Chu wrote:
My Sony DVD player (DVP-C600D) displays disc titles from CD-Text, but
doesn't display track titles. My JVC CHX1200 12 disc changer in my car
displays disc and track titles on my KDMX3000 head unit. (And there's the
MD
connection - the KDMX3000 is still the world's only single-DIN sized MD/CD
head unit. Great deck. Unfortunately, the head unit itself doesn't display
CD-Text for CDs played in its single slot. Stupid, considering that it
displays disc track titles for MDs played in the same slot.)
Yep, the KDMX3000 rocks, and at $500 from Crutchfield, it's not a bad deal!
Speaking of CD-Text, I just tried that experiment last night, and
discovered, as you noted, that it's not supported, unfortunately. Even
worse was my recent experience of copying a new Ben Folds Five CD ("The
Unauthorized Bio. of Reinhold Messner") to MD with my Sony MXD-D3. The disc
and tracks are titled, but when you copy it to MD, you get a scrolling "TEXT
PROTECT" message and the titles don't copy over. The previous BFF CD I have
("Whatever and Ever, Amen") has CD-Text which copies fine, so some evil
lawyer at Sony must've decided that the copy protection bit would be a good
thing to start turning on..
Let me get this straight: You can copy the digital audio to MD just fine
(pursuant to SCMS restrictions), but they won't let you copy the titles??
Thus forcing me, a legitimate owner of a CD, making a legitimate copy for
personal use, to waste an extra 5 minutes spinning the titling knob just to
enter a few dozen bytes of info that are ALREADY on the CD and are certainly
no big secret (considering the titles are printed right on the frickin'
jewel box) but their lawyers are too *!#$^ lame to allow them to be copied
over?! Thus Sony Music subverts a selling point of one of Sony's own
consumer electronics devices. And big companies wonder why we've grown wary
of their antics..
BTW, my recently purchased HP USB CD-Writer (8210e) doesn't support CD-TEXT
for reading or writing.. However, the last time I used Easy CD Creator, I
remember there *is* an option to title an audio CD in a way that the Windows
Deluxe CD player can read the titling info. This might be worth looking
into if you only want to read the titles on your computer. However this
works, presumably it doesn't require any special features on the CD-R, and
who knows, perhaps some enterprising programmer will add support for this to
some of the Linux CD players, if it isn't there already. If anyone has more
info on how that works, I'd appreciate it..
-Jake
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MD: MP3 jstereo and listening tips
Alexander Dietrich wrote: After reading about how horribly bad bladeenc is even in c't magazine, I decided to encode a couple of wav files with both bladeenc and lame and listened to them one after the other (on headphones) and also switching files during the song. Personally, I can't hear the difference between the two, maybe it's only noticeable when you listen to classical music. c't magazine wrote that bladeenc sounds completely crappy at 64 kbps while lame is fairly good, but who encodes at bitrates that low anyway ? I use lame because it's said to be better, and I was wondering about one thing: is joint stereo degrading or enhancing sound quality ? Again I encoded the wav songs with stereo and jstereo and again I couldn't hear a difference and all the files were exactly the same size. Stereo vs. jstereo is a tradeoff, so one can't be said to be "better" or "worse", just different. Joint stereo takes some of the frequency bands that are (mostly) shared between the two channels and encodes them in mono for extra resolution. This saves bits and gives a better overall sound but loses a bit of stereo separation. Sometimes if I'm listening VERY carefully to a jstereo encoded track I think I can hear what sounds like part of the instrument's sound at the proper stereo position and the rest of the sound sitting in the center; a very strange frequency split effect. 99% of the time, however, my ears are fooled. Generally, the encoder will automatically choose joint stereo for bitrates below a certain threshold (usually 160, but I believe LAME chooses 192 to be safe). Personally, I always encode at a high enough bitrate (192 or 256) that the encoder will choose stereo anyway, so I don't have to worry about it. BTW, this may be obvious to some of you, but when doing a listening test, the most important thing, even more important than your choice of speakers or headphones, is your state of mind. Here's my advice: Always close your eyes, take a deep breath, and relax as much as possible. Let yourself go into the flow of the music and imagine the instruments sitting on a sound stage inside your head (w/ headphones) or in front of you (w/ speakers). The first things to suffer in MP3 or other compression are the subtle echoes and other cues that give you the feeling of listening to a real space. Without them, compressed music has a tendency to sound slightly muffled or fuzzy, esp. in comparison to the CD original. Don't let your concentration be distracted by the world around you, as you want to give the music your full attention in order to pick up the subtleties. Do your best to slow your breathing and bring yourself into an altered, meditative state. Finally, "Just Say No", and "Don't Do Drugs", but.. if you're an adult and have access to some decent cannabis, I highly recommend taking a little for heightening sensory perception and the ability to detect subtle distortions in sound. I know of no other drug which can heighten the mind's ability to focus and drill down on a particular sense (taste, touch, hearing, sight) without actually distorting the senses (at low doses). Even more useful, it can give the ability to slow down time in one's head, offering even more "CPU cycles" for your brain to listen carefully to the tiniest and quickest details of a song, and since music is generally both performed and listened to in real-time, this ability becomes very useful... hence its popularity among musicians. Speaking of drilling down, I should note that it's impossible to listen to all parts of a song at once, so don't even try! Even if you think you're listening to every instrument at once, your brain is really rapidly switching between all of them (this serial nature of the brain has been confirmed by recent neurological experiments; it's much less parallel than we once thought). This means that you're not really giving ANY individual component the attention it deserves. Instead, focus on one part at a time, let the other parts fade into the background, and consciously switch your focus between parts. Does the high hat sound different? How about the snare drum? How about that acoustic guitar part? Do the instruments sound alive and "bright" (brightness being the result of high frequency upper harmonics)? If a choir is singing, can you pick out one or two strong individual voices with headphones? Focus on the smallest possible piece of the music, and then focus on the smallest possible component of that. In this way, you'll increase the musical detail you can resolve, and quite possibly improve your enjoyment of the music as you'll discover in it worlds of detail that you might have completely glossed over in the past! OT: What I said in the last paragraph is equally true for sight. Many people strain their eyes and eventually require glasses by staring at a fixed point, or by trying to see everything at once, when in the normal eye, only the very small point at the
Re: MD: MP3 to MD..suggestions?
Was wondering if someone could give me some info about sending MP3 files from my laptop computer to my MD recorder. You'll certainly want to do a digital copy to prevent the extra digital-analog-digital step of an analog copy. Unfortunately, the only option I know of to dump digital audio output to an MD recorder with a laptop is a USB optical audio I/O interface available at minidisco.com for $210. If you have access to a PC desktop, you can get the Xitel Storm Platinum PCI card with digital output for the much cheaper $80. One more comment: if at all possible, don't copy MP3's to MD's if you have access to the original music CD. The compression of MP3 loses a certain amount of sound quality, then the MD compression reduces it even further. This double compression will probably make for a worse quality recording than even an analog copy of the original CD. -Jake - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: Why Sharp ATRAC sucks (a review)
I also think it's a good idea to remind people this should all be about enjoying music and not fidelity for its own sake. I completely agree with you. Of course.. but, at least for me, part of what makes listening to music enjoyable is hearing the subtle harmonics of real acoustic instruments, played by real humans, in the natural reverb of a real studio. Audio compression, unlike any other audio tradeoff (the quality of the amp, speakers, speaker cables, etc..), tends to affect that "liveness" in a way very difficult to describe, and for me, can definitely poorly impact my listening experience. As such, I'd prefer to do some very careful listening tests myself, get an idea of what the best approach is to compress my music (whether with MP3 or MD), find something that I'm happy with, and then sit back to enjoy the music without having to worry about it again. While I'm normally very forgiving as to stereo setups, and am perfectly happy listening to music on just about any decent headphones or speakers, there's something about digital compression that really rubs me the wrong way if it's not done right, and unfortunately for me, it really does hurt my listening experience. This is what I'm trying to figure out right now with MD.. Unfortunately, I didn't do those blind listening tests this weekend, but thanks to Guy Churchill's suggestions, I have a much better idea of how to do this. The quality of one's headphones and speakers definitely makes a difference for picking up subtle differences, though of course, one might argue that if you're only ever going to listen though cheap "earbuds", then it doesn't matter all that much what you do, right? Anyway, to maximize any possible differences, I'm going to test both with my AKG K-301's through my Mackie 1202-VLZ Pro mixer (as Guy suggested the Sony headphone amp might not be the greatest), as well as by connecting the Sony line outs directly to my Klipsch THX-certified multimedia speakers (the best speakers I have in the apartment). If I have time, I might also try doing some listening tests with the Sharp, to see if the problem might lie more in the ATRAC DEcoder or DAC than in the encoder. I'll keep everyone posted. Thanks for your interest, and your fine skeptical commentary. I agree that for 99% of people it won't make much difference, and I'll admit I was a bit harsh in comparing MD to 128kbps MP3 with a bad encoder, though I'll say from some samples I've heard, the Sharp still doesn't sound much different than 128kbps MP3 with a *good* encoder, which is still lower than what I believe the Sony sounds like (though, again, without blind listening tests, I'll accept the possibility that this could just be in my head right now!). -Jake - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: A little non-scientific ATRAC Sharp vs. Sony test
Just for kicks, I encoded the 35 second orchestral sample to MP3, digitally via a CD ripper program. I encoded it using BladeEnc.dll in Windows, at 320 kbps dual stereo, and 128 kbps dual stereo. I did dual stereo to try to give the MP3 format an advantage in how wide a sound stage it could present, because those joint stereo encodes I've done in the past just sound... Narrow, I guess... BTW, from all reports, BladeEnc is an absolutely horrible MP3 encoder (perhaps even worse than Xing!). Sure, it's free, but it's based on the ISO reference source code, which was only released as an example of working code for companies writing commercial MP3 encoders to look at. It was never intended to be used as is, and as such, it has some serious known flaws in its psychoacoustic model, as well as many bugs. Fortunately for us, there's a better (also free, and open source) alternative, which I'm really surprised that not more people know about. It's called LAME, and it's available here: http://www.sulaco.org/mp3/ LAME was also based on the ISO reference code, but there are some very smart people working on it, and over the years, they've fixed many bugs and essentially written a completely new psychoacoustic model called GPSYCHO. It's available for Windows, UNIX, and just about any other OS with a command-line interface, and the web site has some very useful info about MP3 and LAME, so I highly recommend checking it out.. BTW, you can even use LAME as a drop-in replacement for BladeEnc.dll in Windows, so there's absolutely no excuse to use BladeEnc any more! Please spread the word, as I hate to see people using shoddy MP3 encoders simply because they don't know any better.. -Jake - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
MD: Why Sharp ATRAC sucks (a review)
4x copying from CD to MD is a *sweet* feature, but only if the quality is decent. However, the MXD-D3 came with Sony's next-to-latest ATRAC (4.5).. I assumed the differences between that and the high-end "R-type" on their ES models would not be a big deal.. besides, there's no way I was going to fill up my 40 new MD's at 1x speed! Long story short: the Sony sounds fine. I'm perfectly happy with my quick listening test of the 48 sample tracks, encoded with the Sony and added to the same disc I'd previously recorded with the Sharp. Doing a shuffle-play with my eyes closed, I can't always tell which track was encoded with the Sharp and which with the Sony, but I'll try to get my roommate to help me do a proper A-B comparison, for scientific accuracy. But my ears have already convinced me: Sony ATRAC is acceptable.. definitely comparable to a high bitrate MP3.. Sharp ATRAC loses worse than Xing!! (and that's saying something!) Don't get me wrong: the 722's a great MD *player*.. it seems to have a fine DAC, and a great set of features. Add a stereo mike and it makes an excellent portable recording unit for concerts or lectures, too (where the sound is going to suck, no matter what!). But the encoder is *clearly* substandard, and as far as I can tell, I'm the first person on the Internet to point this out, or actually take the time to listen and seriously compare the Sharp and the Sony ATRAC implementations. In summary, don't be fooled into believing that all ATRAC's are the same. Don't be fooled into thinking Sharp is better because it's "version 6" and Sony is "only" at 4.5. If I had only been able to hear the Sharp ATRAC, I would have probably written off MD completely as a poor competitor to 128kbps MP3 (despite the great attractiveness of the MD recording format). Thankfully, I had faith that Sony's encoder wouldn't suck, and it didn't. Don't get burned! Use a real ATRAC when you make your mixes! -Jake Hamby - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MD: DVD Delayed
I read that main DVD companies (like: Matsushita, Pioneer and Victor Co.) delayed new DVD release because of a craker in Norway who found a way to uncode the DVD and allow it to be copyed to a hard disk in a very easy way, they knew that it would be a matter of time before someone did but what they where not expecting was that it would happen before the actual new release! This is an interesting development.. What actually happened is that the cracker in Norway found a way to crack the encryption for DVD Video. This wasn't motivated by piracy (at least not completely :), but simply because Linux users have been waiting too long for someone to write an officially sanctioned Linux DVD player and so far, nobody has. So, industrious as they were, they figured out a way to decompress the DVD video, simply to write players for Linux. Anyway, the new DVD release that's being delayed is DVD Audio. The spec was complete and the companies were just about ready to start shipping products, when the DVD Video crack caught them by surprise, and they hurriedly delayed it purely because they want to put stronger encryption in there. Once more screwing over their customers.. Personally, I don't get it! This is the same thinking which has brought us "features" like SCMS, that only serve to annoy musicians, Linux users, and anyone else who wants to make legitimate backup copies or mixes of the media that they've purchased, while not doing anything to stop the serious pirates, who ALWAYS find a way to bypass it. Remember the on-disk copy protection on those 8-bit (C64, Apple ][, etc.) computer games some of us used to play in the 80's and how they banged up the disk drive head? Remember how easy it was to get cracked versions of any of those games? Remember how it sucked if the floppy disk went bad and you didn't have a backup copy? Well, the big companies still haven't figured it out.. Anyway, this doesn't really affect most of us. If 99% of people can't tell the difference between MD and CD, or MP3 and CD, then won't 99.99% of people not be able to tell the difference between CD and anything better? Why are they bothering? Right now Sony's selling their competing format, Super Audio CD, and the only player I've seen costs $3500 from Crutchfield! The only thing remotely interesting about DVD Audio to me is the multi-channel aspect (which Sony's SACD is theoretically capable of, but Sony hasn't shipped any players to support it). Since I was born in 1977 I never got to experience the wonders of "quadraphonic sound", but it's highly amusing to me that the home DVD phenomena seems to be making the idea of 4 or 5-channel discrete audio promised and not quite delivered in the 70's, a reality in the late 90's. While it makes sense for movies, will it make a real difference for music? We'll just have to wait and see.. The nice thing is that, once these companies slip, and their pathetic attempts at keeping control away from us, the consumers, fail, there's no turning back. DVD Video is cracked and they can't do anything about it because they won't dare start shipping new DVD's that don't play on the old players! Similarly, whatever happens with DVD Audio and SACD, record labels will have to keep shipping music on plain old CD that we can happily continue to copy to our MD's and MP3's.. But 20 (or even 10?) years from now, when the big companies get ready to roll out their new technologies, be very afraid, because they'll have learned from their mistakes of the past, and they'll have discovered even more annoying ways to screw us, the consumers, over. Ok, that's my political rant for the day. :) Here's a link to a good slashdot story covering the DVD audio situation: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/12/02/1246247mode=thread and one on the Linux DVD crack: http://slashdot.org/articles/99/11/14/0524254.shtml -Jake - To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
