Of course, this biggest reason, as has been mentioned, is that the ATRAC in the MD prevents the MD from playing back a bit-accurate copy of what was recorded. But I'm assuming that modern ATRAC algorithms are fairly good. I don't think one can make that assumption on a wholesale basis, for example, about a sound card that truncates a 20-bit signal to 16-bits. (The proper way to shorten word length is to apply dither *before* truncation.) ----------------------------------------------------------------- To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]