NickyJay

Minidiscs will never die trust me. I don't know why you guys are worried. Nothing can replace them so demand will always be there. Just continue spinnin' those discs and enjoying the superior sound quality. Life's too short to be constantly worried.

Minidiscs were designed to be a standalone media. The magneto-optical technology, the recording and editing, the absolute focus on sound quality....none of this required any interaction with the computer. That was the original essence of MD. Sony in later years did try to make the downloading process to minidiscs easier through Sonicstage and Simpleburner. But it was apparent right away that it was just not possible to fully integrate the technology of minidiscs with the developments on the PC/Mac side. So that was that. MD is now a niche market which will continue to exist but only for professionals and die-hard fans. If you need to enjoy iTunes you should just buy the most expensive audio equipment you can afford and feed it the output from your computer. MD was never designed for that in my opinion (though minidisc units admittedly do have very good DACs on board). Perhaps one day a new format will emerge that can fulfill all these requirements. But I can't see it happening anytime soon.

Buy a new one. The repair would cost a fortune anyway. The Sony player is superior to all your other MP3 players. I feel your loss at this time. Hopefully you can quickly buy another Sony player and get back to listening to high quality music as quickly as possible. .

Re-record all your music in Atrac to enjoy superior sound quality over MP3. Sonicstage was optimized to meet this objective from day one.

That's Sony's policy of regional differences for you. You're right there the 710 is a UK model. I don't care much for MP3, which was crippled for the usual reasons. The way I think about it though is that Sony may have deliberately tried to boost the quality of Atrac on these units Oddly enough I don't listen to portables anymore that much. Mostly it's decks and hi-fis. When I start my new job that may soon be changing. I have first and second generation Hi-MDs in the pipeline. But I will also keep the R37 close (I have two new ones stored because they are just so friggin' awesome).

For Hi-MD I rate the MZ-RH710. Very good full sound indeed. The best sound I have ever heard on any MD unit though has to be the MZ-R37. It took two batteries and had all metal casing. The sound of the in-built amplifier to my ears is better than a CD player playing uncompressed audio. Then again I recorded through the analogue input thereby making full use of the superior A/D converters.

Try ebay. I'm pretty sure you can find MD stuff selling for peanuts. Your old model can easily be had for maybe $10 plus whatever for postage. Hi-MD is a bit more. For new units there is only the MZ-RH1 which will set you back $300 or somewhere in the region. Good luck.

Does anybody here still use Atrac CDs? What results are you guys getting? Are there any issues I need to know about? Thanks

1. There is no audio gap on any Sony professional equipment (including our beloved minidisc recorders). 2. Can't say what the exact size of each folder is, but it should be more than sufficient to meet your needs. Like I said, it is simply the best recorder out there at the moment. Stick with Sony you will do no wrong.

Sony is known for their support of the highest standards of audio quality with their hardware. This is a top of the range recorder, make no mistake it easily beats the other offerings. You won't be disappointed when you buy Sony, whether it is audio gaps or any other issue. It never ceases to amaze me to this day the quality that this company is capable of.

Great work. Hopefully the student will be working late nights on it (like most of them do!).

Ah was it the 'legato link' conversion? I remember these Pioneer decks now. Now I understand why they go for such high prices on ebay.

Supposedly the Linux crew are working on a project to allow open source of Atrac on the PC. Though they are proceeding at a snail's pace given their limited resources and the extremely difficult reverse engineering obstacles, it is possible that a solution may be on the horizon. I'd personally give up using Sonicstage and Atrac on the PC until these Linux guys finally solve the issue. It's simply not worth the hassle. There's nothing more frustrating when a product doesn't work after you have invested in it.

I read somewhere that units made by non-Sony companies will work poorly when played back on Sony machines and vice versa. Some of the manufacturers like Sharp and Panasonic stated that they used different Atrac chips based on their own algorithms and technologies. I think this is why Sharp units sound better to some people. Who knows, your Grundig may also use its own unique Atrac encoder/decoder.