MDietrich

In fact, I don´t understand everything But I´ll try to answer. My methodology involves RMAA. It´s a little, free program where I can create measurement signals, pass them through the device I want to test and then let the program analyze the output. It can be used for almost anything. I use it only so that what I hear is confirmed (or not) by the measurements. The rest (how I recorded those signals and got them back to the PC) was explained in the first post. When you say you compared the JB980 to your portable machines, do you mean that you connected all of them with their RCA output? Because that´s not what punkrockaddict and I did. We kept any signal digital all the time. We didn´t want to know how some MD recorder is sounding, we wanted to know if the ATRAC differs. If I might chime in... I noticed that the seller doesn´t write anything about recording, he only mentions working playback. I can´t help it, but I find this suspicious. And admittedly, the deck looks pretty beaten.

Both MD recorders are able to play your old MiniDiscs, yes. I don´t know if one is better than the other... but I´d assume that the MZ-NF 810 would be the model better suited for analogue playback. Please note that I just assume and don´t know. Uploading them via USB is impossible (not even the MZ-N 420 can do that), you indeed have to use an RCA cable connected to the line-in of your PCs soundcard. You can record your MDs that way as one huge piece of music that you edit later. To me, that´d be the most convenient method. But I don´t know, maybe others have better ideas. Guys?

More than 10 years ago I owned the MDS-JE530, I could deal with it without using the remote. It´s not very convenient, you have to use the 'Menu'-button and the jog dial a lot. But it works. Yes, even simple sine waves are a challenge for the ATRAC codec when it comes to treble frequencies. Since we can´t hear those frequencies very well, ATRAC takes away more bits there, leaving only quantization noise which then looks strange. And titling? Nothing can beat a NetMD recorder. I always title using NetMD. Record a disc with any recorder, then title it using NetMD. Very comfortable.

Yeah, I´ve read the guide. But I´m not very good at soldering so I´m a bit afraid to do it

Well, the cheapest one on eBay that also has an optical output (important to me) would be the MDS-JE 530. The JE 640 is still quite expensive (don´t really know why)... and the QS-models are of course way too expensive considering their age. I won´t even mention the ES-models...

HA! That´s the most important question. And you´re the first to ask... I thought "When is someone discovering that I didn´t answered this question?" Congratulations! Well, the answer is that I don´t know. I´m watching several MD decks on eBay right now in the hope of getting one so that I can try myself. If I´m extrapolating from the measurements, recording with a stationary recorder might help dynamics (because non-linear phase errors like the ones coming from the portables create transient problems -> dynamic impairment). There also might be less artifacts to be observed, but that I don´t know.

No, thank you! Yes, it doesn´t matter if you use the power adapter for the portables, the DSP Type-R equipped models all have this performance. For the measurements above they were all powered by their adapter and not by the battery.

Introduction First of all, a HUGE thanks to member punkrockaddict, without him this post wouldn´t have been possible. Attention: the following post will be tech-heavy, so if you don´t know how to read graphs or don´t have time to read explanations, skip it until you have the time. Should you consider yourself tech-illiterate, don´t despair. I will try to make all of this easy to read and understand. If you have some questions, please don´t hesitate and ask. It´s a simple as that: there are no dumb questions. If you have a question it just means that I sucked at explaining. Have you ever seen following sentences in the manual of portable Type-R equipped recorders: "Type-R" is a high-level Sony-specification used in the Digital Signal Processor (DSP), which is heart of the MiniDisc sound. This technology gives the MiniDisc recorder twice the signal processing capability as previous MiniDisc Walkman models, producing a sound quality close to that of MiniDisc decks." (Sony MZ-R 909 manual, page 30) I´ve underlined the important part. It suggests that stationary MD decks have a higher encoding quality compared to portable devices. Since I don´t own an MD deck I could never test this myself. But then user Sony_Fan asked the same question in the thread The result was that punkrockaddict offered to record a testsignal I´ve sent him via email to his MDS-JB930. His MD arrived today and I´ve compared its results to two of my portable MD recorders. But before I start with measurements I´d like to offer an explanation for possible differences between stationary ATRAC and portable ATRAC. As you all know, ATRAC was developed so that portable MD recorders could work with it without drawing too much power from the battery. You see, higher encoding quality = higher processing power = higher power demands. A battery that is drained fast on a portable unit isn´t very convenient and so I thought that Sony might have compromised encoding quality to conserve power. On stationary decks with their unlimited power supply they could allow the ATRAC encoder to go with full force, making no compromises. All of this is perfectly possible since ATRAC is an asymmetrical codec. It needs much power during encoding, but only a small fraction when decoding. This means that it´s perfectly possible for a portable recorder to have a worse encoding quality than a stationary decks, even when both are using the same ATRAC version. BTW, all the graphs, explanations and measurements have nothing to do with the A/D or D/A-converters. This post isn´t written to show how good or bad the respective MD units sound on their analogue outputs. Measurements Test equipment: Sony MDS-JB930QS (punkrockaddict) Sony MZ-R 909 (my own) Sony MZ-N 510 (my own) Testsignal: 32 bit floating point, 44.1 kHz, generated by RMAA Signalflow to MD: playback with foobar2000, delivered with digital S/PDIF-cables to the respective MD recorders. Signalflow to PC: playback with Kenwood DP-5090, deliverd with digital S/PDIF-cables to the X-Fi HD USB. Resulting signal: full 24 bit 44.1 kHz RMAA generated table, showing differences between the three recorders MDS-JB930QS ATRAC Type-R performance with RMAA quality assessments MZ-R 909 ATRAC Type-R performance with RMAA quality assessments You can see, that both units measure well considering that they use an ancient lossy codec. However, in some parts the home deck measures even better. Much better in fact. Let´s have a look at some detailed graphs: Dynamic range, MDS-JB930QS Dynamic range, MZ-R 909 Both recorders record and transmit a true 24 bit signal. But as you can see on the graph depicting the MDS-JB930QS, the stationary ATRAC IC is way superior at keeping quantization noise at bay (which looks like a higher noisefloor on the MZ-R909 graph). Total harmonic distortions, MDS-JB930QS Total harmonic distortions, MZ-R 909 The graphs showing the total harmonic distortions may not look like much. But you can still see that the MDS-JB930 is better a supressing distortions. Distortions are in this case errors caused by the compression. Phase response, MDS-JB930QS Phase response, MZ-R 909 Now the phase response is especially interesting. Every MD recorder I´ve measured until today (with the exception of a Sharp-unit) has shown the phase response you can see on the MZ-R909 derived graph. Portable ATRAC version introduce a phase error to the signal. What exactly is the phase response? Well, have you ever connected a loudspeaker wrong to your amplifier (red connector on the speaker connected to the black connector on the amp)? And have you then wondered about some very strange sound? That is a classical phase error. In that common case you have fully inverted the phase which means that the loudspeaker membranes will be pulled instead of pushed. Not so easy are the phase errors you can see above. You see, the MZ-R 909 ATRAC inverts the phase at high frequencies only. It means that membranes will be pulled only at high frequencies; lower frequencies will not. Science is still not very clear about the audibility of phase errors, I however believe that they are responsible for sonic differences between different units. Portable ATRAC introduces phase errors that aren´t supposed to be there, stationary ATRAC does not. Conclusion It´s simple: Stationary MD decks record with better quality than portable MD recorders, even if they are equipped with the same ATRAC version. Reasons are explained above. For everyone owning a stationary Type-R deck... consider yourself lucky, for you have the best possible ATRAC quality. For me... crap... it means I have to get myself a deck! P.S.: I cannot repeat this with any recorder equipped with ATRAC 4.0/4.5. The Kenwood DP-5090 and Sony MZ-R 30/50/55/37 all have exactly the same ATRAC performance. This means, Sony introduced the intentionally compromised, portable ATRAC IC with ATRAC DSP Type-R.

I don´t like the sound of vinyl for numerous reasons. I´ve always got the feeling that it doesn´t give me the truth, but an euphonically beautified version of it, that includes cracks, pops, clicks, noise, yadda, yadda. An orchestra is unbearable for me on vinyl. I grew up with vinyl (I still own every single one of my LPs... oh, and 45 rpm singles: how I loved them) and over the years I´ve even bought some more recent editions when they contained some nifty, little, musical extra. Sometimes I bought it for the sleeve design only... only vinyl has covers as huge as they come. I own the HIStory album from Michael Jackson on vinyl (it´s super-rare nowadays; strange) and while the CD beats it easily soundwise, the gigantic cover design has its own merits. The booklet has turned into a heavy book! But even though I grew up with vinyl and tape I still welcomed the CD. It has given me so much more fun... well, in recent years it sucked because of the material that has been released on it. But that hasn´t anything to do with the medium itself. For example, I own 'Rock Dust Light Star' & 'Hard Candy' on vinyl... and they sound as bad as their respective CDs. But the 'Hard Candy' album looks cool... like candy

No, the things compared are what´s stated in the OP. Meaning: I compare a standard ATRAC encoding (made with ATRAC 4.0) to an ATRAC encoding where the to-be-encoded files had my 15.5 kHz cutoff (also made using ATRAC 4.0).

Huh? I can still see them. Here´s the whole set: https://soundcloud.com/marlenes-musings/sets/atrac-tweaks Here are the individual tracks: Original ATRAC: https://soundcloud.com/marlenes-musings/atrac-4-0-encoded-standard?in=marlenes-musings/sets/atrac-tweaks ATRAC 15.5 kHz cutoff: https://soundcloud.com/marlenes-musings/atrac-4-0-encoded-encoded-with?in=marlenes-musings/sets/atrac-tweaks

Well, your mind may be simple or not. It doesn´t matter anyway since you got so many things right. MP3 doesn´t differ so much from ATRAC, as well as MP3 (320kBit/s) doesn´t differ so much from FLAC. It´s indeed the truth that the differences between those codecs are so small that 95-99% won´t ever hear them. Even the differences between 24/96 and 16/44.1 are so miniscule that they´ll be inaudible to most people around. I mean, I swear by 24/96, but only because I WANT this miniscule difference and because I have the time to pursue it. This is something that audiophiles will never understand, I fear.

Yes, the scene for vinyl rips is quite big, he´s right about that. And it´s true, they all love it, especially the very young... like 16 or 20. But it doesn´t make me feel old, it just makes me feel less 'hip'. I don´t need different media to feel old, a view at myself in the mirror suffices Why do they listen to vinyl anyway? Maybe because it´s cool, maybe because it´s riddled with flaws (like humans are), maybe it´s because you can see exactly how it works, maybe it´s because LPs are so big, black... with such a huge sleeve design. Another important reason might be that they didn´t grow up using real media. They used 'disembodied' media only (on HDD, SD, MemoryStick, whatever).

I did this once. And decided to abandon vinyl once and forever But not because of recording to MD of course. BTW, did you record it with SP? Or with NetMD ATRAC3Plus? Because both indeed do have compression. If you used one of them you essentially transcoded them from one lossy format to another.

Ooooh, very careful here. FLAC isn´t 24/96 or something else, it´s just a container for PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) and this PCM is the essential life-blood of every digital audio system. Containers (in the literal sense) containing (hence the name) these PCM-data are these: .WAV .ALAC .FLAC .WAVPACK .WMA Lossless .APE All of these formats contain the same data, their only difference is the company / people who developed them and how the data is packed / organized within the container. These are the pure lossless codecs people always talk about. They come in 16/32, 16/44.1, 16/48, 24/44.1, 24/48, 24/88.2, 24/96, 24/192 etc. Bitdepth and samplerate doesn´t matter to these codecs/containers, they encode/store everything they can. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ATRAC, MP3, AAC are completely different. Completely. The PCM-data above is lossless (meaning: no loss of information). ATRAC, MP3, AAC and whatnot are lossy (meaning: loss of information). The PCM-data from above is analyzed by these codecs: What parts of the data can be removed without anybody noticing it? They all do this to save space by fooling our ear / brain. Some lossy codecs are better than others. The best one is - there is no doubt about it - AAC (or MP4). Not one other codec comes close, our beloved ATRAC is far away from being a modern, efficient and flexible codec. There was a time when it was safe to count on ATRAC to save the day. That was more than 10 years ago. That´s a long time for audio-related development. In 2013, ATRAC doesn´t stand a chance against MP3 or AAC. And the reason SonicStage won´t accept FLAC is because Sony didn´t want it to. They wanted the customers to use their own ATRAC format (more royalities for Sony in case some other manufacturer should pick up the codec; no one did, Sony failed). And yes, at the highest bit rate MP3 sounds undistinguishable to FLAC, WAV, APE (in short:lossless). I hope you´re not mad at me - I had to explain codecs and such because 24/96 has absolutely nothing to do with the codec. Really nothing. If anyone tells you that, he/she´s lying or incredibly dumb. And IMO this is something that needs to be understood.

Well, I assume that pre-recorded MDs prior to 1995/1996 sound worse than their CD counterparts. After 1996, well I haven´t heard a difference between pre-recorded MD and CD. Which means: the ATRAC encoder used for pre-recorded MDs is way better than the one used in recorders anyone was able to buy. One indication is that later pre-recorded have a frequency response of (max.) 19 kHz. This never changes, it always stays at 19 kHz. With MDs recorded on stationary/portable recorders this limit fluctuates depending on the music. Sometimes it ends at 15.5 kHz, sometimes at 17 kHz, sometimes at 20 kHz, and after that it´s at for example 15.5 kHz again. This goes on and on until the music ends. That´s why this thread exists in the first place: those frequencies pose some problems for our recorders, so I came up with the idea to remove them.

Oh, that´s actually pretty easy: pre-recorded. Except very old pre-recorded MDs. Those have a frequency response up to exactly 15.5 kHz, beyond that point there´s nothing (except quantization noise). Then there are mastering differences. Early albums have been mastered differently. One example: 'Love Deluxe' by Sade. The CD has way more bass and treble, the MD sounds boring in comparison. But this isn´t the fault of the pre-recorded MD, it´s just a different master (the difference between pre-recorded MD and CD suspiciously looks like a simple EQ). Another album would be 'Emotions' by Mariah Carey. The MD sounds - again - boring while the CD sounds more crisp. But the more recent pre-recorded MDs (sometimes around 1995/1996) the better they sound. I have several albums from 1997, 1998, 1999 and 2000 that sound exactly like their CD counterparts. This cannot be topped by recording the CDs to MD.

It would... but the JE440 lacks a digital output if I´m not mistaken.

Ah, now I understand. Yes, I´d like to know that too. In order to know I need to perform some measurements. I lack a Type-R deck so punkrockaddict was so nice and offered to help me out. Thing is, I need to do this with a 24 bit signal, any other signal will simply hide any improvements, a possible advantage will never reveal itself with 16 bit. So, to find out the best machine for 16 bit or 24 bit I need to measure a 24 bit recording. But 24 or 16 bit... you do not need to concern yourself with that difference. The results will be posted here and I´ll draw a conclusion that should be helpful to everyone.

Can I say it? I love you! Just kidding. But I AM extremely thankful that you have offered this. And on the JB930QS of all things - gorgeous. BTW, a 24/48 file is not the best thing to use for your MD recorders. Feeding them 24/44.1 is the better idea. Reason: they need to resample these 48 kHz files to 44.1 before it can be recorded to the disc (the MD cannot work with anything else). While the resamplers used for the MD recorders were very good all those years ago they aren´t so good in 2013. Most software resampler people can use for the PC offer a quality way higher (right now thinking about the free SoX plugin for foobar2000).

You cannot encode a 24 bit signal using that method. CD only accepts 16 bit. And any possible improvement of stationary decks will be eaten up by the quantization noise caused by those 16 bits.

Did I come along as condescending? I´m sorry, this happens on occasion. I swear, I´ve become that horrible old woman I used to run away from at college. As for Neil Young... it´s sad that he thinks he might make people aware through means like these. Another reason could be of course that he wants to make a few more bucks but I can´t help it that I have a hard time believing it. He seemed too passionate about this. Well, it´ll be released no sooner than 2014, that leaves enough time to look at the things Sony might do and to find out if they´re worthwhile.

The format Sony wants to introduce is nothing new. It´s called DSD and was introduced with the SACD thirteen years ago. The format Neil Young wants to sell is different. It´s high definition as well but uses a different (lossless -> no lossy compression) encoding scheme, probably with included Digital Rights Management so that it can´t be copied. The latter is suggested by the proprietary player Young wants to sell alongside it. Really, really stupid and I hope that he fails badly. Both are just an attempt to cash-in at the growing HiRes download market. Several HiRes players have already been released and right now DSD is all the rage within audiophile circles. Unnecessary so since it doesn´t offer any actual benefit. These DSD files Sony wants to 'introduce' have been released for the first time as a pure downloadable format in 2008 by some Swedish company, they have been gaining attention slowly but steadily. Even free software like foobar2000 can decode them with high quality. Apart from that, DSD isn´t compatible with older software/hardware. There aren´t many portable players around able to play them back... right now only two pop into my mind. Apparently, Sony wants to change that. But CD players? SACD players? BluRay players? Forget it. All of this has nothing to do with MiniDisc or ATRAC.

That is indeed a very good question. I´ve asked this several times now (not necessarily here at this forum) but no one has yet answered me. I´d prefer some measurements but people generally don´t seem to care. I´d love to know too. There are many guys with a DSP Type-R home deck around, I could send one of them a testfile which would need to be played back in 24 Bit by the optical output of a PC and recorded by the optical input of the Type-R-equipped MD home recorder. The disc with the testfile then needs to be played back by the MD home recorder and recorded digitally by the PC - again in 24/44.1. The result would need to be sent to me for analyzing. BTW, I do NOT refer to the quality of DACs, MDs or anything else. This is just about possible encoding differences between portable and stationary recorders. Reason: several Sony manuals seem to suggest that stationary MD recorders have a superior encoding quality.

You know, I´ve always thought of the MD as being a true HiRes device. By all accounts it indeed is exactly that... but regarding the abilities of 24/96 I´d call it 'HiRes-Lite'. When the MD is 24/44.1 and HiRes-Lite, MP3 or AAC are the same. Oh, no one knew? Well, they are. They encode - just like MD - with real floating point, allowing theoretically unlimited bit-depth. The key is in the decoding, software players decode MP3 and AAC with 32bit floating point, with many hardware players it´s more often than not unclear. Which means that possible, usable resolutions with MP3/AAC are 24/48 (if one uses NeroAAC even 24/96), with OGG 24/96.