Jump to content

SileEeles

Members
  • Posts

    138
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    2

Everything posted by SileEeles

  1. ASIO is something I came across before when experimenting with latency with my Mixer (which is a USBAudio Device). For various reasons I chose not to use it, but it seemed to work fine. Ultimatley I find myself wondering if this DFX11 is worth getting rid of all together? It says it dramatically improves sound quality, but that in itself is virtually redundant with computer hardware these days. And also, you can't make something better than it is, it doesn't work like that. You could apply various EQ and effects and maybe get away with a passable result, but ... If you're listening to "24bit-96kHz Flac audio files" do you really need this DFX program? I can't speak for the programs you use (or have tested), since I stick strictly to Windows Media Play (I love it, and with a codec pack it plays damn near everything I chuck at it), but if its a particular setting you are after, many of these applications will allow you to set your own preference.
  2. I've seen a few of these around, various shapes and sizes, some of them crop up on eBay, but I never quite understood the point of them. These days, most computers have HD Audio built in, digital coaxial or optical out (certainly all three in my case). I wouldn't like to say that the Line Out is better than anything else. Chances are a dedicated sound card will be better. The only USB sound device I use is my 302 Mixer, but that is mostly used as input to the PC. Output comes straight from the Line Out to my Hi-Fi, and minidisc stuff is done (for the moment at least) via the optical output.
  3. Oddly enough I've just discovered I can change it to 44.1kHz, but I need to do so via the Windows control panel as oposed to the software one that was provided for my particular sound card, and which I was previously using. "Via HD Audio Deck" only provides me with 48/96kHz where as Windows lets me pick from 44.1 to 96kHz in either 16 or 24bit
  4. No, and this is what I was saying, im not fussed by it, it works so.
  5. It is my Hi-Fi I'm poor enough that expensive amplifiers are out of my budget but that a decent CD-System is still quite expensive but affordable. It has an Aux-In which is all that mattered at the time, which lets me plug my various phono components into it. I have a 3-way selector thing which is hidden out of view so I can switch between the PC, MiniDisc and ... I think the other one is empty. I can imagine a Hi-Fi like that is an audiophiles nightmare but I am not an audiophile, I mean to a certain extent I like my music to sound good, and to my ears it does It has the added benefit of a USB port on it, so its a convenient phone charger in my case but it allows you to record from pretty much any source to USB, and also supports playback from most USB sources. It has a 5 Channel Mixer sat next to it which I used to record guitar input / condenser mic input and it plugs into my PC via USB (to my DAW ), I just couldnt find anywhere else to put it, so it sits on my MD Deck. It does mention "Auto DJ" on one of the buttons, which is (according to the manual) a feature that "fades tracks together" but its not a feature I will ever use. It is a step down from my previous system, that was an Aiwa NSX-999MkII, but ... It was old, nothing worked, generated quite a lot of heat and ... it was just time to replace it.
  6. Hi all If you've read my last thread (or my very first one at least) you know know that I have amassed quite a lot of MiniDisc equipment. I say a lot ... is probably quite a small collection compared to what some of you own Anyway, I've changed quite a lot in terms of how I record, what I use and how I do it, etc. I now record mostly via optical cable to my deck, MDS-JE440. Intially, I was optical recording to my MD-MT80 Portable, but MDietrich mentioned that "owning a stationary Type-R deck... consider yourself lucky, for you have the best possible ATRAC quality" so I figured I might as well just used that. Before that I was using NetMD, and just recording discs via that. What stopped me is the fact that I tend to use MiniDiscs to house an artists personal best of, if that makes sense. My favorite songs covering many albums. A few of these albums have places where gapless is required and NetMD (or at least SonicStage) doesn't do this. The other thing was, when I was compiling for a disc (a band called The Birthday Massacre), I noticed that a lot of the songs have an atmospheric noise coming off of the end of the song, going into the next one. When I initially burned the disc via NetMD, it sounded like a mess and just ended up irritating me somewhat, so I placed all of the songs into a DAW I use, Mixcraft, and blended them together that way so it was gapless, and really quite good, I was very pleased with myself. I burned it as a whole track (over and hour long or so) via optical, and then separated them later. It is a process I've since used on a few discs, I quite enjoy doing it this way. The only thing I use NetMD for at the moment is titling tracks. Sod doing that letter by letter. I imagine the process I use will change again in future, it always does. I'm forever changing things. I use the optical out on my PC, which is set to 24bit/48kHz. I know that MiniDiscs will just bring it down to 44.1kHz but I can't change it. The control panel only gives me two options, 48kHz and 96kHz and either one of those can be set to 16 or 24bit, ultimatley I'm not fussed about it. I am curious what version of ATRAC the MD-MT80 has. My deck states ATRAC DSP Type-R/ATRAC3 and both NetMD units state Type-S but from what little I can gather Type-S improves ... something to do with LP2/4. Oh, I forgot. I also print my own labels now. Nothing fancy, just labels for the cases that give track listing, label for the face of this disc and the spine/bottom/whatever you want to call it. Part of the reason I would buy sealed discs so often was the labels they came with, but I was constantly changing discs and wasting them. And then my brain went "I wonder if they sell A4 sticker paper?" Turns out they do You can get just about anything in this day and age.
  7. Any kind of music player is important to me, always has been. As far as portability goes, the guy with the silly amount of tablets and phone sounds ridiculous. How much do you need, and ultimately they all do the same bloody thing. Same reason I won't get a tablet. If I do, it will be Android, and my phone already runs that/does everything. Pointless. As far as a home set-up goes, I will ALWAYS have some kind of hi-fi system. It is non-negotiable lol. I use my computer 80% of a day perhaps, and I watch videos, music, and so on. Not doing any of that out of silly little computer speakers. I like a full sound, like you get from a decent hi-fi, so that's what I use. I recently bought a new one (hi-fi), and switched to smaller speakers than I previously had, so I've been getting used to having a tad less on the bass front, but still a clear full sound. As an experiment I added two extra speakers but "out of phase" which adds a ... Not really sure how to explain it, but I find that it gives off a kind of faux surround sound, and also enhances things that you might not notice or are more hidden by louder parts of the music, etc. I will always have a hi-fi, a home stereo, music center, whatever you want to call it, it will always have one.
  8. Indeed it does. It may be something I fit in future but as of right now it is unnecessary.
  9. I also think it depends on the MD device itself. My computer will output 96kHz optical signal (optical out on the motherboard, not any external device), but my Sharp MD-MT80 will register "no signal" until you switch it to 48kHz, and the same also goes for my Sony MZ-N710. Both work with 24bit 48kHz, but not 96kHz.
  10. There's a subtle difference, at least from what I can tell. I'm not any kind of audiophile or someone who understands the specifics of encoding music, I have trouble distinguishing the difference between 192kbps MP3 and 320kbps, but then I don't listen for the differences, I just listen to the music haha. As long as it sounds good to me I'm happy.
  11. From what I've heard personally (my hearing probably isn't that brilliant since I listen to a lot of loud music) LP4 is acceptable. There are instances where artifacts are audible, but I only ever noticed them with earphones on/in. Through a HiFi makes no difference to me, however there is a noticeable difference in clarity to me. LP2 and SP have more of a clearer high end, but this is just what I observe.
  12. Goodmans did Also that unit was another one I had looked at. They are a brand name in the UK, but I cannot speak for elsewhere. They have come up from time to time in the past, I don't know if they still exist. The last Goodmans product I came across was probably a freeview box.
  13. Might sound silly, but have you tried a new USB cable?
  14. Back when I had very little blanks or discs in general, it was something I preferred, indeed the reason I chose my first unit was the fact that it came with a few discs. Now I have more than I know what to do with, but even now I'd go for a player that includes discs over one that doesn't, unless I'm after a very specific thing. I've come across what you talk about however. There was an eBay item I was interested in, a Goodmans GMD-16RB. It came with a few discs and I think it was listed for spare parts since the seller couldn't test it properly (he said he thinks the discs are blank), but not a lot of other information was given. If you don't realise that it is a player ONLY, it really doesn't help. I left it, but I'm still interested in the GMD-16RB, and if it comes with discs, awesome, if not, not a big loss. Sealed discs are sometimes hard to find for a decent price, and someone getting rid of theirs is alright by me, even if you don't know the condition they come in. They could be handing you some pretty cool discs, as I experienced recently.
  15. I've been using it non-stop because it just sounds so much better than the two NetMD Sony ones I have. It's lack of LP honestly doesn't bother me at this point. I used to do LP2 initially because my collection of discs was small and I could fit more on that way, but since then I've got more discs than I know what to do with, so all my albums are now SP, either via NetMD or Optical. And I'm fairly certain my one originally came from Argos too, the box has what looks suspiciously like a catalog number on it.
  16. I've recently started using Optical for recording purposes. My computer (which is custom built) has an optical out on the motherboard, so its probably nothing fantastic, but it works fine. Although at first it wouldn't work. Then I changed the output from 96k to 48k (which is the lowest setting it gives me) and all was well. I keep worrying about this "jitter" people seem to mention, though. Is it really that much of a problem, or is it redundant these days; the technology is much better than it was etc? I'm also not using a "decent" or "expensive" optical cable, it literally cost me a pound or so on Amazon. People seem to be torn as to whether the quality of the cable actually makes a difference, ultimately I wasn't too concerned. If anything I wanted to make sure optical from the PC was something I could do and if needs be, I'll get a better cable.
  17. I have acquired a few things in recent days from eBay, so I thought I would update those here First one was ANOTHER Sharp MD-MT80 that I bid on ages ago and forgot about, getting one from Jim in the meantime, and then I won that auction. It is in an acceptable condition, a few marks here and there, but still works perfectly. It also came with a bunch of discs. Now I have more TDK MD-RXG's than I know what to do with. They don't have cases though unfortunately: Also from the same auction came this: Which again, has no case, but it does look fancy. Another item I purchased was a MiniDisc stand. Houses 30 discs but there is actually room for a few more at the top With that stand came a few generic Sony discs, and one that immediately grabbed my attention: which has been used as a home to Marilyn Manson since it was something I kept meaning to burn. That about covers it I guess.
  18. If you read the first post of this thread I mentioned that the very first unit I owned back in 2003/2004 was a Sharp MD-MT80. Thanks to Jim, I now own one again It sounds brilliant. Gives a much better sound than either of my NetMD devices do (MZ-N510/MZ-N710) and that's with the same headphones on any of them. Plays all of my discs fine, other than MDLP ones since it doesn't support them, but I did notice the the display has LP2 and LP4 on it So perhaps it is just a generic display that they use multiple devices, I'm not familiar with other Sharp units so I wouldn't know for sure. I also received an optical cable today so I might get some recordings done with that. It records fine, but doesn't play nice with Maxell discs. Such is life I guess, I managed to escape problems with them up until this point, but I won't stop using them, that's for sure. Both NetMD units work with them as does my deck. The Sharp just gives you Er-MD41 and then a blank disc when it tries to write TOC but other discs work perfectly, and I didn't plan on using it much for recording anyway, so its no loss to me.
  19. As far as the check in-check out thing goes, I believe it still exists. I am unable to delete tracks from discs that were transferred via NetMD but my Deck will delete things regardless of how the discs were created.
  20. See, for someone like me, the information that you say the MZ-N1 gives you during transfer would be very interesting to me. Of the both of my devices, neither of them give much information other than "PC->->MD" and whilst a track is actually transferring the display doesn't really do much of anything, or at least anything interesting.
  21. My thoughts were since the 64-bit driver I was using was newer (I think the one you supplied) then this might have something to do with the faster transfer, but without knowing what the speeds would be on a USB 1.1 connection or with the 32-bit drivers, I don't really have anything to compare to. The device tested was my N710 which requires the battery, the USB alone does nothing, and the same goes for my N510. I am slowly starting to move away from NetMD in certain instances, certainly where gapless playback is required, but I have no issue with it. SP (which is not actually SP from what I understand) and/or LP2 still sound fine to me. LP4 is where I start to notice various audio artifacts and things that sound "watery" to me, so I don't use that.
  22. This was just something I noticed during various messings about and I thought it was worth sharing. I have no idea if it has been mentioned before. It concerns the transfer rates of NetMD. I don't know if minidisc.org is the most up to date with its information but it states: "SP mode audio at 1.6x is 2.25Mbps (i.e. 1411.2kbps*1.6)" However, I think this is incorrect. It does also go on to say "perhaps driver or interface problems that restrict NetMD USB transfers to roughly 2.5Mbps really are limiting the speed of SP mode transfers" and says that USB 2.0 could help but so would fixing whatever the USB 1.1 problem is. I couldn't tell you if this has been fixed, but just from what I've noticed, I don't think the 1.6x is right. When you cue a song to play at 1.6x and start it at the same time as an SP NetMD transfer begins, the transfer is over well before the song is. I also noticed that SonicStage transfers finish at 95%. Once there, it will do one of two things: If you are transferring using battery power, it will stop and write TOC information before continuing with the next song. You can hear this happening on the device itself, since the whole laser/recording aperture is quite audible when going back and forth. If you are transferring with the power supply, it will simply finish at 95% and then continue with the next song. The TOC information is written after everything else is finished. Again the noise from the device confirms this, the laser isn't going back and forth between songs, it is just a continuous process until the end. So with that in mind, I figured I would speed up the music a tad to. 2.0x. I started the music at the same time as the transfer started and it was certainly a lot closer, but the music finished a tiny bit ahead of the transfer, so I slowed the music down to 1.9x. Both finished at exactly the same time, and this was tested a few times with a few different songs of varying length. Which leads me to a few possibilities. The problem that was mentioned by minidisc.org (being restricted to a certain bandwidth) has been fixed, or the use of USB 2.0 actually helps. But then I could still be wrong, since I use a 64-bit driver. I don't know how much it differs over the 32-bit one that comes with SonicStage. Anywho, just thought they were observations worth sharing.
  23. Actually, from what a previous post has said, the "NH900 uses a standard A to Mini B USB cable" so the cable from your standard MD device should have worked fine, unless either that cable is faulty or the device is. That being said, A to Mini B cables are cheap as chips and can easily be found on Amazon, eBay, and many shops.
  24. Not so much many lines of display, but one that I have, the um ... "RM-MC38EL" which comes with at least one Hi-MD unit that I know of, the MZ-RH1. But isn't used by me at all, it sits in a box haha.
×
×
  • Create New...