Bazirker

What is Sitar? RATM!!!!! Hell yeah. One thing to point out concerning my above statement about about rap as an unintelligent form of music...while Zach raps, it's not so much the rap that you are referring to as being intelligent as the lyrics, and keep in mind that most forms of music have some kind of lyrics. Musically, Zach's rapping is not intelligent; it is just his highly intelligent lyrics "recited" over the music created by guitar prodigy Tom Morello (sp?) and the other band members. Although the way he raps does require some skill, I would venture to say that it takes a lot more skill to take an alto sax solo over the changes to Giant Steps than to rap ANYONE'S lyrics. I bet Morello has spent a hell of a lot more time practicing guitar than any rapper on the face of the planet Earth has spent rapping.

I was wrong, it's not that the album is copy protected... Any cd I made with my phillips stereo cd burner has SCMS stuff on it that prohibits me from digitally transferring it by making the above happen. Dammit. So I took my old cd-r's that I made using my stereo unit, recorded the tracks onto my laptop in wav format, burnt that to a cd, and now i can record those. Would I lose any audio quality doing that? I basically converted cda to wav back to cda using musicmatch jukebox to rip the tracks and nero to burn them.

Naw dude I understand exactly what the guys is saying, although i think it is a little silly...I define silence as absence of sound, and because I hear the loud hum of my g/f's computer right now, I wouldn't say I am experiencing silence. However, last night when i was babysitting and I finished getting the kids to bed, there was near perfect silence. I'm not sure it is as rare as some people might think...unless they live in the middle of a huge city or something, in which case there will never ever ever ever ever ever be silence there. So yes, you understood, and so did I, I just think it is a silly concept to record silence for people and send it in. My md probably wouldn't be able to pick up the sound of the computer next to me either and I'd get a recording that sounds like there is nothing plugged in to the md. i dunno, maybe I'm more used to silence than most...

Personally I don't think you should because some lens cleaners can damage your md.

I want to get a pair of earbuds that have the best mix of sound quality, comfort, and price. I have a pair of sony earbuds that were like $10 and I like them a lot except they are hurt my ears after awhile, the sound quality leaves something to be desired, and noise just gets right past them. I'd like to spend less than $50 for a pair of high quality in-ear type earbuds, but I've read a lot of mixed things about different brands. Any suggestions?

Cram it with walnuts...now that is a new one, I need to remember it. You guys are funny. Guest, have you ever lost something before and you just couldn't find it and then it was suddenly right in front of you? I've been to sites where I couldn't find something and then it was suddenly right there and I had just overlooked it. It's easy to do. Be nice.

True, although from personal experience most cd players with an optical out have a sophisticated enough laser to be able to read cd-rw's. This may not be true, but it's just what I have observed personally.

I think I know what you are talking about...I recently bought a radio shack digital format converter for $30 and haven't had any problems with it. One thing though...you said you have a Phillips shelf system...do you mean you have a stereo cd burner? I have a Phillips three-disc cd burner and I have discovered that any disc I burned with it can't be recorded on minidisc via digitial connection. It looks like it is recording normally, but then after the disc writes the TOC all hell breaks loose and I end up with 254 tracks and only the first minute or so of my recording. I had to convert all the cds I made with this burner to wav on my laptop and re-burn them. Major pain. It sounds like that isn't the equipment you have, but if that is the case, then beware.

OK, so PCM and S/PDIF are the formats while optical and coaxial are the transfer mediums. Gotcha. (Duh, I forgot all about coaxial being the transfer medium...I bought this radio shack digital converter that converts "PCM" to "optical," and this seemed odd to me as I am used to seeing coaxial to optical.) Thanks for the responses!

Wait and see what in print, that the outputs have dropped? It is in print. Go look at the specs of the new models. Although I generally support sony products (I have a vaio laptop, clie palm pilot, 3 sony md's, a sony receiver, sony portable cd player, etc), they do seem to be going down the tubes. It appears that they have recently started trying to have better specs for their products without quality and consistancy (i.e. netmd is NOT the drag-and-drop style recording it was originally advertised to be; output power has been traded for big battery life; and so on.) Poop on that man.

To preserve audio quality and money, I'd recommend cd-rw's; I've started doing that sort of thing all the time now and my cd-rw's are quickly becoming some of my best friends.

It's broken, otherwise I would.

Not really....sonicstage 1.5 is basically the same thing as openmg with a better interface and fewer bugs...so i recommend it over openmg. You can patch openmg and it makes the program less buggy; if you have the program I'll help you track down the link to the patches. There is a plugin for Realone player that allows netmd transfers, which some people prefer over openmg or sonicstage. I personally don't have any experience with realone yet. People are working on creating netmd programs, like win nmd. There still aren't any programs yet that can totally replace openmg and sonicstage...maybe time will fix this. Edit: and I forgot my favorite way, using simple burner and dino's nero image method. This is kinda a pain though because you have to use three different programs to make an md.

I agree entirely. It's sad when audio quality/volume is sacrificed for battery life specifications...

I've actually found that if you force yourself to listen to lp4, you can become somewhat desensitized to its low quality. This is useful only if you want to casually listen though, lp4 never stands up to active listening. lp4 is also nice if you are in a loud environment or are like me and have a crap car stereo that you can't tell the difference in audio quality in.

OK, so S/PDIF is a format while PCM and optical are transfer methods...right? btw, thanks for the response.

I used to be of the opinion of the first two posts on this page, but my opinion has shifted somewhat. Rap actually does take skill, although I think it takes far more skill to learn to play and instrument. While rap is relatively unintelligent and simple music, it is still a valid form of music. As for mp3, the quality of mp3 files has improved substantially from what it was originally. While IMHO LP2 kicks the hell out of 128 kbps mp3 and it would rock if atrac3 could easily replace mp3, it's not gonna happen and really doesn't need to. MP3 has improved enough now to where if you use a good encoder you can get good sounding files. Try lame, I uuse MMJB and it sounds pretty good to me.

I have a stereo cd burner and I record md to cd by using a cable that plugs into the headphones jack and splices the signal into stereo analog cables. It's a $4 cable, no big deal to buy. I plug the cable into my md's headphone jack and turn the volume up all the way (I don't have a line out) and plug the other end of the cable to my stereo's analog in. I play back the md while recording to cd-r with the cd burner.

How do you change the extension of unknown types? It isn't under options, and I might be blind but I can't find it under the preferences. I have winamp 2.81. Also, what is supposed to happen when you run that file path? It is the same on my comp as yours and it said it succeded...or something. If this works, you are the man. Is there anyway you can make a winamp plugin to do this operation automatically?

I can say that the atrac type r on my mz-n707 sounds better than the atrac3 stuff from my r700. I have yet to hear atrac type s...but note that atrac type-s is the same thing as atrac type r but the player just has as better dsp. so in other words, you'll have atrac type R encoding and atrac type S decoding...anyone can confirm? I think that's how it works...

well, unless you know how to readjust stuff using the service mode...or, if your laser has physical damage to it, it might need to be replaced. Most likely the best way to fix your problem is to start tracking down the nearest sharp repair shop.

Please don't double post...

To add my opinion to Ramblin' Man's ramblings (heh heh), I'd say that while LP4 is wwwwwwwwwaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy off from sp quality, lp2 ain't bad. Unless you want to use lp2 for listening to classical or other advanced music, I'd say you're likely to never have a problem with it. If you don't mind 160 kbps mp3, you'll be fine with lp2.

I love you guys. Where did you guys learn to do this stuff, college? I'm going to be a first year at UVa next year, so are there any classes I can take to learn about the stuff you guys are doing? Know any good programming for dummies books or anything like that? I'd love to help you guys out if I knew how.

Oh. Well that is very cool!