Andy

While I don't have one, I can imagine that an advantage is that it is convenient for the same reason that a USB memory stick is more convenient than a CD - not everyone has a burner, and currently there are a few incompatible implementations of rewritable CDs (well, there were, if you are using only the latest stuff there may not be... not sure). Being able to use it on other computers (like ones at work and school) with read and write may be useful for some. I don't own one, I'm going to wait to see if they fix everything first and hang on to my MZ-R70

All that needs to be done is make it so that you can use your MD without using sonic stage. When I say "use", I mean, you can do *everything*. If you can: * Go into windows explorer, drag a music file across to the MD drive. * Change the filename of the file to change the title (possibly something more tricky in the case of ID3 tags) * Put the file in a folder to handle groups * Record something in any supported format * Copy the resultant file back to your hard drive just like any other file. Once all these things can be done, we can write a sonic stage program which doesn't suck. Right now, sonic stage is the weak link in the chain, and it is an un-necessary link too.

If MP3 support happens to minidisc ever (even if it is a later generation) and it is true mp3 (ie, if you store an MP3 file on the disc, then the player can find the file and play it back without you having to use sonic stage at all) then anyone will be able to make a music manager which doesn't suck and use it. Sonic stage wouldn't be such a pain if you didn't have to use it to use your minidisc, opening up minidisc to use mp3 would mean that it would be compatible with every operating system, probably a few existing music managers (though I doubt they would understand the concept of removable media on an external device) and basically the world would be a better place. For minidisc to not suck, the only things it needs to do: 1) Allow playback of any supported file on the disc (if it is in a directory on the disc, this could be used for some type of metadata, like groups, but while this would be cool, it isn't a necessary function for md to not such) 2) Allow recording to any of the supported file formats, with the resultant audio being placed in a standard file, possibly in a seperate directory - again it doesn't matter as long as it is just a plain file. 3) Support a mainstream, quality, understood, codec. In this case, it looks like it will be mp3. With those 3 things, MD will actually be able to compete because it won't be restricted by sonic stage at all. If they want to make it really good then the solution is not to improve the software, it is to improve the hardware so that the people who know how to write software don't have to jump through hoops to support it. The 3 points above are all that is required by Sony. My prediction is that there will be an MD which supports MP3s, but that it won't record to MP3. If Sony supports recording to MP3s then I'll be sold. If they support Ogg Vorbis then I'll probably also buy one. I wish that instead of making a big deal about supporting mp3, they had a look at all the other players and supported every file type that the competition is supporting. There may be some formats which aren't possible (licensing crap), but rather than being so proud to support an aging format, look at what is currently cool and support it too. Woah, that post kind of got out of hand. Summary for the lazy: If MD wasn't tied to sonic stage, then MD wouldn't suck.

Even though I've never used SS, I find that any device which forces me to use an application really sucks. If Sony opened up the standard, then we would have a good application in no time, probably free, and if something was wrong with it, then people could fix it. Right now, everything depends on Sony, and if Sony doesn't wan't to fix something, then they don't have to. Even if SS was a brilliant program, many people already have brilliant programs which could be modified to do the same job, by not having an open standard, this can't be done.

I think a big part of the problem is that they are also trying to make a surround sound thing from a stereo source. Basically, all the DSP can do is add a touch of reverb to it, and then run anything that is coming from behind you (after this reverb) into a comb-filter (to simulate the back of your ear). There isn't any reason why this should sound better, all it is going to do is muddy up the sound. If MD was a medium which was designed for surround sound recordings, then it might be possible to do neato stuff with this, but as it is, I don't think you can expect anything useful. As to why they did it? My guess is that a) It is another feature (people like features) They had a reasonably powerful dsp which could do it, so it seemed like a waste to not do it.

I have a MZ-R70 too, and I found that occasionally it would turn bad when recording or playing back from AC. I later found it would do the same with battery, but just not as often. To fix it, I found that if I left the unit facting upside down (so the screen is pointing towards the ground) then there were no problems

Exactly. If you read my initial comment, it was giving reasons why you might want lossless compression over lossy compression even if you can't hear the difference. I have a tendency to be unclear with stuff that I write, which is probably the reason it has taken so many posts to work out what I'm saying Offtopic Section: - you need a (free) plugin to rotate jpegs losslessly in irfanview. - Windows Picture and Fax Viewer is really crappy. It takes longer to load a picture using it than in paint (or at least it does on my computer). Irfanview makes me happy too

That rotating JPEG thing isn't a bug. It is what happens when you keep on recompressing something using lossy compression. Rotation was forcing it to do something to the image, which has an easy inverse, however, because lossy compression is lossy, the inverse of an operation won't necessarily be exactly the same as the original because of the compression and decomression. If it was done to a bitmap or a png (lossless compression), then it would work perfectly. Say you want to record stuff to use it for sound effects, and one of the samples you take you want to slow it down lots and lower the pitch. If you do this, then what will happen is the spectogram graph will shift to the left, bringing all those high components into hearing range, suddenly you'll have a big hole in the sound, much earlier than if it was an uncompressed signal.

Much better Although I am a bit surprised by the apparent cross-talk there. Does Hi-SP now do joint stereo? SP didn't, so I would have guessed that Hi-SP would be just like it.

I don't think so. 1) For the tones, these are signals which you would expect to be compressed perfectly, since ATRAC does compession in the frequency domain, and a tone has a very simple breakdown in the frequency domain. (In fact, I'm quite dissapointed by the results of LP2 in this test) 2) The second test again is a signal which has a simple representation in the frequency domain. 3) Looking at the music samples, compare the blue channels of the PCM and HiSP. The blue in HiSP follows the red a lot more, while in the original, this doesn't happen so much (I'm mainly looking at the peaks in the mids). Now, look at the bass of the HiSP - notice how in the uncompressed version there are a few distinct peaks, where in the HiSP, these are a bit murkier (less distinction between them). The dropoff at the end is a little bit concerning, as I know that I can hear frequencies at 20KHz quite well, but at the same time, getting speakers to reproduce these would be quite tough. Without listening, I'd guess that it sounds very good. But to call it identical to the uncompressed signal is wrong. One of the good reasons for making this distinction is that if you want to do something whacky with the sound - eg, change the speed while keeping the same pitch, then suddenly all these things which ATRAC decided you wouldn't hear get pushed into the open. Processing lossily compressed data is bad. For a fun example of this, if you have WinXP, backup a JPEG file and open it in the XP viewer (Fax/Picture viewer or something like that). Click on the rotation buttons lots of times (like 40+) and then compare the image you have with the original.

Reread that paragraph, ignoring the "Enjoyment != quality." sentence. "!=" is a symbol meaning "not equal to". Typically was mainly used by computer nerds as it is the symbol used in many programming languages. Lately, it has been used in other circles causing some good confusion, seeing as many people just ignore the "!" assuming it is a typo or redundant or something.

Whenever you record something digitally to MD, it will be recognisable from an analogue recording because of the SCMS bit - I'm assuming this will also stay with the Hi-MD format. I think I read somewhere that the Wav converter wouldn't convert stuff which was recorded digitally, which it would be able to enforce because of the SCMS bit. DRM vs SCMS? Give me SCMS any day. DRM stuff is way too complex, and there are no standards which means that consumers lose their choice. For example, without DRM stuff, Hi-MD would work perfectly well on Mac, Linux and everything else. On the other hand, it would also be violating SCMS at the same time (if you did a digital recording and it turned up as a plain old wav file which can be freely copied, then there is a SCMS violation. I'm still hoping that someone without vested interests in the music industry makes a Hi-MD compatible player which can play back and record any files on the disc in a variety of formats. This would be the killer player, and would definately sway me back towards Hi-MD.

I'm not sure if anyone is looking desparately here, but I was at sony central in Chatswood, and there were a couple of discs there (4 or 5) priced at $10 each. I'm still not sure whether I'm going to go Hi-MD or not, I'm wondering about 2nd generation models, and also about non-Sony models. If someone makes something with unrestricted uploading, and ability to play back other audio files, then things would be so much better. Unrestricted uploading seems quite possible, other formats is technically possible (and would probably make Sony's job easier - dropping the DRM stuff would make Sonic Stage a trivial program to do). I do need a replacement MD though, as my current one (MZ-R70) has a crappy laser which can't focus when the unit is the right way up ) Reverse engineering the file format used on a Hi-MD seems possible. If that does happen, then it will make Hi-MD such a useful tool I think. It would be tough and possibly illegal depending on how stupid the laws are where you live, but it would only need to be done once which makes it fantastic . All you Hi-MD nerds out there need to start poking around to try and work out how everything fits together. PCM encoding is also great for reverse engineering, because you can easily recognise it in a hex editor.

Everyone has had a scratched CD which doesn't play back properly (although, the error correction on CDs is extremely good - I attacked a CD with sandpaper once and it played back without skipping the first few iterations of my test. I believe you can drill a 5mm hole in a CD, and assuming there are no other defects, it will still play back correctly.) On the other hand, I've never heard of a MD getting corrupted. I haven't followed much of the NetMD stuff, but I don't think it should make a difference unless SonicStage really is bad. I've heard of players failing, but never discs losing data or skipping. Now, take portable hard drives - I have heard of these failing after being dropped. Maybe this is just a market share thing, and there aren't enough people out there dropping MDs and complaining about it when they don't work, but considering how long MD has been around, I'd put a fair bit of trust in them for data. But, I'm comparing apples and oranges here, because I'm talking about old-school MDs, not fancy Hi-MDs or Hi-MD formatted old-school MDs. Only time will tell with how these perform - but putting them in the same bucket as CDs is misleading. One of the cool hard drive things which is appearing in some laptops (IBM I think) is an accelerometer which detects if you drop your laptop, and in that case, it moves the heads off the hard drive, so on hitting something hard, they don't smack into the disk causing it to go bad. This is only a recent thing and I think it is a great idea (though this won't protect it against some other types of shock, like if you had it firmly attatched to a car, which then went and crashed. Up until the crash it was travelling at a constant speed (no acceleration), so the heads will be over the disk.) I think a lot of Ipod drops won't be fatal just because most of the time, the heads are out of the way and it is playing back from memory. A hard drive is a lot more prone to get harmed when it is being used than when it isn't. Conclusion: if old-school MD is anything to go by, then Hi-MD will be more reliable than IPod for storage. This doesn't mean that IPod is unreliable though.

Sony probably says that it doesn't support Mac and Linux just so that people don't get confused. Many people will just skim read system specs and if they see "Mac" written there, they will assume (rightly, I think) that Macs are fully supported. I don't believe it is possible to make a USB mass storage device which isn't compatible with Mac and Linux.

I think the reason for the lower battery life figures (mainly speculation and conjecture - don't take this as fact), is that in order to read from the disc, the player needs to write to the disc on two layers before hand, forming a little window for the third "data" layer to be visible through. Because it is easier to be more accurate when writing than when reading, this method means that they can have a much higher density. If I understand things correctly (which I don't), then this means that considering what the player is doing, these figures are quite good. Of course, as consumers, we don't need to cut it any slack at all, if we don't like it we can just not buy it. But, I think these battery life figures show that Sony has actually put some effort into increasing battery life.

One of the reasons I'm going to give ATRAC3 (and plus) some slack is that I believe that it is designed to use less battery power than other formats when decoding (and presumably encoding too). Ogg Vorbis is a file format which uses a fair bit more processing power than previous generation formats (like MP3). On the other hand, the big eater of batteries is just the size on disc (look at battery life figures for PCM mode). I got my brother to blind test me on CD and ATRAC (SP mode, as recorded by my MZ-R70), and while I could pick the difference consistently and easily, it was still very acceptable (most of the artefacts were just a lack of definition in the bass) Ogg Vorbis is great (I use it for everything on my computer), and I would love it if Sony would use something like that for MD. Unfortunately, they have created a format which is probably inferior (though I haven't tested it), but will still be acceptable.

I'm not sure if this is possible, but you may also be able to record in a Hi-MD mode (preferably PCM, although the signal for a flute is so easily compressed it shouldn't matter if you go for a compressed form) and then upload to Sonic stage and then download onto another disc in a different format (one of the ones that the older units can play back)

I'm glad that Australia wasn't forgotten. Now I'm excited. My old unit (MZ-R70) needs replacing soon (the laser doesn't focus well unless the unit is upside down). Hopefully the 900 will be a reasonable price... I'm pretty sure the tax department owes me a lot of money You can download the Pulse magazine from www.sony.com.au if you are interested. The prices are just the model number - $200. (E.g. NH900 is 900 - 200 = $700. NH1(000) is $800)

I read somewhere that the audio part of a Hi-MD formatted disk appears in Windows Explorer as just a normal file (or set of files in a directory). I'm wondering whether we could then copy these files onto hard drive, and then later transfer them on to another minidisc (or possibly the original disc after it has changed) and be able to play back the stuff again? Basically, it would mean you can back up the contents of a disc. But, it also means that duplication of a single disc is a lot easier, and also it is more likely that it will be possible to reverse engineer the format and create open software which will transfer music between computer and MD. I've read that the files in question can be viewed just like any other file... but sometimes the device can impose its own special restrictions on some files... hopefully this isn't the case. Andy

I read in the newspaper the other day (Next, in Sydney Morning Herald Tuesday 1st June, page 7, talking about different storage formats) that Hi-MD would be available at the end of the month. From the article: "A more portable option is Sony's Hi-MD, the next generation of the Mini-Disc audio recording format. Due to be released this month, Hi-MD recorders can be used as a "drag and drop" external storage device - holding up to 1GB of data on a small $10 disk - as well as an MP3 player and a high-quality recorder capturing audio from analog or digital sources. Running on AA or rechargeable batteries, Hi-MD recorders are small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. They draw power from the PC when connected, but you still need to carry a data cable and, unfortunately, the drivers aren't built into Windows." (any typo's in there are my own work, not in the article) I suspected that this might have been incorrect on a few fronts (release date, MP3 player, drivers not built in), but today I was in a Sony Style shop (in Hornsby) and the guy there told me that they would be released at the end of the month (being June). From everything else I've read, I think that by MP3 player, they mean that you can transcode an MP3 to ATRAC3 or whatever, and that the drivers which aren't built in are the ones required to transfer music, not just general files. In any case, there is nothing about it on the Sony Australia website, except that doing a search for Hi-MD brings up product pages like this: http://www.sony.com.au/catalog/product.jsp?id=MZNH900 "HI MD 100X TRANSFER ATRAC3PLUS SILVER MZNH900 Sorry, no product information available " (Which also say "This product is no longer for sale") Anyway, that is what I learnt today, if anyone has any additional information (prices?), then it would be nice to hear. Andy

I think battery life will suffer a bit with Hi-MD just because in order to read a part of the disc, it has to write first (if you look at the diagrams of the new technology, there are 3 layers of the disc, and two of them are used basically as a window, while the 3rd one is the one where actual data is stored). So, it is doing a fair bit more in order to read stuff. I'm not sure how likely it is (or useful), but perhaps in future generations there might be multiple lasers used, one per layer. The idea being that rather than having to refocus or whatever, they can all just be much simpler (and possibly only running 1/3rd of the time).

Could you please take away the email addresses from the petition. Now that the petition has happened, having a page with all these email addresses is really only going to give people spam and help spread viruses. Leave everything else there though, there is some good reading to do there. Andy EDIT: This is what I'm talking about: http://www.minidisc.org/upload_petition_co...ollected_0.html

1) I think different units have different numbers, as for a ball park figure... I can't remember - but check the back of your manual (if you have an MD that is) - they usually list that type of thing. 2) The way the motor is controlled would probably allow for some control (eg by applying current in alternating directions at the RPM). From there, it can get a fairly ok idea of how fast it is going by just reading the pits and flats on the disc. Instead of putting straight binary on the disc, they use something called (or something similar to) EFM. Read about it here if you are interested: http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Articles/S...uality&index=10

Minidisc has been around for 10 years now, and although it is definately a niche, it is becoming more popular now. Looking into my crystal ball, I'd say that MD will be around for *at least* another 5 years. Why 5 years? Because 5 years is the time I would estimate it would take before a harddisk based media player goes cactus. Personally, I can't see MD going anywhere, but for the purposes of this, I'd happily say that it will be around for longer than a harddrive will last for. Discs will be availabe for a while even when (if) they stop selling players, so if suddenly MD dies, then you can just go out and stock up big - and in the process you will probably revive the MD economy bringing all the manufacturers back . With a HD player, you have it until it dies, then there is nothing you can do about it really.