Shorty

stownsley's right. Microsoft's attempts to control your use of music through DRM are even more authoritarian than Sony's. WMP may seem easier to use, but MS is unlikely to allow Sony to use its format (the ATRAC3 codec is the audio codec of the RealOne player) on its software, where it can compete with WMA. Also, as has been stated before, WMP is bloated, intrusive, extremely difficult to remove and does absolutely nothing that isn't done better by any of the other media players on the market. Sony's OpenMG Jukebox/SonicStage software may be second-rate at best, but it's better than the alternative (WMP).

MDR-V150's myself. Best 250 Swedish crowns I ever spent. I could've spent more, but I decided that these were good enough for portable use. I do like Sennheiser headphones, though. They rock. By the way, where did you get your avatar from, maia?

I doubt it. It's more likely that it's an error message indicating that you've put in the wrong kind of disc.

AFAIK (and you can feel free to correct me, if I'm wrong), MD Data didn't use any type of native compression scheme. It'd simply take too long to compress and recompress every single file that comes through.

I think what you're after is true SP mode recording with SonicStage. As far as I know, this is unlikely to happen given that Sony is pushing their ATRAC3 audio format pretty hardcore as the underlying codec for the NetMD format. I definitely agree with you that ATRAC1 Type-R recording in NetMD would be very well received. I am not a Sony techie, but it might be possible to record in true SP mode using custom software, since the MD unit itself records in SP mode whenever you specify SP mode for output (it goes ATRAC3 "LP2" in the OMG file :arrow: uncompressed and sent to the recorder :arrow: recorded in ATRAC1 "SP" by the MD unit - not very efficient, Sony! :x).

There is a feature in Sony portable CD players that allows CD-Text CDs to transfer song names to an MD recorder using a special cable. I don't know the name of it off the top of my head, but Sony or Audiocubes would have one.

Sorry mate, but I don't think that was even worth 2 cents. This isn't the place to be wishing death upon the lives of Sony executives (however stupid their decisions may be). I'm locking this topic. Let us have no more of this asinine drivel.

I'd postulate that the main reason Sony doesn't install optical output on their consumer MD units (note that I said consumer, as the professional units are another matter entirely) because it's not a feature that's generally needed in MD units of that level. Most of the people who buy an MZ-N505, for example, are not going to need the ability to export their MD tracks to another source. We're talking the average user here, not the technically apt people that would frequent this forum, per se. Pro units need them because pros need to be able to use it. The other reason is cost. It costs money to not only have optical output but to integrate that into the rest of the circuitry while maintaining the remarkably small size MD units have become. For consumer-level recorders, it's simply not worth the extra cost. Of course, illegal copying is also a concern. But I'd say it's as much a matter of cost and necessity as it is about preventing illegal copying.

Good work, steelydoubt. And it's only about US$50-60 (~ AU$100). Although it's worth pointing out that the drive doesn't ship with drivers so you'll have to track those down yourself. Caveat emptor, guys.

I don't mind RealOne, since it actually works (which is more than I can say for OpenMG Jukebox ). The only gripe I have with it (and this is more with the codec in general) is the length of time it takes to convert music to OMG format. I'm lucky to break 1x, 1.3x. Transferring is pretty quick but it just takes so long to set up a library that I mostly don't bother and stick with optical recording (which allows me to record in full SP-quality - go ATRAC1 Type-R).

Well researched, Julio. Although it's worth pointing out that you can buy a portable NetMD recorder for less than the cost of the NetMD drive option. So my question is, why would you choose this option?

I'm not sure if anyone can verify this, but I think I remember seeing NetMD drives in Japanese Vaio laptops. Works just like a Zip drive. Drag-and-drop and hey presto, a music MD. Other than that, the only MD drives commercially available have been the now-defunct MD Data drives (and even those are very hard to find).

If you want to print MD labels you should be able to get a program that will allow you to print the label onto a sticky label using your PC's printer, thus saving the expensive (and inconvenience) of purchasing and carrying around a portable printer. And, if your printer's any good, the quality would be better.

I think Jason's onto something here. Backwards compatibility would be a very important feature for MD Data2 recorders, especially with long-term MD owners who may have large collections of MD Music recordings. However, I don't think that MD Data2 is likely to be used in a commercial unit anytime soon because, as I said before, Sony have just introduced a whole new range of NetMD models and now is not the time to introduce a new format. There's also the issue of cost. The higher-density disks would require more precise and accurate hardware (650Mb onto a physical space 1/4 the size of a CD is pretty dense), which would cost more. It's likely that Sony MD Data2 units of comparable size to current models would be prohibitively expensive (then again, so were the original MD units, but there you go). A high price probably wouldn't do any good to Sony's chances of successfully promoting the units. Personally, I would think that Sony could benefit greatly from using MD Data2 in the future somewhere along the line. The increased capacity (and hopefully not too large an increase in size) would make MD units more competitive with MP3 players.

Guys, I think we've kind of wandered away from the original intent of this topic, which was using MD Data disks for music storage. Personally, I think it wouldn't hurt Sony much at all to bring out a new type of computer-capable MD system that would use MD Data2 disks. I think the extra storage capacity would definitely give it an edge over the solid-state MP3 players, at least (the HDD-based ones are in a class of their own, I have to say). 650Mb for a few dollars compared to $200 for 128Mb of CompactFlash? I know which one I'd choose. The only problem is that there's already an established infrastructure based on MD Music disks and it would make it somewhat difficult to not only get people to change over but also to get new people to buy the system. That and Sony recently brought out a glut of new MD recorders, so it's not likely that any major change to the system will come about anytime soon.

MD Data v1 had the same capacity as a music MD - 140Mb. MD Data2 had the same capacity as an audio CD - 650Mb. What if an MD recorder operated more like a portable MP3 player so that you could record uncompressed PCM audio or store many hours of audio in a compressed format such as MP3 (perhaps Sony could offer a software version of the ATRAC1 Type-R codec integrated into the software)?

It stands for "Track Protect" and it allows the user to specify certain tracks to be write-protected, instead of only being able to write-protect the entire disc (ie. sliding the tab on the MD). As for native MP3/WMA support, it's not that bad an idea. An MD holds about 140Mb of data, which is slightly better than CompactFlash cards and costs only a couple of dollars (compared to CompactFlash, which costs about twenty times as much). It would also solve the format conversion bottleneck (ie. MP3/WMA to ATRAC3 before transfer).

Ack! Second-generation compression! The pain, the horrible, hurting pain! Seriously, there's no way to digitally upload songs from MD to PC - yet.

The MZ-N1 also has seperate treble and bass controls as well as the preset sound modes.

When the MD Data2 disc was invented, there was talk of greater capacity on an MD or even dumping ATRAC altogether and allowing uncompressed audio to be stored. I doubt it would happen, though, because Sony's invested a lot of R&D money into ATRAC and the ATRAC3 architecture recently employed in RealNetworks's software suite so they're not likely to just chuck it all away. As for multi-channel 5.1 sound, I'm not sure if that would be necessary, considering that it's already covered by DVD-Audio, SACD et al, so to have it on MD (which is primarily aimed at portable audio users) would probably not be necessary.

Perhaps with the new, smaller ICs and optical pickups that they created for the Sony MZ-N10 they could get rid of the battery bulge?

Not a bad idea, and it is technically possible because SCMS doesnt' apply to analog/mic recordings, so the SCMS bits are different from those for digital recordings. I'd still like to see unrestricted digital uploading and true SP recording, though.

Currently, digital audio uploading is not an officially supported feature of the NetMD suite. However, that isn't to say that it may be technically possible in the future (there has been talk on some forums about the possibility of audio upload in the future) through some kind of software/firmware rewrite to allow MD uploading. I would personally welcome an official solution with open arms, but for the moment such a matter is in the hands of the users such as yourself. The only practical solution for getting MD music onto your PC is to record from the Line Out of your MD onto your PC using your soundcard's mic input. There you can do pretty much whatever you want with it. Bear in mind that the audio has already compressed by the MD's ATRAC DSP, so you're going to lose more quality if you compress it to MP3 because of second-generation compression (although ATRAC, especially the Type-R and S generation chips, is perceptually lossless so you may not be particularly noticeable).

As far as I know (I checked the MiniDisc.org FAQ about this), SCMS prevents more than one digital copy of a MiniDisc. So you can record from a CD to an MD, but you can't digitally record from that MD to another. Note that you can make as many analogue recordings as you want, since SCMS info is not transferred during analogue recorrdings. It's rather unnecessary considering that: You could just as easily make more MD copies of the CD and save yourself the quality loss involved in second-generation compression Professional decks are exempt Analogue recordings are exempt Most users don't need to worry about it, though. As for no optical out, it's not really needed unless you're planning to plug your MD into a receiver deck or something. But most people don't have equipment that can accept that kind of input so 99.5% of the time people use the Line Out plug to plug into speakers or a stereo.

Hmmm. Sounds like a software issue. Since it will erase the MD using Simple Burner, it's obviously not a hardware issue. Try uninstalling all the drivers and programs and reinstall everything. If that doesn't work, then does anyone else have any ideas? Someone who uses XP Professional?