Pug

My new years resolution was to stock up on MD units to be set for life. Bought these two already: (my other resolution was to give up beer - but that I have failed already). Cheers Pug

Sir, Just go to this location: C:\documents and settings\all users\application data\Sony Corporation\SonicStage\Packages Back up the access database via copy and paste and all your ratings will be safe. Cheers Pug

As a long time Mindisc user I was exclusively using SP for discs. 1 disc = 1 album. I dabbled with HI-MD for around a year. I quite liked it and it was a great novelty putting tonnes of albums onto 1 disc. However once it was obvious the writing was on the wall I got out of it. I wanted to have contingency for players to access my music for the next 50 years (I do expect to use mindisc for that long!). I have returned to SP and I now have little fear of not being able to access my mindiscs for home listening. I intend to use MDLP for portable use and extended mixes, as I'm starting to fing 30gig of music a little overwhelming. I still find Sonicstage great for MDLP mixes - very quick and convenient. Even in 10 years time I will to have an old XP laptop with SS and my media library. I'm also getting to the point where less = more. Cheers Pug

I like the last tweak! First I set the URL page to google.. quite nice! Then I set the set it to D:\Music: Very cool I can now browse my music in Sonicstage via treeview. It will also darg and drop into the application to import new music etc!

Sorry, but I thought the format war with mindisc was DCC vs MD - which MD won. I don't think MD ever went head to head with CD. (Cassette perhaps) Cheers Pug

It's a testament to the format and the enthusiasts that support it. So congrats to everyone involved. Cheers Pug

I pick the package up at 1.15pm GMT so I hope to take a pick of my bag of swag later today. Cheers Pug

MZ-N10 & 150 discs - £50 Cheers Pug

ray, yeh... whatever dude... keep it to yourself... Chris, interesting article; hope its not the end - it won't be for me whatever Cheers Pug

Just my point of view but I'd rather keep it seperate. Or if it was merged at least some distinction between minidisc and Sony. I've loved mindisc.org as a great source of inpartial informtion for minidisc enthusiasts. Obviously there is a huge connection between minidisc Sony and atrac, but for me I'd hate to see it become a Sony fansite. Cheers Pug

Kick start your disc collection: Discs Cheers Pug

In my opinion we are lucky minidisc got as far as Net-MD let alone HI-MD. We are pretty fortunate that Sony has let us experience the last breath of minidisc technology and didn't confine HI-MD to a concept. I'm happy they made that last push to HI-MD and as ong as I can source blanks and units I'm happy. Cheers Pug

Einolu? Wow he is a blast from the past, both him and mystyler were big old Pana fans and I can see why! Very happpy with my purchase, the troule is I'm now keeping my eye's peeled for other cyber bargains. Cheers Pug

My collection of minidisc units seems to be growing and I'm considering some sort of cabinet for them. How do you store you units, in a draw, on a shelf, in a bag, on the cradle, in your jacket pocket, on the floor, next to your hi-fi, next to your PC? Cheers Pug

I don't really ever remember them being that popular so I've always been used to them being the slightly ecentric choice. I think minidisc is dead in the water (in the UK at least) the wider general public think it was discontinued years ago. VHS is going the same way. The debate on the death of midisc has been running for almost as long as I have been using the format. It would be interesting to get a statistic on how many HI-MD units were sold to people who has already used the format vs users new the format. I would imagine a high percentage of HI-MD sales were to existing users and the rest were to people who stumbbled into the format or were mis-sold. Cheers Pug

Just re-read my post... hmm that post is an example of what happens when you get home from Friday night beers to find a mint condition unit on your doorstep. Link for auction: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie...item=5869433572 I must admit I don't normally keep hold of the boxes for my minidiscs, but now I kind of wish I did - even the box for this unit holds a certain amount of nostagia and excitement - (sad aren't I?) Cheers Pug

I hope I dont get too adicted to ebay, Panaasonic SJ-MR220 plus 26 discs arrived today for the small sum of 32 pounds! Just HOW? can one purchase such a beautiful bit of kit that is absolutely mint (not a single mark) - boxed, all accessories, and 26 minidiscs for so little money? The 220 is such a nice piece of kit, tiny, stylsh, sounds sweet and the touch pad is really quite interesting and unique. Thought I'd start a thread as I'm am rather chuffed I hope to get some pics up soon, despite the fact it is not really a current unit and all the fuss is over HI-MD. Still I wlll be posting in 3 years time when I get a RH-10 for 32 quid! How cheap can these beautiful bits of kit become? It is almost criminal not to buy them at the price I just picked the 220 up at I think I'm keeping my eyes peeled for a tiny SONY. R909 may be next on my list. Cheers Pug

Minidisc suits my needs and will continue to suit my needs for quite sometime. I now have enough blank discs to last me a hell of a long time several good working units. Sure technology moves on but as it shifts I'll be hanging on picking up older units. I just can't justify spending 200 quid on any type of portable audio equipmet and 2-3 years ago I dreamt of owning 909's 910's N1's etc. Now these units are all well within budget. I've just bought a Panasonic 220 from Ebay (plus another 30 discs) for a ridiculously cheap price - and as long as i can get top end MDLP units and discs I'm a happy man. I just need to wait another 2 years for top end HI-MD units to come down to a ridiculousy cheap price. If Sony drops the whole thing I'm not sure how much of an effect it will really have on me. In ten years time I may well be a bit of a dinosaur but I don't mind too much as long as I can get hold of blank discs. Cheers Pug

Sonicstage 3 onwards seems a lot slower to me than 2 Version 3.4 takes around a minute 1st 2nd or 3rd time: 666Mhz celeron, 128mb Ram I have stopped using SS on this PC as it isn't so much the starting up that is the problem it takes about 2 minutes to import an albums worth of tracks (not convert, import!) It takes around 20 seconds to do any other operation such as select album, change to track view, right click on an album etc... I now only run SS on my laptop, Cheers Pug

Not sure what the hell this is; http://www.semic.sanyo.co.jp/eng/product/s...udio/atrac3.htm http://www.semic.sanyo.co.jp/eng/product/s...ac3_encoder.htm I'm sure it's not for consumer conumption though. Build your own MD kit? http://www.semic.sanyo.co.jp/eng/product/s...on/audio/md.htm Cheers Pug P.s sorry if this has been posted before.

The scenario is that I am exclusivley using atrac LP2 (132kbs) for my codec and bitrate of choice. Mainly as I have always thought that the sound quality is excelent and the file sizes acceptable. The other primary reason I have chosen LP2 is for backwards compatability. I can see in the future me picking up a rather nice Net-MD or even MDLP recorder/player (perhaps even a deck) and LP2 will be compatible with this.... or so I thought... I'm running Sonicstage 3.4 and selecting files (mp3's) and converting to 132kbps - tranfwering to Hi-MD no problems. However whenI try to transfer to a Net-MD Sonicstage actually transcodes a second copy of the atrac file and transfers! therefore ripping the whole of my library in 132kbps for backwards compatibility is a rather futile exercise... or so I thought... It transpires that with the apply copy protection ckeckbox selected the LP2 tracks will transfer to both HI-MD and Net-MD. Copy proection i appears is a pre-requisit for Net-MD recordings. I will test this evening if these "copy protected" files can be transfered from pc>pc with the new advantages of sonicstage 3.4. The moral of this post is if you are converting a lot of muisc to LP2 for use with Net-MD make sure you apply copy protection. Cheers Pug

Wow! Many thanks for this, this has now made atrac my codec of choice (LP2 specifically). My old 666mhz pc chokes with Sonicstage, but with winamp it is a beauty. Doesn't like the tags but I guess that is to be expected. Which is a good "old version" of winamp? Would like some of the newer features but don't want corporate stuff or spyware... Cheers Pug

Am I right in saying you cna now use SS to download music onto a HI-MD disc (as atrac) and then upload via SS to a 2nd PC? Cheers Pug

I put those straight in the bin. Have yet to experience any problems. Cheers Pug

I managed to take my OMA files from one PC to another with Sonicstage 3.3. Atrac is good for me as I only use MD for portable use. I'm not a quality freak, if I want good quality I'll go back to my original source - CD. I also have a very slow PC at home so storing in mp3 then converting to atrac takes almost the same as realtime (although get nicely labled tracks). Incidently I got the burning working by downloading the Sony connect version rather than the MDCF package... Cheers Pug