saaron

I would have liked to have had one (especially one of the MD dubbing units), but they all seem to have been sold only in Japan. I cannot see any evidence of portable MD-enabled stereos being sold in Europa which I find quite strange.

I just picked up a brand-new in-the-box Sharp MD-E9000H mini hi-fi for my daughter's room for the super-cheap price of £79 on eBay and got it yesterday. This is the second hi-fi MD I've seen with MDLP that lacks group (first was my JB-480 deck) function. My G-755 portable also lacks group, but it's present on the Sony mini hi-fi we have in the kitchen and my MDX-CA790X also recognises it. I'm just wondering why the slipshot application of group function? It would seem to be a core feature of MDLP, but it either came in late or some genius decided it should only be present on high-end kit. Can someone clear it up for me? I still make all my MDs with groups because being able to hop through them in the car is a definite plus and I hope to get a JB-980 someday (again, bizarrely this appears to be the only Sony deck that supports group feature).

I find this attitude (which seems pervasive on this board) both bizarre and a waste of energy. How little a life do you have that you: a) hate a music playback device feel equally strong dislike for total strangers because they buy said playback device Personally I'm glad people are still enjoying music at all. I don't want any kind of mass-storage music playback device because I don't want to store my music on a computer, but hatred seems a bit extreme for what is a fairly benign technology.

Not sure where this impression is coming from. I keep reading that since introduction the shuffle is the leading flash-based player despite lacking a display, and frankly I cannot see the need for one on a device intended for random play. Clearly Sony can only blame themselves for their problems: keeping ATRAC proprietary and licensing rather than giving away MD technology meant that it would stay a niche product. Forget iPods; if people weren't buying them they'd probably buy MP3 compatible portable CD players and load up CD-Rs with MP3s -- it would still be easier than using SonicStage to fill MDs and you wouldn't have the DRM issues associated with either iPod (easy to get around) or MD. Sadly by keeping the electronics arm in-house it's been hobbled by the entertainment wing of the company and I don't see any way that will meaningfully change as long as the company keeps it's current structure. I can see them dumping DRM restrictions on analogue input, but no way that's going to happen with digital unless they want to sell only Sony-owned product via Connect, which would definitely look weak compared to iTunes.

Blankshop.co.uk have the TDK XSIVD series, but other than that no designer ones. I've ordered stuff from them before and they're pretty good. I suspect you'll have to go outside of the UK for more exotic MD designs.

I dump all my CDs to MDLP2 for listening to on the road and the train; CD-TEXT rocks because my shelf-unit will automatically title everything on the MD. What pisses me off is when the Text is copy-protected -- what's the point of that? I have to manually title my tracks now....ooooh!

That would be very cool. I'm already considering a JE 980 for dubbing purposes, but I'd prefer to copy JE480-980 rather than the other way around. Hopefully the soldering skills needed aren't too extreme (it's been awhile and that was only converting PS1 joypads into arcade controllers).

MD probably would have been more successful in the US and Europe if it had been pitched as a replacement for analogue cassette and the emphasis had been placed on the radical editing technology which is quite amazing for a consumer device. As it was MD was debuted with blank and pre-recorded media and seemed to be getting pitched as an alternative or replacement for CD. I think they also would have helped themselved by not charging for licensing the technology and just put the specs out there and let companies make portables and decks like Philips did with audio cassette. Having said all that I think there's definitely a pro-niche there. Someday flash technology may be mature enough to provide an alternative, but it's not quite there yet in price or features, and I think MDs been around long enough that we're not in danger of running out of kit. We just have to hope that Sony opens the format if and when they do stop producing hardware. I also don't understand why people automatically compare Hi-MD to HD and flash-based portable music players like the iPod. Hi-MD is not intended to carry around your entire music collection and it's recording capabilities are paramount. There seems to be this bizarre notion that because the iPod is objectively more useful for transferring music downloaded off of a computer that this makes MD obsolete when it has much greater functionality than that.

£129 for the CA-790x is a good deal and it's a nice deck. Supports MDLP and recognizes group function (the way it ought to work: plays all tracks in order, but allows jumping between the groups. If only my Sony shelf unit worked the same way); plus you can hook up a multi-disc CD or MD-changer to it (I just copy all my CDs to MD, so not an issue for me). I found it pretty easy to install in my Saxo as well, so don't be put off by having to pull your existing stereo if that's a factor.

I've replaced some stuff I sold ages ago and the only compelling music I find nowadays is "world music" and experimental stuff on indie labels. The presence of copy-protection and lawsuits is definitely off-putting; the only experience I had with a "non-CD" resulted in my making a pirate copy of the offending disc and returning it to the shop. I cannot say I'm too sad about it however. Spending less on CDs means I can save more and spend more on holidays and fun times with my family; I don't see that as a negative. I also wouldn't have turned to great shows like Late Junction on Radio 3 without the moribund state of pop music (which, let's face it, is not a recent phenomenon and has been going on since pop music became big business in the 60s and 70s). I think the only way forward is for the big labels to die and copyright laws to be overhauled. The phenomenon of making a living by making music is relatively new (only the last few centuries), and I don't think making a hit single means anyone deserves to be a millionaire. Even if the big labels die and the era of the pop star comes to a close, people will continue to make music; if it becomes more hobby than get-rich-quick scheme, we might even see an improvement in the quality of music people create.

Verrrry interesting...now if HiMD decks and car units surface I might be tempted to take the plunge. Otherwise, I'm thinking a JE980+SCMS stripper is the best way to preserve my personal recordings.

I'm no evangalist and I'd agree the unit looks very nice and the absence of SCMS is a definite plus, but I have to say that I'd need more details on the nature of the power supply (user-replaceable?), and I'd really like to see what to me is the number one killer app aspect of MD-recordable -- whatever the format is: the ability to edit recordings without having to download them or use 3rd party software. If someone can make a flash-based recorder that has MD's editing features and gets excellent lifespan out of conventional LR6 batteries, I would probably dump MD for live recording and only use it as a portable music player.

I'd take the tape adapter over one of the FM transmitter jobs any day. I got one on eBay and it was more trouble than it was worth: burned through batteries and didn't impress me audio-wise and changing discs with the thing hanging off the portable was definitely causing a road hazard for those around me! In end I picked up an MDLP deck for a couple hundred quid and I'm a happy man. Tape adapters are pretty cheapo, but they've been around since the portable CD player days, so I wouldn't be too bothered about brand names; if it craps out on you it didn't cost more than a couple of quid anyway, right? I have a Recoton one, but I've had others in the past that I've lost or given away. Quality will probably never be better than FM radio, sorry to say, but unless you've got a luxury car that filters road noise well, I doubt it'll bother you too much.

Excellent! I guess the US isn't such an MD-backwater after all

Cool, all I wanted to know was that they were available to buy. What were they going for?

www.core-sound.com seems to still be offering the M-Audio C03 on their website -- thanks for the pointer! It's US$175, but may be worth it to me.

I'm taking a trip back Stateside next week and I'm bringing my portable recorder so I can play some of my daughter's and my music without bringing piles of CDs. At the same time I planning on visiting local record stores like Streetlight, Amoeba, Tower and Virgin to buy domestic CDs both to take advantage of the exchange rate and save on import costs and hopefully find some out-of-print stuff. I'd like the option to transfer to MD, but I'd like to minimize the luggage on the way over so I'm wondering if anyone on the forum resides there and would know if places like Tower Records still stocks blanks (last time I checked was when I lived in Oakland, but that was four years ago and I don't want to chance that they're no longer stocking). I figure Japan Centre would have them if they were anywhere, but even that might be assuming too much. Anyone?

Why would anyone have a rational reason to "hate" a recording medium? Seems a bit odd to me. I've had people question why I have an MD player instead of an iPod; my answer is that I prefer the flexibility: I don't want to upload hundreds of CDs to my computer and then download them again to a portable HD/Flash device. I like having individual pieces of media. I like being able to edit tracks. I like not being tethered to a computer to record an audio track. I like being able to take the same piece of media, play it in my lounge in a deck, in the kitchen on a mini-stereo and in my car, without having to cable things up and play with EQs on a portable device.

Given my penchant for MDLP kit, eBay is definitely someplace I'll be checking a lot for kit, so I'll add this to the list. In the meantime I'll be saving for my JE980 and a new Xitel Optical-USB device so I can back up my audio to CD-RW as well, even if it is realtime. Ah the pleasures of the digital age *ack*...

I understand that the hardware change will open up the availability of emulators like WINE, which seem to have greatly improved in compatibility and in addition, such emulators will like run software much faster. Having said that, I'm still not really interested in running Windows software on any future Mac I will buy, so some kind of open source solution from Sony or elsewhere would be welcome.

Anyone know of a source for one of these devices? I've tried looking on the net, but they no longer seem to exist, probably due to the same laws that have pretty well killed off macrovision defeating technology...

DOH! You're right. Guess I'll have to wait to get a JE980 and hook that up to the JE480 for 1st gen dubs. Thanks for the confirmation on what I thought the deal was. At least I don't need to track down an SCMS stripper (I read somewhere they might compromise audio quality...).

In my readings about SCMS I'm under the impression that anything recorded in analogue mode -- including microphone input -- has SCMS encoding. I use a G750 with a plug-in-power microphone to make family audio recordings (the little one is wise to the video camera, so preventing "natural" recordings of events) and I'd like the ability to make backups of these precious family recordings as I know that despite the hype, optical media is not forever. I'm not sure if I'd be allowed to do a one-off digital copy of these recordings; I certainly cannot rely on the source being around to make multiple copies, but if I can do that I could at least make multiple digital copies in addition to a realtime computer backup via something like a Xitel optical in/out->USB device. I'm going to try connecting my G750 to the optical-in on my JE480 to see if I can do a digital dub; if not, I guess I'll have to settle for an analogue copy. It really angers me that I cannot make a personal recording and then do as I please with that without creating some goofy loop via a computer because of the paranoia of media companies. May they all go bust tomorrow!

No kidding? Who's going to be carrying it? John Lewis (only place I can find the NetMD shelf units at the moment)?

I've done quite a lot of recording on a shelf unit to LP2 using HISPEED CD->MD SYNC (x2) and haven't seen any quality issues. I understand that when you get to 4x copy speed artifacts can get introduced, but aren't detectable unless you get to high volume. I'm not sure how x2 speed is accomplished, but it does seem to take a while between selecting it and starting it, so something is going on inside the machine beyond playing the CD at double-speed. Also, I cannot listen to the recording whilst this is happening, but this doesn't point one way or another.