jadeclaw

Creating equal conditions was the first thing I did in my tests. With Nero's MP4-AAC it was simple, select CBR, then the closest to what Sonicstage offers == comparable. With OGG Vorbis, it was more complicated, nailing it led to error messages, but with a bit of playing around with the different settings, I came quite close to the desired bitrates - much closer than Amorim in his. And I usually ended up slightly lower than the SS2 ATRAC3 offerings. But despite that, OGG and AAC performed better. Nevertheless, Amorim devaluated his test by not paying enough attention to the test conditions.

Exactly. SonicStage doesn't allow this. Maximum possible is Hi-SP. According to Sony...

Update! SonicStage killed my WinXP installation in a very peculiar way. During boot, the screen goes blank, the Sync for the Monitor is switched off while the harddisk light is lit permanently. The lockup was so bad, that even the reset button doesn't work. I've had to cycle mains supply to unfreeze the machine. Sometimes 2 or 3 times. Last time I've seen this was on a Commodore C64 with a virus... Now, after reinstalling everything execept SS2, the problem is solved.

The perfect MD looks like this: and has all Hi-MD features. The other one is of course a 3.5 " drive for the comp...

Hmm, Crazey, that looks more to me like a connector losing its solder joint, or a bad joint from the beginning... Can happen with any equipment, where the connector isn't mounted mechanically into the case, but soldered on a PCB instead. Had this problem on countless CB-rigs - so giving the PA and speaker connector joints a touch up was standard procedure...

250MB-Drive? Then you have nothing to do with 'Click of Death', as that affected a Series of ZIP100 parallelport drives. And that was in the early years... Speaking of price, try Ebay. You pay usually less than 1/3rd than regular price for ZIP250 discs. ZIP100 discs are a lot cheaper than that... The only problem will be postage from outside Antigua, so check these rates first before bidding. Hi-MD or not, it won't push the price of memory cards a lot down, as that is dependend on the price of the memory chips itself.

My programming language is longer than yours. Oh, well... First, VB can be used for serious projects like any other programming language. Except games, since speed is everything here. Now back to MD: Ok, 256k is 2MB per minute, so 60 minutes are 120 MB. We divide that by 225 seconds, that gives us ~530 kBytes per second on a reformatted disc. Not bad, I say.

Oh, a 'Click of Death' - victim? I have Zips as well and I have no problem with them.

In reality, it seems to be slower, double speed (~300k/sec) on writing and quad speed (~600kB/sec) on reading. See the MDCenter.nl Report in the middle of the page. Speed depends on the disc type used. Maybe someone of the first owners may test this for us...

Not exactly, 96db is full level. Anything above will clip. And that is done deliberately on some Pop-CDs to make them sound louder. It is cheaper to read some data sheets, that to measure the final product. It doesn't make sense for cheap chinese junk. But reputable manufacturers usually measure at the output connector. And that's the point, where it makes sense... If it is stated for chinese junk, it's a lie. If it is stated for quality equipment, it is possible. Since we have a digital signal, a series of numbers to be exactly. And what can you do with numbers? Calculations. Basically, the key here is Oversampling and Noise shaping. First we use oversampling to calculate the steps between two consecutive values of the original data. With that, we push the Samplerate up and the resolution as well, therefore reducing Quantisizing noise and nonlinearities in the DA-converter. The next step is to push existing noise outside the audible frequency range, where it can be filtered out using relatively simple audio filters. That's what the Noise shaper does. But there are more tricks possible, the most well known is HDCD. Here, additional information is encoded into the data stream, which is used on the playback side to improve dynamic range and resolution. However, the cd-player needs a HDCD-chip as well to decode this data. Before you ask, HDCD and lossy compression are NOT compatible. The HDCD-data is lost... That's a simple go no-go test... Filesharing is commonplace and one doesn't know, how a certain rip has been created. So all forms of additional problems can be introduced here. However, quality of the Players can vary as well and they may not been build with audio in mind and the harddisk introduces problems of its own kind...

In reality, MP3 @ 128 k is a lot better. One warning tho, don't use the Xing-Encoder for MP3-encoding, it is as fast as diarrhea and the result sounds like diarrhea - Use LAME or Fraunhofer instead. PDOG, but despite my acidic criticism of Hi-LP, Hi-SP sounds very good and the difference to the uncompressed original is so marginal, it can be considered transparent. So, no worries here. When comparing, that was my first thought...

No. Standard CD is 96db. That's the limit for 16bit. MP3 can have more or less, depending on the source material and of course the bitrate - low bitrate means additional noise and distortion. Some theoretical limits: 16 bit : 96db 18 bit : 108 db 20 bit : 120 db 24 bit : 148 db The maximum useable and useful would be 120db - absolute silence to standing next to a running jet engine - at full thrust... And that's, where the technical limits are. Some people call Creative Labs 'Uncreative Crap'. Add some other braindead things like constant compatibility problems, Resampling via DA -AD conversions, switching off of the digital output, when playing back DRM-infested material and you understand. That's true. However, SNR is not the only value interesting here, as the manufacturer decides, which one to publish. And the SNR should include Distortion as well, but that is left out, as that is the sore point of low voltage headphone amps. You can quickly lose 20db through distortion alone. Well, it is simple, if nothing else is stated, it is the difference between quiescent noise and full signal (Maximum digital value). What we really need, is seldom given - the dynamic range - the difference between the signal and everything else, including noise, distortions, converter nonlinearities etc. Often enough, soundcards rated better than 90db had a dynamic range well below 75db. One of the reasons, why cheap 24bit/96kHz soundcards seldom live up to the promised expectations... In fact, it has. Why? To just hear the noise, the maximum sound level possible is as loud as a pneumatic hammer. If you hear noise at normal volume levels, then something is wrong with the equipment. Or the source material. Of course, it affects as well, but listening tests should be done with clean source material. And since most rip from their own CDs, this is usually the case.

Well, you have to choose between the muffly gargling sound (LP4 66k) and muffly telephone sound (Hi-LP 48k). Since Hi-LP 48k adds carbon microphone style distortions, I prefer LP4. Personally, I would use Hi-LP 64k as the lowest and would go to LP2 132k instead. Remember, Hi-MD extends the running time of standard discs as well. And of course, it depends on the type of music as well. Hi-LP for Britney Spears, Hi-SP for Jazz, PCM for live classical music... :grin:

I'm disappointed as well, I hoped, it would be atleast on par with OGG, but apparently a multi-billion company is unable to outperform a bunch of open source programmers. So finally, I hope that the hardware codec in the recorder has a better quality at 64k. But for that to know, we still have to wait...

To answer that, take a look here: http://forums.minidisc.org/viewtopic.php?t...t=4665&start=15 (The two big ones done by me).

Hmm, most modern digicams conform to the USB mass storage standard, Hi-MD conforms as well, so it might be possible to dump data files from MD onto the iRiver as well. But music in Atrac. No I don't think so.

No. All Hi-MD are USB. USB 1.1 in fact.

You're right about the quick format, the long format overwrites everything only on Floppydisk. On harddisk and other high capacity media, the long format is actually a quick format with a read test added.

Depends on the bitrate... The point is: What is reasonable? The 30000 $ line-up? Think Krell & Mark Levinson here... True. True for MP3. If you take something more modern like Atrac and OGG, this is more than adequate even for serious home use. Well, for 99% of all users, Hi-SP and Linear PCM will sound equal. And a good number doesn't even hear a difference at 128kBit...

That's right, the XM tuner is not included. And it isn't necessary for you, as the service is not available in Antigua - Click

Looks good. Very good. And much better than on the Sony promotional pics. I think, these pics should be linked into the unit's page in the equipment browser.

It does play MD. And MDLP. No Hi-MD. CD/MD-Changer-controls are included as well. For XM an additional box is necessary. US$379.99 at Crutchfield Audio.

Kurisu, I have tested Iceeedteas build as well and it's the same shit in green. The culprit here is OMGJBOX.EXE . It crashes during Convert Format. It crashes during playback as well. And the 1 second lockups are there as well. No other Software on my system has any problems like this. Since this seems to be a problem inside the EXE-File, Iceeedtea cannot do anything about it, Sony has to fix it.

:wacky: Ahem. Does everyone on Antigua talks this way? Seriously, if you would sort your thoughts and put them into complete sentences before clicking on submit, it would be easier for us to understand, what you mean. Ok, on to your bucket of thoughts: A good shampoo helps here. :wink: True, NetMD can do this and Hi-MD does it too. And Hi-MD can create recordings compatible to old equipment as well. Try this one. It has Dolby surround as well and is a wireless one... You mean cool, right? But cool seldom mean high quality. This is called a multimeter. Something like this is already available, it is called digital signal analyzer and it will show things like samplerate, signal quality and encoding used. However, connected to digital out of a MD-recorder, this analyzer will tell you everything about that signal, but nothing about the recording itself, as the digital conmnectors always handle an uncompressed audio signal. So, you have to rely on what the recorder tells you - and of course your ears. Your brain obviously runs rampant as well... :wink:

I'll try it, but not tonight, as it is close to midnight here...