Breepee

[qoute instead of edit ]

One uses the best ripper around, EAC, and uses a playback program of choice, like Winamp or foobar, as I do. Also WMP can play them back with the appropiate codecs installed. There's actually a lot of programs that support FLAC and Ape. Have a look around on the net and let lossless amaze you mshadel, is that hypothetical or have you actually got some CD's thru WMA lossless onto your MD? That would be GREAT news! Or is it just an assumption?

I would DEFINITLY go for such large amounts of space to store my music in CD quality (FLAC or something like that to gain some extra space). And with SACD on the doorstep there might be need for a large amount of space to preserve the original quality. No, I like it a lot. The more space, the better.

That's a completely other option you should not want. I keep a mastercopy of every CD that passes through my hands in my PC in APE (something like FLAC). This is lossless, but compressed (almost half the size of a wav file, compression is like zip of rar). So these files a compressed, not encoded. Encoding to mp3 or atrac is not transcoding but just encoding (a batch of extracting and then encoding). APE's/FLAC's are as good as a CD, but with the advantage of your entire music collection at CD-quality at your fingertips. I agree that Sony's software sucks bigtime at this piont (as a matter of fact, *any* software being produced by Sony sucks. DRM seems top priority over there). I also don't know what would be the smart thing. I'm still in doubt wether to buy a HiMD or a HDD-player or something. Sony's hardware is absolutely fine and if my choice depended solely on that, it would be definitely be a HiMD for me, but I'm just sick and tired of this neurotic and over-the-top DRM-thing Sony presses upon the MD. I like the freedom I have with a MP3-player. But this is another discussion I hope Sony is going to support formats like FLAC, or APE or some other lossless but compressed format (I would like the units to support it too, like Apple with its 'AAC' lossless). For now, I wouldn't know how to get your files tagged onto your HiMDiscs.

That the way I like it! My entire collection in pcm on a few discs!

Any news yet?

I've got a question about the 900. It's partly plastic and partly alu. On the pictures I can see that the front is almost entirely alu, with a plastic thingy around the controls. But I havn't seen any pics of the back yet. I was wondering (and hoping) that there was some alu as well. Can anyone clarify this?

Is that an optical line out on that 700?

It's definitely not sound. If one would want to minimalize signal loss, always use the highest quality setting (HiSP). I think Fray Adjacent chooses LP2, because of the fact that there WILL BE signal loss (maybe unnoticable), and doesn't want to sarcifice too much discspace to a song with signal loss.

Well, to me defenitely not. MP3 on 256kbits sounds WAYYYY better than LP2, when playing through the same HiFi equipment. I can reasonably say that this is the most logical conclusion there is, because it's just not real that Atrac could or would be so much superior than MP3. It's common knowledge that all major codecs (MP3, OGG, AAC, Atrac) sound approx. the same on the same bitrate (little difference here and there. I would say that OGG sounds the best, then MP3, then Atrac and then AAC). I've conducted a blind listening test and I can concur with this statement. But, by picking a high bitrate (like 256 and over) everything sounds very close to raw CD-sound (on par, I'd say), so that's the reason MD/Atrac is fine for me. If you experience otherwise, I think it's something with your ears, or maybe somewhere in between.

Wrong. 256kbit/s is approx. 2MB per minute. 256kbit = 32kbyte 60 seconds is 1 minute => 32kbyte * 60 = 1920kbyte. So every minute of HiSP takes nearly 2MB of diskspace.

That's a completely unfair test, you should use the same bitrate (eg HiSP track on the MD).

What's that kind of nonsense? Storing data on an MD works the one way, and one way alone, no matter what kind of data is on it. Atrac, or MP3, or programs/movies/etc. An 4 minute Atrac HiSP (256kb/s) track will take precisely as much space as an 4 minute MP3 256kb/s track. By the way, I totally like the idea. Just an MP3-player (with a decent line-out please, and something like Sony's HD-amplifier) wich uses MD disks.

Havn't tested it myself, but judging from other's experiences and my own "gut feeling", I'd stick to Atrac3 LP2. It's bitrate is just twice as high. A codec (Atrac3Plus) which is (for example) 10 percent better, is not going to compete with that. Of course if you're going to reformat old 80minute discs, you can even record in HiSP an put as much music on it as you did with old formatted LP2 discs. That's even better

I'd like it to operate just like any mp3player, when connected to PC drag-n-drop the files, and I addition record files via analog/optical in (preferably ogg, since it beats all other formats out there. And a lossless, but compressed codec ala FLAC or Monkey Audio would be very nice too.

For speech LP4/64kbps could suffice, though I've experienced something like 'channel-clipping' when recording stereo speech (and actually using the two channels). Sounds like a problem with joint-stereo, but I'm not sure. I prefer LP2 (which is near CD to my ear) and doesn't clip channels. That's OK, I just get itchy when big companies spread lies like 64kbps == CD-quality. Wont do it again

You've just been reading Sony-propaganda. Of course this is bulls***. Microsoft claims CD-quality at 64kbps WMA, Thompson at 128kbps mp3 or 64kbps mp3pro and so on and so forth. It's all plain nonsense. Just please listen to some demanding pieces of music on a nice HiFi set, and everthing below 160kbps will sound like s***. Above it, the difference fades (for me). To be on the safe side, I just stick with lossless, (Hi)SP or 256kbps and up. CD-quality == HiSP, not a bps less.

Yes, exactly as I thought. When I read your post, I thought also uploading (MD>PC) of downloaded (PC>MD) songs was possible, but it isn't (why-o-why). Thanks.

And what about songs I uploaded to MD via the unit? Can I also copy them back to PC? I've read MDcenter.nl that wasn't possible.