symphara

This forum has been an excellent source of information, and it's one of the best I've seen so far in terms of friendly and helpul people. If Sony kills MD, I will be sad to see the community part. Having said that, screw Sony - I'm not even on the Hi-MD trend, I have a regular MD portable player, a recorder in my Pioneer stereo, a Sony 980 deck and Kenwood MD car unit I've been very happy with. What I love about MDs is the casette-like usage model (insert disc, press "record", off it goes). So I'll stock up with loads of blanks and keep using them! </symphara>

You need to use SonicStage. The files will be converted to ATRAC when transferred to the minidisc. You don't need to convert them yourself though, it will be done automatically, you only need to choose the format. Converting from a lossy format (MP3) into another lossy format (ATRAC) will guarantee that the resulting quality is lower than the original lossy format. That's because they lose different bits of audio information, hence the effect is cumulative. However, using either regular SP or Hi-SP (atrac3plus) mode will minimize the quality loss and unless you're a very keen listener you shouldn't notice any difference compared to your original 192kbps MP3s. From my personal experience, reconverting high quality MP3s to LP modes (regular LP2, LP4 (atrac3), Hi-LP 64 or 48kbps (atrac3plus)) will lose quality varying from noticeable to impossible not to notice, depending on the target ATRAC bitrate.

You can jog with most, if not all, portable MD units. They are in this regard far superior to hard-disk based systems. I've dropped mine several times and it's fine, it doesn't even stop playing. I've changed the CD player in the car with a MD player and I was very happy with the newfound complete lack of skipping. You should obviously be able to put a 500Mb file on a 1Gb Hi-MD. As for transfer rates, reports are mixed. These guys have measured the upload (PC => MD) transfer rate at 3.55Mbps and the download (MD => PC) at 6.22, which is not fast but usable. Either way, I'd recommend waiting until the new units are released and a few proper reviews pop up, and then decide what to buy. </symphara>

Maybe you mean "not a single MD player"? I fully agree that Sony can't be happy about Sharp pulling out of the MD market. Out of sight is of course out of mind when it comes to these things, and MD needs all the attention it can get - it's a dying format (to some extent). Also, fewer unit producers is bad news for consumers - higher prices, fewer features and lower overall quality and choice. I hope that Panasonic and Kenwood will license the new format, although chances seem slim. </symphara>

If you had a sound card with an optical out you could probably circumvent that and record PCM from your PC, right? </symphara>

Sorry, obvious to whom? I read over and over in high-quality MD equipment reviews (MD decks, like the JA3ES or JB980) that people (who are otherwise audiophiles) cannot distinguish between the original CD source and the MD recording, when the deck is hooked to a good sound system. I don't have a smashing sound system, but it's reasonably good and MD-SP sounds just like the CD in my living room. To me and everybody else I've asked to compare. "Obvious" is obviously an inadequate term to use in this context. "Barely noticeable, if at all", sounds closer to what most people experience. This "lossy" vs "lossless" argument sounds very much like the "LPs (talking about vinyl not MD-LP) sound better than CDs because they're analog". </symphara>

Thanks for the clarifications! I'm not interested in recording SP on Hi-MD formatted minidiscs but on regular minidiscs (with Hi-MD equipment). It sounds like I can't really record in SP mode using any sort of NetMD mode without the sound quality being seriously damaged by downgrading to LP2. I guess I'll just have to stick to real-time digital recordings from the CD player. </symphara>

That's very interesting - so what you're saying is that you can't record in "real" SP mode, and in fact the quality is reduced to LP2 when the track is being transferred? </symphara>

Don't get me wrong, I like as much quality in the car as I can get - however unless you're driving something in the region of a brand new Mercedes S430 or better chances are the road noise will cut a lot of the reproduction quality. Hence it's pointless to have something rendering 99.999+% of the original sound when you can only hear 92%. </symphara>

Yes, in my opinion the lower bit rates are even ok for music. I converted a few tracks from a Perl Jam album (the Oct 31 2000 San Francisco concert) to 48kbps ATRAC3plus mode and they sound fine. As I suspected, pop/rock sounds better than classical in low bit ATRAC rates. Not that classical is un-listenable in 48kbps anyway. I also tried a few classical piano tracks and the result is enjoyable enough. Note that by "fine" I mean fine for car/music-on-the-go, it's not HiFi. I guess it depends on the music/sound ratio that makes you happy. I love great music even on a bad quality recording, while the opposite never happens. A lot of people will complain unless the quality is perfect or very close, so check the category you fall into. Anyway, it will most certainly work well for voice. To my understanding yes, provided that you don't mix NetMD and HiMD modes. </symphara>

Many thanks for your replies. I guess it should work - can't wait to get my hands on an NH1! :cool: </symphara>

What's wrong with the Sony decks, like the JB980? Most have very good record level controls and plasma record level indicators. </symphara>

Maybe this helps a little.. I've installed SonicStage 2 yesterday and, since it has the ability to convert CD tracks into ATRAC3plus files, I did a few comparisons between codecs out of curiosity. Mind you, this is purely subjective, non professional stuff. I've used: WinXP on PC with DVD/CDRW, Sony MDR-300 headphones (pretty good), and one Handel Fireworks Music CD (classical, heavy on strings). Codecs: ATRAC3plus encoded with SonicStage 2, WM9 encoded with Windows Media Player 9, OGG (very recent version, if not latest) encoded with CDEx. All the rips were straight from the CD. --------------------------- Results Good news: ATRAC3plus sounds pretty good. The 64 and 48kbps modes sound similar to the former LP2 mode. However, I didn't really detect much of a difference between the two (48 and 64), which was surprising. Neither sound like the original CD tracks, the difference was quite obvious - more bass, some frequencies disappeared, the sound stage was not as full. I thought that in the 48k mode the sound volume was flattened (i.e. sections supposed to appear quite soft were audibly lauder). The 256kbps mode is similar to the former SP mode and by all accounts very close to the original. Unfortunately I couldn't make a comparison between Hi-SP and SP as SonicStage 2 doesn't convert tracks to SP mode. Anyway, I couldn't really tell the difference between the CD tracks and the Hi-SP encoded tracks. Everything was in place, sounded rich and detailed. Maybe better phones and a better soundcard than the one on the IBM Thinkpad T40 would reveal more. Bad news: both WM9 and OGG beat ATRAC3plus (again, my opinion after this small test). Why: ~64kbps WM9 and ~64kbps OGG (I could only get approximate bit rates) simply sound better than ATRAC3plus Hi-LP (64kbps). At least for classical music. I didn't have the same strong impression that frequencies are missing, as in the case with ATRAC tracks. The volume level (for ~48 kbps WM9/OGG) definitely behaved as in the original. Actually I thought OGG rocks. At 128kbps OGG still sounds very close to the original. ~256kbps WM9 and OGG sound great, just like the 256kbps Hi-SP mode. Again, I couldn't really tell the difference between this and the original CD. Unfortunately for ATRAC3plus 256kbps is a CBR (Constant Bit Rate) stream, so that rate is nailed to the wall. I was able to go with both WM9 and OGG lower than 200kbps and they still sounded like the original. So.. ATRAC3plus is ok, even the low bitrate stuff sounds good (but again, it's not the original and that's obvious), and I'm sure it would fare better on pop/rock music. For listening to music on the run it's good enough, given that you can put 34 (or 45) hours on a disc. But the Sony assertion "64kbps ATRAC3plus sounds better than 128kbps MP3" is just a sales line. 128kbps MP3 might not be the best but it's better, judging from my previous experience with MP3 encoding. Actually MP3 VBR 128kbps is much better. The Hi-SP mode is, in my opinion, very good. Then again, I like the old SP mode as well and I suspect the two give similar results. Recording in this mode should please anyone but the most audiophile quality-demanding applications, or iPod-wielding people who think they paid 500$ for the best thing since sliced bread! Wait until you drop it on a hard floor... so definitely Hi-MD for me </symphara>

First - thank you for the answer. However, some things don't make sense. I downloaded SonicStage 2 and there's no mention of ATRAC SP anywhere. All the transfers and format conversions seem to be exclusively to ATRAC3 LP modes or ATRAC3plus SP and LP modes. How will good ol' SP mode be supported? When you transfer the files to the Hi-MD drive there'll be the extra option? I somehow doubt that, since this option isn't grayed out in the dialog boxes, it simply doesn't exist. Any ideas? </symphara>

Hi all, I've been a minidisc fan for many years now and naturally I'm very excited about the new standard. I currently own a Pioneer minidisc recorder, a Sony portable minidisc player and I also have a Kenwood minidisc car unit. The Sony unit is the only one to support MD-LP. The Pioneer recorder can do only record in SP, and the Kenwood player can only play SP - which never bothered me as I prefer the better SP quality at the expense of using more discs. Downloading music from my PC to a minidisc is something I'd be very interested in, as it takes ages to record everything real-time, and I was just about to buy the Sony JB980 NetMD deck. Funnily enough, the very same day I decided to order the deck I checked minidisc.org and found out about Hi-MD! Hi-MD sounds great, of course. 13 hours of Hi-SP mode on a disc, USB drive mode, fantastic. I want one! Which brings me to my question Will I be able to download music via USB to regular (74/80 min) minidiscs, in the old SP format? I'd like to make compilations playable by my - now "old" - equipment, which is not even MD-LP compatible. Many thanks, </symphara>