skyther

You log on with root? Okay. Aeriyn, I like annoying girls. :happy:

Not really necessary at this point. We don't need feeds from slashdot (why would we?). Probably just MD.org, but there isn't really much MD coverage nowadays, so I don't see why we should bother for the mean time.

I don't use it. :happy: P4 Northwood C 2.8 @ 3.6 stock voltage, 1GB PC3700 DDR 2.8VDDR.

It's a news feed system.

As much as we (well, at least I) supports the enthusiasm and urge for users here to own iPods, please do not utilize this forum to post links to pyramid schemes for your own benefit. MDCF/Minidisc.org does not condone such activity. Such acts are classified as commercial advertising and is forbidden. Only sales of personal items not for commercial profit is permitted in the classifieds section of the forum. For those of you who have posted such links, please remove them ASAP. Thank you.

Active noise cancelling has lower sound quality as a trade off. Passive does not. MD portables will not provide sufficient power to the ER-4S, only the 4Ps. 4S sounds clearer and more detailed than 4Ps, but 4Ps can easily be converted to 4S using an adapter cable (~75 Ohm) but not vice versa. Using foamies will help the ER-4s in the bass frequencies, but E3cs are a good alternative. Both are okay, depending on your listening tastes, although I do believe the ER-4s isolate better.

*whistle* Who? Me? I'm not a mod! :happy: Grats ztycho.

They don't have Hi-MD licenses maybe?

^ I was being sarcastic. :happy: 448kbps is the maximum. Most DVDs use 384kbps.

The N10 will not work with the internal Li-ion flat. The battery has to be between "low power" and flat for the AA to work. The voltage difference has little to do with the power source. There are diodes in the unit that regulate power and stop reverse current flow.

Yes it does. Definately. Leave it for an hour or two, even after the charge light goes off. NO. Your Li-ion will have it's life shortened.

No it doesn't affect channel seperation. It's just a split ground, which probably effects the power efficiency of the amp. *edit* http://www.minidisc.org/classd_amp.html Push pull topology, hmm. It might affect your sound quality, but not by much. The differential system in the Auvi has probably more to do with lower battery consumption.

True enough. But we're not questioning ATRAC against CD, but against other lossy formats. Not true. I have a deck with a remote that has independant alpha keys for titling. Yet I'd rather use my PC to title, swap and divide tracks. I'm using PC Link, not NetMD, btw. Either way, it's been proven that MD has not much of a future without PC support. NetMD IS the core behind Hi-MD, whether you like it or not. Despite all that "MD can record from any source" arguement, no one will want to record 7h 55m of music per disc from a CDP. All that uploading hype was also the main fact that Hi-MD was unable (though the situation is still currently unsure) to upload recorded audio to PCs digitally. The keyword here is PC. >90% of Hi-MD users will be using PCs to manage their music. iTunes + iPod is the simplest way of carrying your music around. Dock, wait for a minute, pull out. An exact mirror of your PC audio library is made.

^ "Two completely different worlds"? Nonsense. VBR allows for quality and size optimization, where it adds and takes bits as it sees fit. Lossy is lossy, they belong as one category. They achieve the same thing, only each does it with varying results depending on the psychoacoustic techniques it applies to selecting the chunks of data it throws away. As a personal observation: MP3's (LAME) artifacts are metallic sounding and generally unplesant, ATRAC is not as bad. On the other hand, ATRAC has a higher artifact 'rate', suggesting that it's not as efficient. AAC has the advantages of both.

No you can't. Only PCM, Hi-SP, Hi-LP for Hi-MD formatted discs.

The connection and traffic is donated, AFAIK.

Stick to one thread for your related questions please. Don't make my work hard. :whatever: Anyway, most people upgrade their phones for better sound quality, not volume headroom. The EX71s will do fine, but the V500s (I once owned the V700s, once upon a time...) don't exactly sound good, unless you're a basshead.

*sigh* It doesn't record. No line in, no mic in. Period. If you want to record, buy yourself a MD deck. Until higher end Hi-MD decks with digital outs are available, it's useless for bootlegging. If you like the N10, don't bother. I did a couple of blind tests. My girlfriend says the N10 sounded like crap, she couldn't stand listening to it. Compared to everything else, it felt like something was piercing her ears, and this was with D66s. She said the R70 sounded better as well, but not by much. And she knows nothing about electronics despite my rather insane collection of audio equipment, both portable and non-portable. :happy: And then, it's not what you like or don't like. It's a question of which works better. This is all my N10 ever does - sit around for pictorial comparisons. It's night and the camera sucks, but... Fancy a mirror? I know which I'd rather take out. *edit* Oh yeah, I didn't get the odd shape comment. Most things normal come rectangular...

Hehe, jack of all trades, master of none. IMO you're really asking for too many things in one, and that's why manufacturers keep coming out with products that try to be everything. Just like phones with PDA functions and MP3 playback, a phone is a phone, and with all that extra stuff it becomes too cluttered and no longer user friendly. If you can find a store that has a satisfaction gurantee sorta thing, try both. You'll find that the 8 hour battery life isn't that bad since you can just pop it into the dock when you get home and take it out before you leave the house. I've only had it die on me due to a low batt twice, but that's mainly because I didn't bother charging it.

Bloated bass, yep. As far as home components go, just stick with a good CD player. The iPod's line out isn't really clean either, it goes through DSP, just like the iHP, but comparing both I'd say that the iPod does feature a better line out. I think with the design of the iPod, there is something to be considered. It's a really flexible device. Let's just say that I like to consider things with experience, not just facts. What you see on paper does not usually reflect on what you experience in real life. Just like a car, you can take a look at the specs sheet but you won't really know how it drives until you've done so for a while. With the iPod, it charges from your PC's firewire port. You don't need the AC adaptor, it's really just there for travel purposes. It charges while you sync your music. iTunes does this for you automatically, but you have a choice to manually update things yourself if you choose to. These aren't really features you can put on paper. They can't really describe to you how "plug and play" really works for the device on a piece of paper, you've got to experience it for yourself. I don't know what you're really looking at. If it's portability, go for a flash based player. If you're just feature crazy, go for the iHP. The iPod is what I call something that just works. It does well at what it's supposed to do. I think what you're trying to achieve here is something that's a jack of all trades. The iHP would probably fit you best, but from another standpoint I'd like to say that it doesn't do everything best. I own a iMP and I've had a iHP-120 to fool around with for about 2 days or so, and I personally find iRiver devices to be too cluttered with features that it becomes a hassle to use. It definately lacks user friendliness and simplicity for one. I've toyed around with the iFP series of flash players, and of course the iPod. The list of MD players I own is fair: R55, R70, R90, R900, N10, DS8. I have relatives with N1s, E10s and such, as well as a load of other friends with MDs. I bought my N10 as an 'upgrade' to the R900, along with another classmate of mine. It's really awe-inspiring at the store, but you don't realize how much of a can of worms it really is until you've used it for a while. I'm no longer interested in portable audio as much as I used to be, home components are really the way to go as far as sound quality and entertainment is concerned. My iPod's just there to accompany me on the bus, and it does well for semi-serious listening, much better than MD would otherwise. Taking note that you are in Japan and that you say you're contented with EX71s, Hi-MD might be a little more viable for you than it is for me due to your location. Just a note tho, digital amplified units do NOT have true line-outs. It's a restriction of the technology since the DAC/filter/amplifier are integrated together into a single stage, hence it becomes impossible to bypass the amplification stage entirely as what *should* happen in a true line-out. That aside, the iPod also has an analog line-out, but it's on the dock.

PS. Don't be fooled by iRiver's 'features'. It's 'digital/line out' isn't clean, it's basically no better than having no line out. I didn't really like it, the interface is much too messy over the iPod.

Hi, anont. When did you become me? Woppin, I'm not sure which aspect of use you're referring to in comparing these two devices. In terms of recording, neither Hi-MD nor the iPod will be of any use. The iPod simply does not facilitate recording, nor was it designed to. The add on recording pack (I think it was a Belkin) does 8-bit recording from what I've heard, and makes it no better than a convenient note taker. Hi-MD is too restricted to be any good. There is absolutely no point in being able to record something and not do anything with it. The solution? Plain jane MD. Not a cost effective solution - this involves buying a higher-end deck with optical outs, but that's your only choice for a pure digital rip. And, of course, no PCM. Now that the recording part is done with, this is where my opinion comes from - the viewpoint of a someone who just wants his music on the go, simple, quick, hassle free and with much better than average sound quality. I can't simply ignore Sonicstage and Sony's DRM issues as you say. I'll go through all the comparable points about both devices: - Getting your music on the device The primary method of getting music on both devices is via the PC. Now I know that the MD fanboys continually argue that the major benefit of MD is that it can record off any source that has a line/optical out. Then again, every bloody 'advantage' that MD has to them is a major advantage. Now here are the facts. A single Hi-MD disc holds 7 hours and 55 minutes of audio using Hi-SP. Hardly anyone, in this day and age, can be bothered recording that much of music off a CD player. I record MDs (plain jane MDs) on my deck, straight off the optical out of my CDP, and I get annoyed having to switch discs at least 15 times for every compilation I make. 7h and 55m, no thanks. Even if I recorded 8 full CD albums on an MD, I'd still have to change discs 8 times and make sure I do it every hour or so. That leaves real-time recording out of the question for practical purposes. Ripping CDs on PCs are much faster, even when done with EAC's secure mode. Here's where the software comes in, and exactly why Sonicstage cannot be excluded from a fair comparison. If I don't like iTunes, I have other programs that I can use to sync music with my iPod. Ephpod, Anapod, Foo_pod, and some other crap that's around. Freedom of choice. Hi-MD = Sonicstage, and Sonicstage alone. Sonicstage already had a bad reputation, and a bad rep it still has. Not as buggy as 1.5, some quirks were fixed, but still not there yet. No where near the usability and flexibility of iTunes, and we're not even going into the third-party software there is available for the iPod yet. Sony is still telling YOU, the consumer who pays for the rice in their bowl, what YOU can and cannot do. DRM? Sure, you get DRM in the iPod. A little note that says "Don't steal music". Are there restrictions to where you can place your music? Copy files in and out as you wish? What about codec restrictions? MD fanboys also enjoy speaking of Hi-MD as a portable disk medium. With what, it's 0.5MB/s transfer rates? Let me point this out - the iPod is a fully functional hard drive that does a (relatively to Hi-MD) blistering 8MB/s to 12MB/s. In the amount it takes for Sonicstage to transfer a single ATRAC file to a Hi-MD disc, you could have transferred an entire album in AAC at the same bitrate to an iPod. - The codec arguement MD fanboys swear by ATRAC. These fanboys need to tell me something. What have they heard? What are they comparing ATRAC with? Xing/FhG encoded MP3s ripped with Audiograbber that they downloaded off KaZaA? Suprisingly, I've heard some pretty stupid fanboys say that the MP3s which they encoded into ATRAC (transcoded files) actually sound better than the source MP3s that they encoded from. Heh. These fanboys need a taste of some real equipment before making sweeping and idiotic statements. MP3 is old. LAME has been tried and tested, tweaked to hell for the best that MP3 has to offer. Compared to ATRAC3 (not +), LAME is in most cases the superior codec. AAC is undoubtedly superior to ATRAC3. I don't know where ATRAC3+ stands exactly. Often I get flamed when I voice my personal opinions, so I'll just wait until someone does an ABX of ATRAC3+ and MP3/AAC for solid evidence to back me up. Regardless of the superiority of each lossy codec, more importantly is, once again, the freedom of choice. Hi-MD offers ATRAC3+ and PCM. And it's PCM implementation has only very recently been completed. iPod does PCM, Apple Lossless (lossless (PCM) quality compressed to about 70% of the original size), and the 2 primary lossy codecs, AAC and MP3. Then of course, Sony's ridiculous claims that 64Kbps ATRAC3+ > 128Kbps MP3. Even the semi-intelligent MD fanboy knows that's not possible. Amazingly, there are people who believe that bs of a claim. Brought to you by the same people who said that the 20GB NW-HD1 was cheaper than the iPod. What they failed to mention was that they compared it to the 40GB iPod. They claim their 20GB can store 13,000 songs while Apple only claimed 10,000 with their 40GB. This goes hand in hand with their superior 64Kbps ATRAC3+ claim, of course. Sony, in my eyes, has zero credibility. They have resorted to sleazy tactics that one can never imagine a corporation of their size would do. "MP3" playback, Sony says. Fortunately, some people are intelligent enough to know that transcoding (converting from MP3, which is already lossy, to ATRAC, which is even worse) is a no-no. Despite the "Sony should fix this, this and that" comments from fanboys, they don't seem to realize that there already is a solution that doesn't suffer from Sony's idiosyncrasy - Apple's iPod. - The sound quality argument "The HD amp rocks!", says the MD fanboy, with his Streetstyles, MX500s, EX71s, or even Eggos. Here's a tip - get a pair of E3cs, put it on an iPod with properly ripped files. "But nah, the iPod sucks, and there's no bass" claims the fanboy, after toying the iPod with it's stock earphones and 128Kbps Xing encoded MP3s. No digital amp is going to give MD what it needs to match the iPod in terms of sound quality. Sound quality has been a priority kept in mind in the design of the iPod, and this is reflected in the quality and the specifications of the components used. Finally, it's time to realize something. The current iPod iteration, the third generation, has been around for over a year and three months, and is still going. Here we are, commenting about how good something that has just very recently hit the Japanese shelves is, when there has been something else around that has been able to do all that and more since a year ago. Have fun toying with old technology. We aren't in the 20th century no more.

Because it's running on something like a P3 500 IIRC. Kurisu has done his best to get it running smoothly, but I guess we're bottlenecked until the administration can be bothered to give us a little upgrade.

Uhm... sorry, but isn't that what an iPod does? No transcoding needed either. So which exactly is the "Godsend"?

16-SOP.... o.O No rolling op-amps for you then.