alieninhead

All CD/DVD media is optical only. CD-RW discs have a special layer/coating on it that allow the laser to change the color of the pits over and over again. CDs in general are alright for archiving at best; I know any CD-RWs I've ever used after re-writing over them about 10-15 times it was a gamble if I could do it again and have it still be readable. You, in theory, could damage an MD's disc and have it still playable..I know in normal music/data CDs scratches can be passable (for skipping) as long as the part near the inner circle isn't damage that keeps the TOC. ~a.i.h.

Analog in may very well just be your only option. Get a 3.5MM miniplug that's male on both ends, plug one into your headphones and the other into your mic/line in on your sound card..open up Windows sound recorder, press record and press play on your MD player... ~a.i.h.

So you have reinstalled XP and the programs, totally reformatted your hard drive? Hmmmm... Could be a couple of things: weird songs, bad ripping. I doubt these, but could be. It also could be bad RAM. I've seen some very weird stuff be the result of bad RAM. How many apps do you usually run at a time? (how many icons are near your clock, etc?) ~a.i.h.

You might try to find some programs such as Norton System Works, McAffee Utilities, etc...they will alow you to recover erased data very easily. But if you wait on it, the part of your hard drive you had your music on may be written over again and music recovery will not be an option. Good luck! ~a.i.h.

Oh, OK, OK... So you can record from SS2 NetMD bitrates into the new Hi-MD/reformatted 80Min discs, but not when you're actually recording through the line-in using the hardware encoder... That's kinda odd... ~a.i.h.

Whoa, there is no mid-ground? I never realized that. That sucks. So the only way to use a Hi-MD disc is to encode using ATRAC3plus? So when you reformat your old MDs to Hi-MD standard the reason it fits so much on it is because it's using a lower bit rate..? I'm confused.. ~a.i.h.

See, that strange case comes in use for a reason. I've always liked that about MDs--they had something CDs/DVDs lacked, and at a smaller form factor too! They did cover bit rot on home CDs/DVDs on the CNN website not too long ago. So yes, what you're experiencing is definitely an issue. I've never hard trouble myself, my MP3 CDs in my car usually have a 6 month life span before I reburn new mixes because I've bought so much new music. :wacky: ~a.i.h.

I'm OK with SS2. I liked the old way you recorded things in SS 1.5; the ability to click on "hard drive" to "NetMD" just made more sense to me visually; I've had some awkward moments with SS2.0 because of that. I understand how to use it, it just seems waaaay tooo funky for me. But in general, I do like the added functions it gives. I'd transfer all my tracks into it if I used Windows lots, but I don't do that much anymore... To be honest, I don't use it much. I open it up, maybe buy some music, or import it and transfer to my NetMD. It's not my favorite media player in the world..waay too hard on RAM and processing power. ~a.i.h.

Thanks. :grin: *crosses fingers*

That sounds awesome. Something I'd try...hmmm...I wonder how F.L.A. would sound?

I thought they made a MD data drive? I've always wanted to track one down to add to my live show... Anyway, I agree that at this point it may be re-inventing the wheel with an MD drive in computers from Sony's point-of-view. But, then again, not everyone would want a MD player to listen to music with, so they might just do it anyway..bigger marketing area. I hope that this may be the case, because I would like a cheaper non-linear mass-storage unit. I mean, sure, there are CDs and DVDs, but they're only tehnically non-linear; you still have to burn them. Bah. I want to drag'n'drop like my hard drive/floppy disk/zip/etc. ~a.i.h.

I agree and assume it is a bash at Sony. I'm sure at some point, the tests were accurate but over all...? Beyond that, LAME MP3 isn't MP3. Well, yes it is in some sense: it's an MP3 encoder. But it's experimental and not an encoder found in most (or any?) MP3 encoders out there. I tried using it on my Linux distro to rip but it took a heck of a lot longer than Music Match..so I scrapped that idea. I found that an ATRAC3 file encoded at 105KPS is much nicer than an MP3 encoded at 128 KPS. But that's just me. I also can tweak the settings of the ATRAC3 file on my MD player unlike I can readily do/ever tried with any MP3 player I have. ~a.i.h.

Just wondering...there's been no mention, but has anyone heard of a new Hi-MD car unit coming down the pipe line? I'm holding out on getting an MD unit for my car for a Hi-MD one.... ~a.i.h.

Well, there is a new MP3 standard on it's way in that gives you the ability to encode surround sound. But that's just a hook to get people on this new MP3 standard, as it also has DRM functionality. So maybe, just maybe, you'll see a new MP3 MD player utilizing this upgraded codec. Doubtful. Beyond that, despite the recent tests, I've always found ATRAC3 to be superior to MP3. I don't mind Sony being crack heads about DigitalRestrictionManagement issues. It makes a lot of sense at this point, since a lot of bad boys and girls decided to get on Napster and the whole P2P file sharing thing went on a roll. But ATRAC has always had built in DRM functionality, and with some good reasons. Although I don't think the good outweighs the bad. Give them some time to sort stuff out, and when the DMCA is ammended here soon it'll be legal (for US citizens anyway) to make some sort of counter measure to the ATRAC codec. For home use, of course. ~a.i.h.

Anyone know when the car units will be coming out? ~a.i.h.

Yes...you'll be able to record with lossless compression using the PCM standard.

Are you trying to rip the whole CD using Simple Burner or use Sonic Stage it's self? They're two seperate apps, I'm just trying to figure out what you're doing here.. At the very worst, do you have a MP3 ripper that'll do at least 192 KPS? You could always rip to MP3s and import to Sonic Stage... ~a.i.h.

As far as reduced/speed of transfer? If you're transfering anything digitally through USB (with the exception of MiniDV/MicroMV/tape-based camcorders), it's always going to take as long to transfer as the file is long. Kind of like burning a CD, right? You supposedly have 32x realtime download speed on NetMDs, and I think Hi-MDs are supposed to be faster than that so...it should be speedier. Because PCM is still an audio codec like Atrac3, it's just a lossless one. So yes, technically, a lower quality PCM recording would take less time to transfer only because a smaller amount of data was taken down to record the song. But PCM recordings take up a lot of space. There's a reason why you can only get 70 (800MB) mins of CD-Audio on a normal CD.... ~a.i.h.

Yeah, there is no real spec to feed data from one storage device to the next. The most recent thing I can think of would have been the DC memory cards, but you'd have to have a VMU on one end to initiate transfer. Those things were neato. The iRiver, I guess, can do that too. That is pretty cool. Cheers to that ever-praised device. It's not at all unlikely we'll see something like that become more common. Things like PicBridge are working towards cutting out the PC between printers and digital cameras, for instance. In the future, more devices just might come packed with enough operating parameters to transfer between one device to the next, but that would require pulling teeth and having a consumer electronic industry as a whole come to one specification. ~a.i.h.

All the features listed rock. I'd use all of them probably at some point. And yeah, I agree with Fray--MDs are much better than CDs. What has always annoyed me with CDs was the need to open up a data session, close a data session. Do you have to do that with floppies, zip disks, MDs? Hecks no. CDs just weren't thought about from the consumer perspective of using as a storage medium until it was too late. Now DVD-RAM..now that is something done right. If only there were more compataible players out there for it... ~a.i.h.

That'd be awesome. It's probably not something they'd be afraid to do, since they're known for keeping around formats not-so-popular (like MicroMV camcorders). I'd love to see a MD video recorder. I'm not sure if the Sony Handicams can support writing to the memory sticks as far as videos go (obviously they write w/photos, and I have seen some Samsungs that can write to the memory stick using Mpeg4) but even if they did you'd have to buy a big stick to do long recording, and if it's Mpeg4 it's crap quality. I think Panasonic's D-Snap which comes with a 512MB SD can go 20minutes or so on MPeg2 video. A gig MD w/Mpeg2 recording would therefore be something like 40 mins! Sounds like fun. ~a.i.h.

Don't crucify me if I'm wrong, but it is very unlikely the Hi-MD or any USB-based MD format will ever come to the Mac. Since Sony is the purveyor of all things NetMD at this point, they more-than-likely have the final say whether or not you can put a USB-based format on what operating system. And since, potentially, Apple and Sony are on a collision course with each other I'm not sure if there will ever be a Mac version. However, again, if enough support is rallied--or if an aftermarket app is created to work w/the Mac is made, it's not out of the realm of possibility Sony would come out with their own thing. They just really like the PC platform and are really trying to push themselves along using Windows, and pretty computer towers. As far as mounting the drive under Mac? OSX is a Unix core, right? It's pretty easy to mount a Fat32 drive even under the kernel of Linux I'm running, I'm sure I could get the MD player to mount. Unless, of course, it's FAT but using some sort of weird encoding scheme. You never know with Sony. ~a.i.h.