aeriyn

ATRAC/Sony/DRM/UselessStage = teh ebil. EBIL. I <3 my pink iPod Mini. :happy:

Bah, NH1 sarks! iPod Mini > Hi-MD.

The Hi-MD units, so I've heard, all have pretty loud motor noise especially when writing to the TOC, compared to some other units. Sharp units have tended to be quieter IMO to Sony units. I recall my N10 being fairly quiet, much, much quieter than the R900 that it replaced, and quieter still than my N505. However, later on I obtained a Sharp DS8 and it was quieter (on playback and track skipping) than the N10. However, my new iPod is quieter (dead silent) than any MD unit I've ever seen. =P

The JA555ES does not support MDLP modes. Both units are very good, but I'd say that the JA555ES is probably better. All of the JB series MD decks are good, but obviously ES minidisc decks are going to be the best available. If you can get them both for the same price, go for the JA555ES. MDLP is overrated, anyhow. :rasp:

Yeah, afraid dex is right. When you use SonicStage to burn an ATRAC CD, it makes it usable on any ATRAC-compliant PCDPs, much in the same way any MD will play on another MD unit as long as it supports the same encoding method. This means, while you can play it on your Discman, you will not be able to extract the audio files in a faster than real-time scenario. You can, however, record them in analog from the line-out or headphone out on your Sony PCDP. I don't really recommend this, because I don't think the resulting recordings would sound very good. :sleep:

dex, I'm surprised at you. :laugh: You think I'd use my iPod for storing tracks for any other purpose than listening? Not a chance! FLAC+CD-R is my friend. :rasp:

I suggest that you buy the USB sound card to record your vinyl collection to your PC, and buy a more user-friendly DAP to use for portable listening if you don't plan on any sort of live recording. I was an MD nut myself too, but now I use an iPod because UselessStage is just horrible. 80USD usb soundcard + 250USD iPod Mini = 330USD, still cheaper than an NH1. :rasp:

Oi, no. LP4 is ATRAC3, which is not the same thing as ATRAC 4.5/Type-R. You are right though, LP4 quality really sucks. Don't use it for recording music. Recording voice with it is fine.

Oooh, I like that! :laugh:

It's an anime thing. They generally show through the hair in anime. :rasp:

OMG, I remember this from my N505! It's like a pearlescence on the plastic protecting the LCD and it made titling a pain in the ass, a game of find the angle where the light doesn't reflect and obscure the LCD readout.

Oi, I've heard that the HD Digital Amp is rather picky about what type of headphones you use with it. Try a different pair.

roflmao very good job. :laugh: And yes I did know that about binary. I just thought that since the minidisc.org faq says that reformatted MDs have 305mb... yeah. :sleep:

My father's a professional photographer, so I know all about film being higher quality than digital. 35mm is definitely higher, and medium- and large-format films are miles ahead of consumer digital photography products.

Well, everyone, I'd like you to welcome... Cori's Pink iPod Mini! Just picked it up from Best Buy this morning, and I am in LOVE, I tell you. iTunes as a music management software makes me forget all those horrible, horrible UselessStage nightmares. The sound... well, I need some good buds before I can really say how good it can possibly be. I need them now, because these iPod stocks are horrid. WTF, those farking high school kids stole my D-33, the Luscious Jackson CD that was in it and my E2cs, I hope they put my canalphones in their ears without wasthing them first!!! Now I gotta buy new buds. :sleep: OMFG, the Turbo button! Yessss, oh those were the days! I had FOUR MEGS OF RAM! 30-pin SIMMs that ran at a lightning-fast 110ns! Those were also the days when one megabyte of RAM cost you close to a C-bill.

Oi, Syrius, that was your first computer? Lucky. My first PC... I got in 1992. It was an Intel 286 20MHz overclocked to 25MHz! Woo, breakneck speed! I also had (and still have) an original Amiga 500 with monitor (complete with Component RGB connectors as opposed to a normal VGA plug) mouse, crashed and dead 120mb hard drive, two 3.5" floppy drives and several boxes of 3.5" floppies of Amiga software that probably none of them work. I've seen so many PCs come and go over the years. The one I've got now is probably my fourteenth computer; I'm not exactly sure. The one I had before this, I sold to pay for the parts to build this one, the one before that was fried by a lightning pulse. Previous PCs had been obtained from my stepfather's work and my mother's upgrades (and hand-me-downs) while they were likewise handed down to my little brothers.

So what happened to the other 15mb mentioned on the Hi-MD blurb on minidisc.org?

Good points, both of you, but the price of music tracks ordered online individually is very close to the total cost of the entire CD. If I'm paying for my music at all I want fresh, unmolested 16/44.1 PCM. Not encoded into various lossy formats. :sleep:

That's what the program told me when I used the calculate gain option. http://mp3gain.sourceforge.net/ This program. :sleep:

This is like the sort of thing used to make the soundtracks for movies?

Try looking for a Sony MZ-R700. They appear on eBay all the time, have quite good sound quality (ATRAC 4.5 for SP mode recording) and generally sell for around 80USD. You could then use the remaining 120USD to locate a decent microphone. The R700 is good for the recordist as it has both a microphone input (with plug-in power) and uses standard LR6 type AA cells. The units you quoted, the N420D and the NF520D, do not have microphone (or even line) inputs. They are NetMD downloaders only and are thus useless.

roflmao @ dex Oi, it sounds like the magnetic write head on your R900 is dead or very very dirty. After four years I wouldn't be surprised if it were dirty. :laugh: Try, very very gently, with a lint-free cloth (the type that are made for cleaning eyeglasses and camera lenses works well for this) to clean the magnetic head on the inside of the MD unit. Conversely, if this method makes you a little nervous, you can always buy one of those MD cleaning discs. I believe there's one disc that cleans both the magnetic head and the lens. If none of this improves your recordings, than I'd agree with dex and say, it's time for a new MD unit. Three to four years of slightly above average use seems to be the general lifespan for MD units.

you can regularly find 3 foot S/PDIF optical digital cables on eBay for around two dollars US.

I noticed this myself when I still owned my N10... however, instead of transferring, the tracks would just refuse to transfer, claiming I did not have the rights to transfer them. Basically, UselessStage is suspicious of any MP3 with its header not at 0 bytes, I believe. By opening the file in Adobe Audition and saving it as a WAV, I was able to escape this issue. Some stranger wav files would also refuse to transfer, like those that had been tagged by fb2k.

OMFG. 21000USD?! That thing better be farking AMAZING.