aeriyn

Sorry to hear that your college didn't join up. Hacked OS = yum. :grin:

watcher666, America's even worse about MD equipment than the UK. The only models on sale here are the Sony plasticized ones. Rarely, you might stumble across something semi-decent... I saw an NH1 at the high-end audio store hereabouts. I would have had to order my DS8 from Audiocubes if Chris hadn't have told me about a guy on T-board that was selling his for $125. Of course I snapped it up rather quickly. It was spotless, not a scratch on it from the moment I got it, and of course it's still in lovely shape. (Good finish, these things have on them.) No matter what I did I was unable to make my N10 sound anywhere as good as my DS8. My R30 sounded better than my N10 did. (I really wish my brother didn't have the R30 either, I'd use it in the car.) If you want the good MD stuff, you're going to have to look at importing from Japan, because that's the only place it's really big. Or, go old-school. I've heard many people sing the merits of the R50, and the R900 was not a bad unit at all. I suggest hitting eBay for a Sharp though. Keep an eye out for the Auvi units; even though, say, the DR420, isn't the prettiest in the world (it's actually quite repulsive, lol) it sounds just as good as the others that do look sexy. :grin: Edit: Oh, forget cute MD blanks here in the US. Sony 80min Color Collection 5-packs is about all you can find.

I'll do the fake-SP test with that old N505 I have laying around. PCM vs. real SP (on JE330) vs. netMD SP vs. netMD LP2 Hmm. Wonder what's going to win? My Beyers are on their way! So I'll have a good pair o' cans to do this little testing with... ... well, when the amp's done, too. :whatever:

Whooooaaaa... Chris, you really started something here. Although, I think the marriage topic was brought up by me. :laugh: dex, there is "common-law" marriage in some states of the US; Alabama has it. Personally I think it's a bunch of crap because of how people use the common-law marriage to their advantage and to their previous or current partner's detriment. Completely agreed on separation of religion and government. A government that presides over millions of people, all with different religions, spiritual beliefs (or lack thereof) cannot be so biased as to side with one sect. Objectivity is the name of the game. Unfortunately, no one in the US government is truly objective, because the American public at large is, well, stupid. The Average American knows nothing. He has no real knowledge. All he has is a set of media fantasies and prejudices that he clings to as if they are sacred truths. Of course religion injects some of its own brand of spiritually-induced chaos into this average American. The average American is happy in his ignorance, and refuses to seek the truth. Yesterday, at work, I heard some good ol' boys arguing with someone about the election. While I won't list all the particulars here, the most profound statement uttered by one of these rednecks was, and I quote: "I'm gunna vote fer Bush, cuz he likes killin' those towel-heads." If my eyes were capable of rolling so hard they popped out of my head, they would have. I'd seriously like to kick that guy's ass, and not only for his racist remarks. Ugh... If I could, I'd collectively kick America's collective asses. I get really tired of feeling ashamed of being an American. Although, I don't know. My grandmother says she thinks a Japanese family must've left me in America while they were on vacation. :laugh:

The E10 sounds almost identical to the N10. So, if you were happy with the N10, you should be happy with the E10. Although personally, if I were you, I would get a Sharp, either DS8 or DS70 or one of the Auvi players. They aren't as small as the E10, but they don't sound like mud.

Wow. I really only have one response to that rant which has trumped my own. Word. :laugh:

>.> <.< I love my FCCC copy of Windows XP Professional. "Validate" doesn't even exist. :laugh: I bought a bunch of software when I was a student at Shasta Community College through this thing called the Foundation for California Community Colleges; it meant, 75% discounts on all software, and without all the strange restrictions and anti-piracy measures. I don't even need to put in the CD-key for most of my stuff... :grin:

I like the interface of my MD deck personally... :grin: It would be nice, however, to see Sony DAPs (specifically, Hi-MD) able to natively handle other codecs (I'm thinking more along the lines of AAC/MP4 than MP3, though) because well, ATRAC3+ leaves a lot to be desired, even compared to old-school ATRAC. And maybe if SonicStage was somewhat stable, user-friendly and wasn't so chock-full of DRM that it destroyed any semblance of ease-of-use and actual usefulness... Hmm... food for thought, at least. I still like my MD deck better.

Sounds like an optical pickup block fault; i.e. dead laser assembly. This exact thing happened to my MDS-JE330 deck. The optical block died, and no matter what I put into the slot, it would always say "No Disc. I got someone to fix mine, though, since it was way off warranty... and no, he's not taking any more repairs at the moment. He's backlogged. :sleep:

First-generation (real-time record) LP2 tracks don't sound horrible, but they aren't very good. NetMD fake-SP is much much worse; it's about what I got transcoding 192kbps MP3 to LP2 via netmd. It's about the same on the crappiness scale. I'll stick to my JE330, kthnx. :laugh:

by virtue of how it's done, fake SP should actually sound slightly worse than LP2... ... since it's LP2 that's been transcoded to SP.

I believe you are right, dex. With my equipment, it's somewhat hard to tell the uncompressed tracks on both CDs apart. The older CD sounds a little fuzzed, but not terribly so, and it actually has a rather nice sound to it. My newer CDs sound good enough with my equipment, which is arguably not the best. I'm just wondering... why do they bit-push so much to get the volume of the recordings up? That makes no sense, when you can just turn the pot on your amp up and increase power...? Also, I do listen to music all day (not literally, but close!). I love music; I don't even own a TV. :happy: So fatiguing sound, sound that is very loud, is something I tend to stay away from. My music is usually slightly dark as well; with my hearing issues anything bright is rapidly fatiguing...

Sony portables are annoying about putting track marks when you don't want them; even with digital recordings... I was recording from a DVD player with coaxial out through a format converter to optical, and it was track mark hell. There'd be twice as many track marks as normal... or there would be NO track marks (in the case of CDs that had no silence at all between tracks) at all. It seems, with Sony, that if there's one overriding factor (when using optical in, and the CD deck sends the track marks at the proper places) it won't do track marks every 2 seconds of silence. With mic-in I've found that it makes no track marks for silence... but line/opt in jack is probably going to always make a track mark when there's 2 or more seconds of silence. I think you may have to deal with the track marks, or record via mic in and leave the rolloff and battery box out of the equation...

<lie>s I tell you!

Wow. You're a nice religious person. :happy: Agreed about the gay marriage issue. I would bet large monies that Bush doesn't give a rat's ass what homosexuals do; he's just pandering to the religious right and sealing their votes. Same with Kerry; he likely could care less, but says what he does as to not scare off potential voters. Blargh. Oh, Chris... apparently with those missing explosives, the Bush administration is now claiming they were gone before Coalition forces were ordered to guard that building. :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

Compressed audio is for noobs. ... wait, I'm listening to compressed audio. :sleep: To me, in portable applications (sharp md-ds8 > sharp hp-md33s) I can't easily tell the difference between ATRAC 4.5 and PCM. For portable applications mind you, before everyone starts getting all shnarly. In the car, on the streets, walking around, with lots of ambient noise... or in a library, reading a book and not paying much attention to the music I'm listening to... yeah. I mean, yeah, I can tell the difference between the original CD and the sound the MD is producing. But the difference isn't annoying and it doesn't make listening not enjoyable. With ATRAC 4.5, the most annoying part of compression IMHO, pre-echo on vocals... I can't hear. There's small bits of hissing, sometimes, as a result of compression... maybe some flangey noises, but I can't hear them. The music is still fun to listen to, especially with the DS8. Also, you have to understand that some CDs are mastered better than others. I have one CD... Aikawa Nanase's "Red" which was mastered in 1995. There's no way it will sound better than another CD I have, BoA's "Valenti" which was mastered in 2003. I can tell the difference between those CDs by themselves, uncompressed and everything. Obviously "Valenti" encodes to ATRAC 4.5 a lot better than "Red" does... since the source is of a higher quality. Just my two cents... :happy:

Recording problems are with the magnetic head. It is possible that a hard shock (such as dropping the device) changed the floating position of the magnetic write head. Pushing it against the disc while recording, with the cover off, is not advisable. It has a set floating position, which I believe is about 0.25mm away from the disc itself... about a hairsbreadth. Also, I suggest staying away from Sony's plasticized cheapo MD units... not only do they lack any decent features but they seem to be rather prone to failure. Though, the N510 is a pretty good unit. It's just a repackaged N505, but both units are sturdy and robust. They don't sound wonderful, but for that you'd have to spend money (read: late-model Sharp).

Moving to correct forum... Eww... 64kbps encoding. :laugh: If you listened to your Hi-LP recordings with a good set of cans, you better believe you'd be able to tell it from Hi-SP. With my cans (beyerdynamic dt440) I can tell PCM from 292kbps ATRAC 4.5. :grin: All joking aside, it's good that you're happy with the product that you bought. Fortunately it seems that some do enjoy Hi-MD, even if others (like me) don't really see the point (except for live recording in PCM). All hail old MD! :laugh:

*cuddles Skyther* Noooo, don't leave! I was just kidding! :laugh: I like the Staff profile idea, also. More chances to show off my hawt rig... wait a minute... my rig sucks... :whatever: :grin:

I want a JB940. *crycrycry*

the "loud music" setting for the NH1 is Automatic Gain Control, which could be affecting the sound quality of your recording. try doing this: leave AGC off, use the rolloff at the same setting and put the volume of the recorder at 16/30. you're using a battery box/rolloff thingus, right? I don't have any experience with these devices, so I don't know if microphone sensitivity would have any bearing on these... probably not since you're connected to the unit via line-in... right? *is a noob recordist*

:sleep: 110 can find a respectable unit? 110USD can barely find a decent one. I'd look for an R700 if you could... since it has ATRAC 4.5 and a microphone jack. It does not have a built in microphone; only the MD business recorders do. However, you don't want a built-in mic. Built in mics suck.

alternatively you could record the tracks to your PC and use a sound editing program such as Audacity and remove the stuttering (short periods of silence) manually. what I imagine you'd have to do for live recording, though, is to turn off all automatic track marking functions and record the show as one big huge track... ... then manually add track marks after the recording is finished.

Hmm... The only thing I can really think of is cleaning up the Hi-MD section. While I could do this myself, it would be such a huge job... :sleep: Normally, people are supposed to put live recording stuff in Live Recording, techy stuff in Tech Support/Tech Topics... but in Hi-MD, anything that even remotely relates to Hi-MD in the most peripheral way is being thrown into that forum. I catch some of the worst OT posts, as do you all, but ugh... it is a mess in there! I think all noobish posts resulting from the inability to use a search command or read a FAQ should be put in the trash bin also, not just rude posts. Oh yeah, and less Skyther. *giggle*

The N10 and the JB940 both support ATRAC Type-R recording for SP mode recordings. Some folk say there's no difference between portable and deck recordings as long as the ATRAC is equal... but I'm not so sure. :laugh: If I were you, I'd use the JB940 for recording music, and the N10 for a paperweight. :grin: Or you can sell me your JB940... (Just kidding. :laugh: )