aeriyn

He has a Sony bookshelf system that I imagine can dub from CD->MD at 4x. I'd throw that USB cable out the window if I were you. :grin: Might try looking for an older player-only unit; Sony made some good ones. Or maybe you'll get lucky like me and stumble on cheapy awesomeness. *cuddles her DS8*

What weapons of mass destruction? :laugh: Last I heard, there weren't any in Iraq, and there hasn't been any since 1992. Colin Powell admitted it publicly, as well as apologizing to the entire nation and world for his rhetoric which certainly aided in the decision to go to war.

Religion... religion should play no part in politics. I'm going to disregard every point you made because it was biased from a religious, and thus tainted, perspective. I do not have a problem with religious people, as long as they keep it to themselves and don't try converting me. If you think that you have to push your religion on me to be a good practicing member, you're dead wrong and if you ever prosetlyze to me in person, I'll kick your ass. :whatever: Religion has mostly told me how worthless and sinful I am, as a gay person, as someone who looks for explanations to life's questions within my own heart and within nature. I get tired of religious assholes telling me how I'm going to suffer painfully and burn in hell just for being who I am. I'm not going to say what I really want to because I'm a mod and I'm supposed to set some sort of example of maturity here. :sleep: Regarding Bush, he is the antithesis of everything I stand for. I don't know how well of a job Kerry will do; he's never been President before. But I can't imagine a four-year-old doing a worse job of commander in chief than Dubya. And about pro-life, my brother's studying to become a genetic engineer. He wants to work with stem cells; work on trying to cure alzheimer's and parkinson's and maybe one day every disease and malady we can think of. Any effort that blocks stem cell research pisses him off, and by extension pisses me off. As a girl, I would hate to think it could one day be illegal for me to have an abortion if I was ever raped and impregnated. I would be stuck with this eternal reminder of that evil time; you can bet millions of women who are rape victims and did have the result of said rape aborted do not have to feel this way. I honestly regret that people cling to these religion-supported hatreds as if they are holy and revered. If I could, I'd try to help them understand that these hatreds don't fit in with their widely heralded efforts to love thy neighbor. I think, in the religious right, "love thy neighbor" really means "love thy neighbor... as long as she's not homosexual, a heretic or not God-fearing." The hypocrisy just simply astounds me. (I feel strongly about this, mostly from the countless altercations I found myself in, usually against religious-type people. If you don't like it, tough shit. You shouldn't actively support a group that wants nothing more than to hang me from the nearest tree.)

Mmm... Sharp Hi-MD... *gets horny just thinking about it* :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: Just kiddin'. :grin: In all seriousness, I hope Sharp doesn't release a Hi-MD unit anytime soon... :whatever: I hope they wait till I have zee cash first. :grin:

:laugh: I was speaking of my N505 in particular. I've misplaced the wall wart that came with it and I'm too lazy to buy a new 3v adapter. :grin: I wasn't talking in general, but your point is well taken. I'm still buying an MD deck. :whatever:

Skyther proved it was an E10 in a brass shell. :whatever:

Iraq aside, what right does the US possess that gives us the almighty power to tell other countries what to do and when to do it? We have no such right. Might does not make right; just because we can force other countries to act how we want them to, does not mean we should.For the better part of the last century, America has acted like the rulers of the Earth. Which we, of course, are not. Despite the fact that Saddam was terrorizing his own people and subjugating them into the ground... what right do we have to barge in there and turn the place into the United States of Iraq? Just something to think about. If we'd keep our nose out of everyone else's business and try to address the situations we have in our own backyard (as Germany, France and Japan have done already) we wouldn't have a trashed economy and division at the highest levels. We really would be the most powerful nation in the world. At the moment, we're only masquerading as the most powerful nation in the world, while in reality our government has served our country up on a silver platter for the economies of China, Japan and the Middle East. Not badmouthing Japan for taking advantage of our idiocy, either. They follow a different set of rules than we do, and we should not make them play by our rules. They would refuse, and have refused. Their way works better. Why should they change? It is the responsibility of the weaker partner to change, and the US is indisputably the weaker partner when it comes to nichibei--the Japanese-American economic relationship. The US is a child. It needs to grow up. "If you don't want Japan to buy it, don't sell it." --Morita Akio

Nah, Sony's not stupid per se. They are just monumentally shortsighted.

there's a difference in the recording quality of decks vs. portable, namely the Wide Bit Stream capability and possibly by virtue of the fact that they are running on uninterrupted AC power while my portable recorder was on batteries. also, the N505 is not the most sterling example of a MD recorder. I doubt that its recordings are just as good as a deck with comparable ATRAC version (4.5R) but higher-quality components.

Obviously, I'm going to vote for Kerry. I agree with every single point dex brought up; they are points I've cited many, many times. Other points I'd like to bring up; Bush claims to be a Republican, which is supposedly having US economic and business interests at the forefront... but everything he's done has done nothing but injure the economy. He outsourced thousands upon thousands of jobs. This damages our economy while strengthening the economies of the countries we outsourced to. One day, those workers in India and South Korea will want more money, and the companies that outsourced will be in a tight spot. He cut off the tariffs on steel early. It practically put US Steel out of business with all the cheap Dutch and Japanese steel flooding into the US. He is the first president in 70 years to actually lose jobs rather than create them. And he didn't lose only one job. He caused us to lose almost two million. More than economics, I have a very intense personal dislike for the man. For one, I am gay. His little crusade to make gay marriage illegal would have precluded any chance I ever had to walk down the aisle one day (if I ever choose to :laugh: ) with another girl. His constant pandering to the religious right has pretty much infuriated anyone who is not Southern Baptist or some other fundamentalist Christian sect. He loses his temper, he gets mad for no reason. He led an absurd and completely unjustified war against a country that had done nothing at all. Once we finished the war, we occupy Iraq and tell them their system of government sucks, and now they have to be a democracy. Idiocy. Democracy is the most difficult form of government to manage. The Iraqi populace has no experience with democracy. They don't know how to be democratic! The Middle East is a hotbed of violence; it always has been, since the days of the Sumerians and Mesopotamians to Alexander the Great to Saddam Hussein. It always will be. Nothing we do can possibly stop it. It's gone on for so long, war is all these people know. Just like the Israelis and the Palestinians. Just like the Protestants and Catholics in Ireland. The "war against terror" is another lunacy contrived by Dubya. It's the most infantile ideal I've ever heard of. There is no way in the nine hells that we can win a war against all terrorists. It's just childish. No, not even a child would be dumb enough to think that this is a winnable war. For every terrorist we kill, a hundred more are recruited. It is a war with no victor; a war without end. If we don't just give up, we'll still be fighting the "war on terror" fifty years from now, a hundred, a thousand. But I digress... There will always be evil. Evil is necessary. Without evil, there would be no good. There would be no progress, no moving forward. There would be no heroes. There would be no villains. There would be none of the conflict that pushes humanity forward toward a higher state of being. The balance between these two forces may tip and sway, but it will always balance itself out in the end. Evil can never be truly destroyed, just as much as good will never truly be extinguished. Now if only people could realize this most self-evident of truths... it is rather ignorant and naive to believe that evil is a disease that must be expunged or Armageddon will come. In fact, evil is much like the night... without night, the world would suffer under and endless light. Without evil, the world would stagnate and cease to move forward. Conflict would not exist. Progress would end. We would be content and warm in our stagnation, our inflexibility and intolerance. But of course, very few people think of good and evil in this fashion. Perhaps it is for the better if both those of a good weal and those of an evil weal do not know that the only reason they fight against each other is to maintain an intangible balance of ideologies whose only purpose is to keep our race from either fading into oblivion or destroying ourselves with excess and gluttony for power. As I look back, I realize that it is the intent that determines good or evil, not the actions. Saddam is an evil man, for he has the intent, the purpose, to commit evil acts for the sake of personal gain at the expense of others. But Bush's actions, which subsequently led to the capture of Saddam, an evil man, do not make Bush a good man. He did not intend to capture Saddam for altrustic reasons, but rather for personal gain, i.e. revenge for attempting to murder his father, or to obtain oil, or to add forward military bases to strategic locations in the Middle East... at the expense of others, namely the soldiers who were sent to their deaths, both American and Iraqi. This also makes Bush an evil man. I cannot in good conscience promote the ideal of an evil man running my country. I will vote for John Kerry, even though I do not think he is a good man. I do know, however, that Kerry is not an evil man. He may not be actively altruistic, but he is not actively malevolent. Wow. Long blurb. Philosophy plays a big part in politics, a part not many people actually notice. Let the flames roll in. :laugh: (Just kidding.)

Yes, the R70 portable is pre-MDLP and will only play SP-mode tracks. I suggest, however, since you have a bookshelf system, to dub the tracks directly from CD to MD in SP mode and play them on your R70 if you want to save money. Also, SP mode sounds better than LP2 and sounds a lot better than any of the NetMD modes through sonicstage. Yeah, you only get 74-80 minutes per disc, but the quality difference is huge. If you are looking for a good player-only unit, I suggest any one of the newer Sharp Auvi players (DS5, DS8, DS30, DS70, DS55, etc). I own a DS8 myself, and I love it to death. The Auvi 1-bit digital amp really makes a difference in the sound quality, and the unit itself is very small, gets great battery life, and is quite sexy to boot. Try searching the classifieds here and at t-board for used Auvi units... also, you can purchase several of them at Audiocubes. Sharp MD-DS8 Auvi 1-Bit MiniDisc Player

Pfft. That's the biggest waste of money Sony's ever created. Not only does it scratch easily, but the thing is huge (around the size of the R50 but a bit thinner) and it's just an E10 in a silver-plated brass shell. As we all know, the E10 sounds like mud.

Moving to correct forum... Not all audiophiles are interested in the engineering side of the spectrum. I consider myself an audiophile because of the definition of the word. audiophile - one expressing an ardent interest in high-quality, high-fidelity audio and audio recordings Now I'm not big on the recording side... I recorded a few live shows, made a few bucks. It was okay. Mostly, music's just part of my life. Listening to it that is. I don't care about graphs or charts or statistics. If the music sounds good, whether or not it's bit-perfect to the original PCM source, that's what I'm concerned with. Fidelity is not a major concern with me as it is with most audiophiles. I don't care if the music sounds like itself; I care if it sounds GOOD. Signal processing, amplification, EQ and tonal adjustments are all fine with me, especially if they make the music sound better. I'm really sort of a wanna-be audiophile; as I don't have nearly enough money to support my hobby. :grin: Sheesh, I'm struggling along to build a PIMETA headphone amp, which parts will only run me about 160USD. So yeah, I'm a little too poor to be a "true" audiophile. As I write this, I'm sitting down listening to an SP mode recording of Aikawa Nanase's "midnight blue" on my Sharp MD-DS8. It sounds really nice; I don't stress out because it's not bit-accurate to the original CD. Who cares? It's transparent enough for my purposes. Although, I'd have liked it better if it was recorded with an MD deck rather than a portable... But you get the point. Not all audiophiles are concerned about fidelity, and not all regular folk are concerned with sound quality. In fact, most people I know who are definitely not audio-nerds honestly believe that 128kbps MP3 is CD-transparent. :laugh: So you see, there's something of a middle run; those who want the best sounding stuff they can get, but don't really care much about how they get it. By the way, I think Hi-MD sucks, too. That's why I'm still with my "old" standard-MD DS8. Hi-MD, while offering many new useful features for recordists... most of these new features are crippled by restrictions and DRM that make them close to useless. Sony = the Japanese word for shortsightedness.

Please don't post duplicate threads. I've already deleted the other one. We want to try and keep this forum clean, kthnx. About your question; I don't know, and if you haven't gotten any responses, it probably means no one else does either. Just because your question doesn't get answered in a few days does not mean you have to post a new thread. "Bumping" your post (replying to your own post) to bring it up the list is fine, however. Try searching the Internet for this; I believe there is an upgrade for the MD8... but I am almost certain that it is a firmware upgrade and not an actual hardware or ATRAC DSP upgrade. Surely it would not be an actual drive upgrade.

Newer is not always better... Sony's old-school PCDPs blow both these away in terms of sound quality. Enter Sony D-311 or Sony D-555. Both are exceptional units. I'm trying to find a 311 myself... :grin:

Running the player into line-in on your soundcard is probably the best option. To use the USB playback function you must have SonicStage running. Just use a stereo minijack interconnect; reasonably good ones can be found at Radio Shack for around 10USD. I generally do this when playing games but want to listen to my own music; however in the future, once I get my home rig constructed... hehehe... I'll just set that bad boy next to my PC and slip on the beyers whenever I want to listen to music. :happy:

Moving to correct forum... There are many who feel your frustration with Hi-MD. It isn't a new technology, really. It's Sony milking a dying cow. By keeping compatibility with the old MD format, it's somewhat crippled the advantages of Hi-MD. I'd like to see Sony take Hi-MD to the next level. Fix the problem with track transfers from the unit to the PC. Make 1GB blanks more available. Remove SonicStage from the equation entirely, or rework it in a decent fashion. Allow for native playback of at least MP3; I'd prefer native playback of MP3/WAV/WMA/AAC/FLAC or some other form of lossless audio codec as well. Allow for pure PCM recordings via analog sources without DRM of any kind, and allow for drag-and-drop transfers of files to and from the unit. However, none of this will ever happen. Sony = the Japanese word for shortsightedness. Edit: By the way, those 3-pack Hi-MD for 10 bucks things? That was Sony's little attempt at scamming us. I've seen them; they're nothing more than regular 80min MDs preformatted for use with Hi-MD units. Actual Hi-MD 1GB blanks are around 7USD for one; that is if you can even find them.

actually. sonicstage 2 and higher doesn't even mention check-in/check-out. the button and action within the program is now called "transfer." which actually makes a whole lot more sense. but this has somewhat degenerated into idiocy, correcting each other about terminology. :grin:

Oh, how I wish I had 200USD to play with. *sobs*

I miss both you two crazy nuts. I miss sitting in on your little arguments/debates. :laugh: PiMeta's also in storage, the parts of it that I had (the pcb with the resistors soldered on, the opamps still in anti-static foam, the pot and the housing) and my dad's multimeter is nowhere to be found, so I can't continue working on it, especially without a PC to look up instructions or to ask you questions. But I promise I'll finish it as soon as I can financially. Well, I have about 720USD right now... I just need a roommate! No one I left messages for called me or anything. It's getting very frustrating! As for wanting anything... mostly I just want an apartment! Living with my PC-hating granny sucks! :sleep: I can't get my own place; can't afford it. Need to room with someone, and finding one suitable is a little hard, especially when people don't respond in a timely manner. I'd like a decent MD deck if I could find one inexpensively. The discs recorded with the N505 sound okay, but not nearly as nice as they would with a deck, I'm sure. Titling on this little tiny thing is a pain in the rear, also. Especially since the skip forward button likes to pretend to be skip backward at the most inopportune times. CD deck too, need that as well. and the dt440's. oi. lotta money talking here, and I'm trying to save up to move to in with Nika next year. *hugs skyth and chris* Hope you guys are doing well. I'm okay, just really bored!

yus. i'm bored. :sleep: so I figgered I'd make an off topic post... in the off topic forums. Wait, wouldn't that make my post actually not off topic? Which in turn, since it's in the off topic forums... wouldn't that make it off topic? :wacky: Confusing I tell ye! anyhow. My PC is very lonely in a storage room, waiting for me to find a new apartment, but people are really slow in responding. it's like, they're all leisurely looking for a roommate... orz. Somewhat annoying, especially at my grandmother's house. She hates computers, won't let me bring mine in. So I'm very bored. I miss Final Fantasy XI. I miss Nika! But I digress... I don't miss SonicStage. Curse that infernal program. Without a PC, real-time recording has been my only real option unless I want to be chained to my PCDP which is old and skips if I touch it (sounds nice though, Sony D-33, and was cheapy). But I've discovered much more SP mode love, in the fact that the difference between SP and LP2 is huge. Before, I didn't have many SP discs because I had no reliable source. at granny's house, I hijacked her DVD player and ran the coaxial out through a format converter (radio shack, 15USD, such a bargain) and recorded discs. and I was like, whoa. the N505 really is horrible for titling tracks though. especially that any N505 older than five minutes has that annoying propensity for >> to pretend to be << every two seconds. but it doesn't record bad. recording sure eats batteries though. I forgot how bad it was; with my R900 I always used the ac adapter... but I was always recording LP2 with that thing. amazing it took me so long to "hear" the light. I still want that pink iPod mini, but it's shifting from a "omgineeditrightnow" desire to a "maybe if I have the money." sound quality on my DS8 is lovely for me with SP discs. battery life is superb, and I don't mind carrying discs around, especially if they are all pretty discs like the TDKs I have. (Don't really care for Sony Color Collection, but the biancas are acceptible.) as much as I somewhat feared it, having my portable music totally divorced from my PC actually is handy, and I like it. waiting an hour for a CD to record to MD is not bad when you can wander off and read a book or play a computer game. so... sorry skyth. :grin: iPod's gonna wait, if not disappear from my want list. i just get to the point where I'm not well off enough, and I wonder, do I really need this? not really. what I have is wonderfully sufficient, and totally separate from my PC, which is nice when Tenshi-chan is sitting all alone in a cold, dark storage room. *cry* I wish I had some alcohol. orsomeshit. bear with me, chris, skyth. I feel depressed.

*zombie voice* Sharp... MD-DR77... *drool* yeah I know it's not hi-md... but blargh! I refuse to buy Hi-MD until Sharp releases an Auvi model! *cuddles her DS8* :laugh:

Sharp HP-MD33S Four Pole Headphones Ask and ye shall recieve. :laugh:

Moving to correct forum... Sure, I'm really bored anyhow. Waiting for MDs to record! :laugh: With the newest version of SonicStage, which can be downloaded from connect.com, the old check-out limit has been removed. You can transfer tracks an unlimited number of times. MiniDisc does not use MP3; it uses a different compression codec called ATRAC (Adaptive TRansform Acoustic Codec) which is proprietary to Sony. However, SonicStage automatically transcodes MP3s and unencrypted WMAs to ATRAC3. I strongly suggest you record the old-fashioned way, however, for ATRAC3 is not nearly as good as old-school ATRAC 4.5R... which sounds very, very close to CD-transparent to me. SonicStage is very limiting on your bitrate choices. If you go with standard MD, you get LP2 and LP4 (132kbps Normal Stereo and 66kbps Intensity Stereo respectively). LP4 just plain sucks, LP2 I wouldn't recommend either unless you're used to 128kbps MP3s, which is about what it sounds like. If you go Hi-MD, you get a choice between PCM Audio (1411kbps Normal Stereo, uncompressed audio), Hi-SP (256kbps), Hi-LP (64kbps, utter crap) and 48kbps (even worse). Also, you can use LP2 or LP4 or even ATRAC3 105kbps. Personally, if I were you, I'd go with Hi-MD to get more recording space and the ability to use SonicStage for 256kbps encoding. Doing it the way I do it (via optical input) is real-time and slow, but the sound quality is much better than anything Soniccrap can do. :whatever: Actually Hi-MD units, except for the very lowest end models, are on the same price point as HDPs. If you've always got access to a PC, I'd say go with an iPod. But if you are away from your computer a lot, I'd say MD, either legacy or Hi-MD. The N510 is actually not a bad unit, especially for the price. It doesn't have wow sound quality... for that you'd have to spend a little. I've seen N510's for as low as 45USD in places like Wal-Mart or the like, on clearance while Sony plugs their (much crappier) downloaders at a higher price. For sound quality, I'd suggest Sharp. I personally own a Sharp MD-DS8 (player only unit) which I'm listening to right now, and it sounds lovely. Really brings out the energy of the music I listen to (mostly J-Pop). For a Sharp recorder, try hunting around for an IM-DR420, or if you want the uberMD, try for an IM-DR80. Both of these support the NetMD standard. If I had my pick of Sharp recorders, however, I'd bag me one of those pink DR7s... so very pretty. :grin: I'd recommend the DR7 as well, but it is non-NetMD. All recording has to be done in real-time, and maybe that doesn't appeal to you. Sharp units are a little expensive because they aren't marketed in the US, and they are generally high-end (Sharp doesn't make the plasticized units that Sony has been cranking out so much, save for the DR420), but you can get lucky sometimes. I found my DS8 for $125, used but in mint condition, while a new one would run $240. I mean, if you're on a shoestring budget, go with the N510. But if you have some cash to play with, look at the Sharp Auvi units. The sound quality will not disappoint! Hope this helps. :happy:

Glad someone agrees with me. :whatever: I know for a fact that the RM-MC33EL works with the NH600. I imagine that the 40ELK would likewise work. I don't think the NH600 can be hacked, but there is a possiblity that it can be. You can hack many other MD units to behave as higher-end models; I've hacked my N505 to pretend to be an R900, although some of the options don't work because the unit lacks the necessary hardware. I would not have any clue how to get into service mode on the NH600, and not sure I'd want to try, even if I had one to play with.