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aeriyn

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Everything posted by aeriyn

  1. No, you have to strike a balance. Reciprocity. One of yours for one of mine. The current sell, sell, sell attitude in the US is destructive, not constructive. Selling our businesses to foreigners, outsourcing and dissolving manufacturing in the US is not the way to go. When you manufacture something, you're literally creating wealth. You are taking raw materials that are worth a certain amount and multiplying that amount by many times. The US has nowhere near the manufacturing capabilities it had in the 1950s. As of now, we cannot make everything we use. Even beyond that, it comes down to another issue: we overconsume. Zombie is right; we love disposable throwaway use once products. We need to learn conservation. We need to look at Japan and Germany. Conservation is not making do with less, it's doing what we do now with less energy, with less materials, with less cost. Conservation is efficiency. The real problem in the US is that the government is so hostile to our businesses when it comes to competing in the world market. Trade is not free even though we continually fool ourselves into believing it is. The Japanese have a saying--"Business is war." And that's exactly how they see it. We're in a no-holds-barred economic war with China, Japan and every other country that trades on the world market. We need to start acting like it. They're not our friends. They are our competitors. We should not forget that.
  2. I was talking about my other job, the one I had before I was forced to work at a restaurant with all the other computer nerds who lost their jobs to outsourcing and stupid businesses. And as for how I feel about our helping other countries--charity starts at home. The US has far too many problems here to be worrying about the rest of the world. They need to take care of their own kids before feeding the neighborhood.
  3. It has clips for speaker leads on the back. Personally, if I were to buy and use an SI Tripath amp, I'd take it out of that cheapo plastic case and put it in something metal with proper binding posts or banana plugs. Oh, I'd change the crappy volume pot for an ALPS RK27 while I was at it.
  4. Outsourcing should be regulated a lot heavier than it is. Now, I don't mind company A creating a new product and then going to a Taiwanese OEM and saying "build our product" because well, no one lost a job from that! But what pisses me off is when company B goes into its factory that has been churning out product for twenty or thirty years and saying "We're closing down the factory," then laying off every employee and reopening the factory... in China. Or Mexico. That is total total BS, totally betraying your employees, your country and yourself just to make a higher profit. If you want to outsource the jobs, go right ahead, but do it like Japan does--outsource the people too! I wouldn't mind moving to another country if it meant that I'd have a good job at the other end.
  5. I'd like to reiterate that the average iPod user is a moron, and that I'm not the average iPod user. Those crappy white earbuds are nowhere to be found.
  6. No, outsourcing to China makes it a bitch for me to find a damn job, that's what it does. All politics and diplomacy aside, I am an individual person who personally does not give a rat's ass about China or Iraq or Iran or what happens over there if I can't find a job or support myself. Period. Why? Because myself and my loved ones are the most important things to me, and it is to all of you folks too. If you say it's not, you're a liar because I very seriously doubt any of you would give your job up so some Chinese guy you don't even know can have a job. Personally I believe that what happens in those countries is none of America's f-ing business. I think it is total bullshit that the USA is more willing to give jobs to people in China than to their own citizens. Helping other countries is all well and good, and a very noble goal for humanity but, BUT it's not our responsibility and it's not our right. America always sticks its nose in everyone else's business and tries to "help" when the country doesn't even want help.
  7. Hahaha. The only MDs even comparable to the iPod (or the Rio Karma for that matter) in sound quality are, unfortunately, still the Auvi units made by Sharp, and they're mostly not even NetMD, but old-school no -computer-connection MDLP units.
  8. Creative seems to be the company for flash-based digital players. They make the smallest ones that sound the best for the price. Sony and iRiver also make very small flash-based players; the Sony models have very good battery life and tiny size, as do the iRivers, but they are considerably more expensive than the Creative Labs' units. Apple's only flash-based player, the iPod Shuffle, is not my very favorite. For starters it has no screen and almost none of the player settings are definable on the player; they all must be set through iTunes. Sound quality wise, it's on par with the other iPods and it is definitely loud enough. I still don't see any reason they should've ommited even a simple one or two line display, though. I kinda like to know what I'm listening to and a screen makes navigation much easier. Try finding an individual song on a Shuffle, and you'll have a frustrating time. If you were looking at a Microdrive player, I'd say Rio Carbon and iPod Mini lead the pack; likewise for a full-sized hard drive player, I'd recommend the iPod 4G and the Rio Karma. I'm not a fan of the Creative Labs' hard disk players. But I really am impressed by their flash-based players.
  9. I wish more portable players would have digital outputs, and not for recording reasons at all. There are some nice portable DAC projects out there as well as some builders who make a product; the aos Flute is really awesome, an exceptional little battery powered DAC and a stellar headphone amp combo all in one. And of course Headroom's Coda and Overture combo. At the time though, only the previous model iRivers and some of the Archos units actually have digital outputs. If they'd use a 3.5mm mono minijack for coax digital out, the fragility would not be an issue...
  10. It's pretty much a general consensus that the encoders used by SonicStage are not nearly as efficient as the ATRAC ICs in MD recorders. I don't think it has to do so much with speed as with Sony's general incompetence when it comes to making computer software. Note: Sound Forge was not made by Sony; it was made by the Sonic Foundry people. Sony took over the program and did some things that most long-time Sound Forge users didn't especially like. Sound Forge is exempt from the ideal that Sony isn't very good at making software products because Sony didn't make it.
  11. I try to be honest. I used MD as my primary portable audio for a good year and a half. I'm much happier with my iPod. Does it sound all that much better than my Sharp MD player did? Not really. But it's a hell of a lot easier to deal with. I like to call iPods "Portable Music for Dummies" because they really are that freaking simple. And even an ubertechy person like me really appreciates simplicity and minimalism in design. And in my honest opinion, if you're not going to record, you don't need MiniDisc. dex will tell you this too. Chris and the other mods and most of this forum, however... they're more or less proponents of the format in of itself, and I am kind of on the outside. I still think that the collector's discs from Japan have an awful lot of cool factor, but every time I think of that I just remind myself of how much easier it is to get high-quality music on my iPod Mini.
  12. The significant problem with using MiniDisc for multimedia purposes is the fact that writing data to a magneto-optical disc is very, very, very slow by modern standards. This wasn't a problem when MD was first designed because it was only able to record in real-time.
  13. At the expense of a weaker headphone output. Also, hard drives eat a lot of power while optical-read drives don't. That's entirely subjective. But I'll bite. The only MD units that I even consider to sound "as good" as the iPod 3G/4G/Mini are the Sharp Auvi units. Most of the newer Sony units are typical Sony "No-mid-fi: we're all bass and treble baby; we have no midrange!" I'm the first to admit that the iPod has a clean, neutral sound. Some people consider it to be sterile; personally I just think it's a source that doesn't get in the way of the music. =P And casing it up in one of the thousands of different types of cases made for the iPod, oh and ditch those white earbuds and the lemming factor is gone. The IEMs that I want to get sometime in the near future are about the most godawful ugly things ever but man, do they sound sweet. =P
  14. Hi-MD holds 1GB of information per disc, so it holds quite a bit more music at higher qualities than NetMD units do. I recommended the flash player because an MD unit has moving parts which are not designed to take the kind of abuse that might be heaped on them in say, a bike crash going at a pretty good clip down a hill, if you smash hard enough, even if the MD unit doesn't make actual contact with the ground, it could still cause catastrophic failure. Also, the flash player has a more powerful headphone amp built into it, which translates to louder volumes with less-efficient headphones. Sony, for some reason completely unknown to me, believes that 5mW per channel is enough. Some headphones need considerably more power than that to be driven to normal listening levels. As for the sound quality of MiniDisc, that is largely dependent on the analog output stage of the device. All of the Sony Hi-MD units use a Panasonic amplifier IC which is not a particularly good one. Many of the older Sony MD units use a "generic" brand opamp that's a bit better. The encoding qualities of the MD codec (ATRAC) is that it's better than MP3 at low bitrates. There are very little differences between lossy codecs at ~256kbps. As much as the recording folks here complain, Hi-MD is much easier to work with when it comes to recorded works. Since you can quickly get your recordings off the unit onto your computer for editing and mastering and burning to CD, unlike the previous incarnations of MD which require to either use an expensive external MD deck with an S/PDIF output or use the headphone out on the MD portable itself (which is analog and lossy, and the signal is getting mucked up by going through a lot of cheap capacitors). Note that all transfers for old MD are real-time. Most of the complaints seemed to be about earlier versions of SonicStage. If recording your instrument-playing is top priority, then MD is your only option. If listening to other peoples' music while riding your bike is your top priority, go with a nice flash player like the Muvo Micro N200. MD isn't superior to other formats; in fact in a lot of ways it's not nearly as convenient or as user-friendly. Sound quality is subjective of course, but Sony never seems to understand the correlation between high output power and good sound (which actually goes hand-in-hand). The Sony sound is usually good enough for most non-audiophile types; they've got "mid-fi" down to a science.
  15. This is a lot simpler than it sounds. Find the input wires from the head unit's tape deck (left channel, right channel, ground) to the amplifier, cut all three wires, stip and tin the ends. Solder longer wires onto each of the free ends so that you've got enough wire to put the switch wherever you want to. Heatshrink all soldered connections for neatness and to prevent shorts. Then solder a DPDT toggle switch between the L and R channel wires. On the two free lugs for the DPDT switch, solder the input L and R from the 3.5mm minijack that you want to plug into an external device. Solder the grounds all together (since the grounds can be common in normal unbalanced stereo operation). Heatshrink it all up, mount the switch wherever you want to. Throwing the switch will alternate between the tape input or the new "aux" input. It's really quite simple. With a multimeter and a half hour I could probably give nearly any head unit this "treatment."
  16. The SI Tripath is only a two-channel amp, unfortunately. It has only outputs for left and right channel. No sub output. But it's very inexpensive. Buy.com carries them, I believe. Froogle it, you'll find something.
  17. I don't mind buying Japanese products or even Taiwanese products, or Malaysian products, because those countries are our allies. The PRC is not our allies. I'm not saying that Chinese people are evil; they're not. Their government isn't exactly pure as the driven snow, however.
  18. Not only is this true, but a colossal advantage over other portable recorders. MD is the only affordable, cost-efficient method of CD-quality recording that fits in the palm of your hand. Period. The Marantz, Edirol and Mayah CF recorders are excellent pieces of equipment, but they're rather large, heavy, extremely expensive (US $500 or more) and use a very pricey media type. Hi-MD can record just as well if not better for half the price of the cheapest CF recorder (the Edirol at this point). It seems to me that your usage would be better suited by a HDD-based DAP such as the Sony NW-HD3, Rio Carbon/Karma or Apple iPod. The only real advantage of MD over these units is that it can record CD-quality audio from a microphone portably. If you're not going to use it for that, there's really not much point in having one unless you're already significantly invested into the format (or you just like the format). I don't see how using the MD unit's recording function could reduce the life of the MD unit itself, considering how it was designed specifically for that purpose. And yes, MD units, like any other device with moving parts, is fragile to an extend and suceptible to damage from physical shock. Only solid-state (flash-memory based) digital audio players/recorders can avoid this, and really they too could be considered fragile.
  19. I might be able to get a job that doesn't involve flipping burgers if it was.
  20. If you can live without the sub, I'd suggest trying for a used pair of Energy or Paradigm Atom bookshelf speakers (cost varies) and a Sonic Impact Tripath amplifier ($30). The little SI Tripath amp... it sounds as if it should cost ten times that much. There are people using this thing to power AKG K1000 headphones ($800 US headphones!) and enjoying the results.
  21. Based on your usage habits, a flash-memory based digital player sounds like it'd fit your bill better than an MD unit except for using the discs with your minisystem. You are not going to record with this, correct? For primarily active, outdoor use, I would definitely recommend solid-state over anything with moving parts. Both MD units and HDD-based players can suffer catastrophic failures of crucial parts from abuse, such as head crashes or optical pick up block faults. Creative Labs makes some very good flash-based MP3 players. I personally am partial to the MuVo Micro N200, it has the sleekest looks, is very, very small, uses AAA batteries (including high-capacity NiMH rechargeables) has an FM radio tuner and a voice recorder. If I wasn't broke, I'd be using one of these as my workout player. It holds up to 1GB and utilizes USB2.0, so transfers are very fast. Also, it's flash-based so there is no way it can ever skip and it will be able to take a lot more physical shocks than an MD player before something... lets loose. Using EAC/LAME -alt preset-standard VBR encoded MP3s, you can cram a good deal of music on this tiny little player. http://www.creative.com/products/product.a...5&product=10737 If you're dead set on an MD player but don't want to change discs every hour or so, Hi-MD is your only way to go. Since you would be using this unit in a very high-stress environment, I wouldn't recommend one of the "premium" models like the NH900 or the NH1; rather, I'd point at the NHF800, since not only is it far less expensive, but it uses standard AA batteries (including high-capacity NiMH rechargeables), has a radio tuner on the remote (but not without the remote) can acquire recordings from either the USB port via SonicStage or the optical/line-in or microphone input if you ever decide to use it for recording. However, the NHF800's LCD is not backlit on the main unit or the remote. Soundwise, I've used a Creative N200 and I was amazed at how good it sounds and how LOUD it gets for being so small. Believe it or not, but the headphone output on this tiny little MP3 player is stronger than all modern MD players. I've never heard the NHF800, but all the Sony 1st gen Hi-MD units use the same Panasonic operational amplifier... and I'm not too thrilled with the sound I heard on my neighbor's NH600D (using uncompressed OpenMG PCM just for kicks). IMO, I'd say the N200 sounds better by a wide margin, and I'm usually quite critical of Creative Labs' players. They make damn good flash players though.
  22. I'd tend to agree with you; IMO, ATRAC3 is a better low-bitrate codec than MP3. It isn't as good as AAC or vorbis, but it's close enough that the differences are largely academic, yet are measurable. Of course, if you're like me and listen to bitrates over 192kbps, the differences between codecs become about nil. With normal use I can't tell the difference between 224kbps AAC, 256kbps MP3, 256kbps vorbis, 256kbps ATRAC3+, etc.
  23. He gives it to that guy that talks about mescaline with the girl with the white rabbit tattoo.
  24. Head-Fi didn't appreciate some responses to a thread about Shure, Inc. opening up a manufacturing plant in China. Hopefully you folks will let me get a bit of this anger out of my system. How I see it: China (the PRC to avoid confusion) is not our friends. We are not allies. In fact, we were once actual military enemies. I believe that outsourcing all our manufacturing, not just to China but primarily to China, is wrong and is hurting our economy while inflating the economy of a country that does not have our best intentions in mind. Am I a bigot for seeing things this way?
  25. Bleh, both iTMS and Connect suck. I'm not an Apple fangirl, far from it. I like my iPod because it does everything I want it to do and nothing I do not need it to do. It's also the only microdrive unit capable of playing back a lossless format. Just get this straight, Chris, and I know you think I'm some sort of Apple zealot. I'm not. I use the iPod because it perfectly suits my needs and wants. When something better, cuter and in pink comes out, I'll be all over it. And since my home listening is through a good old-fashioned CDP, buying CDs makes perfect sense to me. In fact I'm listening to it right now.
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