ZosoIV

I've been debating whether or not to go the Hi-MD route, but one thing has bugged me about several of the units (MZ-NH900, RH10, etc.): how big are they? I need something small and thin, which is why I really like my N10. The MZ-NH1 looks to be about the same dimensions as the N10 (maybe a bit thicker), but the RH10 looks huge to me. Any comments from people who have owned both?

Actually, I think it's even worse...I keep hearing people talk about fake SP as being "disguised" LP2, but that wouldn't make much sense, considering that the block sizes and filterbanks of ATRAC3 are different than ATRAC. Even if you "trick" the player into thinking LP2 and a bunch of padding is SP, it still wouldn't play back. More likely, the software encodes the track to LP2 for dubious reasons (DRM, most likely), then sends the stream to the player, where it is transcoded (not disguised) into regular ATRAC. The fact that most ATRAC DSP chips probably can't do SP encoding faster than maybe 2x also might be the reason why fake-SP encodings are limited to about that speed, despite there being more bandwidth available in USB 1.1. Thus, my feeling is that "fake SP" is actually worse than LP2: it's LP2, decoded to PCM and then transcoded into SP on the unit itself, which leads to more quantization noise and generational artifacts. Just speculation, of course.....

SP only, though I do use a mono mic and LP4 for lectures. LP2 is pretty bad for many types of music, if you know what to listen for. LP4 is not even worth bothering with, except for voice recordings.

I use Grado SR125's (and EX71's for outdoor listening).

I happen to own both an iPod mini and still have nurtured my MD obsession of many years. The iPod sounds ok over my Grados, if a bit thin, but because I have a nice MD recorder, it's not my first choice when I want to relax and listen to something critically. The iPod is a repository for a ton of songs - quick and convenient for the bus, or in my assistantship office. The MD is for when I want to relax and really listen to my music; SP encodings with the Grados do the trick nicely. I'd never think of going one way or the other; both the mini and the MD do their thing really well, better than a single player would on its own. Most people don't have MD's because they don't have a need to record, they could care less about nuances in sound, and they want to stay with the hippest trends. Music to them is just something that goes on in the background; MD is for the rest of us

Hi-MD certainly is not on its way out, considering some of us old-timers who aren't even on our way "in" yet. Sure, I'd love a snazzy new NH1, but the cost of a new player, plus the scarcity of 1GB blanks, isn't reason enough for me to bite. For now, my N10 (and my HDD player) serves my needs quite well, though 36 hours of voice recording on a single disc WOULD be nice. Maybe in a year or so....

I'd be thrilled if Sony would just drop their damn movie and music divisions and stick with making hardware. Instead of building crippled, half-assed devices that "sort of" work in order to appease their media monster, why not make the BEST devices to play other people's media? It's better to be great at one thing than mediocre at several. If two or three years ago, Sony had offered audio and/or video players that lacked their usual DRM-paranoia and played all manner of formats (MPEG-4 AAC, Vorbis, MP3, FLAC, etc), Apple wouldn't even be an issue right now. Sony has a steep hill to climb! Apple is great at marketing, but function should precede form; I should know as a relatively unimpressed owner of one of their laptops. Next time it's a Vaio

I just snagged a mint-condition N10 with 10 discs, a microphone, and all the trimmings for about $120 off eBay Looks like my MZ-N505 and MZ-R700 will soon be up on eBay as well!

I'm not surprised in the least by this news, but I'm not sure this will have major ramifications in the short term for MD. For one, MD has a huge installed user-base in Japan, having reached critical mass long ago (unlike here in the US, where to most people, it was never more than a mere curiosity). Not everybody is going to have the money, need, or desire for a HDD player right away. I'm also sure there will be others who find the 128kbps MPEG-4 AAC encodings offered on ITMS pretty abysmal for 150 yen/song. (Apple obviously used a much older encoder to encode tracks than it currently offers, because ITMS songs have very obvious ringing and pre-echo artifacts that usually aren't heard at that bitrate with AAC). Give it about a year or two - then, I'll be "scared." I just don't see everybody dumping MD en masse for an iPod overnight because ITMS rolled into town like some noisy circus. Will it happen eventually, though? Almost certainly. My beloved blue MZ-R700 will see use as long as I can buy media for it, and I'm sure that somebody out there is still using the other 10 or so MD recorders I've sold since the 90's. MD is a niche format, and as long as we continue to use it, it will stay alive. Will it ever be "popular" again? Not likely, but who cares? If we like it, that's all that matters. Discs and units will be around, albeit used, next to forever; some people still regularly use 8-tracks, which slowly vanished from the public eye after the record stores yanked them from the shelves in 1983. My MD recorder and HDD player can happily coexist because they each do something well that the other cannot. MiniDisc is for music and sounds yet to be captured; MP3 is for that which already has. I hope that others will come to this conclusion as well; until there is a cheaper, better way of recording sounds, MD has a future.

The title says it all: I'm interested in picking up a used MZ-E10, as I tried a friend's and really liked it. If anybody has one they'd like to sell, please PM me with a price!

I curse the day that I sold my Aiwa AM-F70; that was quite a recorder back in the day. Sure, it was sort of dorky looking and tape-player huge, but the EL backlight (and backlit buttons), jog dial, and track search functions were sweet. Never mind the bad battery life and the little head-magnet that had to be constantly glued back on to be able to read discs.... I recently picked up an old MZ-E40 for all of $20. It's for the console nook in my car (the front LCD panel and controls are perfect for that), and works great. Some old things actually are good so long as one has a reasonable use for them.

It is possible, but illogical: --freeformat -b640 -h --nspsytune -mj You don't gain much by going over 320kbps with MP3 due to its inherent format limitations: short blocks are too large for good time resolution on sharp attacks, and the long blocks are too short for good frequency resolution on certain signals. Then you have the problem with sfb21, which causes bitrate bloat when attempting to encode frequencies above 16Khz...and so on. Try fatboy or castanets at 640kbps....still not transparent. (For fun, try ATRAC Type-R...even worse!). Getting back to your original question, Sony probably choose not to include a mono mode for the simple reason that most people probably wouldn't use it. In the past, people have used mono SP to squeeze more music on non-MDLP players (or actually encode mono signals), but with Hi-LP @48kbps offering less-than stellar stereo quality and offering 45 hours on a disc, mono mode is not really needed with Hi-MD. Besides, joint stereo (M/S) already only takes up 60-70% of the bandwidth of regular LR stereo, meaning that to get the same subjective quality as Hi-LP at 48kbps, you would need about 33kbps (7/10) as opposed to 24kbps (1/2). With the option to record 45 hours of nauseating-quality audio on one disc, how much more could you want?

I am looking for a CD/MD dubbing deck, such as the Sony MXD series, for either purchase or trade for a like-new Terapin VCD standalone recorder, originally listed for over $600. I am looking to spend between $100-$200. The model need not be an MDLP compatible model (though that would be nice), for I only use SP for making recordings for my automobile, etc. This includes, but is not limited to, the ubiquitous MXD series from Sony, or similar offerings from the likes of Sharp, Marantz, or JVC. I'm basically looking for something to play and record MiniDiscs with my home stereo, as I sold my JE-530 a few years ago to pay for books. The CD playing and dubbing function is desirable since the CD player I own does not have an optical output, and I am on OS X and cannot take advantage of NetMD. If you have a deck that you would either be interested in selling or trading for a VCD recorder, please send me a private message or post your intentions below. Thanks for reading this!

I recently became the proud owner of a barely-used cobalt blue MZ-N1 for only $100, and would like to know if UTOC cloning is possible on this unit. I ask this because a) I have a few old discs that I'd like to recover, and I own a 86:28 miyadisc and would like to try cloning that as well. I'm cognizant of the fact that most portables cannot do cloning, but I do not have access to a deck (actually, this purchase represents my getting reacquainted with MD after not using it for about 2 years). Is this possible? Thanks for any advice.