ZosoIV

Here's an interesting observation I made when playing around with my NH-1 and different encoding modes - Hi-LP, which sounds pretty poor to begin with, sounds clearly worse when encoded via SonicStage. I've heard this mentioned on the board someplace else, but did some testing to verify such observations. On the three test tracks I used (Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here, Miles Davis - So What, Van Halen - And The Cradle Will Rock), the optically-recorded Hi-LP encodings contain much less stereo flanging, more precise "hits," and less warbling compared to those encoded with SS 3.3. The difference is obvious, i.e. not even worth ABX'ing. I find this interesting, considering how limited a chip-based DAC is in terms of power and capability. With a DSP, the object is to encode with as little CPU cycles as possible, which decreases energy consumption on a battery-powered device. On a computer, which runs on mains and may have 20-50x the processing power of a ~20-50MHz DSP like found in the NH1, one would think that the encoder would be far better tuned. If anything, you would at least expect the software-based encoder to sound the same, simply being faster! This does not seem to be the case – the software codec is faster at the expense of sound quality. While the sound quality of realtime-encoded Hi-LP isn't audiophile by any means, it compares favorably IMO with the latest "autov" Ogg Vorbis encoder at -q0 (44.1kHz/64kbps). I have played around a lot with the latest Vorbis encoder and encoded the same samples mentioned above from my FLAC library for testing. The Vorbis files exhibit stereo collapse and sound very rough on instruments like the sax, but do not sound overly metallic like most encoders around this bitrate. The A3+ encoder tends to sound more metallic, but more stable than Vorbis. Either one is an OK choice for cheap earbuds on a train/subway, but not really anything else.

I love Hi-MD, but I also love audio decks. The MDS-JB940 that I bought and quickly sold last week was frankly a disappointment in terms of being able to put a decent amount of high-quality audio on a disc. The LP modes sound awful, and SP is not without its occasional flaws, either. What we need is a deck that is capable of recording at least 80 minutes of 16/44 PCM and can do all the things a JB or ES series std-MD deck could. What we need is a Hi-MD deck from Sony. (The two Onkyo ones seem to be useful if you own the matching stereo system, but I'm talking about a standard 17" stereo deck). Why? Well, for one, people still DO use recording decks in various capacities. Having an uncompressed PCM recorder with re-writable discs would be far more convenient than the now-defunct DAT or CD-R standalone recorders. Secondly, a portable is not a hi-fi component. The ES series of decks sounded excellent as stereo components, but only use std-MD. Why not update to Hi-MD and market the deck to audiophiles and home recording enthusiasts? Third, no other format currently fills this niche other than std-MD, which as we all know has limitations. Though I've seen some HDD PCM/CD-R decks from Yamaha, they are plagued with issues and IMO are instantly less useful because the media (HDD) is fixed. Maybe it's time to start a petition from people who really have a need or interest in a Hi-MD deck. Even if Sony were to just gut one of their std-MD decks and update it, that would be better than nothing....is it worth a try?

I'm very un-artistic (despite being able to play several musical instruments), so my avatar is pretty square. A free 2GB Hi-MD disc to whoever can guess who it is first

Ha, with the occasional exception of A3+ @352kbps, I already only use PCM with 1GB blanks

I'm Italian, but used the Chinese New Year as an excuse to make spicy homemade pork dumplings yesterday (recipe courtesy of friends from Beijing). Yum.

Perhaps better put: Sony has good ideas, but often implements them in a "stupid" manner. Hi-MD is great, but OpenMG, SonicStage, and ATRAC all do their part to hold back an otherwise innovative product.

Looks like I bought my Japanese NH1 at the right time, huh? (And for a song, too).

How's the audio quality of the streams? I hear that DAB is broadcast in MP2 @ 128-192kbps, but I've heard lots of complaints from people living in the UK about it. Here in the states, we're pretty much limited to XM/Sirius satelite radio (both of which use low-bitrate HE-AAC (AAC+SBR)), and the upcoming terrestrial (free) "HD" radio, which is supposed to use AAC+SBR @ 96kbps for FM channels. AAC+SBR sounds fake and grainy, like listening to the radio through dental braces, so I haven't quite bitten yet. It must be nice to capture free music onto Hi-MD, though!

I have 10 Hi-MD discs coming this weekend, and will format my 14 remaining legacy MD's to Hi-MD as well. At one point, I owned over 350 legacy MD's!! I now wish I had kept them instead of selling them on eBay in 2002 to raise money for a long-defunct Archos MP3 recorder

I did, which is how I came to the opinion that it is not possible. Such a disc would either be very out of spec or would require that Sony planned ahead and built the possibility into the players, which I see as quite unlikely from both an economic and technical standpoint. We're all speculating, so who knows? I still contend that Sony would have already released a 2GB blank by now if they were planning to do so. Why would they do so little to promote Hi-MD and "hide" the fact that a 2GB blank exists? And then release it two years after launch? Come on. IMO, if they had planned on releasing them, it would have been right away or soon after the release of Hi-MD in 2004. Every MB counts when you are competing against MP3 players; 2GB would have had a much bigger "wow!" factor than the 1GB blanks, and would have only increased initial sales of Hi-MD units. Sony would be stupid not to release the biggest blank they could right away, and for now that seems like 1GB.

New additions: MDS-JB940 (like new, from eBay, coming today!), silver MZ-NH1 (Japanese), also like new, coming tommorow. I'm in MD heaven

I'm getting mine tomorrow and will post my findings for you.

I almost bought one of those, until I realized several things: a) it would be far cheaper to get a very basic barebones case/motherboard/3.5" HDD/good soundcard than it would be to buy the Yamaha, the Yamaha's little brother (CDR-HD1000) is infamous for its failure/repair rate (do a search online), and c) you can digitally rip CD's to the HDD as wav files, but if you were to make a CD-R from the image on-unit, it will erase it to comply with SCMS. The only way to retrieve recordings off the unit without having them erased (like for the car, friends, etc) is to record the original CD's in analog mode, which is 1x and loses quality compared to DAE. SCMS doesn't apply if you go that route. I've gone the computer/HDD route myself, and encoded all my CD's to the lossless FLAC format. I even did that for my LP's and tapes, though I might re-do some of these with Hi-MD as the MZ-NH1 probably has a better analog section than the cheapo on-board sound chip that I used to record them onto my computer. Another thought: archiving to lossless on a computer allows you to make backups on DVD+R's if you have a burner. After ripping and tagging everything, I did just that with about 30 8.5GB DVD+R DL discs that are now stowed away for safe-keeping in the event of a HDD crash. edit: formatting

Others might not agree with me, but I doubt 2GB blanks are either possible (with current specs) or in the offing. To increase a disc's capacity by a factor of two would require a 50% smaller track pitch, or 50% smaller laser spots, or a higher wavelength laser, all of which would require a significant change in hardware. We all know that Sony wouldn't be stupid enough to drop yet another incarnation of MD when they haven't even done a good job with trying to get Hi-MD some publicity. Thus, any new blank would have to fall within reasonable range of current Hi-MD standards (unless they allowed a huge amount of technical "headroom" for future use, which would be rather unusual). My technical theories: the track pitch of a current 1GB disc is around 1.1-1.2um, IIRC, which is similar to that of a 99-minute “oversized” CD-R blank. This means that the motor assembly that moves the read head probably isn't too dramatically different from CD or standard MD specs, which would make being able to read a disc with a very narrow .6um track pitch very unlikely. (Std-MD specs allowed for a 1.4-1.5um pitch, so 1.1 or 1.2um isn't as big of a jump as 1.1 to .55 or .6um). Thus, I doubt that Sony built in the ability for current players to track anything narrower than the current 1GB blank. Also, the error correction, data modulation, and pitch size/lengths on a Hi-MD disc are pretty state-of-the-art, so it is doubtful that they would change these parameters either (such would require totally new hardware anyway). Going from a red to a blue laser would require new hardware, so that’s out too. In short, I don't think that 2GB discs are possible on current hardware. Of course, Sony might be hiding some tricks up their sleeves, but I'd say given the above, in addition to their apparent lack of enthusiasm for the format, I wouldn't hold my breath. After all, why wouldn’t they have released them by now if they were possible? The jump from 74 minute to 80-minute blanks was technically insignificant compared to what they’d have to do for a 2GB blank. I'd be just as happy if current 1GB blanks dropped by 50% in price as I would if they released a 2GB blank.

Well, it looks like the cheapest discs I could find here in the states were on Amazon Marketplace for 4.35 USD each. eBay's discs didn't go for less than around $5/each in packs of five with ridiculous shipping costs to boot. I bought ten to start me off, but with my taste for 352kbps A3+ and PCM, they won't last but a week Here's an idea - let's keep this thread alive for future use. When anybody sees a good deal on Hi-MD discs, post it here (with a date + URL) for others to partake of. Maybe we could make this thread a sticky?

SP was so much simpler - I could pop in a disc and always get a recording that sounded exactly like what I put into it! No worrying about quality/size ratios, robotic-sounding artifacts, etc. If Hi-MD discs weren't so damn expensive, I'd probably just stick to PCM.

How about http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=13975&hl=? Also, have a look at eBay's "buy it now" listings for MD recorders. I've seen bare MZ-N505's go for as little as 35 or 40 USD, and the downloaders (MZ-NE410, etc) are almost always less than 50.

For whatever reason, Apple's devices and music store seem to be a big hit with consumers, probably a combination of mass marketing, ease-of-use, and research. Sony could really compete with Apple if they came out with a LINE of devices (not just one) that offered significantly greater features, quality, or design than iPods, which IMO are very stripped-down and bland (I know, as I received a Nano as a gift). They need to come up with better software and DRM first, though!!!! What ever happened to "like.no.other?" It's time for Sony to innovate again, not just copy Apple or try to steal their thunder. edit: spelling.

I'd put her up on eBay if nobody bites here - the 610's aren't as common as some of the other late-generation NetMD units. You probably won't have any trouble selling it.

That's a good point - MD players do have a certain sound signature, especially those with so-called HD amps, so that might account for some of the coloration differences. I'd say that for 99% of music, MP3 and ATRAC3plus are probably indistinguishable at high bitrates. ATRAC might cause errors on different signals than MP3 (or vice versa), but more likely, signals that cause one to trip will also cause any audio codec trouble. Examples of this are electronic/vocoder sounds, bells tolling, castanets, harpsichords, and trumpets, all of which are very hard to code with lossy compression because their signal components are so complex and random. I will probably only use 352kbps on things I will listen to while lying down or relaxing - everything else will be just fine with Hi-SP. As a side note, do the hardware units encode Hi-LP/LP2/Hi-SP any better than SonicStage? I am getting my MZ-NH1 on Friday.

John Coltrane - "A Love Supreme" (1964) in FLAC level 5.

105kbps cuts off at a lower frequency than does 132, and sounds less sharp. On the plus side, you do not get the annoying joint/intensity stereo collapse as with LP4 (66kbps). Give it a try - you might like it as a compromise for longer compilations in portable environments. Again, everybody has different tastes - I can't even take 132kbps anymore, but some people are perfectly happy with Hi-LP. It also depends on the type of music you listen to - low bitrates are particulary bad for jazz, so I stick to Hi-SP or better.

LAME is an extremely well-tuned codec: despite MP3's format limitations (poor time resolution, crude joint-stereo switching, >16kHz coding issues, etc), it still is competitive with newer formats like AAC and Ogg at bitrates above 128kbps. Considering how poorly ATRAC3/ATRAC3plus has performed in the few blind tests I've seen on the internet (and the couple I've done myself by merely having somebody else switch sources back and forth on my deck/DAC), LAME is probably better at 256 or 320kbps by simple virtue that it has been constantly tuned and tweaked for the past 5 years. ATRAC3plus doesn't get that sort of attention because it's closed source, so although it may be a better format on paper, it may never show its full potential. LAME, on the other hand, represents MP3 at the extremes of what it is capable of; I doubt they can get it sounding much better than where it is today.

Just tried the 352kbps setting with several "difficult" John Coltrane tracks over Grado SR-325 headphones and an M-Audio 96kHz soundcard, and the difference between it and Hi-SP (256kbps) is definitely hearable (and reproducible) on certain passages, especially when John blows into his sax really loud and at high pitches. There's less ringing/smearing in the 352kbps file; for example, the sax has loses detail in some passages with Hi-SP, but not with 352kbps. Also, there's much less, if almost no pre-echo (smearing of very sharp cymbal hits) in the 352kbps version, while I can occasionally discern some with Hi-SP. (For fun, try to encode a "castanet" sample with Hi-SP!!). The 352kbps also retains the original hiss/air of the PCM file, whereas the Hi-SP file loses some. Thus, I've concluded that 352kbps is the setting to use for "transparent" encodings that sound just like the PCM original. Too bad it takes such a high bitrate for this with A3+…..for example, LAME, Ogg, and MPC reach this point around 200kbps or less. Keep in mind that because of time constraints, I did not do a double-blind ABX test here, so YMMV - I only chose to listen to parts of songs that traditionally give ATRAC lots of trouble. For most passages, I doubt there would be a hearable difference. Oh, forgot to mention that I also compared some 352kbps encodings with some ATRAC Type-R ones I made with my MDS-JE530 deck (over the S/PDIF connection). For example, Type-R makes the acoustic guitar strums on the end solo section of Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" sound thicker and less certain (a pre-echo issue). A3+ sounds more stable here and is crisper than Type-R, it would seem, but otherwise, they are very close in terms of sound/coloration. Type-R always had a certain "punchiness" to it that Hi-SP doesn't seem to have, but the higher 352kbps setting does. I think I've finally found a replacement for SP

I'm surprised that anybody can discern 256kbps from 352kbps A3+; theoretically, there's very little difference between OR within audio codecs above 256kbps. Maybe Hi-SP (256kbps) isn't tuned to its full potential yet? 105kbps? That's a whole other story