everso

Depends on what you listen to and the quality you are after. Personaly I love audio books - lowish bit rate and in mono. I use one of those "sound bug" sucker things. Sounds great and has the supprising benifit that you can still hear fine should you put your head under the water. Everso.

Thanks. Just wanted to know if I was way out or anything. Everso.

Hi all, I am making a few audio book Hi-MDs. The files seem to be taking ages to convert. A typical 15meg 30 minutes mp3 converting to a 10 meg 48 kbps ATRAC taking 6 or 7 minutes to convert. The PC has nothing else running on it. Loads of free disk space, 512 meg of ram and 1.7 gig ADM processor. I am on XP with SP2 installed and SS3. If this is way slower than can be expcted has anyone any ideas what to do to speed things up. Thankls in advance Everso.

Well all things considered I went for a case logic MPC2. It's only a little larger than the MD but will (at a push) hold the remote and earbuds. I didn't like the fixed belt loop so put a small hole in the unzipped side and fitted a caribenar (is that spelt right - the climbing rope holdy thingies). The wire for the remore comes out of the zip opening and it all works just fine. Thanks for the advice guys. Everso.

Yes - very. Everso

That's what I said I was expecting. Can't work out how they got 10 though. Perhaps it's a "special" 10 pack that Sony put together for them. I'm not expecting them to be propper HI-MD 1 gig blanks at that price. But you know - I never expected to get an MZ-NH1 from Amazon at £69 either . I'll report back if they ever come into stock. Everso.

I was in Currys today asking if they had and. The assistand was most adamant that they sold 10 Hi-MD blanks for £15. Said it was a special price. I asked severl times and he was most insistant. Non in stock but I'll keep checking. I would think it those Sony rip off "hi-md compatable" 80 they sell but in pacs of 3 I can't see how they get 10. Mayby it was a special pack of 10. I'll report back if they are Hi-mds and they come back in stock. Yo'll know cos I intend to buy the lot and stick what I don't need up on e-bay . Everso.

Nice - but bigger that what I am looking for.

Hi all, I have got a NH1 on the way. I am now looking for the perfect cary case. What I want is something as small as possible, no space for extras like spare disks, batteries etc.. What I would realy like is someting like the "Silicon skin" type of case - small, form fitting and good protection. So ppl - what do you cary yours in? Everso

WHOOOOO!!!!!! just got a e-mail from Amazon - they have ran out of the 900. They are sending me a MZ-NH1 for the same low low price of £69. Being dispatched now. Now - that's what I call a result. Everso

I got to get me one - probably the lovelt OLED will swing it for me. I have been waiting for mp3 play back for a few years now. Main reason is I listen to a lot of audio books. These are normaly encoded at 22Khz - mono at a low bit rate. This means I offen have to make a temp copy (.wav) then encode the wave in SS. Do you have any idea how much this blows. If the mp3 playback is flexable enough to manage these files I got it made. Everso

Even more interesting. A protected CD will not play in many car players, PC players and even SONY DVD players. Though all shops will not allow you to take a CD back once opened you can if it will not play on your device. Given that this includes such a large list of units I can imagine the shops must be getting pissed off about now. Even more amusing -it allows a pirate to get a CD, use software/trickery to copy the CD then take it back for a refund. It actuly AIDS piracy. Got to laugh. Everso

How do we know? It could be that these and other devices are allready mp3 capable - but without any way to get mp3s on there it has nothing to play. That would mean an nice easy update toSS would fix the matter. One way to make sure that Sony don't get flooded with hardware upgrades killing players. Everso P.S. I also belive in father christmass if that helps you figure how realistic this is.

Well I'm going to hold off getting a hi-md player. I can't see them giving out free upgrades - not the Sony way. I'll be delighted if they do allow me to upgrade my 707, just don't think they will. The various comments about "it's all about playing" are true however I can see several advantages with mp3 support No need to re-encode (not the be all but a point non the less) Sonic stage is very fussy. Many of my mp3s fail and I have to convert them to wav and then put them through sonic state (major pain) Audio books. These are typically encoded at a low rate because that’s all they need. When I put them through SS the ATRAC file is typically 4-10 times the size of the mp3 because of the limited sample rates available. I know this is helped by Hi-MD but not everyone has Hi-MD. Finally – it’s an mp3 player. That’s going to make it easier to sell and that’s got to be good for the minidisk market. I have explained to a number of people about how wonderful the player is only to have them decide against when they hear about the re-encoding required. If done right it means that you can just drag and drop an mp3 without any extra software. This means people can use tem at work – internet cafes and so on. If done right that is. I can see these wiping out flash players overnight (except the lower capacity ones). The HDD player may be a tougher nut to crack but it will allow MD to give them a run for it’s money. Let’s see what happens. Everso

I know there is a method to record sound from a Hi-MD without going the Total recorder route. However there may be people out there who have started using the real time thing or for one reason or another can not get other methods to work. For those, and others, looking for real time sound card capture try http://www.snapfiles.com/get/messer.html Its a program called Messer. It works like Total recorder but is freeware. I've been using it for a while to record internet radaio as it has a built in timee. Enoy Everso

It's not too hard. I have been working on a VB version for a while now in my spare time (precious little since my wife was ran down). Basically what you need to do is Take your list of MP3s. Pull out the track names and file length (easy - plenty of pages on that) Convert to wave files (very hard if you try it or shell to an external prog.) Make the .IDX & .CDB files. This holds details on the track names and placement of data on the image for Simple burner. Create the audio image (not too hard) Shell to Daemon (all on there web site) Shell Simple burner (I really don't need to tell you how to do that do I?) All in all it was coming along nicely. I used a "always on top" window to drop the mp3s - or play lists. It starts the encoding as soon as dropped so that it used browsing time to get on with the encode. I organise lists in cue files so you can have the same mp3 in more that one cue without the need to re-encode. It also looks to see if the mp3 is VBR and then manually gets the play length. One day I may get the time to finish it off and get it posted. Who knows? But for now - the wife needs bath - my own personal slip and slide Everso