mrgeen4242

I assume that he was refering to a computers DVD drive and CD drives. Both are the same form factor, use the same connections in your computer, have media that look (basically) the same. A DVD drive will read DVDs and CDs, where a CD drive will only read the older CDs. Actually, the technology that went to into DVDs is much the same as CDs, the data is packed much more tightly, as we are able to focus the laser reader much more precisely now. There are other changes of course, but the two really aren't that different. Incidentally, the V in DVD doesn't actually stand for Video. Rather, it is a Digital Versitile Disc... you can put anything onto a DVD, video being the most common. Lots of computer games, (as well as Xbox and PS2 games), some computer software, and some very high fidelity audio recordings are commercially distributed on DVD. In that respect, the analogy was spot on. Moreover, in most Asain countries the VCD player was pretty ubiquitous. If you haven't seen one, a VCD player is just like a DVD player except that it uses CDs to store the movie, where each CD holds about an hour of VHS quality video (the low quality and 2 discs per movie handocap kept them out of the US market almost all together... however, most modern DVD players will play VCDs now). Anywho, that was a really long post to say what I had to say. Hope I didn't come across sounding liek a smart arse. Rob

Hm, ok that answers my question, but I only wanted to know if you could copy music from your computer to any MD player you plugged into, not neccisarily at the same time... Anyways, seems like you can, so there probably isn't any unit specific coding going on, which makes me think it is possible to make a 3rd party MD writing application. Also, I just read over at Slashdot.org that Sony is dropping their CD copy protection measures and starting in November all CDs sold by Sony will be plain ungaurded CD formats. This is big news in itself, but it also indicates that they are moving away from copy protection in general, which could mean good things for the MiniDisc format... OH, wanted to add that ATI's video cards were supposed to be sorted so that the 9500 were the ones that didn't make the 9700 QA proccess, but I've never heard of a 9500 not working at the 9700 specs, which is probably due to the fact that they couldn't come up with enough 'defective' 9700 gpus and just started using the parts from the 'same bin' to fill demand. This was especially true around the end of the products life cycle, as the chip yields improved.

Yep, that's what I was getting at... the audio decoding is handled by a DSP, and that if some of Sonies players are capable of decoding mp3's it must be being done by the DSP in the machine. So, if that DSP is a chip that is shared across platforms into the HiMDs then its likely that they could also play mp3s. Wether the DSP is programmable and could be 'upgraded' to handle mp3s, or whether they are hard coded devices that have features turned on or off based on firmware I'm not sure. There are LOTS of examples of companies using a single component with features being turned off for lower cost items, even though they are capable of them. Some good examples are ATIs 9500/9700 series video cards. The hardware on the two were identical, but the firmware was setup to limit the 9500 artificially. A fairly simple firmware upgrade turned the 9500 into a 9700. ATI did this because it was cheaper to manufacture a single product and sell it at two price points. Sony could indeed be doing this. Build a single DSP that can handle all of the audio decoding for several products, turning on and off various features based on the price points they are aiming at. Anyways, it's all just idle speculation at this point... what I think is more important and probable is creating some software that does what SS does (sans ATRAC conversion). A good start is with USB snooping, and then trying to replicate that communication, and I will definately work towards that when I get a HiMD device (still deciding what model to get and looking for a good deal). After we can get the hardware working with software other than SS we can start to experiment with what else we can do. Now, along this line of work, can you have more than one MD device and hook it up to a single computer, copying music from that computer to both MD devices? (I ask because if there is no check on which MD device is connected to what computer, it will make it easier to create third party applications to work with it).

While MP3 licensing costs is a good issue, what method do you think the flash (and possibly HD) based players are going to use to playback mp3's? It takes a pretty good amount of CPU power to decode an mp3... nothing significant in comparison to a modern CPU, but for a small battery operated cpu its pretty intensive. Chances are that the the general purpose proccessor in just powerful enough to handle menus, data transfers, battery monitoring, etc. I doubt that it would be over engineered enough to handle m3 decoding. Anyways, I was wondering if someone would like to take a look at the results from using http://www.wingmanteam.com/usbsnoopy/ on the SS to MD transfer... it'd be a start, maybe not for native mp3 playback, but for Mac and Linux compaibilty at least. Rob

I asked that in another thread, and it seems that you cannot drag and drop ATRAC files to the unit and play them. Must be that SS sends a command to the MD unit telling it to put these files into the "partition" that holds music, and to resize it to whatever size it needs to be, leaving whatever is left for the "data" area (what you can see when the MD is mounted as a filesystem). Otherwise the MD would be at least partially compatible w/ Linux. Now, that is why I asked about the DSP in the HiMD players. If Sony is using the saem decoder chips in all of their (new) players (which would be a cost efficient move) then it would seem that it is capable of playing MP3s. (I SERIOUSLY doubt that whatever flash players are going to be upgraded to support mp3 playback have a general purpose CPU powerful enough to do software based mp3 decoding... all music processing is most like done with a special purpose DSP chip). The trouble, as you point out, is that the MD players divide their discs into two seperate areas... wether they are logically divided or there is a table of contents, I don't know. I am VERY suprised no one has used a USB snooper to see what commands SS sends a device prior to copying the data over. If you could capture the sequence of signals before and after data was copied, it is likely you could send those same signals to the player manually, and then feed it an MP3 data file, just to see what the player would do with it if the table of 'valid' music files pointed to a mp3 encoded file... If no one has tried it, they should... I will give it a go when I get one, but I'm not an EE, so I'm not sure I could pull it off properly. But, if someone came up with an open source application to do this, it would make the HiMD the clear winner of MP3 players... crossplatform compatibility and $7 for a disc that would hold 16 hours of 128kbps music.... drool.

Can a HiMD recorder record at the Hi-LP rate (48kbps) in mono, and get 90 hours onto a HiMD disc? I'd like to record all of the lectures for a given class onto on disc...

I haven't really seen the 700 for sale anywhere, in my area at least. And when I have, it is usually an 'oddity item' and so the price isn't discounted at all, the way the 800 and 900 are. The 700 is basically the 800 w/o the radio, right? Or am I way off on this?

So do we know if the DSP in the HD1/E55/E75 is the same r similar to the one found in the newer HiMD players? I ask because I am curious if hardware mp3 playback is possible with a MD player, should Sony choose to implement it.

I haven't tried any long VBR files, but it didn't seem to have trouble with short (3-5 minutes) files... though now that you are mentioning it, I remember seeing something about that problem somewhere... someone else will probably know about it.

I was just getting done doing some testing and coming to post what I had come up with and saw your post, b.e. Since I already did it, I figured I mind as well tell you how it came out... I decided that I would just rip a track from an audio book I have at 64kbps/22kHz and see how it comes out. (Note that I usually rip my books at a lower bitrate than that, as I usually listen to them while driving and the road noise covers up alot of the artifacts). Anyways. I made a total of 3 files, an MP3 at 64kbps/22kHz, and two 48kbps Atrac3plus files, one from the original CD and another converted from the MP3. The copy from CD to Atrac3+ was very good, imo. I didn't notice any artifacts. The mp3 was also pretty good, although, again imo, not as good as the CD->atrac3+. Lastly the mp3->Atrac3+ picked up quite a bit of background noise. This would probably only be evident if you were listening to it in a quiet enviroment and at a pretty loud volume, but it was there none the less. I really had to be listening to hear it. I also took the 64/22 mp3 and upsampled it to 44kHz and converted that to Atrac3+, at the sugestion of marcnet, and it sounded about the same as the first mp3 to atrac3+ converted file, but I don't have the best of ears, to be honest. Anyways, since you seem to have found most of the problem with the original mp3s, I can suggest that doing a CD to 48kbps Atrac3+ conversion gives some pretty good results, so ripping your future audio books in that format may be a solution. (Although that has the drawback of limiting playback to only your MD devices, and not any other mp3 players). I think what I am going to do is rip my (new) books to 128kbps/44khz mp3 for archiving, and then convert them to 48kbps atrac3+ for MD purposes. I just did a test of that and the result was identical to the CD->atrac3+, as far as I could tell. Not much help, but I tried Rob

Hi - I have a alot of audio books as well, and its one of the main things I am looking at HiMD for... I downloaded sonicstage the other day to test some conversions and whatnot to see if hte sound quality would be adequate for me (so, no, I haven't got a MD player). Anyways, if you tell me what the original bitrate and sample frequency of the audiobooks you are having trouble with are I will see if I have anything similar and run some conversions to see what I can come up with. Voice recordings can be some of the most difficult compressions in my opinion, as you generally can go for a lower compression ratio, and while the overall quality is good, you end up with a lot of 'ugly' artifacts (if that makes sense ) Rob PS What model MD palyer are you using? How do you like it (other than this) and if you decide to sell it, contact me first, maybe we can work out a deal for you to unload it quickly.

Hi - I'm looking for either a 600d or 800 HiMD unit... I am also in the processes of selling some other, non MD stuff, and thought I'd put them on here, in case anyone was interested in a trade... 1 Koolance Liquid Cooled Computer Case, PC2-C, with CPU, GPU, and motherboard cooling blocks. It was used for maybe 3 days or so, and is in great condition. Comes with a powersuply unit as well. 300w, I think. http://www.koolance.com/shop/product_info....products_id=111 1 Sony-Ericson T68is phone, for AT&T Wireless (can be unlocked for use with other carriers). Bluetooth, color screen, nice phone. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...044833?v=glance Those are the only things I can think of right now, but you can leave a message here or email me at mrgreen4242 at inofjunkie.net (sorry have to make you type it out to keep spam bots from grabbing my address :ohmy: ) Rob

Hi - are you still selling this? That unit is going for about $200 new and shipped, so if you still have it maybe we can a deal? Rob

That's what I figured, but maan is that stupid =p You can't even drag an drop a DRMed file onto it How do you put something into a 'group'? Is it done only through sonic stage, or can it be done on the player? Can a song have more than one group? How many tracks will it let you bookmark? Yup very helpful! I am really looking hard at getiing an nhf800, but not sure if I can justify the extra $100 or so over getting a super discounted 600D... I have never recorded anything in the past, so it's hard to say if I would start using the recorder features or not... Ah well, thanks again, Rob

Well, I am not an audiophile type, I have fairly poor hearing, etc etc. That said, I have been really satisfied with my Koss UR20's. They are a full over the ear headphones and do a decent job of blocking out enviromental sound. The sound reproduction is good, to my limited hearing, and they are about $20. As a side note, I read that the later versions of this series went to some cheaper components, and weren't as nice, until you get into the more expensive versions. I can't say anything about that one way or the other as I haven't used them!