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!

That's very interesting. Correct me if I am wrong (I'm changing th esubject a but here) but doesn't the DSP in (at least the HiMD players, and maybe the NetMD) support MP3 decoding in hardware, but it just not enabled with the current firmware? If that is the case, and firmware upgrades are possible, it suprises me no one has tried to hack it yet. There are people out there that will try and hack almost anything, yet I haven't seen much indication of a MD hacking community. From another point of view, I can see Sony opening up the MDs to PLAY mp3s, but keep the curretn ATRAC DRM for anything recorded by a MD unit. Seems like a fair balance, as you stil couldn't use the MD to create pirated music, which is presumably Sony's aim. Then again, it's Sony, so who knows.

Thanks for the price tips. (Amazon lists it for $220 free shipping, incidentally)... any opinions on my other questions?

O, I didn't realize that! Very interesting, though not sure how usefull. ;-) Ok, I am almost there on buying a HiMD player, but I am wondering how people like the interface? It seems like there isn't any playlist support? Is it easy to find what you are looking for out of a gig of music? I really want to thank everyone who has taken the time to answer all my questions, it's made the HiMD an serious contender for my money, where it wouldn't have ever been option before. Sony should send you all a check! Oh, I also was wondering if you have to use SonicStage to transfer music, or can you drag ATRAC3 files to the player via explorer and play them? I'm assuming no, but I have to ask . So, anyone see any good deals on a NHF-800 anywhere? ;-)

Ok, that is very usefull information, thank you. I may get a 600D to try this out with, and give it to my wife if I decide to upgrade to a 800 or 900 model . The only real downside I can see is that I would need to have 200-250% more hard drive space for the atrac files . Is there anyway to tell Sonic Stage to delete all the Atrac files it has created? Or, at the least, what will Sonic Stage do if I clear the directory where all the Atrac files are stored out? Will it recreate them next time I try to copy the file? Or, will it just give me an error? Also, I just wanted to be sure that if I were to record something with a microphone onto a HiMD recorder using, say, the 256kbps Altrac3+ format, I can move it directly onto my computer, faster than real time, correct? Also, with something like this what are my 'rights' with the resulting file? Lastly, how easy is it to edit that file to make track cuts, etc? Oh, also, I saw talk about a Atrac to Wave converter coming from Sony? Will that only do files that you recorded personally, or will you be able to do any file for which you have 'unlimited' rights for? Is there any ETA on that utility? Thanks again! Rob

Thanks everyone for your fast replies and help! It is almost worth getting a MD Player for the great community! DaveW - I see what you are saying abotu using the MD as a extra backup of music files, it's definately something to keep in mind. Also, for reference, thee are several things I didn't like about the iPod (and lots that I did, of course), and potential HD failure was only one of them. I don't like having non upgradable or replacable storage media and also batteries. Speaking of which, do the HiMD players use a AA size battery, or is it some proprietary Sony battery pack? (The Sony site says AA, but there is a lot of references to the battery pack that comes with the players). I downloaded Sonic Stage... what a piece of junk! I had a lot of trouble getting it not to crash (and when it did, I had to reboot the computer to get it to launch again I remember why I use Linux now :rasp: ) Once I got it going though, it wasn't bad... I think my troubles had to do with having files on a different drive than Sonic Stage was on, I'll have to test that some more later. Anyways, the quality of files converted from 192cbr mp3 to 256 atrac3+ was very good, imo (remember not good hearing), and the 192cbr to 64 atrac3+ was also suprisingly good, but even I could hear the difference there (although they would be easily acceptable for noisey area playback, like in the car). Why is there no 128 or 160 kbps Atrac3+?! Are there any hacks to get that? Conversion speed on my P4 was plenty acceptable. The "LP4" 132kbps Atrac3 was also pretty good, and I couldn't hear much difference, if any. All in all, it seems pretty reasonable, thus far. I have some quesions on the DRM aspect with Atrac3(+). I look on the rights tab under properties for a music file and it says (for files that I have converted from un-drm'ed MP3s) "Playback Restrictions: None ... Remaining Transfer Count: Unlimited" does this mean that I could copy that song to any number of MD's any number of time I wanted? What would happen if I put that MD into someone elses player? Also, I couldn't take that file, put it on a MD, then copy it from that MD to another computer (other than using a realtime re-recording), correct? Also, if I were to 'import' my whole library into Sonic Stage, but not 'convert' all the files (just leave them in the original mp3 format on my drive), would I be able to make HiMD discs by plugging in the player, having the files converted on the fly, copied onto the MD disc, and not having the Atrac file left on my HD? Sorry to be asking so many questions in such long posts, Rob

Oh, I'm sorry Latexxx! I thought you were refering to the connect.com music store, as in buying a song and trying from them. I will do that, thanks for tip! Any insights on the rest of my incredibly long post? Thanks again Rob

Well those would be original uncompressed files that are converted to Atrac3, right? I am looking to hear an mp3 which has been converted to Atrac3+, which would be what I would do with an MP player. Is there a freely available program that I can do that with myself? I was under the impression that the software that comes with a MD player is the only stuff out there to to that? Thanks for your quick reply, Rob

Hi all - I've been lurking around here for the last few days/week, and I am trying to get somethings straight, and maybe get some buying advice. I am in the market for a new digital music player, by which I mean an mp3 player. I actually had an iPod for a bit, and liked it ok, but through a sequence of events to long to get into, it's my dad's now... he likes it alot. I picked the iPod because it was an all in one type deal (all my music on the device) which would have been convienient at the time. Now things have changed and I don't need ALL my music/audio on a single device, and in general I don't prefer it that way. I tend to shy away from hard drive based players, as catastrophic failure killing everything I have is a scaret thought. Plus, counting all my music and audio books I have significantly over 20gigs of data (and growing all the time, very quickly at times - audio book and live show trader ;-), and that starts to get expensive if I want to bring it all with me... My first look was to Flash memory based players, and there certainly some nice ones out there, but at $90/gig for SD cards, that would get costly REALLY fast. I stumbled onto the Hi-MD by accident really, but it looked like a decent deal, upfront... $7/gig, or $1/300megs is a great price point! Plus, the hardware isn't TERRIBLEY expensive either (at least the low end stuff). Ok, sorry this is going on so long, I tend to do this. My concern, as most newcomers I am sure, is the lack of native mp3 support. I don't have the keenest ears, to be truthful, and I encode most of my mp3's at 128kbps vbr, which sounds pretty much identical to the source on my decent headphones, to me. So, 1) Is it possible for someone to take a 128kbps mp3 to transcode it to 256 atrac3+ then do a digital recording of that sample to a wav file and send the mp3 and the wav to me so that I can hear how it comes out? (hope that made sense 1b) Any chance you could do the same with 64kbps atrac3+ as well? ;-) 2) how is the 600d player? It's cheap, and it may be a good way to try the format out for me. 3) Aside from the obvious recording features of the 800, (and the remote - not a huge deal to me) is there any difference in quality between the 800 and the 600d? (I'm VERY interested in getting into live show recording, but I may hold off on that till after I try out the MD world with a cheaper unit). 4) Assuming I were to move my extensive (lets call it 30gigs of mp3s in various bitrates) library over to MDs... a) how long would it take (I have a P4 2.4ghz machine) and would I be able to move the files back to my computer, in faster than realtime and not losing any of the meta-data, should I need to do a restoration of lost files? If so, what format would they be in? 5) I am a Linux user. I kow there isn't any Linux support for the HiMD devices (at this time), but I dual boot win98 for some games, etc, and wouldn't be a big deal for me to boot into windows to fill up a disc or two... However, I wanted to be sure that the software in question works with win98? Also, while we are at it, what is the status of Linux and MD? 6) I would not be adverse to converting all my music to Atrac3+ for local storage as well... I mean covnerting the mp3s I have to Atrac3+ and keeping them on my harddrive (and my MD player) that way, rather than having mp3s and converting them to Atrac when I want to move them to a MD. Is that possible? Can you do a mp3->atrac conversion and have the atrac files end up on your harddrive, and not the MD player? If so, what players are available to play them? Are there any for Linux? 7) I'm not waiting for a new model to come out to buy, when I am ready to buy I will get what I can at my price point. However, it MIGHT be December/January before I pick something. Do you expect new models by then? If so, what features are you looking to have been added to those models? Sorry this was so long... I know that alot of these questions get asked all the time, but I was a little confused by some of the information, as it was sometimes confliting, or old enough that it MIGHT be out of date. So thanks for any help you could offer, especially in setting up some sort of sound test to help me make sure that I will be able to enjoy my current library. Oh, I live in Michigan, so if someone happens to be nearby and wanted to demo the sound live for me, that would be even cooler ;-) Rob