ROMBUSTERS

great job dex! all you euro-people get rid of that crappy cap on your volume now!

nobody has mentioned the fact that you can reformat older discs! I had about 10 lying around and now i have 10x 300MB = 3000MG ~ 3GB of storage. not that i would carry them all around with me at once mind you. Throw some discs in a bag, they are cheap enough to buy loads of, and take em with you.

anyone notice that this is a netMD vs iPod fight? lol what kind of matchup is that. netMD is years older than iPod, so of course iPod's going to have certain advantages. The HiMD vs iPod is a closer match. -However for your MDlike i said (and i dont care where the power goes the fact remains) your MD's batterylife will more than likely *always* be better than an iPods. -Also the removable media ensures that your dont loose any info in something like a random hard drive head-crash. -both devices look great -if your going to listen just to some music every now and then, iPod is probably your way to go. However if you do any travelling MD using easily found AAs or AAAs is a better option. -Like you said you would have to recharge your iPod every night or so (obviously dependant on use). Why not alternate between the two? While one's charging use the other! Perfect harmony! lol

your discs should last a vey long time without noticeable degration unless: -your discs temp goes up to its curie point and you loose all your magnetised data -you place a strong magnet near it

Back to the original question in the very first post (in case its answer got missed during this giant mess): an uncompressed PCM/WAV file is what you would find on a CD to compress this file every lossy (MP3/Atrac/OGG/etc) compression system strips out portions of the audio at high frequencies that re not considered audible to the human ear (i.e. you shouldnt miss them). Also the encoders stress louder noises more than quieter ones because again you shouldn't miss them. In this way they can loose (lossy) a lot of audio info and shrink the file size down. The next step is to employ mathematical formulas to compress the data that is left over even further. This is done in a similar manner to compression system that are used for data files on a PC (although never the exact same). Taking the audio data to binary you have sequences of 1s and 0s. One of the ways (i believe reading on a sony website) that Atrac compresses the audio is that for every 2 adjacent 1s they subsitute for just a single 1. For example: Original sequence: 10011110011110 Compressed sequence: 1001100110 Obviously it is more complicated then that but you get the general idea. This along with many other means is what actually compresses the original wave file to the compressed format. The various codecs like MP3 and Atrac and Atrac3+ even, take different steps and ways of compressing the information which is why an MP3 at 256kbps will end up being a different file size and sounding (slightly) different then Atrac3+ at 256kbps. the old theory used to be of speed but no one is really sure anymore

the real question is regarding Atrac3 105kbps - its a Sony 'non-standard' bitrate which kinda doesn't make sense. It almost as if: Atrac3 LP2= 132kbps Atrac3 LP3= 105kbps Atrac3 LP4= 66kbps

better battery life

plus with DWDD discs the laser is actually needed to heat up the disc before reading (similar to recording although not as much). This act of using the laser to heat something (on playback!) alone accounts for a significant drop in the 1GB disc playback

and as mentioned countlessly before, no HiMD support either

i have an older custom installed XP system PIII 866Mhz 390MB RAM 80GB HDD 1x DVD-ROM Drive 1x DVD+-RW Drive never had a single problem with HiMD or SonicStage working properly

WHAT?!?!?!?!?

wut ISP do u have? I have Rogers (and also live in Ontario) and a couple weeks ago their service was up and down quite a bit its all good now though

a

ya i can never remember the name. oddly enough my HiMD came with one (havnt heard of anyone else having the same luck). MZ-NH700 Ontario, Canada Came with SonicStage 2.1

perhaps because the HiMD is still very new they are still working out the bugs in the production system. Here is my thought of the moment: The disc appears file and works until the very last portion of the disc is accessed. Because the HiMD uses a smart data writing system it *should* jump over areas that it detects errors on (especially during the write sequence). Therefore it is possible that the HiMD *smartly* avoided all of the damaged sectors of the disc until the very end when it had no other choice per say. By the way could those having problems with their discs post their location and the location from which they bought the discs.

first off update windows to SP2 and then uninstall and reinstall SonicStage again (using the directions on this forum - use a search). then see if it makes any difference

yep i do this at my house. you need a stereo mini (male) to stereo (left right chanel) cable. Plug the stereo mini cable into your headphone jack and the left right channels into their audio inputs. Blast the HiMD at 30vol (if possible) and then control the audio with the amp itself

no one has found a way to sucessfully ghost a HiMD disc while retaining the audio data. The theory goes that the HiMD player mounts the storage drive as a virtual folder while maintaining complete control over its contents. However reformatting the disc through windows rid the disc of its HiMD audio abilities and thus can be ghosted like any other storage device (although this again doesnt make sense in your case with your fear being about the recordings themselves).

a

when you go to the transfer to MD tab of sonicstage click details at the bottom and click the very last option (Stereo Mode). In this mode the discs should play with your unit but be warned it takes a long time to transfer

in real time

i dont believe you can use it for HiMD discs but perhaps maybe for netMD discs, although why not skip the hassel and just put up with SonicStage 2.3 (hasn't crashed once for me)

try any of the MD online retailers or even something like Amazon or eBay (if you wanted to risk it)

a

id be interested if Sonicstage performs better on a virtual PC Linux or MAC box just out of curiocity