Jump to content

Sparky191

Members
  • Posts

    1,440
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by Sparky191

  1. ...But to Atrac , it most definately sounds better than Itunes AAC , after a more carefull listen last night of Wish You Were Here , that I just downloaded from Itunes , I was dissappointed , gotta go buy the Vinyl

    I think its a bit pointless worrying which codec is less brutal at low bitrates like the ones you get from iTunes. If you want decent SQ use high bitrate or lossless. End of.

    ...itunes sucks compares to sonicstage - it's just designed for millions of single songs, b.) it's nearly all 128kbps downloads - i can't understand how the thing has got so popular! I actually get all my online music from MP3Sparks.com, where u can download in upto FLAC quality if needed.

    Most people aren't interested in SQ. Thats the simple truth. Personally I can't stand DRM and low quality. Buying 2nd hand CD's is a better deal alround. MP3Sparks.com is not really legal. At best you could say its a grey area.

    ...itunes doesn't display the covers as well as SonicStage IMO. Also, ATRAC and SonicStage can play all my CDs (which are nearly all 'mixed' cd's) with no track breaks, now as i understand, mp3's always have track breaks, that would be a disaster for me.

    You mean gapless. Doesn't bother me, but I can see why it would. Pity other codec aren't as good as ATRAC with gapless. Are Sonys' other walkmen (non HiMD/MD) gapless with ATRAC?

    Out of curiosity whats the different in the album art?

    I like SonicStage and i think a lot of people out there do to...in fact i would imagine most people left on earth who arent sheep and have an ipod would give it a go. (That's just one of the reasons i would NEVER buy an ipod - why be the same as EVERYONE else on Earth, when there are alternative small, higher quality devices available).

    ...

    I don't really like how iTunes or SonicStage work. But I can use either without any problems. But I would say both applications are poorly designed and have too limited features for no good reason. SonicStage was very badly written and buggy for a long time. Though its ok now. Theres still major bugs in it like the problem with ATRAC Lossless being useless.

  2. ...for those who want to backup their computer files in case their computer ever crashes due to a virus, and I think that is very important that we have these multiple formats of removeable hard-disc drives (CD, DVD, MD, Hi-MD, Zip, Floppy, etc.) in case, especially us PC users with all the malware and viruses we face out there (Guitarfxr and the other Mac users are so damn lucky they don't pick on them like they do on us)...

    In a couple of decades of working in IT, and Wintel PC's. Viruses and malware are extremely rare events for me to see, even on other peoples computers.

    ...I had to go to Hardoff today...

    Whats Hardoff?

  3. I have empathy for an old school approach. But none for the logic that all less capacity is better, otherwise MD > HiMD. Or that MD/HiMD units are the pinnacle of UI and ergonomics or they never fail.

    Theres a bunch of other DAPs out there besides iPods, but why do people here always drone on about iPods? Even Sony make DAPs and HD ones too! Why not a thread about the SQ of the Sony DAPs vs RH1.

  4. If you've a habit of dropping expensive electronics, I guess don't buy them. Same would apply to a decent camera, DSLR, PDA etc. I wouldn't go back to the inconvience of a film camera because digital cameras aren't as robust, regardless of the quality of film. Its not about listening to X amount of hours. But listening to the right 3mins.

  5. Honestly, when using PCM or lossless and no EQ, the difference between my 5.5G iPod video and RH1 are rather negligible over Grado SR-80 headphones. The RH1 might have a slight edge in the bass department, and the iPod's high frequencies are more shrill/pronounced, but that's about it. Any differences (imagined or otherwise) probably aren't large enough in everyday listening/everyday phones/everyday environments to warrant considering one over the other. Not on the basis of sound quality alone, anyway.

    My iPod and Hi-MD have happily co-existed for a long time because they are two different things - one is a small capacity audio recorder, and the other is a large capacity video/audio player. If I want high sound quality, I don't use either - I go over to my Marantz digital amp.

    This is my way of thinking too. Love my MD/HiMD but I know what is isn't. Ditto the portable MP3 players I have. They work well together. I record a lot of stuff for my MP3 player on the HiMD. They work well together.

    Have to say I'm tempted by a classic. I'm finding my 2GB MP3 player too small, and really the whole synching playlist is just a pain. With a Classic I could just finally just put all my music on it.

  6. Hi sparky -- That's the WHOLE POINT. You are using filetree --OK --it's still an INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SYSTEM. You've applied an ID3 filetag to the tracks so you can retrieve them.

    My whole point here was to say that once you get beyond a certain number of tracks you DO need some type of search algorithm to find / organise the tracks.

    Windows explorer etc just won't cut it anymore.

    Your post here just amplifies exactly what I've been saying. It doesn't mean you have to use commercial software but you have just shown that you DO need some type of system to manage the music tracks.

    Cheers

    -K

    I don't get you. I don't use the tags. I use file names and folders. My usual playback and navigation is with the filetree mode in MediaMonkey. Its the same as explorer but with a player. I also use filetree to copy the files on to my Samsung MP3 player. The MP3 player is set to use filetree no ID3 tags. So I don't use the ID3 tags for navigation or playback. I only use ID3 tags when I have a player that doesn't support filetree. Like a HiMD, Creative or iPod etc. MediaMonkey has some powerful functionality for building tags from filetree and building filetree from tags. So thats handy for cleaning up stuff thats named or tagged badly. But thats really only to be pedantic. I don't need the tags. Same way I don't need ID3 tags for any of my other non music data.

    The limitation of filetree is not the number of files or finding files. Its limitation comes when you want to complex searches which go beyond simply finding a file, or create complex relationships between data. IMO

  7. My comments re copywrite refer to writing software to handle encode/decode ATRAC/OMA files and their transfer back and forth to Sony devices like HiMD.

    Can't agree about your limits on files. My music library is about 12,000 files and 50 GB's. All organised pretty well by filetree IMO. I think the deepest it goes is 4 levels. So max of 4 doubleclicks to find any file. I organise both by filetree and ID3 tag as I have different players, some use tags some don't. Come to think of it if I consider all my other data photos, graphics, docs, work progects etc I'd easily have > 100,000 all well organised by file tree. Got knows who many files I'd manage at work.

    Obviously there are limitations. If you want to search by all artists who released an album in 1994 with more than 10 tracks and with "k" in their name. Then I could only do that by using a database of some sort. But I think people who do that are beyond "normal" users.

  8. The existing functionality of HiMD & SonicStage 4.x is fairly comprehensive and already achieves a lot of what you asking for. Rather than reinventing the wheel, you would be better off starting a list of features/functionality that isn't available with the current hardware/software in order of priority.

  9. Greeting guys,

    I've been reading this post with complete amazement and confusion. It seems to me that the only issue HiMD users have is how to download recorded tracks from their Minidiscs to any device they want and to be able to convert to any other format they wish.

    This is a software issue, is it not?

    Surely there are competent s/f engineers that can reverse engineer Sony's basket case database and file structure.

    Collectively, is it not possible to offer compensation to someone with the talent to provide a new software product?

    Just how much could it cost?

    Or, is it that Sony may sue to protect it's proprietary software even though they are not supporting it any more? If it is valuable to minidisc users why should we not attempt to produce the software that we would really want to use?

    What am I missing here?

    People have tried and failed. Also its most likely copyright violation. I would assume Sony specifically prohibits reverse engineering.

    ...

    I think also that people will still want some type of Music Management software -- just drag and drop won't manage your music decently when you get a few thousand tracks.

    I'm a Pro photographer and have a similar problem managing databases of 100'000's of photos.

    ...

    Don't really agree with that. At the end of the day they are all filing systems. Obviously with a true database you have more options on how to search. But even a flat file system large amounts of data can be managed.

×
×
  • Create New...