Breepee2

No, the way it is, is logical. The HDD-players are targetted at a whole different audience. People who already have hundreds of MP3's and just want another MP3player. The MD however, is been around for a long time, with a percentage of users who use it to record music. The MD was originally designed as that, a digital cassetteplayer. They probably try to convince the recorder crowd Atrac is a very decent format and that MP3 is only for the mindless masses.

I do mind DRM, even when I think it's fair. For example, take this problem. What if, 10 years from now, Sony goes belly-up and that happens? You can't use a PC for tens of years, so when you're buying a new one, or Longhorn is incompatible with SonicStage, you go Linux/MAC, what do you do then with all your purchased lossy music? You can't play it back, you can't retrieve.... In short: lost of hassle with the strong possibility of no recovery and rebuying. And what if you decide to buy a new DAP, but a non-Sony (which doesn't support ATRAC) unit this time? You just cannot playback your music anymore. That's the reason why I currently can't have MD as my single source of music. I have to keep backups somewhere (not only for the sake of qualitydifference FLAC <> Atrac) for future use. It's happened before a system went obsolete (cassette). There are even rumors now that MD will be in a short period of time. DRM only reduces usebility. I've ripped my CD's to FLAC, which is an open source format, so no one can close it down, discontinue support or what ever. Source code is freely available (so you can keep a copy to have absolute certainty you can play it back in the future) and there's a large community out there developing it free of charge and making it a standard (it's the only lossless format that is supported on tens of portable DAP's and even some stationary components). These files will be playable on computer and many DAPs (though not so many as I'd like to ) a 100 years from now. And then if havn't even mentioned the ethics of DRM. When big monopolists shove DRM onto music you paid for and you own, there's something seriously wrong. If they can't show trust in us, why must I show trust in them? Sony has commited their fair share of untrustwothy things to the MD (bad MP3 playback, DRM-ing of your own recordings, putting copy restictions everywhere, issues with firmwares, buggy software which has rendered many ripping hours useless). DRM == Bad. Period.

Extra formats? Not likely (FLAC, FLAC, FLAC!). I havn't heard of any firmware updates for any MD-unit, so I wouldn't count on it (altough real obvious bugs are kind of an exception, then again they would have been solved by now).

Here's mine. I've just reinstalled Windows 2 days ago, so there's a heap of games and software to reinstall and icons to rearrange. Little note: Although the paging file is turned off (I've got 2GB ram) Windows Taskmanager still seems to think there is one (well, there's not!). This is btw the theme 'Azure' and it's a totally great and simple, but very useful theme. I can recommend it to anyone who seeks a more usable Windows. I don't like bells and whisles, but this theme is really worth it. Oh, and for my specs, see my signature (todo: 2x Raptor 73GB (or maybe this little gadget ) and a new videocard, G70 or R520).

There's no recent Sharp hardware. Why, I don't know. Yes, they made better hardware than Sony. That's it. If you want HiMD => Sony. If MD is enough, look for some Sharp if you can still find it. For details on specific models, please search.

Please DONT use 7, its one of those apps that adds a loader exe to Windows startup so that it appears fast, but actually slow down the boot process. Get 6 and use Adobe Speed-Up (use google) to get a lean 'n mean pdf-machine.

There's (sadly) only one way to get SP onto a minidisc, that's recording trhough line-in in realtime (preferably optical).

Meh, US only. Everything good and handy is non-Europe in this world it seems

Strange that they want us to trust them, but they won't trust us. As long as they have money for ridiculus things as these, I really don't care about piracy. By the way, I think any cdburner HIFI component can copy these CD's, and I don't see why smart programs cant see the actual tracks on the disc.

By the way, is the point to store the music or to store and play it back? If you only want to store, you can also just copy your music (in FLAC for example) to the disc as data and save it in a shoebox under the bed. With any HiMD unit it will be possible under any OS to retrieve your music digitally with no loss at all (provided the discs don't break down). I trust an MD more to hold data for a long time than a CD/DVD.

Although I think the (Hi)MD's itself are one of the best media around (I trust an MD more than a CD or DVD) you right that you can't get your sound off digitally. The only bitperfect way I can think of is uploading in PCM and ripping with marc's tool to wav/FLAC. That way it should be bitperfect from what you uploaded. Uploading in Atrac is possible too, but ouf course that will degrade sound quality compared to CD.

Nope, although the difference is not big. But it has a good reason. Decoding FLAC takes less CPU than decoding MP3. WMA Lossless (and all other lossless codecs) are heavier than FLAC to decode. That's why it's such a good candidate for portable use, it doesn't drain your batteries as much as other formats.

Yes and yes. FLAC is just a form of compressing raw audio, there's not one bit lost when comparing to wav. Of course when editing everything will be decompressed and recompressed later when saving, because the way FLAC compresses differs from bit to bit.

I upgraded this winter from my standard Sennheiser MX300's to the Sony MDR-EX71SL. Whil they're admittedly better than the Sennheisers, it still not quite good. I don't know how I can use words to say what I mean, but it boils down to me defenately wanting to try something better (and more expensive). When there's money's I'll be looking at some Shures (3 or 5) or the Etymotic 6i. They're pretty hard to come by btw here in the Netherlands, I know not of any (web)shops which sell the more audiophile-like phones.

Where has my reply gone? I see a separate thread? Anyway, it belongs here. OK, I think I've removed the reason why it was separated, though the point still stands. Somehow me must get a law in place which forbids Sony to make software... I really don't understand how a multi-billion dollar company allows itself to mess things up so bad...

First I want to suggest to rip to MP3 with another program, EAC in combination with Lame (search Google for details), to achieve best possible quality. Second, isn't there an MP3-uploader for the networkwalkmans that does just that and doesn't need nor use ShitStage? Third SonicStage indeed is the largest insult that us customers and MD-fanatics ever could have.

Wow, that's .... really Sony... Could you add Atrac3+ HiSP as a comparison?

Glad I don't want that chipset. BTW, AMD and Apple are on the same organisation which eventually want everything to be DRM'ed, so don't get your hopes up.

Yeah, like the respect they have for old people

FLAC is a form of compressed audio. You don't need to unzip, it play's back directly (like MP3 and Atrac). It's main point is it is lossless (so you store bitperfect copies of you CD's). The other one is that it's released under an open-source license, which means anyone can always and anywhere use it (there's no big evil company who can decide to not support you in the future). It's not supported on every portable device, but it is the most (and aside from Apple Lossless) and the only supported lossless codec. Essentially it is a .wav at 55% at .wav size. I have most of my CD's in FLAC on disc. Sony supporting this next-gen codec (or at least it's own lossless codec) would be truly great. I think the time is over for crappy lossy codecs anymore. Lossless is the future. Raw audio is of course also not required anymore as a playback codec, there's no use in throwing 45% of space away.

If you use PS3's digital out there would be perfect audioquality.

Pulling out of MD business sounds different than discontinuing the old MD-line. I think there can be no doubt of what those Sony-eployees think is going to happen. @ Ishiyoshi Normally I'd agree, but Sony has a history of not officially talking about anything. Of course they'll officially announce it if they completely abandon the (Hi)MD. The thing is now 2 Sony-eployees in 2 different countries have said so. Why would they say so if there's absolutely no basis for it? When I add up that the new CEO practically considered the MD and Atrac legacy and wanted to move to HDD/flash players, I think those Sony-employees could be right.

Flash is too expensive for the time being in that sort of quantities. I hope they'll switch to UMD-rewritables. They're essentially DVD's, so it isn't impossible. But I think the future Sony has in mind is just HDD and Flash players, and let 3rd parties continue to produce MD's to use with their old MD-hardware and leave it at that.

There are now 2 Sony-people who've said Sony is leaving MD-business: http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=10006 sixth post.

And FLAC support!!!! Or Atrac Lossless....