Breepee2

Are the enhancements in 2.1 worth the lost posts? I'd say let the software culminate a bunch of really useful features before upgrading (and make sure to have a last-minute backup). Almost every upgrade we get kicked back a few weeks

On what do you want comment? It seems your quite happy, QED methinks? For your information, this is minidisc.org, not iaudiophile.net

The UMD is just a small DVD in a box, nothing difficult about making them (re)writable. Maybe the home-recorded discs will not be compabitle with older (PSP)units, but new units should be fine.

But it will make just about everyone move away to the MP3-crowd.

But could be with a smaal amount of tweaks.

Of course one can always have a personal preference for the characteristics for a specific codec. I base it on the big Hydrogen ABX of last year (with Atrac3+, Lame, Vorbis, Musepack and I though also AAC). If so many people clearly consider Atrac3+ to sound worse than it's concurrents, it probably doesn't. Note that all codecs but Atrac are constanly improved, and Atrac is not (every once in a while there's a big 'improvement' which requires everyone to buy new equipment).

This rules out about every portable audio player out there. By the way, you can always create Lame MP3's with the preset extreme, which is a very safe bet. Or find a player that supports FLAC to increase space. If you are so concerned with audio quality and space, why did you buy an MD-recorder? I sports the playback of one of the worst codecs to be had on portable audio gear, and when you'd use PCM, you'd have to drag 60 1GB discs along, to at least get the same space as that HDD-player you were talking about. If you like MD, that's fine (join the club ), but please do so based on real facts. Otherwise you'll be just like the MP3-flash-crowd: "it's better cuz it just is".

Moi aussi.

That's no full size HiFi HiMD component, is it?

Maybe there will come some new HiMD models, or maybe this has been it. EOL on MD.

Speed is absolutely not necessary for a HiFi PC. Playing back audio is something even an 300 mhz cpu can do. Fast and complicated cpu's and low memory timings isn't only of no use, it even creates more 'background noise' inside the PC, which in theory results in more errorneous bits (although this is very common in today's high speed PC's and is being corrected all the time, it's this is a mathematical fact. Since speed is of absolutely no importance, just stick to 'slower' settings). Big disks is the thing you need to worry about. The music has to be sotred somewhere, and lossless of course (else it wouldn't be HiFi). Speed of these discs isn't important, today's big drives (200GB +) are without exception more than fast enough. Other than that, I'd built a system that is low on power consumption. That means buying an Pentium/Celeron M or Athlon/Sempron 64, or getting an old CPU (Celeron 300-500 mhz for example). When going for an Athlon 64, a 939 board isn't going to help you, except increasing your power bill. Also, if it's possible, use the DAC's of your amplifier, and not your sound cards. If you must use you're sound cards, look on the web for cards that seem to please (Maudio 7.1 for example seems to be a nice card). I think I'd buy a barebone, either an HTPC-ish one, of sometihng like this: http://www.asus.nl/products/desktop/pundit-ae3/overview.htm. Room enough to stick big drives in and a decent audiocard.

No? FOr example, a CD can be read at 1, but also at 2 and 4 and 48 speed. Even at .1 speed. It all depends on how the manufacturers define how the hardware handles the disc. In HiMD's case, speed wasn't the primairy point. It won't make the disc spin any faster Transfers will be pecisely as fast as with an USB1.1 device.

Almost every soundcard-maker resamples everything to 48kHz (for example all AC97 codec's) and as such output 48kHz (not unaltered). A lot of soundcard-maker who offer 44.1kHz resample it again (Creative does this for example, even in it's Audigy's) back to 44.1kHz (still not unaltered). This Chaintech card (thanks to it's VIA Envy chip) can output real unaltered 44.1kHz, as it should be. So, no, almost no card outputs digital signals unaltered. If you set your software to resample (with a better algoritm than on-chip) you won't notice it when listening, but still, if you want to record bit-perfect copies or just want to get it out with no loss, this Chaintech card is one of the few that does the trick.

One way...

None in the Netherlands either... So it's up to me

The easiest is still converting to 'WMA Lossless'. That's a lossless format like FLAC/MAC/SHN. SonicStage works perfectly with it. Not OS though, but it gets the job done and is the most space-efficient way.

It's not difficult to obtain a card with digital out (optical or coaxial). It's difficult to obtain one that leaves the sound unaltered (untouched 44.1kHz out).

Via your sound card. There's simply no other way.

I thought Sonicstage added a little gap, even with Atrac? And how does Sonicstage handle gapless Lame-MP3's?

Is it OK if I provide an explanation ? Some parts of music are better 'compressable' than others. Some part's are more difficult. The codec requires less bits, at easy parts, to achieve a certain level of quality, than more difficult parts, which require more bits to achieve that certain level of quality. CBR uses a specified bitrate, so the easy parts will have a higher level of quality than the more difficult parts. VBR is better, but requires a little bit more intelligence (processing power) than CBR.

Nope. And that's the point. HiMD is intended as an archive medium, and as such it doesn't require high speeds, but large quantities.

Transferring to and fro MD isn't limited by it's USB version, but by the discs itself. Slapping on USB2 will increase tranfering speed zero percent. And I don't really mind, I quite happy as it is. About this ridiculus comparison, it is stupid. A HiMD can be better than an iPod, and an iPod can be better than a HiMD. Depends on personal whishes.

You don't really need realplayer for that. Try using a free codec (FLAC/Ogg Vorbis/etc) and files are very portable.

The cullprit is that the divisions within Sony are almost like different companies. That's why this ugly piece of software called Sonicstage even exists (and why there's a separate MP3-download tool for portable audio devices created within the PC division of Sony). It (Sonicstage) is almost like an initial draft to bind Sony more together, but doing that with a company as big as Sony (and with all the different cultures within the different divisions) is a slow process (that's why improvements with Sonicstage do come, but slowly and has a long way to go). So that's why I think Linux Sonicstage (let alone opensourcing of code or separate libraries that can be utilized in custom software) are in the (distant) future. Wine is developing more rapidly so I think that that will bring Sonicstage sooner. BTW, imzu, I think you can sync with your Tungsten in Linux via Evolution (perhaps another program)? At least Kpilot seems to be able to: http://forums.suselinuxsupport.de/index.ph...=ST&f=4&t=18631

They can always put th stuff they don't want others to see in a closed source library, or just built the entire program closed source themselves of course (precisly like SS on windows). I think a future wine with USB is your safest bet.