lcotta

Thank you, Mr. Bass Man. Yes, this is a "6000 channels & nothing on" project, meaning I'd rather be tinkering with resistors than watching TV... and no, I don't need reference class output, just some nice sounding, nice looking, "hey-mom-look-what-I-built" box. I've used powered speakers, the PC kind. Good output, but hey... not homebrewed! BTW, what's the (typical) impedance of an average line-out jack on a soundcard? Just wondering... About impedance and amplitude: I tried connecting the MD phones out to my A/V receiver, had to crank the volume waaay up, compared to any other sound source I have. I normally listen to CDs at -45dB or so, had to go all the way to -20dB with MD... This made me think I was feeding low-Z into something that expected, say, 100K or more. Which in turn made me look into mic preamps... no rest for the wicked. Really the MD is putting out 1Vpp? I was thinking more around the lines of 200mVpp... Thank you for your insight. Best, Luca

Further musings on the topic. How about a microphone preamp circuit, that might take low-Z input and feed it to high-Z output with acceptable results? Mics are in the range of 600 ohms, still too much, but modifications may be made to go as low as 150 ohms or so. Just a thought. Comments welcome Luca from Italy

I am thinking of building an inexpensive (say 5+5W) external amp + loudspeakers for my netMD (an MZ-707, only phones out), sort of a homemade docking station (iPal envy, I guess? ) I have a bargeload of schematics for audio amps, preamps etc, some new, some positively vintage designs (i.e. 1970-something). The articles on preamps go to great lenghts to explain RIAA equalization (I told you they were vintage, did I not? ), but I can't find anything to couple phones-out to amp-in. I welcome your suggestions on the best way to get the most mileage out of the phone out plug. Thanks to all in advance Luca from Italy

Second that! I have, erm, tolerated Sony's DRM and unnecessarily complicated D/L procedure only because MD gave me solid performance as measured by the ultimate testing device. My ears. I know, it won't make much of a test instrument... too biased! Anyway, there's tons of crappy MP3 players around, and lots and lots and lots of hoops to jump through in order to listen to a legitimately-owned piece of music. Sony's is not the absolute worst around, but it's not that hot either. The best I can hope for is some kind of "Netscape-effect", i.e. Sony dumps MD but at the same time gives full access to the technology so users can at least support themselves, and possibly create an "Open" MD community. L.

Sorry kurisu, I didn't notice your reply! I have the files as .mp3 on my PC (64kbps, mono). I ask OpenMG to import them (which should convert them to ATRAC, right?), and OpenMG complains that it can only read 44KHz stereo sound (something like that) So what I need is basically a batch tool that will let me take 64kbps mono .mp3's to ATRAC. Either that, or a tool that will (needlessly) "upconvert" 64kbps mono into stereo, and then OpenMG would convert to ATRAC. Whew. At times like these you think "i shoulda gotten one of them Zen players instead" L.

Well, thank you Christopher, but other than finding out that my question comes a year too late, I haven't found a clue... :-) Mind you, I'd love to go to the latest SonicStage if it solves the problem, but does it? TIA L.

Hi all, I have searched the topics, but I haven't found this discussed anywhere. I have just bought a NetMD MZ-N707. It comes with OpenMG ver. 2.2 My problem is that I have a number of source material in 64kbps/mono (mostly Old Time Radio shows). OpenMG seems really fussy about this. It won't let me convert this source material into ATRAC/LP4 Has anyone found a way around this limitation? Maybe some other CODEC or application that will let you convert this material? Thanks in advance for your assistance Luca from Italy