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freddyjollo

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Everything posted by freddyjollo

  1. No - it just suffered from being the first compressed music format & portable that was publicly visible, at a time when people thought in terms of Cds & were just discovering uncompressed "bit perfect" CDRs that lacked any copy protection that could also play in their car players. There were lots of free cd rippers that did the job fast. I remember at the time all the fuss about the evils of compression. I remember some people declared that minidisc couldnt work as the level of engineering couldnt be rolled out on a mass production level. The difference between Md & CDR was not large enough in the first place - just SP mode- and had all the disadavantages of getting new hard ware at very high price! It therefore failed in the US market & as a result a whole generation closed its mind to that type of thing until the Apple buzz & MP3. By that time it was getting a bit long in the tooth with better solutions appearing. I dont think Sony etc were to blame - they were pioneers charting new territory & also had the problem of having a finger in the music business. Remember Philip's Digital Cassette, a competitor that was supposed to be half way house between analogue cassette & digital, that failed so fast? In fact I am surprised Sony held out for as long as they did. These days we all accept compression, & drm of some kind. I still love my rather weathered Sharp MT88 - I marvel at its solid aluminium body that is still going strong after 6 years; my needs are modest & its good enough for me. I ll probbably be buried with it, wearing a pair of earphones lol. Something for the archaelogoists to ponder over in a thousand years time heheh.
  2. well a good example is Any Questions? under Discussion & Talk - quite definite left-centre-right of the speakers. some seem to use fixed mics. most they move the mic to the current speaker. some are better than others. In some I can hear people on either side of current speaker coughing or audience participation left & right eg clapping, cheers etc
  3. Well I ve just downloaded a few - from the Early Music Show under Documentaries & run them thru Sony Sound Forge Audio Studio 9.0 & the 2 channels meters show a distinct stereo effect - also the graphs are different though harder to see. I know the BBC dont broadcast the same programme the same way on various mediums eg Radio 7 is mono on DAB but Stereo on Freeview. I have tried comparing Radio 7 - iplayer v dab eg Dads Army. Dads Army is very old now & was probably not made in stereo but on Iplayer was being broadcast in stereo, the Sound Forge Audio Studio 9.0 meters were( almost, maybe) identical. The DAB ones were definitely identical. So it looks that maybe the BBC is broadcasting mono material as stereo?
  4. WOW the Radio Downloader is a really nice program!. Thanks for the link! So simple to use!
  5. well presumably that means having the pc on all the time? or are you suggesting putting a pc on a timer? The thing I like about the deck solution is that it is a very low energy answer. How many watts does a deck use - not a lot? Hmm I think I have an old Super Socket 7 board with K6-400 mhz cpu some where. Maybe try building up a low energy system from it & try out kaffeine
  6. One reason that I keep on using minidisc is that little slider on the decks that on power on will start recording and on power off wont lose the recording. I use my decks alot for recording comedies and SciFi series, mainly speech, from BBC Radio 7, DAB. Quite often this can go on for 5 or 6 weeks or more unattended until I have the whole of a programme( or I need to replace the disc with an empty one) Are there any other more modern devices have some thing similar - apart from Freeview boxes?
  7. How does all this registry manipulation differ from just using the "open with" wizard and then choose media player ( to always play it ? If you then double click an atrac file, media player attempts to open it, but you get a pop up that says it may or may not be able to play the file as it doesnt recognise its type. If you then choose not to show this pop up again, double clicking an atrac file or even dragging onto media player does the job you expect?
  8. How does Avrin's ATRAC3[plus] decoder work then? Is it in principle possible incoporate it into players like Videolan's, or is it only A Media Player plugin? It would be nice to have a player that just does its job & doesnt require any registry manipulation?
  9. Thats a great shame. But for me( probably others also) Lp4 & Lp2 is ok.I am just glad I can store my atrac audio files on my NAS & play them on any PC without having to have Sonicstage running on them all & import them into it.
  10. well I have only at the moment tried LP2 and LP4 modes - most of my disks. They play fine. I dont know about all the other bit rates. There is the matter of sound quality. I havent noticed anything bad thru my notebook - which is surely its' use? so the inbuilt codec seems good. That doesnt surprise me when u look at the long list of contributors Videolans player has many talents - apart form its' player, it can also convert between formats - I tried atrac to mp3. worked well & was quite fast. Also it includes a streaming server. I tried streaming atrac audio files to the virtual world Second Life. Fine. Oh by the way it isnt only an audio player, as the name suggests its plays video files. I must say I like it playing dvds as unlike some other alternatives it gets the formats ( widescreen, 4x3) etc right with very little effort- some other players I have used have distorted the picture. It can also be skinned, so you dont have to use the standard , rather plain look. There are lots! It will also receive and play (shoutcast) internet radio. So I think a good player and probably the only one that out of the box plays dmr free atrac files. And its all free!
  11. I doubt its a good idea to keep on using a mindisc especially for recording, that had been put through a washer as I seem to remembet that the top surface has a lubricant for the magnetic record head, which touches the top surface? This lubricant layer has probably been compromised by any soapy hot water & there maybe be subsequent damage to the record head?
  12. My guess is that the Sonic Stage you installed doesnt include the drivers for the portables. I have also found this for some SonicStages versions I have downloaded. Or use the cd that came with the NH600. Dont use it to install Sonic Stage. Use Explorer to find the /Device/Driver/pa/ folder. There is an SETUP program for the drivers for your portable there I think. Or let XP find the drivers in /Device/Driver/pa/winXP If this doesnt work then maybe someone else here has ideas?
  13. Just to expand on this. The player is free opensource. So it seems there is no longer any need for Winamp or that parasitic plugin or with tampering with the registry to get Windows media player to work? The nice thing about this is since you can get the VLC for Linux & MacOS, we have a nice player for oma & aa3 files for those other OS. I can confirm the Linux version ( Ubuntu) works a treat. Cant confirm MacOS. VideoLan dont seem to puplicise the fact about oma & aa3 files very clearly. There is a single ref to .oma files in a verson history, but not in the web site spec descriptions. Its a matter of better late than never?
  14. hi another option may be the VideoLAN players which will now play non drm OMA and aa3 files without sonicstage being installed. http://www.videolan.org/ I dont what the limitations are.
  15. seems like the later VideoLAN players will now play non drm OMA and aa3 files without sonicstage being installed http://www.videolan.org/ aa3 files are not automatically assigned to the player unlike oma files but can easily be made to so in the normal way sorry if this is common knowledge. if so delete this comment
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