fishbpm

Yes thanks I understand but my situation is slightly different since my source recordings are all atrac, NOT wav (albeit they will be "decompressed" to PCM as necessitated to enable upload). While I have also read volumes on the relative merits of atrac vs mp3 etc, I am trying to establish whether the fact that my recordings originated as atrac3 therefore strongly favours the use of atrac for recompression. Yes Ive been there! That's why I am considering the hi-MD option (ie. copying over to hi-MD then using hiMD built-in upload). But Im not sure whether any metadata (ie. track markings) will be transferred this way either. Even tho they are both MD players and both made by Sony Ive been lead to believe the legacy MD output can only be received as a purely analogue signal. I'm still not conviced as to what is or is not possible with hi-MD in this regard fish

Just a quick one Gary. I bought a Sony MZ-R909 specifically because it had pitch control (i'm a dj so actually care about beat rate!) This turned out to be shortsighted because you can only adjust pitch in INCREMENTS - of something ridiculously huge like +/- 5% or something stupid. This is obviously useless for mixing or precision (but this wasn't my intention in the first place) but worse IMO it is often impossible to find a pitch position to suit the track being played (the increment jumps are just too large) this was of great annoyance to me since I thought it more of a design oversight by Sony rather than a cost control measure (they could easily have selected a much smaller increment) I;m not sure what your expectations are - the increments may be fine for your needs. All Im saying is make sure you try one out before blowing your cash. Fish Sorry cant help you with models/selection - mine is over 2 years old and purchased in Australia

Thanks Dex, Yeah sorry bout that. Dropped the ball on that other thread a bit... but I did believe you both times! The reason Im asking all these (difficult?) questions is: My objective is to move my entire MD collection onto a harddisk player for my daily use - preferably in a uniform format (I would also retain a hard-drive archive copy but thats just incidental). This is just so much easier than having to handle hundreds of MDs and offers much greater functionality.. Hence my desire to use a compression codec (maximise portable capacity). So based on your other useful comments (below).......> ......I am keen to try recompressing the PCM file. Which brings me to my final problem: Choice of (recompression) codec directly impacts my choice of hard-disk player. If I recompress using Sony's atrac codec I MUST buy a Sony player. To be honest I would rather not be 'forcibly devoted' to SOny in this way. There at least 10 or 15 other excellent hard-disk players that I would least like the opportunity to consider So here is the crux (well crux #2 it seems!).. Is it reasonable for me to assume that recompression using Mp3 (or other "industry standard" (ie. not Sony) codec) will give me noticeably worse results than recompressing with atrac? Since you;ve said (see below) that the first PCM pass "reconstructs" the whole bitstream, is the choice of recompression codec really that important? Or does my original concern about "avoiding transcoding" still apply? All this info is determining my fate with respect to Sony (the one and only, but preferably not under duress! ) newFish

thanks dex Yes I confess I have been a little indoctrinated by the digital revolution. The word "analogue" alone brings fear to my soul. I will try to get over it! If it works then thats all that matters in the end.... I;m not sure how much space I will sacrifice using a lossless codec to archive my "uncompressed" atrac data. (I've tried googling it for the last hour but just can;t seem to find a definitive example of .flac or similar compression ratios.. tho I have a feeling it is something like 5X!!!) I hope not this is a HUGE difference and if correct I will probaly be opting to recompress! newFish

Hmmm. atrac --------------(realtime)----> PCM -----------------(codec compress)----> atrac/atrac3 [legacy MD] ----(soundcard)----> [pooter or hiMD] -------(sonicstage?)-----> [pooter] I am wondering why the above is not possible? Firstly, to be clear I assume the PCM file is effectively the atrac file "padded out" with redundant data (ie. meaningless or at best replicate bits inserted into the atrac data stream) Therefore I would have thought that REcompressing the resultant PCM file would not involve transcoding to any noticeable degree since the compression algorithm is very close to the original (atrac) algorithm. I;m making some assumptions here about current sonicstage (or similar?) sony encoding software. ie. do the latest atrac codecs differ markedly from the original atrac codecs on legacy MDs? At the end of the day I just want my trax to sound like they do now, but reside on my PC in compressed format (ie. comparable to MP3 filesize) ok where's my mistake?? newfish

thanks guys! (and thanks A440 for the link) I am actually quite shocked by this revelation! But I guess I shouldn't be so surprised I really would;ve thought sony would've made the hi-MD compatile with raw atrac data but.. well logic only goes so far! ok I'm assuming that both these methods will pad the file out to the same PCM file, and thus both will result in the same bit quality? If so That's fine - so then my last question is: should it not thereafter be possible to (re)compress the PCM file back to Atrac/(Atrac3?) using SOnicstage or similar? Logically (oh dear, not logic again... dangerous!) this should NOT result in transcoding losses since it is reverting the file back to its original "unpadded" format. This would solve my storage capacity issues. What do you think? has anyone done this recompression or am I in fairyland again? newfish ps I hope you dont think Im diss-ing MDs here. I'm not (honest!) - I think hi-MD has great potential as a good alternative to a harddisk player, especially if you have an extremely large (20G+) collection whereby you can still manage it with a small suite of hi-MDs. But I think Im safe in saying that old MDs are a dying breed!

ok I'm in grave danger of betraying my pathetic ignorance here! But I assumed that hi-MD was exactly that: a HIgher capacity MD! ie. I thought the technological leap was in capacity, NOT compression. Hence a hi-MD stores the same atrac3 compressed audio, except just a LOT more of it. Therefore I asumed I would be able to happily copy my old MDs direct onto hi-MD, whereby I should be able to get up to 20 MDs onto a single hi-MD. However your reply (and please forgive me Im trying to understand it!) implies that the resultant hi-MD file is in PCM (uncompressed) format. How did this happen?? used the same codec (atrac3) but

ok I think I get it... youve replicated the source by recompressing with a lossless codec Which means the resultant file size [flac] must be much larger than the source file size [atrac3]? Which isn't what I had in mind - obviously the larger file contains a pile of effectively useless data (ie. data additional to the original atrac3 encoding) I wanted a bit-perfect copy by keeping native atrac3 (I have a LOT of data!) So therefore Im trying to avoiding any transcoding and was wondering whether using soundcard made this possible.... or whether it necessitated uploading by creating an intermediate hiMD copy. again this is on the assumption that "transoding is BAD"? Now Im not even sure about this... so now Ive probably totally confused everyone!

Thanks Volta, I found the pins/thread regarding the sound card solution... But Im wondering why not just copy my old MDs direct to a new hi-MD disk (could even do this digitally using the digi-output on my bookshelf unit!) Then wouldn't it just be a simple matter of uploading from the hi-MD copy via the built-in hi-MD functionality? ANd wouldn;t this also be bit-perfect by retaining the native atrac3 encoding? Or is there a problem with this that justifies using the soundcard option (which on the face of it seems a lot more fiddly having to deal with transcoding & gain control etc.) Maybe Im confused.... Thanks heaps newfish

Hi, I refer to the administrator (kurisu)'s posted digital/analogue soundcard input solution to "how to upload regular md audio" below It's all covered here: http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=7070 But doesn't this, by defacto, mean the ATRAC3 is transcoded to whatever codec is used by the software associated with the soundcard (which is very likely not atrac3?). Or is there software available that can avoid transcoding using a digital I/O soundcard? I had come to believe that transcoding should be avoided at all costs, but now I;m not sure Would it be better to digi-copy the older md content over to a hi-MD and then upload via the built-in hiMD functionality? This would definitely retain the native ATRAC3 format. Plus there would be no need to manually set recording gain thus removing the risk of clipping and gain loss. I;m not sure about comparative costs/logistics between digital I/O soundcards and hi-MD recorders. What does everyone else think? cheers

Hi, I have 200 old skool (ie. not hi-MD) minidiscs each containing a measly 74mins of ATRAC3 data. My once proud collection is now an embarassing waste of time and space! In a nutshell I need to get this data off the discs and onto a hard-disk player. I'm trying to find a solution that doesn;t involve transcoding (bad!) and doesn;t involve $buying$ a thereafter useless hi-MD player (which I believe is the only hardware that can enable a PC connection) is there another trick??? There must be someone else out there who's got the same problem, surely? Or was I the only MD geek? thanks!