kino170878

It's actually a very difficult question you are asking. There are different uses for both bit rates. You therefore have to make a decision on what you want to use minidiscs for. From just a sound quality perspective I think 352kps may be marginally better, but SP has full stereo so it may depend in the end on the tracks themselves. I think, however, that the key to solving this is your *other* deck. Is it also a Sony SP deck? In that case having a number of decks in the same format would make more sense than getting an Onkyo Hi-MD deck. But your setup may allow both formats to exist side by side, so I can't say for sure. Basically it's this: if you want to invest in decks I would go the SP route; if you want to invest in portables go Hi-MD. If you want the best sound quality possible without the advantages of the minidisc format go PCM (uncompressed WAV).

Is the UK MZ-RH1 volume still capped? I remember reading a hack which lifted the volume restriction but at the risk of completely destroying your unit. Maybe I should get the silver RH1 as well when the opportunity comes by.

We will forgive Chris if he can use his influence to make Sony release a Hi-MD deck, new portable line, and new MD car units Oh and some software that actually works properly. Any ideas on a timeframe?

Yes Sony killed Minidisc, but they did make the best units out of all the manufacturers (which makes sense as they invented the thing). I've had Aiwa and Technics MD units crap out on me, I never had a Sony go bad.

That picture is hardcore dude. Make sure no civilians are around you when it happens.

That screen is so damn beautiful. I wonder though how long it will last before it slowly starts to fade out. A bit like the RH1 no?

Does anybody here have experience of applying stickers to minidiscs? What methods do you use? Were you successfully able to use the reverse of the disc as well? I am asking these questions with a view of creating a huge number of MDs including artwork, track info, and so on. I may also need to re-apply stickers if the contents of the MDs change. I will be applying stickers to the discs themselves and not their cases, at least initially. Any help or ideas appreciated.

Does anybody here have experience of applying stickers to minidiscs? What methods do you use? Were you successfully able to use the reverse of the disc as well? I am asking these questions with a view of creating a huge number of MDs including artwork, track info, and so on. I may also need to re-apply stickers if the contents of the MDs change. I will be applying stickers to the discs themselves and not their cases, at least iniitally. Any help or ideas appreciated.

Most of these Sony Hi-MD units now seem to end at a minimum of 50 GBP. Nobody can get them at 20 GBP unless you are lucky enough to spot a 'buy it now' unit at that price very early on.

It's very interesting you would say that because there are some forum members here who say the opposite i.e. that it is Atrac3+ 352 which is better than SP 292. There is a frequency analysis thread by Avrin for example which demonstrates that the 352 rate is able to capture some of the very high frequencies better than SP can. I think one reason which could explain why SP may in fact sound better is that Atrac SP uses true stereo (co-designed with Dolby) whereas the new Atrac uses 'joint stereo'. At high rates supposedly joint stereo works just as good if not better but your result shows that this may not always be the case.

I wonder what version Atrac this uses....maybe 4 or 4.5?

It's not so surprising really. Almost everybody has dumped the MD format completely now. It's going to take a lot of work on your part to secure a high-end unit; it took me years to get a decent setup. It won't happen overnight that's for sure.

^ Nope I distinctively remember that it was ending on August 7th. Somebody on this forum must have contacted the seller and got him to end it early. That's strategy for you.

It's gone already! Some people obviously have that sort of cash to burn even in these tough times. Did the thread starter manage to get it I wonder.... I should have charged a commission to this rich dude lol.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Sony-MDS-JA555ES-MiniD...id=p3286.c0.m14 Knock yourself out dude, for a cool 2k

So what you are saying is that different minidisc units, specifically RH1 vs all the rest, have different firmware limitations inside? That would seem to me to go against Sony's principle of having backward compatability. My own theory is that *all* minidisc units that can connect to a computer should be able to upload data. I can recall reading one of Avrin's threads where the RH710 (which cannot record in Atrac3 natively) was able to be hacked to record in SP. Perhaps every possibility is therefore hidden within the hardware and you just have to find out how it can be manipulated by the software.

Bump Hopefully soon we will see true SP uploads becoming a reality.

But the Hi-MD unit can play SP if it is recorded by the unit itself. I thought cbmuser said that if the hardware side can support it then the software will be able to do it too. So why can't it work?

This sounds great, so will we be able to transfer SP tracks from the PC to 1GB Hi-MD discs thereby getting 5 hours of SP audio on one disc?

I may have missed it but can you delete tracks from the unit itself if those tracks have been downloaded from a computer? And how easy is it to label tracks on the unit?

On studio equipment (including a handful of MD decks) Coaxial digital connections can carry a purer signal (less potential distortion) than the optical digital connection, even though some people claim to prefer the "cleaner" sound of optical. AES-EBU supposedly carries the best signal but that's only what I've read, I can't confirm it since I never had access to such expensive equipment. Overall I doubt you could hear it unless you had a million dollar studio/audiophile set-up.

I always found non-Sony equipment to be louder. My Aiwa F80 sounds almost twice as loud as any Sony MD portable I have. Try and research the models and see if you can pick up a good condition second-hand one on ebay. Also check out "S.F. Edit" mode on legacy Sony MD decks, this can boost the volume of the track/s in question. Be aware that this particular edit operation is irreversable and it only works with tracks recorded in SP - you can't do it for LP2 tracks. And if you are on Hi-MD then you can forget about this operation altogether since it doesn't exist on the Hi-MD units. The only workaround there might be too normalize the original WAV or MP3 tracks using either Audacity or MP3Gain before converting them to Atrac3plus and finally to the MD via Sonicstage.

That is the MZ-R37. It's full metal body and overall sleek look may have been the reason the producers decided to include it in the movie

Still waiting for mine, hope it goes ok.