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SONY MXD-D4 Quality of Copy

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jigger

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Hi Folks

Unfortunately I bought a HiMD Sony before knowing about the limitations

of copying from PC to MD. ( in NetMD )

I use Minidisc as musician on stage since years....

Now my question :

If net MD will only copy my own soundfiles from the computer to MD

in LP-Quality , what will my Sony MXD-D4 do ?

Will it copy in true SP from CD to MD ?

Can`t find anything in the manual.

Thanx for answering

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Yes, if you choose to record in SP from a CD, your deck will record in SP. That is the best quality MD can do.

However, note that if you choose to dub the MD at greater than 1X, as the D4 can do up to 4X, the deck will use an earlier version of the ATRAC encoder, resulting in results not as good as if you used just 1X. Whether or not you'll be able to hear this degrade in quality is debatable. Try it for yourself and see.

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High-speed dubs won't utilize the second pass-through filter (Type-R ATRAC DSP) and instead will just use the standard (ATRAC 4.5).

I believe that is the case with this unit.

The difference between ATRAC 4.5 and ATRAC Type-R is subtle; it is not the rather large difference between ATRAC 4.5 and ATRAC 4.

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^ Thanks for the restatement. rolleyes.gif

J/K :laugh:

Actually, I overlooked the fact that the unit is the D4, and does not even possess Type R, but ATRAC 4.5, so in that case, I believe that there is no difference between real-time, and fast recording modes.

(Other, ATRAC Type-R units do as you said obviously.)

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Hmmm....I have both the MXD-D40 and MXD-D400.

At 1x, the D40 uses its Type R to copy, while the D400 uses its Type S.

However, unless I am remembering this totally incorrectly (I do not dismiss the possibility), BOTH machines use not 4.5 in 2x (4x? _ never use it), but rather ATRAC3, which is more like MP3 than it is ATRAC 4.5.

To me, the difference in SP and LP2 is easily noticeable. LP2 is great for portable use and, while more or less acceptable for home use, nothing to get excited about. For sure, LP2 sounds nowhere nearly as good as 4.5. It does not even sound as good as my aging Pioneer MJ-D508 MD deck, with Pioneer's own ATRAC.

So I doubt very much that on the D4 you are using the 4.5 for both SP and LP. Check the minidisc.org equipment browser for more info.

Bruce

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It's confusing, but to summarise:

4x is for SP copying with ATRAC 4.5

2x is for LP copying with ATRAC 3

1x is for SP copying with ATRAC Type R, OR

for LP copying with ATRAC 3

The Type R and Type S DSP's are the same for the purposes of encoding to MD. Type S only affects LP2/4 playback, not SP or LP recordings...

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Where is this information available? It certainly isn't in the user manuals. If I am reading your post correctly, then LP4 uses 4.5? I guess I should actually try LP4, although I have heard very few good things about it for recording music.

4.5 in SP mode (on other machines) sounds fine to me, so I would think that reports of not-so-good sound with LP4 might be due more to compression than ATRAC.

Bruce

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Where is this information available? It certainly isn't in the user manuals. If I am reading your post correctly, then LP4 uses 4.5? I guess I should actually try LP4, although I have heard very few good things about it for recording music.  

4.5 in SP mode (on other machines) sounds fine to me, so I would think that reports of not-so-good sound with LP4 might be due more to compression than ATRAC.

Bruce

Oi, no.

LP4 is ATRAC3, which is not the same thing as ATRAC 4.5/Type-R. You are right though, LP4 quality really sucks. Don't use it for recording music. Recording voice with it is fine.

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