Running At Minus Degrees...

[SlowMo]

well, i first thought, it would gap, because of condensing sweat moisture, making it impossible for the laser to read. to solve this, i´d put it in a plastic bag, isolating it from the moisture (i sweat a lot, when i´m running)

i have the unit in my trousers pocket, it shouldn´t get too cold there..

but still, i have those gaps which are REALLY annoying, and sometimes, i even have to stop running, just to "stop the gap". i´ve tried different pockets (jacket´s chestpocket, sidepocket, hoodie frontpocket...) with the same result, it gaps !

could it be, that i´m ´bouncing´ too much, or what...?

[ROMBUSTERS]

which bitrate are you playing back at?

> lower the bit rate, the more stored in the buffer, the longer the anti-skip

hows your battery holding up?

> having a low batter was the only time ive ever heard an MD skip in my life (and that was on my old N505)

[skmetal07]

do u have it on shuffle? i heard it might skip with that on

[ROMBUSTERS]

do u have it on shuffle?  i heard it might skip with that on

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wrong assumption again (second time ive had to correct people nothing personal)

the data on an MD is scattered all accross the area of the disc. In this way even if you played the disc in normal mode it would have to seek back and forth to read bits and pieces of data into the buffer. The player then playsback from the buffer. So even it it was on shuffle, thats only changing where its looking for the bits, nothing more.

[SlowMo]

compresion: 64kbps (305mb md)

battery: full (almost )

shuffle : nope

i´ll try it with another disk tonight, a "hi" one, wish me luck...

[Qwakrz]

Yes ROM, I would agree with you but, if you look back through some of the earlier posts in Hi-MD section you will find that shuffle does affect playback of the unit, it may be that the unit stores the shuffle information etc in the buffer memory and as such is not able to buffer as much data & this causes the skipping.

SlowMo, try and put the MD in a backpack or around the waist, basicly somewhere that is not jolted as much as your pocket, previous posts have stated that putting the unit in a thigh pocket caused excessive movement that was enough to cause dropout and skipping.

[ROMBUSTERS]

Yes ROM, I would agree with you but, if you look back through some of the earlier posts in Hi-MD section you will find that shuffle does affect playback of the unit, it may be that the unit stores the shuffle information etc in the buffer memory and as such is not able to buffer as much data & this causes the skipping.

SlowMo, try and put the MD in a backpack or around the waist, basicly somewhere that is not jolted as much as your pocket, previous posts have stated that putting the unit in a thigh pocket caused excessive movement that was enough to cause dropout and skipping.

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fair enough although i doubt a couple of kilobytes (max) will take that much away from music playback.

1411kbps(PCM) (kilobits/second) ~ 176.375 kilobytes/second

256kbps(A3+HISP) ~ 32 KB/s

132kbps(A3LP2) ~ 16.5 KB/s

105kbps(A3LP2/3) ~ 13.125 KB/s

66kbps(A3LP4) ~ 8.25 KB/s

64kbps(A3+HILP) ~ 8 KB/s

48kbps(A3+48) (kilobits/second) ~ 6 kilobytes/second

and (though a test i just conducted) a 10,000 character textfile only took up 9.76kilobytes ~ 1byte per character. I doubt sony uses this format to store it however it cant be much different. Also i forget the HiMD character limit but the player recognzes the songs by their playnumber anyways, lowering the amount of overall info store.

But lets take the worst case senario, say it did indeed need 10kilobytes to store the playlist (which it wouldnt).

That means its only robbing the buffer of the following amount of music:

1411kbps(PCM) = 0.0567 seconds of music lost

256kbps(A3+HISP) = 0.3125 lost

132kbps(A3LP2) = 0.6061 lost

105kbps(A3LP2/3) = 0.7619 lost

66kbps(A3LP4) = 1.212 lost

64kbps(A3+HILP) = 1.25 lost

48kbps(A3+48) = 1.66667 seconds lost

keeping in mind this is worst case senario and indeed the music buffer is used as a shared RAM your still looking at loosing (at worst) about 2 seconds of audio only

[dex Otaku]

The HiMD table of contents [TOC] is -much- larger than just 10k. It contains not only the track names and such, but also links to DRM infomation, and I would expect is stored in Unicode or some variant which uses more than one byte per character in order to make multiple languages [alphabets/glyphs] possible.

The TOC is loaded when you insert the disc, and is need not be accessed again unless you are either recording or editing on the unit.

In any case, this shouldn't affect the unit skipping in any way.

It's possible that the cold might be slowing down the optical head mechanism. Its also possible that low battery power could encourage this, especially since most types of battery function poorly when they are cold [mainly through shorter life, though].

Otherwise I'd suspect that there's a hardware problem involved here. The buffering done by MD and HiMD units is very efficient - I regularly take mine out walking in -15 to -30 celsius weather, with the unit in a jacket or pants pocket, and even with the way I walk [very fast] it never skips.

[ROMBUSTERS]

The HiMD table of contents [TOC] is -much- larger than just 10k.  It contains not only the track names and such, but also links to DRM infomation, and I would expect is stored in Unicode or some variant which uses more than one byte per character in order to make multiple languages [alphabets/glyphs] possible.

The TOC is loaded when you insert the disc, and is need not be accessed again unless you are either recording or editing on the unit.

agreed but i was referring to the temporary placelist created by changing the playback mode to shuffle (which may be stored in the same RAM as the TOC or in the buffer RAM), with the latter being incorrectly blamed for lowering the buffering amount by such a significant amount.

[dex Otaku]

Ah. Okay. I wouldn't think that would have much of an impact either.

[ROMBUSTERS]

Ah.  Okay.  I wouldn't think that would have much of an impact either.

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glad we finally agree

[SlowMo]

hi,

thanks for the many answers ( although getting a bit off track with that shuffle issue, interesting stuff though...)

but it seems, that the prob is much simpler, because yesterday, when i tested it with the hi-md it didn´t skip at all.yet i only took a short run, because i felt a bit ill, and it was espacially cold yesterday... so it could still be possible, that it would start skipping, while taking a longer run (about 45min-1h)

but still, i think it´s strange that skipping safety should be lower at "old" minidiscs, i would expect it the other way round.

putting it in a backpack is not really an option, why should i by a light and small device, and then put it in a pack, hampering me while running ? and since it would be the only thing in that backpack, it would probably bounce even more...

i´ll keep watching it, and report results..

[ROMBUSTERS]

but still, i think it´s strange that skipping safety should be lower at "old" minidiscs, i would expect it the other way round.

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it shouldnt really be that different. Although there are some hardware limitations if that wut your referring to. HiMD 1GB discs read faster then any other disc formatted HiMD or not.

If battery power is wut is cuasing your laser to be slow on the seek then payback in old MD mode (which requires less power overall) might help but i doubt it'll be noticeable.

Other than that there shouldnt be any difference using 'old' minidiscs.

[SlowMo]

hi,

just coming from a 45minute run, and discovered: it´s not that different.

i mean i had a hi md in it, and after about 20 mins it skipped the first time, and from then on about every 5-10 minutes (4 times overall)

and this is something that returns, the first skip to occur is always after about 20-30 minutes, and from then on, it keeps skipping...

battery had 4 blocks, before and after the run, so that shouldn´t be the problem.

wondering if it still could be about condensation, can´t accept the thought of a faulty unit, or worse, a unit that works perfect, and simply doesn´t comply with my bouncy way of jogging..

[daremo]

Have you ever cleaned the unit? They make MD cleaning discs. Might be worth a try if nothing else seems to help.

BestBuy: Minidisc Head Cleaner

[SlowMo]

the unit is pretty new, and i´ve always kept it closed and in the bag that came with it, i really don´t think dirty lenses n stuff should be an issue yet.

[Latexxx]

I've noticed that the pocket has a strong influence on skipping. If I wear trousers which allow the player to swing in 50 cm arches, there is no change of avoiding skipping. But if I secure the player somewhere or use a smaller pocket, it skips hardly ever when running.

[SlowMo]

I've noticed that the pocket has a strong influence on skipping. If I wear trousers which allow the player to swing in 50 cm arches, there is no change of avoiding skipping. But if I secure the player somewhere or use a smaller pocket, it skips hardly ever when running.

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that thought came to me too, that´s why i had tried different pockets in the first place. the thing is, that even the smallest pocket (jogging trousers) is much bigger than the unit,and so allows it to swing. (still not that much, i woulnd´t have expected it to skip from that.)

however, tonight i tried the following: i´d put a unopened pack of handkerchiefs (=light and soft) into that pocket´s bottom, to prevent the unit from sinking to the bottom of the pocket, where it would swing most, and fixing it by filling up unneeded space.

and: no skipping occured. .....until i chose to listen to another track, accidentally partly pulled out the headphone plug of the remote, thinking it was skipping again. this time even worse, without recovering.

did the rest of the run in silence, because i couldn´t figure out the reason until i was home...

thanks for the help..

[ROMBUSTERS]

that thought came to me too, that´s why i had tried different pockets in the first place. the thing is, that even the smallest pocket  (jogging trousers) is much bigger than the unit,and so allows it to swing. (still not that much, i woulnd´t have expected it to skip from that.)

however, tonight i tried the following: i´d put a unopened pack of handkerchiefs (=light and soft)  into that pocket´s bottom, to prevent the unit from sinking to the bottom of the pocket, where it would swing most, and fixing it by filling up unneeded space.

and: no skipping occured.      .....until i chose to listen to another track, accidentally partly pulled out the headphone plug of the remote, thinking it was skipping again. this time even worse, without recovering.

did the rest of the run in silence, because i couldn´t figure out the reason until i was home... 

thanks for the help..

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heh you sure you're not the cause of all this random skipping?

[SlowMo]

heh you sure you're not the cause of all this random skipping?

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pretty much. the other times i didn´t touch the remote at all (often rainy weather/very cold, unlike today, and i didn´t want to open my jacket to reach the remote)

anyways, it wouldn´t click in again on itself after once clicking out

time to go to bed now, it´s half past 5 in the mourning here, and i´ve got a powerpoint seminar "tomorrow" at 9am -damn that´s really a waste of time !