though Posted March 16, 2005 Report Share Posted March 16, 2005 i have (2) 80 min MD discs. they have material that i recorded to them from an analog source in MDLP2. i would like to keep these at home where they are safe. now, i would like to make several 1:1 copies of these with no quality loss.my question is... what is the easiest way? 1: do i have to have a MD player with optical out and go to optical in into another unit?2: can i get a Net-MD unit (i have never owned one) and copy the tracks via usb to my computer then back to another MD (with NO QUALITY LOSS)???do i have any other options?my player does not play back in HI-MD (i use a MDS-E10 pro rack mount unit).thanks in advance!- troy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dex Otaku Posted March 16, 2005 Report Share Posted March 16, 2005 i have (2) 80 min MD discs. they have material that i recorded to them from an analog source in MDLP2. i would like to keep these at home where they are safe. now, i would like to make several 1:1 copies of these with no quality loss.my question is... what is the easiest way?There is no way to make a copy of an MD to another MD without a quality loss using consumer equipment. Any playback from the disc will mean conversion from LP2 to PCM, and any recording to another MD will mean encoding back to whatever bitrate you choose; no matter what the case, you will incur a generation loss in terms of decoding and re-encoding. If you are using LP2, the effect [artifacting] will be glaringly apparent.2: can i get a Net-MD unit (i have never owned one) and copy the tracks via usb to my computer then back to another MD (with NO QUALITY LOSS)???No netMD or HiMD equipment will allow copying of MD/LP discs to a computer via USB. There is such a thing as professional MD/LP equipment that will allow 1:1 duplication of discs, but to my knowledge these units are very costly.If you wish to make a backup of your original recordings, I would suggest copying them either by optical or analogue means to a computer and then writing the resulting wave files to CDR or DVDR. If you are interested in long-term backup, note that neither format is actually ideal for such [with even high-quality discs lasting as little as two years in storage], and that CDRW is more reliable in terms of longevity. Backups should be made using CD-ROM format discs [i.e. wave files as data], not as audio CDs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
though Posted March 16, 2005 Author Report Share Posted March 16, 2005 thanks for the post dex. what a bummer. i'll have to think about what to do now... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dex Otaku Posted March 16, 2005 Report Share Posted March 16, 2005 Sorry it wasn't better news. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bug80 Posted March 16, 2005 Report Share Posted March 16, 2005 Isn't there a light at the end of the tunnel? You could search for a relatively cheap soundcard with optical in. When you have that, you can use the optical out on your player to record the tracks digitally in real-time on your PC (in PCM/WAV, that is). In that case, there's no quality loss, neglecting any jitter effects and the like. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dex Otaku Posted March 16, 2005 Report Share Posted March 16, 2005 Isn't there a light at the end of the tunnel? You could search for a relatively cheap soundcard with optical in. When you have that, you can use the optical out on your player to record the tracks digitally in real-time on your PC (in PCM/WAV, that is). In that case, there's no quality loss, neglecting any jitter effects and the like.←There's no quality loss doing this, but that's assuming that you're not putting the same thing back on another MD. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
though Posted March 16, 2005 Author Report Share Posted March 16, 2005 (edited) ya exactly... i need to get this info on other MD's without any quality loss.why don't they think of a way to do this? so when i transfer mp3's to the new generation HI-MD units, will there be a generation quality loss like the current system? or only if you change the format to sony's atrac? Edited March 16, 2005 by though Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bug80 Posted March 16, 2005 Report Share Posted March 16, 2005 (edited) Transcoding (i.e. from one lossy codec to the other) always leads to quality loss. For instance, transcoding a 128 kbs MP3 to ATRAC3 LP2 gives you most of the original MP3 artifacts plus the ATRAC3 artifacts for free!So, when doing backups this should be avoided. I guess the only way with Hi-MD is recording the original track to PCM. PCM is a lossless format, so no extra artifacts will occur. However, the number of tracks that fits on one disc will decrease, of course.* EDIT * To answer your last question, if you transfer the MP3's to a Hi-MD unit that is capable of playing MP3 natively (2nd generation units), than there will be no quality loss compared with the original Mp3. Edited March 16, 2005 by bug80 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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