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Audio difference between Hi-MD and Regular MD?

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ninetynine

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When you say Hi-MD, do you mean 1GB discs or reformatted standard MDs or both? When you say regular MD, do you mean in standard or Hi-MD mode?

1GB discs can only be used in Hi-MD mode, whereas regular MDs can be used in MD or Hi-MD mode. Hi-MD formatted regular MDs hold about 1/4 - 1/3 of a 1GB disc. If you use the same codec/bitrate, there's no audible difference. Regular MDs in std. MD mode - besides being even more limited in capacity - use different (older) audio codecs and thus can't be compared objectively in sound quality. PCM - being 'lossless/uncompressed' - should in theory sound better than any of the other codecs, but consumes substantially more disc space. That makes it more a good recording than a reasonable playback mode.

Edited by greenmachine
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  greenmachine said:

When you say Hi-MD, do you mean 1GB discs or reformatted standard MDs or both? When you say regular MD, do you mean in standard or Hi-MD mode?

1GB discs can only be used in Hi-MD mode, whereas regular MDs can be used in MD or Hi-MD mode. Hi-MD formatted regular MDs hold about 1/4 - 1/3 of a 1GB disc. If you use the same codec/bitrate, there's no audible difference. Regular MDs in std. MD mode - besides being even more limited in capacity - use different (older) audio codecs and thus can't be compared objectively in sound quality. PCM - being 'lossless/uncompressed' - should in theory sound better than any of the other codecs, but consumes substantially more disc space. That makes it more a good recording than a reasonable playback mode.

Greenmachine is spot on. The sound quality is the same, if using the same bitrate, using either 1GB blanks OR 80min blanks. The only difference is the amount of storage capacity that you have (1GB blanks leave the rest for dead!)

Also, does anybody know if the 2GB blanks (not available in Australia) are able to be used in the 1st Generation Hi-MD recorders such as the MZ-Nh900, MZ-NHF800 etc.?

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I think the basic questions here is:

What sounds better?

The original SP mode with 292 kbps bitrate OR

the HI-SP mode with just 256kbps but maybe better codec !!??

This 356kbps Mode ( I think it was 356...) is only aviable in SoS, and

to use it, you have to import as Wave. (SoS can at maximum Import atrac

with 320kbps, wich is not supported by most (or ALL ??) HI-MD units :blink: )

for daily use its not realy suitable.

PS: Try one of my Minidisk, And you will never have store problems anymore !! :lol:

Edited by DerTapir
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  ninetynine said:

I ment to say what is the difference between the hi-md and the older mini disc players ( between the net md and the ones that came out before those aswell ). I was thinking of purchasing a r70, Isn`t the recording sound quality 44.1khz / WAV ?

ATRAC 292kbps (SP)

ATRAC 146kbps (MONO)

ATRAC3 132kbps (LP2)

ATRAC3 105kbps

ATRAC3 66kbps (LP4)

are the NetMD/MDLP modes, whereas the high quality of the ATRAC modes is only available by realtime recording - 105kbps is not available for realtime recording but only by USB transfer.

Pre-NetMD/MDLP units like the MZ-R70 only support the two ATRAC modes. Stereo (SP) is about 1:5 lossy high quality compressed audio, read about it here and here. Pre-NetMD/MDLP units don't support faster than realtime USB transfer.

Neither pre-NetMD nor NetMD can upload recordings digitally faster than realtime, you'll need either a deck with digital outputs or go the analogue route. Read more about it here. You'll get decompressed lossy audio, which consumes as much space as a regular pcm file but has gone through a generation of loss. HiMD is the way to go for convenient recording and uploading.

These are the Hi-MD modes.

Edited by greenmachine
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  • 1 month later...

Atrac 3+ is for me much better than old atrac codec especially in 256kbps (hiSp) and 352KBPS: for example I don't have artifacts with Miles Davis trumpet anymore and transitory sounds are sharpest.

Of course PCM mode for full enjoying of music is great!

Edited by garcou
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Recently I started to notice whistling artefacts in almost all my live mic recordings in Hi-SP.

Pretty annoying as I'll probably have to go buy some more 1GB discs to switch to PCM recording...

Also it was really nice to be able to record for 5 hours uninterrupted. I mean, before I learned to hear the artefacts...

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