3nd3r.wiggin Posted April 12, 2007 Report Share Posted April 12, 2007 Hi all, I just signed up here on the forums. I have an MZ-R30 and MZ-E55 from back in the day and just ordered a MZ-M200 and should have it in a week. I don't do too much field recording, but I got a pretty good price on it so the mic is sort of a bonus for me. Between the e55 and now I had a 20GB 3rd gen iPod but its battery and hard disk are becoming flaky. I would've gotten another iPod but I always found MD more fun, plus the ability to record anywhere even if I rarely use it is comforting.Enough explaining, question time: Can you transfer music through SonicStage to a regular MD disk not formatted in Hi-MD mode? In other words, can it encode my MP3s and stuff to ATRAC SP and transfer it over USB so I can play the disk on my old players? Its not a deal breaker but it would be handy. Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sector001 Posted April 12, 2007 Report Share Posted April 12, 2007 yep, u can transfer from SS to a regular MD disk.....and it will encode the MP3's to ATRAC Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
3nd3r.wiggin Posted April 12, 2007 Author Report Share Posted April 12, 2007 yep, u can transfer from SS to a regular MD disk.....and it will encode the MP3's to ATRACThanks for the quick reply. I was able to find everything else I wanted to know here, just not a clear answer on that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raintheory Posted April 12, 2007 Report Share Posted April 12, 2007 (edited) Enjoy your new unit, it's a great piece of hardware!And welcome to the forums! Edited April 12, 2007 by raintheory Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparky191 Posted April 13, 2007 Report Share Posted April 13, 2007 ...Enough explaining, question time: Can you transfer music through SonicStage to a regular MD disk not formatted in Hi-MD mode? In other words, can it encode my MP3s and stuff to ATRAC SP and transfer it over USB so I can play the disk on my old players? Its not a deal breaker but it would be handy. Thanks.As was said above, yes you can but it will be MP3>LP2 which personally I wouldn't be fond of. Some people don't mind though. If your only using the old players where you don't want to risk the the M200, in the gym or whatever, then its probably good enough for that. The M200 can play MP3s without converting them, you probably know that. Nice unit let us know where you got a good deal on it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Avrin Posted April 13, 2007 Report Share Posted April 13, 2007 (edited) It will actually be MP3>LP2>SP, which is even worse. Edited April 13, 2007 by Avrin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparky191 Posted April 13, 2007 Report Share Posted April 13, 2007 It will actually be MP3>LP2>SP, which is even worse.I'm confused. How is MP3>LP2>SP worse then MP3>SP. Does it transcode a 2nd time or something? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raintheory Posted April 13, 2007 Report Share Posted April 13, 2007 The SP is actually LP2 anyways, just in an SP wrapper. Shouldn't be transcoding from LP2>SP. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparky191 Posted April 13, 2007 Report Share Posted April 13, 2007 The SP is actually LP2 anyways, just in an SP wrapper. Shouldn't be transcoding from LP2>SP.Thats what I thought. Avrin what gives? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grenert Posted April 13, 2007 Report Share Posted April 13, 2007 Thats what I thought. Avrin what gives?I think he means it's worse because it's only LP2 quality, but now takes up >2X the space! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobt Posted April 13, 2007 Report Share Posted April 13, 2007 Again, as with any recording let your ears be your guide. I have several MP3' s at vaying bitrates on my NH1, and they are ok. Much too much is said about theoretical limitations, and not enough is said about soundBob Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Avrin Posted April 13, 2007 Report Share Posted April 13, 2007 (edited) The fact is that SS feeds the LP2 (ATRAC3) to the unit, and the unit itself transcodes it to SP (ATRAC). Unavoidable. And takes ages. Edited April 13, 2007 by Avrin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raintheory Posted April 13, 2007 Report Share Posted April 13, 2007 (edited) The fact is that SS feeds the LP2 (ATRAC3) to the unit, and the unit itself transcodes it to SP (ATRAC). Unavoidable. And takes ages.Interesting...How is it that units that cannot record legacy formats (MZ-RH10/MZ-RH910) do this? Edited April 13, 2007 by raintheory Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparky191 Posted April 13, 2007 Report Share Posted April 13, 2007 The fact is that SS feeds the LP2 (ATRAC3) to the unit, and the unit itself transcodes it to SP (ATRAC). Unavoidable. And takes ages.Do you have link with that info? AFAIK it transcodes it only once to LP2 but puts a SP file wrapper on it. Which is different to what you are saying. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobt Posted April 13, 2007 Report Share Posted April 13, 2007 The fact is that SS feeds the LP2 (ATRAC3) to the unit, and the unit itself transcodes it to SP (ATRAC). Unavoidable. And takes ages.?? ages ??, no matter how much "time" it takes with SS it is miles ahead of straight time. Up to the 90's for many years all my recording, whether reel to reel, or cassette, was real time, and lots of fun. I don't understand why everthing now has to be instantaneous or somethings wrong. My first puter with buring ability took longer than realtime to rip and burn a cd, now I can do it in a fraction of the time, I don't expect it to be no time. Let's be realistic in what we tell people on how long things take.Bob Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greenmachine Posted April 13, 2007 Report Share Posted April 13, 2007 How would a pre-MDLP unit - which doesn't know anything about the LP format - be able to handle a wrapped LP2 file? For compatibility reasons it needs to be plain SP mode, which to my knowledge is only achieved by transcoding and thus losing some quality (although minor) yet again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raintheory Posted April 13, 2007 Report Share Posted April 13, 2007 hmm.. (perhaps this topic should be split?)Personally I was always under the impression that the SP-compatibility mode was in fact actually LP2 in a wrapper. However, after some thought and a bit of research (older material pertaining to OpenMG software and netMD units) I have come to the conclusion that this may not be in fact the case. And further investigation may be useful...http://www.audiotstation.com/forum/showthr...p;threadid=4748http://www.minidisc.org/NetMD_faq.html#_q83Encrypted PCM transfers for SP mode tracks: Judging from the careful experiments of Lance Birch, it appears that when NetMD downloading is being used for creating Minidisc SP mode tracks, the OpenMG software decompresses the [always LP2 or LP4 mode]PC file to standard 16bit, 44.1kHz PCM audio, encrypts it, and downloads that. The fact that PCM is being used for recording SP mode tracks is heartening since it indicates that NetMD downloads could retain SP mode audio quality, given the right PC software. Though current NetMD recorders reportedly offer only 1.6x speed downloading for SP mode tracks, USB 1.1's 12Mbps bandwidth would allow downloads at up to 8x realtime.Now, this states that the netMD units are fed PCM data, and that data is recorded as SP on the unit... Is it not possible/probable then, that a WAV file imported into SonicStage is sent as PCM to the unit for SP encoding (and not encoded as LP2 first?)... I say this because PCM transfers werent available until Hi-MD, which was introduced later. Prior to that anything sent out of the software had to be encoded as LP2/LP4 to work with netMD.I'm at a loss here, but it would be great if the Hi-MD units actually record true SP when transferring. I would still like to know how the units that do not have the legacy recording feature on them (RH10/RH910) do this anyway.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strungup Posted April 14, 2007 Report Share Posted April 14, 2007 ?? ages ??, no matter how much "time" it takes with SS it is miles ahead of straight time. Up to the 90's for many years all my recording, whether reel to reel, or cassette, was real time, and lots of fun. I don't understand why everthing now has to be instantaneous or somethings wrong. My first puter with buring ability took longer than realtime to rip and burn a cd, now I can do it in a fraction of the time, I don't expect it to be no time. Let's be realistic in what we tell people on how long things take.BobYeah Bob , things have gone from Leg Speed to Light Speed since we were kids ,so the people who basically come of age in this time are surrounded with nothing but Instant Gratification. I still prefer a good Stew that has sat in the fridge for two days to really let the flavor soak in. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobt Posted April 14, 2007 Report Share Posted April 14, 2007 "I still prefer a good Stew that has sat in the fridge for two days to really let the flavor soak in."Same goes for lasagna, next day is always bettr (If there's any left over)Bob Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparky191 Posted April 14, 2007 Report Share Posted April 14, 2007 How would a pre-MDLP unit - which doesn't know anything about the LP format - be able to handle a wrapped LP2 file? For compatibility reasons it needs to be plain SP mode, which to my knowledge is only achieved by transcoding and thus losing some quality (although minor) yet again.I always read about it as being fake SP. That the LP2 data was padded out to make a SP file. I've never posts that its transcoded to SP. But from that (very interesting - cheers raintheory) link it makes sense that if it decodes the file to PCM size then on the disk its SP size it would make sense to simply record it as SP as that functionality already exists on the device and doesn't need written from scratch. Padding it out would be much harder and mean creating new functionality and tbh why bother. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZosoIV Posted April 14, 2007 Report Share Posted April 14, 2007 (edited) "Fake SP" from Sonicstage is most certainly not LP2 wrapped up to look like SP - it's LP2 that was decoded to PCM, sent to the player, and encoded into SP. The reason why it takes so long is because of 1) the data rate of PCM is 175KB/sec or 1411.2kbps, which is more than 1/2 of the transfer rate of old NetMD players on USB 1.1 (which was about 2.5Mbps (megabits, not MB), and 2) the ~ 22MHz LSI chip inside the player probably could not encode Type-R faster than about 2x even if it wanted to. More importantly, ATRAC3 is a completely different codec than ATRAC, with different sized long blocks (1024 samples vs. 512) and four QMF filterbanks instead of ATRAC's 3. Thus, ATRAC decoders would have no way of properly decoding ATRAC3 even if it were "disguised" to look like SP, just like MP3 decoders can't handle MPEG-4 AAC. Edited April 14, 2007 by ZosoIV Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Avrin Posted April 14, 2007 Report Share Posted April 14, 2007 I'm at a loss here, but it would be great if the Hi-MD units actually record true SP when transferring. I would still like to know how the units that do not have the legacy recording feature on them (RH10/RH910) do this anyway..Actually these units DO have built-in legacy SP recording capability, but it is impossible to select it without going to the service mode. All the required circuits are present. And my late RH10 actually recorded some tracks in true SP in realtime via optical in. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raintheory Posted April 14, 2007 Report Share Posted April 14, 2007 Actually these units DO have built-in legacy SP recording capability, but it is impossible to select it without going to the service mode. All the required circuits are present. And my late RH10 actually recorded some tracks in true SP in realtime via optical in.Actually now that you mention it I remember seeing a post about this and service mode (but when selected some other feature was disabled if I recall correctly), good call. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Avrin Posted April 14, 2007 Report Share Posted April 14, 2007 Yes, MP3 playback is disabled. I can not find my old topic about that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raintheory Posted April 14, 2007 Report Share Posted April 14, 2007 Avrin:http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=18618 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Avrin Posted April 14, 2007 Report Share Posted April 14, 2007 Thanks! Unfortunately I no longer have the RH10 to experiment with it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
3nd3r.wiggin Posted April 15, 2007 Author Report Share Posted April 15, 2007 I go away for a few days and look what happens No wonder I couldn't find a clear answer before posting, no one actually knows how it works Thanks for all the replies, I find it really interesting. Sparky191, I got it on eBay so unfortunately its not something you all can share. I'll let you know how it works out once I get it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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