How good is LP4 REALLY?

[md user]

Yes, I've just received a couple of samples of well-encoded LP4 of CLASSICAL music (thanks to sfbp )

I've always disregarded LP4 point-blank for any music, let alone classical - but am I being unfair/pre-biassed? (You see, I expected manifold artifacts &c.)

Listening to them REALLY is enjoyable, much like listening to FM on an old portable radio - perfectly acceptable in the past, why not now? [Considering that the recordings came from the radio, I presume, this does seem rather fitting!] On this evidence, I'm certainly going to record some for those days out where absolute-critical listening isn't important - just the fun of RATHER GOOD music (and lots of it)! After all, I could put an whole opera or piece onto one disk!

Anyway, what's your view; have you been similarly pre-biassed?

Have you really given LP4 a good chance?

Or maybe you're already using LP4 seriously? Tell us!

It certainly gave me a smile to think that 66kbps CAN sound so good!

It will give me yet another dimension to MD enjoyment!

Keep listening to those MDs - even at 1/4-def!

Oh!, and if you know of some good PC-processing/tips to optimise the LP4 'bit-allocation' - I'm interested!

Regards all

mdmad.

[bTW, i've put this on the main board because I (and maybe others?) tend to ignore the MDLP section - not using that format much - so it might bring attention to MDLPs qualities.]

[sfbp]

<blush>

One comment - Sony had to balance the same factors as everyone else coming up with a format. The big advantage of compression is very simple - smaller files. If you've ever tried emailing someone a WAV file, you will know what I mean.

[bochawa]

I use LP4 all the time to record from the Music Choice channels on cable TV (jazz, smooth jazz, big band, new age) and it sounds fine to me. When I had a car with an MDLP player, it also sounded good, but now I do all my listening at home.

[KJ_Palmer]

As far as I'm concerned, the general legacy rule of thumb - SP great, LP2 good, LP4 fine for voice only - still very much applies. I think I've given LP4 a fair crack of the whip, optical recording on my MDS-JB980 and SS download and it just doesn't cut the mustard for me. I also listen mostly to 'classical' music, and made several LP4 compilations, but sadly ths stuff just hurts my ears after a few minutes, whether on a deck or portable, ATRAC Type-S or not. To be fair LP4's not maybe as bad sounding as a low bitrate MP3 with their 'tinny' artifacts, more analogue-y like a poorly recorded cassette, but unfortunately those Bach, Corelli, Vivaldi, Mozart etc LP4 collections remain on the shelf.

LP2 is a fine, listenable compromise between quality and quantity. Would love to be proved otherwise.

[sfbp]

I will email you a URL or 3

S

[Modernaire]

For non-important long hour radio shows, I've used LP4. Its good for voice and just general stuff. I certainly hear a difference from LP2 down to 4.

[md user]

For non-important long hour radio shows, I've used LP4. Its good for voice and just general stuff. I certainly hear a difference from LP2 down to 4.

Curiously, I recorded an opera in LP4 last night, and it was the single commentator's voice that was most artefacted and annoying! The opera itself was relatively good compared!

Odd isn't it?!?

mdmad.

[sfbp]

I am thinking the same thing I heard (probably exactly what stopped me too from using LP4 on operas) might be some weirdness from a MONO commentator.

(Meaning that if you are using "difference from Mono" to encode the stereo, that some strange stuff might happen when the most prominent sound ie the announcer, really is mono)

[KJ_Palmer]

I will email you a URL or 3

S

Thanks very much Stephen. I have listened to those three LP4 tracks (didn't know it was possible to email ATRAC files btw!) and overall was quite impressed. Very listenable on both deck and portable, whilst somewhat harsher in some passages than others. Possibly the dynamics of the music comes in to play - the faster, louder sections seem more smeared than quieter parts, but overall almost as smooth as LP2, or a good DAB or even FM broadcast. Will certainly give LP4 another go, it would be good to have some 5+ hour compilations for the home deck.

Cheers,

Kevin

[sfbp]

I think one reason I wouldn't care if they turned off FM at least here in Canada is that the quality is craparola. I did some air-to-MD recordings (and analysed the signal) and knowing what I now know about DSP, I'd say it (the signal) is not worth saving.

But then I would want my satellite radio, and that is still close as ever to financial extinction. So it's the internet or nothing! The cable companies not bad, but they also have no schedule you can check in advance.

Interestingly the best recording I saved from the 1980's came off of FM radio. Good enough to convert the cassette to CD. Things have got much much worse since then. All our stuff is compressed, relayed by satellite/internet and then played back. And the quality is dreadful as a result.

Agree about the quality (of the LP4's you tried). But for background (anathema to "proper" musicians like my wife) music, is quite good enough.

[paperclip]

I just recorded some PBS music shows from a respectable FM tuner to my Type-R deck in LP4. When played back on my speakers , from a Type-S deck, I was surprised: Stereo separation was quite good, noise floor in the basement. Only thing missing was high frequencies. Funny how I don't remember LP4 being that good, I must have done something wrong long ago that made up my mind.

And yes, i can pick out PCM in double-blind if I'm familiar with the music

This makes me love MD all over again, even more-so!

[freddyjollo]

I use LP4 a lot for spoken word. I find when used for music it tends to lose a bit of the sparkle of the original - Thats not too much of an issue using ear bud phones as they tend to distort the sound balance any way, but I do notice playing thru a hifi system. The 5 hrs is though very attractive.

[THIS SUCKS]

lp4 only sounds good if its recorded on the unit itself from the analog input. recordings from ss are terrible. for lp4 only i even think the analog input on the unit sounds better than the digital input. the digital in sounds better for sp and lp2.

[sfbp]

lp4 only sounds good if its recorded on the unit itself from the analog input. recordings from ss are terrible. for lp4 only i even think the analog input on the unit sounds better than the digital input. the digital in sounds better for sp and lp2.

If you looks at my post higher up, you may see that I don't *quite* agree. It's when Sonic Stage TRANSCODES the music from a different bitrate (probably because the LP4 uses a different mechanism to the others eg LP2) to LP4 that Sonic Stage messes up.

If you record on the unit, upload to PC (must be the RH1!) the resulting ATRAC file can not only be moved around but is untouched if transferred to HiMD.

Just a clarification - being able to put "about" 6 5-hour programs on a 1GB disk is really quite nice.

You can do a similar thing with an ATRAC CD, only it will be more like 4 instead of 6, useful for driving across that prairie!

[md user]

You can do a similar thing with an ATRAC CD, only it will be more like 4 instead of 6, useful for driving across that prairie!

Now I understand why there is less LP4 usage in the UK than the US (or Canada)! Our 'prairies' last for about, err, ... 20miles ...

Just a bit of fun,

mdmad

P.S. Having said that, we do sometimes get trapped in traffic queues for about 4md's worth ...

[sfbp]

Well on top of that, you still have the best broadcasting radio in the world

[Arr-Nine-Hundred]

Well on top of that, you still have the best broadcasting radio in the world

You got that right. I couldn't live without Radio 4.

Stephen, I'm curious about those LP4 samples you've given out. May I have copies please? I'm also happy to host them and link them from here: http://opticalgarbage.com/minidisc/download.html

[sfbp]

I'm concerned about copyright, but I will PM you what I posted on my own site.

Cheers

[md user]

OK, some samples are needed, methinks!

Using a portable (DR410), and my deck as ADC, I achieved the following on, to my mind so far, the hardest music category: opera.

http://rapidshare.co...ta.v3.flac.html

MD5: 00C304042B4D8C19E9210F1A438838C9

Can you hear the artefacts? (Of course you can.)

Can you improve upon it?

The wav original is here if you can - but do tell us how you achieved you're recording!

http://rapidshare.co...alwav.flac.html

MD5: CA2E2A171C02BAD45441683321AB8E54

Go on, give it a go: especially JB/JA/pro-deck owners!

mdmad.

Aside: no copyright intents made here, they're only 5mins samples! (Nobody's going to lose money by it.)

[sfbp]

Curiously, I recorded an opera in LP4 last night, and it was the single commentator's voice that was most artefacted and annoying! The opera itself was relatively good compared!

Odd isn't it?!?

mdmad.

I recall this as a reason why I didn't use it to record opera directly.

After hundreds of hours of recording off internet radio streams at 128kbps, I finally hit a snag yesterday. I got the same annoying sibilants as the above when recording to LP4 (via optical). In fact the whole recording was worthless and I had to throw it out. It happened "out of the blue" after I had changed a couple of things. I changed them both back and all is well.

Stay tuned, I may be able to be definitive about which of the 2 changes caused it. Until then, I say nothing out of fear of disseminating false information.

Stephen

[md user]

I recall this as a reason why I didn't use it to record opera directly.

After hundreds of hours of recording off internet radio streams at 128kbps, I finally hit a snag yesterday. I got the same annoying sibilants as the above when recording to LP4 (via optical). In fact the whole recording was worthless and I had to throw it out. It happened "out of the blue" after I had changed a couple of things. I changed them both back and all is well.

Stay tuned, I may be able to be definitive about which of the 2 changes caused it. Until then, I say nothing out of fear of disseminating false information.

Stephen

I'm still intrigued ...

Btw just bought some mdr-7506 headphones; now some recordings showing artefacts on my other phones have diminished. Is it still a frequency profile issue?

[sfbp]

I came to the conclusion that the only thing I did was to have the sliders on my PC sound card all the way to the top. I recall Avrin commenting that set to 30 on line out some component did strange things, weird distortion. So I took both Wave IN and Master OUT down a couple of notches.

I have not been scientific about this: it didn't happen again, and frankly I don't like to mess with things when they are working. Maybe, just maybe, I somehow got a bad stream that day.

Stephen

[netmduser]

Hello everyone,

I also have been surprised with LP4. My experience is going from CD to WAV using foobar and then import the WAV to LP4 in Sonicstage. I find the quality of the LP4 transferred this way to be excellent. Playback is on MZ-NE410 which I think is Type-S capable. Most of my listening is SP now so I was definitely surprised when I hear a good LP4 recording.

[sfbp]

My experience is going from CD to WAV using foobar and then import the WAV to LP4 in Sonicstage. I find the quality of the LP4 transferred this way to be excellent. Playback is on MZ-NE410 which I think is Type-S capable.

Very interesting. My first experiment with LP4 several years ago was to do exactly what you are suggesting, except that I let SonicStage rip the files to WAV. As a result (it was SOOOOOO bad) I completely junked the idea of using LP4 for the next 3 years. And my only MDLP-capable unit was in fact the MZ-NE410.

I think in turn this points the finger of blame firmly back at the SS ripper. I wish I'd known all this at the time.

Stephen

PS: I just checked the schematic of the 410 and it has a single chip that is the system controller AND the DSP chip packed into one. The part number is CXD2680GA. (this is the same general type of chip used in the NF810, and that is known to be Type-S). Additionally the first Type-S chip was the CXD2664 and this is clearly a later number; so I believe that you must be right although I have never been able to find the mention of Type-S in the 410 manuals.

[sfbp]

Footnote: I today noticed something possibly interesting.

Took a recent recording at 66kbps and played it back on my MXD-D400 which is Type-S (CXD2664R chip).

I have both analogue and digital playback enabled, and my amplifier will accept the digital stream if it is there. It will turn off the analogue stream if the digital stream becomes enabled.

I noticed distortion on playback - thinking something had gone wrong I checked everything. But quickly noticed the playback was analogue (the optical connection got pulled out by accident), by looking at the receiver's front panel display which shows when there is a digital signal - it was not present.

Restoring the TOSlink connector and replaying the song fixed the problem.

Any comments?

[netmduser]

The only comment I have about ripping from CD either in your deck or SS is if it is highspeed the reading of the disc can introduce more read errors and hence more distortion.

I am pretty sure many of later model downloader models would all have type-s. This is because their ATRAC chip with type-s would be the most cost effective for the manufacturer to use even though it offers the consumer the highest sound quality.

[sfbp]

Another observation.

I have been having trouble recording from 128kbps streams (it seems that the server in question is flaky at the moment) so I switched to another stream (of the same source) that was at 192kbps.

This sounded fine off the air, and recorded nicely in LP2. But recording to LP4 I got the same muddy crap that everyone has always complained about when dismissing LP4.

Could it be that, for a given "final" compressed bit rate, there is a SOURCE bitrate that you don't want to exceed? So transcoding PCM (or for that matter 192kbps) straight to 66kbps may not work that well (depending on how things are set up and what digital filters are in place), but that going from 128kbps to 66kbps may be just fine most of the time (provided that the 128kbps stream was encoded well to begin with).

I'm quite aware this is not a scientific study - just a one-off observation, but I am trying to build up a picture of what it is that makes for good compressed recordings. Maybe one of you will be able to reproduce the sort of thing that I think I have seen.

Stephen

[sfbp]

Confirmed. I repeated the observation with the 192kbps stream - it records just fine at LP2.

[Tom B]

LP4 works for me when recording long radio programs with a HD FM tuner. I end up converting these to .mp3

[sfbp]

Here's another entrant in the "How Good Is LP4 REALLY?" stakes

Two-piano music by Stravinsky. Don't worry, this is amazingly tonal (and tuneful) stuff. I listened in vain for any of the usual artifacts and errors long associated with Piano recordings.

I won't leave it there for very long...... so best grab if you want to see what I mean.

<link deleted>

Stephen

[Soundbox]

I downloaded that on Saturday and have listened to it a couple of times on my MZ-RH1 (making an effort to understand this model better) and I must say that I am impressed. If this is from FM, I can hear that you have removed the usual hiss and the background is very quiet. The pianos sound quite natural with little harshness even on the louder sections. It was a peice of music that I have never heard before and I enjoyed it not only for the demonstration of the MD system, but for musical content too.

[sfbp]

This was from the internet. You will likely find that it plays just fine on any MDLP unit or Hi-MD unit (as a native MDLP disk, or I can transfer it back on to MD in half the space using HiMD mode, the same collection of bits, not altered by the upload and download at all).

I tried recording off the air (FM) with my bookshelf unit but I am almost convinced now that the bandwidth gets wasted recording the hiss you speak of. LP2 is fine, LP4 is not.

But internet streams are typically "pure" if properly mastered.

[netmduser]

I am listening to an LP4 MDLP disc with 4 CDs.

Sounds really good for LP4.

I used simpleburner from CDs.