LP2 experiences

[damnspynovels]

So as mentioned on countless other threads I just got a JB940 - specifically because it does LP.

My intention for using LP2 is for when I get around to archiving radio shows I've recorded onto my television's set top box.

However I thought I'd give LP2 a go for recording from CD. It's horrible right? Like it's not actually acceptable to my ears. Cymbals sound like the gurgling of a murky pond.

I've read accounts here and there that LP2 really does only suit already compressed sources (like DAB or MP3) and that it works well for them, but obviously it makes a big mess of a dynamic source like CD (and, whilst I've not tried it - presumably also vinyl).

Is this people's findings? What do you use LP2 for? Is LP4 just a joke and not even worth considering?

[SileEeles]

LP2 is actually not too bad in my experience, albeit I do come from MP3 as a source so perhaps that is why. LP4 is where I start to notice a big deterioration, but beyond that, LP2 does fine for portable purposes, otherwise I tend to record optically these days.

[damnspynovels]

I suppose it make sense a little - tho i'm not particularly technical - that if there's less information in the source (i.e. mp3), there's less for LP2 ATRAC to make a mess with.

[SileEeles]

I would only imagine that to be the case if it were via optical (possibly NetMD? Although I know that NetMD basically is LP2 with some padding), via analogue any device probably wouldn't know any better, since theres no imformation to tell the recieving unit anything, its just an audio signal, you know?

[damnspynovels]

I would only imagine that to be the case if it were via optical (possibly NetMD? Although I know that NetMD basically is LP2 with some padding), via analogue any device probably wouldn't know any better, since theres no imformation to tell the recieving unit anything, its just an audio signal, you know?

is that how it works? i'm not entirely sure, but I would've thought regardless of whether a signal is analogue or digital, if dynamic range has been compressed, it's been compressed - and so whatever frequencies were removed / squashed just aren't there anymore.

[Arr-Nine-Hundred]

So as mentioned on countless other threads I just got a JB940 - specifically because it does LP.

My intention for using LP2 is for when I get around to archiving radio shows I've recorded onto my television's set top box.

However I thought I'd give LP2 a go for recording from CD. It's horrible right? Like it's not actually acceptable to my ears. Cymbals sound like the gurgling of a murky pond.

I've read accounts here and there that LP2 really does only suit already compressed sources (like DAB or MP3) and that it works well for them, but obviously it makes a big mess of a dynamic source like CD (and, whilst I've not tried it - presumably also vinyl).

Is this people's findings? What do you use LP2 for? Is LP4 just a joke and not even worth considering?

I use 80% LP2, 20% SP. Most of my recordings are from mp3s. I've never heard any of the muddy sound that other have reported from LP2, even when recording from CD. It's pretty transparent against the original source IMHO.

If you're original shows are in stereo and you want to preserve the stereo fidelity as much as possible then use LP2, you'll get the benefit of 160 minutes on a 80m MD and seperate stereo channels (LP4 uses joint-stereo and so the seperation is nowhere near as clear: http://www.minidisc.org/mdlpfaq.html#r_q57).

[SileEeles]

is that how it works? i'm not entirely sure, but I would've thought regardless of whether a signal is analogue or digital, if dynamic range has been compressed, it's been compressed - and so whatever frequencies were removed / squashed just aren't there anymore.

Indeed, but the minidisc units (portable or otherwise) do thier own compression regardless of your source to squueze the files on the disc anyway, this is the job of the ATRAC codec and its various version (I think most people agree that Type-R/ATRAC3 seems to be one of the best). Since the optical input has a set rate for minidiscs, usually it is 44.1kHz/24bit and there are various things you can do to audio files to get the best quality transfer out of it, indeed one of the members here who would probably be able to answer your question better, MDietrich, has posted topics on the subject.

As far as my knowledge goes though, LP2 has always been decent for me. I come from high bit-rate MP3, 320kbps usually, sometimes lower, back when hard drive space was limited. Even 192kbps MP3's have come out fine in LP2. I would suggest that LP4 is more for vocal and radio recordings, but there are just parts of music it doesnt handle very well.

Many other people will use FLAC or various other lossless files to transfer to MiniDisc, but this seems somewhat redundant to me, particularly with this format when so much gets lost anyway. Just to put it in perspective, they've taken a 12cm Audio CD, and shrunk it down to 60mm if I'm not mistaken. Not much else has changed, it uses the same laser wavelength that reads regular Audio CD's (780nm) and obviously they way information is written to the disc is what sets it appart. Whereas most other things, DVD's, Blu-Rays, and so on, squeeze more information on a 12cm disc by shrinking the laser that reads the disc. Why they did it the way they did ... no idea, but whatever. I guess thats part of what makes it what it is.

[damnspynovels]

Indeed, but the minidisc units (portable or otherwise) do thier own compression regardless of your source to squueze the files on the disc anyway, this is the job of the ATRAC codec and its various version (I think most people agree that Type-R/ATRAC3 seems to be one of the best). Since the optical input has a set rate for minidiscs, usually it is 44.1kHz/24bit and there are various things you can do to audio files to get the best quality transfer out of it, indeed one of the members here who would probably be able to answer your question better, MDietrich, has posted topics on the subject.

As far as my knowledge goes though, LP2 has always been decent for me. I come from high bit-rate MP3, 320kbps usually, sometimes lower, back when hard drive space was limited. Even 192kbps MP3's have come out fine in LP2. I would suggest that LP4 is more for vocal and radio recordings, but there are just parts of music it doesnt handle very well.

Many other people will use FLAC or various other lossless files to transfer to MiniDisc, but this seems somewhat redundant to me, particularly with this format when so much gets lost anyway. Just to put it in perspective, they've taken a 12cm Audio CD, and shrunk it down to 60mm if I'm not mistaken. Not much else has changed, it uses the same laser wavelength that reads regular Audio CD's (780nm) and obviously they way information is written to the disc is what sets it appart. Whereas most other things, DVD's, Blu-Rays, and so on, squeeze more information on a 12cm disc by shrinking the laser that reads the disc. Why they did it the way they did ... no idea, but whatever. I guess thats part of what makes it what it is.

Yeah I totally understand all this.

Like I said I've not really done any mp3 to MD transfers yet - and when I do I'll be doing them optically - though as my deck isn't NetMD or anything, it'll be real time transfers. The only real experimenting I've done is with CD to LP2 optically, and I definitely hear squashing of sibilants and a decrease in presence and dynamics.

It's a messy process but my mp3 workflow will likely be iPhone (via Airplay) > Airport Express > Optical to MD. Not quite sure if there's transcoding but I don't think there is, as this method would usually use the DAC in the Airport Express, but I'm bypassing it by using Optical.

[sfbp]

If you're getting sibilants going from CD to LP2 there's something wrong imho.

The one and only place I hear a problem with LP2 and LP4 is when a mono announcer is superimposed on a stereo broadcast in LP4. Something about joint stereo and the allegedly mono sounds means that strange differences get magnified.

Tons of things which are a the traditional bane of analogue recordings are handled easily by LP4. What you CANNOT do is to take an un-dithered 16-bit recording "straight off CD" and get good LP4 by converting the WAV file to ATRAC. This was probably the basis of all the early tests on these codecs, and is the reason they sound so miserable when they tried it, and also when anyone tries to do a "scientific" comparison by the obvious means... take a common ancestor (WAV 44.1kHz 16 bit) and convert to different formats. The problem here is that the methodology is flawed. It assumes all sorts of facts not in evidence. The first is that the WAV file is already optimal. With some rippers (eg EAC) it may well be; with others it most definitely is not. Remember an audio CD has really got more than 16 bits of resolution in it, more like 18-20.

MDietrich analyzed nicely the way to get correct LP2 and LP4 - mastering to remove the high frequencies you cannot hear anyway. This means that Type-R recording is able to do the correct bit reallocation because (my causality here) it's not wasting time or bandwidth re-encoding the irrelevant stuff. If you take a properly mastered audio stream at 64 or 128kbps such as is broadcast on the internet, and capture at x1 with Type-R (or Type-S!) LP4 you will be very surprised just how good it is.

(Pace, MD, I know this isn't what you said but a combination of what I have figured out, you said, and you sort of assented to!)

MP3, OTOH, I have never had much luck converting to ATRAC of any kind. But I gave up trying perhaps before they did all the tweaks to it in recent years. I know that if I go ATRAC->MP3, provided I always use 256kbps (or better?) MP3, all the SP, LP2 and LP4 sounds convert nicely. LP4 is great, but MP3 at 128kbps or below is still the pits, IMHO. This is much more about the retained (stored on disk) quality of MP3 and ATRAC before the conversion, than it is about the final result.

Stephen

[trott3r]

I use LP2 for radio both analogue and digital broadcast with music program recordings.

No real difference on my 980 for me with lp2 and that quality of source.

LP4 i use for sports commentary recordings ie speech and that is fine again.

CD i always record in SP and vinyl as well.

[damnspynovels]

If you're getting sibilants going from CD to LP2 there's something wrong imho.

The one and only place I hear a problem with LP2 and LP4 is when a mono announcer is superimposed on a stereo broadcast in LP4. Something about joint stereo and the allegedly mono sounds means that strange differences get magnified.

Tons of things which are a the traditional bane of analogue recordings are handled easily by LP4. What you CANNOT do is to take an un-dithered 16-bit recording "straight off CD" and get good LP4 by converting the WAV file to ATRAC. This was probably the basis of all the early tests on these codecs, and is the reason they sound so miserable when they tried it, and also when anyone tries to do a "scientific" comparison by the obvious means... take a common ancestor (WAV 44.1kHz 16 bit) and convert to different formats. The problem here is that the methodology is flawed. It assumes all sorts of facts not in evidence. The first is that the WAV file is already optimal. With some rippers (eg EAC) it may well be; with others it most definitely is not. Remember an audio CD has really got more than 16 bits of resolution in it, more like 18-20.

MDietrich analyzed nicely the way to get correct LP2 and LP4 - mastering to remove the high frequencies you cannot hear anyway. This means that Type-R recording is able to do the correct bit reallocation because (my causality here) it's not wasting time or bandwidth re-encoding the irrelevant stuff. If you take a properly mastered audio stream at 64 or 128kbps such as is broadcast on the internet, and capture at x1 with Type-R (or Type-S!) LP4 you will be very surprised just how good it is.

(Pace, MD, I know this isn't what you said but a combination of what I have figured out, you said, and you sort of assented to!)

MP3, OTOH, I have never had much luck converting to ATRAC of any kind. But I gave up trying perhaps before they did all the tweaks to it in recent years. I know that if I go ATRAC->MP3, provided I always use 256kbps (or better?) MP3, all the SP, LP2 and LP4 sounds convert nicely. LP4 is great, but MP3 at 128kbps or below is still the pits, IMHO. This is much more about the retained (stored on disk) quality of MP3 and ATRAC before the conversion, than it is about the final result.

Stephen

So you're saying CD to (Type-R deck) LP2 via optical should be ok? Maybe I'm being too hyper analytical. You talk about (pre) mastering to remove frequencies - but I'm guessing that's something you'd need to do on a computer etc.

[Sony_Fan]

So as mentioned on countless other threads I just got a JB940 - specifically because it does LP.

My intention for using LP2 is for when I get around to archiving radio shows I've recorded onto my television's set top box.

However I thought I'd give LP2 a go for recording from CD. It's horrible right? Like it's not actually acceptable to my ears. Cymbals sound like the gurgling of a murky pond.

I've read accounts here and there that LP2 really does only suit already compressed sources (like DAB or MP3) and that it works well for them, but obviously it makes a big mess of a dynamic source like CD (and, whilst I've not tried it - presumably also vinyl).

Is this people's findings? What do you use LP2 for? Is LP4 just a joke and not even worth considering?

If you are using an ATRAC Type-S unit that has improved LP2 encoding, the outcome is very good. But you need to adjust the recording volume if the CD source is too loud. Lower recording volume can produce "cleaner" and "crisper" copies with little or no distortion

[bluecrab]

LP2 is OK for casual listening. It sounded nice on my MDS-JA333ES when I had one, a bit less nice on the MXD-D400. A little odd because the 333 was Type R and the D400 is Type S.

With LP2, you can tell that the source that has been messed with (at least I think I can, as it seems to play louder than SP). Still, as I said, OK for casual - and portable - use. I use SP whenever I can.

That's for music. For audiobooks I record from CD > MD, LP4 is just fine. I also use Mono mode for audiobooks.

My best advice would be to go with whatever sounds acceptable to you in a given context.

[sfbp]

So you're saying CD to (Type-R deck) LP2 via optical should be ok? Maybe I'm being too hyper analytical. You talk about (pre) mastering to remove frequencies - but I'm guessing that's something you'd need to do on a computer etc.

Not really. It may be, though you will have to check. What I am saying is that to get a "balanced" LP2 or LP4 you need to get the proper processing, preferably by software, to extract the meaningful (audibly or "psychoacoustically" significant) bits so that the Type-R bit re-allocation can kick in.

Sony spent a lot of trouble doing this right for CD->NetMD because they figured that's where most of their users would end up. Hence the stuff about high quality etc when ripping from CD.

The fallacy is that a rip to HD (and, one would suppose, at the highest bit rate possible) followed by a conversion will do the best job. Actually the best job will be done by SonicStage doing the rip itself direct to LP2 (or AAL which has LP2 as a component), which is stored on disk and then transferred by USB to a minidisk.

Unfortunately they didn't do such a good job on LP4 (either they weren't smart enough, or they wanted to sell more hardware, disks, etc - pick your pet theory). But if you take a stream with about the right number of bits, eg a properly mastered broadcast stream at 128kbps, the hardware in the decks (not sure about portables but I think all HiMD devices are ok, since the technology is newer) will make a very nice recording at 66kbps (LP4). Certainly better than any MP3 below about 192kbps. This is empirical, not from any grand theory.

As long as you don't have too much data to start with, LP4 recording is OK. Curiously, countering expectations by the pundits here and elsewhere, if you are starting from a CD and ending up at LP4, going VIA an intermediate rate such as Atrac3+ 256kbps is more likely to be successful than going VIA a "full" (but defective") rip of "all" the data on the CD to your hard disk. The pundits would have you believe that two "lossy" conversions must be worse than one. Not true, in this case, and in my humble opinion.

Maybe now you can begin to see (I know for me it's "in a glass, darkly") what's behind these "high-quality" settings for the ripping. It means SS can be set to take more time (work harder) at reducing the bits to something that plays back right. Unfortunately there's no "high-quality" setting when SS rips to WAV. I'm sure that's an anti-piracy thing. I don't blame Sony for that, and there's a workaround.... use EAC or some other high standard ripper.

Stephen

PS by "mastering" I mean correctly ignoring the bits (depends on target data rate) so that a nice sound can be achieved. You can do worse than read everything by MDietrich on this site, explaining about the cutoff frequencies needed for LP2 and LP4 correct encoding.

[PhilippeC]

[Ral-Clan]

I've read accounts here and there that LP2 really does only suit already compressed sources (like DAB or MP3) and that it works well for them, but obviously it makes a big mess of a dynamic source like CD (and, whilst I've not tried it - presumably also vinyl).

This statement doesn't make any sense. How can going from an already compressed, lossy format (mp3) to another compressed, lossy format (LP2) ever possibly be better than going from an uncompressed format (CD/WAV) to LP2? That's like recompressing a JPEG to another JPEG. Artifacts are cumulative.

I use LP2 for portable listening and it's generally just fine. I don't have top of the line headphones, just decent mid-priced JVC ones that are widely available. I've also used Senhiesser MX400 earbuds which have a good reputation. LP2 is just fine - seriously. Maybe if you're listening on those $300+ headphones you will notice a serious difference. Or maybe if you have "golden ears".

As for LP4 mode...

I've also put radio broadcasts and spoken word stuff (i.e. family oral history interviews) on MD in LP4 mode. You will notice some faint artifacts of you focus your attention on listening for them, but generally LP4 mode is absolutely listenable for vocal stuff. Certainly at least as crisp and clean as a good cassette recording (minus the noise floor).

Music in LP4 can be problematic, yes. Dance / club / mass produced pop that's heavily compressed and "wall of sound"-ish can still be satisfactory (not great, but satisfactory). The codec, to my ears, seems to have been designed for that type of music.

Again, I compare LP4 to cassette. If you were happy with the music on cassette in the 1980s/90s, then LP4 won't be any worse. LP2 is much better than cassette. SP is close to CD or DAT.

Music that has highly distinct parts either in the left or right channels will suffer from squishy sounding artifacts in LP4 mode - as this messes with the joint stereo encoding of LP4. As an experiment try recording two different songs to the left and right channels of the same LP4 minidisc track. You'll hear some interesting artifacts.

Really, you should record the same passage of music in all three modes (SP, LP2, LP4) to a minidisc and have a friend toggle back and forth between the three, without you seeing what he/she is doing. Then you try and guess the mode each passage was recorded in. Have your friend score you on your correct guesses.

Only this sort of blind A/B listening test can overcome the false psychological differences (or placebo type effects) we sometimes insist we hear.

[netmduser]

LP2 was designed to sound just about as good as SP. That alone has a lot going for it, unlike others.

[sfbp]

I use LP4 almost exclusively for classical music. That is not to say that most classical recordings I make are on LP4. When I use LP4, I listen to classical. Which is what I use MD for in the first place. I do a lot of LP2 and a lot of Hi-SP (256kbps).

[JMay]

I haven't tried LP4 yet, but I have used LP2 for recording some radio shows, one broadcast in mono and one in stereo. I really don't hear any real difference, but just like Arr-Nine-Hundred (LOL, cool name!), I've been used to MP3 for a long time, though I've also dabbled in OGG.