Minidisc, Yes or no? Options

[NeoRenegade]

I've noticed, while searching the net for an MD recorder and trolling some forums, that there's a pretty strong MD community out there.

Since it's a totally legitimate audio format, could we try putting up a Minidisc/ATRAC section here?

[atici]

Nah, ATRAC compares quite unfavorably to other codecs and is proprietary. The only reason MiniDisc users are using ATRAC is because they willingly put themselves into a position that limits their choice to a proprietary and inferior codec imposed/forced on them by Sony. Hence I don't think them making such a choice entails HA community to open a board for them.

This post has been edited by atici: Jul 17 2003, 23:48

[CiTay]

It's already included in the Other Audio Codecs section. I really think the format will gradually fade out. It had it's prime when there were no MP3 portables available, and i agree there is some neat MD hardware. But with all the MP3 devices flooding the market, Sony only holds a niche nowadays. Of course, people invested quite some money in MD and maybe want an own "community" for it, but there isn't that much to discuss really...

[NeoRenegade]

...But MD is good for personal recording, and it's user-friendly.

This post has been edited by NeoRenegade: Jul 18 2003, 00:23

[upNorth]

I'm just curious, what is there to talk about? I don't own one myself, but is there really that much to do with a MD?

Btw: I voted from a Hardware point of view, thought there would be other hardware devices that deserved it's own section before MD.

[Audible!]

ATRAC is unimpressive IMO and proprietary. Also the MD mp3 support via transcoding to ATRAC is disappointing if typical Sony.

[Joseph]

If any section should be added it should be a listening tests section. There are so many and there will be so many more.

[NeoRenegade]

That, I agree with.

[DigitalMan]

I'm just curious, what is there to talk about? I don't own one myself, but is there really that much to do with a MD?

Btw: I voted from a Hardware point of view, thought there would be other hardware devices that deserved it's own section before MD.

Agree, what is there to talk about? Is Sony still investing in MD other than new styles, smaller form factors, etc.?

[JeanLuc]

Hmmm ... I do not see how MD (since ATRAC 4, of course) should be regarded as inferior ... it is a transparent way of data reduction at a decent bitrate of about 20% of the original data. It surely is old (ATRAC 4 which was the first "real" HiFi ATRAC has been released in 1996 and has not been under a comparable strong development like the lossy codecs we use in a computer environment) but that does not mean it is outdated.

You must take into account that MD has been designed for computer noobs that just enjoyed their home stereo systems, portables and car stereo on a convenient medium at a time when broad lossy audio compression standard was 128 kbps XING or FhG and CD-Burners were not available at decent pricing (nor DAE capable drives except some old Plextors) ...

But after all, MD has been overtaken by computer audio ... it is slowish, not backward-capable, uses expensive media uses CBR ... its quality is good, no doubt but there is no need to buy an MD recorder today.

[guruboolez]

Hmmm ... I do not see how MD (since ATRAC 4, of course) should be regarded as inferior ... it is a transparent way of data reduction at a decent bitrate of about 20% of the original data. It surely is old (....)

You must take into account that MD has been designed for computer noobs that just enjoyed their home stereo systems, portables and car stereo on a convenient medium at a time when broad lossy audio compression standard was 128 kbps XING or FhG and CD-Burners were not available at decent pricing (nor DAE capable drives except some old Plextors) ...

The ATRAC encoding format is progressively removed from the Sony family. In order to compete with mp3 portable player, Sony released a new transfert protocol, called NetMD. Encodings are now performed on computer (and powerful CPU), and files are transfered via USB. In ten minutes, a MD user can fill a whole MD.

Problem is : this protocol doesn't allow ATRAC encodings, but only ATRAC3 one. Why ? No objective reason : pure choice of Sony.
The most common setting for MD is now ATRAC3 at 132 kbps (pure stereo, CBR). For a lot of people, LP2 is transparent, close to ATRAC quality, and therefore close to CD (for some rare people, ATRAC3 is > to CD ).

Consequently, it's difficult to say that MD "is a transparent way of data reduction". It was, but it isn't anymore. Very few people can bear real time encoding and transfering with modern MD units. NetMD is much more comfortable (more buggy too), widely adopted. If someone is going to talk about MD encoding quality, you can bet that he have in mind LP2.

[den]

I voted yes, because I can't see how it could hurt. If you visit the MD forums, they are very ordinary, extremely biased and they show a complete lack of the controlled terms of service/properly organised listening tests/moderated expressions of opinion that we have come to expect form HA. As a result, the info on there is near useless, and I have gained significantly more benefits in relation to using my MD properly from HA. B)

I just wish some of the other MD boys in the hood would do the same...

I also think there is a distinction between ATRAC as such and MD, especially with the way in which NetMD works and direct ATRAC encoding inside the MD hardware, versus the other ATRAC options via Real...

In response to some of the other posts regarding MD, Sony alone have released 8 new MD players/recorders this year so far, with more to come. Sony alone have sold in excess of 56 million MD units, and there are still players/recorders being regularly released by Sharp and others also. The format is hardly dead, and after 11 years, sales are still growing year on year globally. It's also to Sony's credit that they have maanaged to keep evolving and improving the codec, yet it is completely backward compatible with the original players at the default bitrate.

It's actually quite rewarding to listen to some of the early pre-recorded MD's versus the same album ripped from CD and encoded in a recent version of the encoder. Huge difference and improvement in quality.

I also understand though why others would not like to see it here as we have ATRAC already covered. It's just a shame there is not a decent forum like HA for MD.

Den.

[guruboolez]

I don't see any reason to create a dedicate forum to MD, if few people will post about it. Others Audio Codec section is the right place, especially when activity is low.

MD has maybe 56 millions users, and some big dedicate board. Nevertheless, there are few thread on these forums talking seriously about sound quality. No reason to expect a miracle here.
Then, we can't expect any answers from sony (or Real) by discussing here about artifacts, flaws and others problems of ATRAC3 coding. Dear Sony, after a double blind test, I noticed than encoding with SonicStage 2 introduce more pre-echo than with 1.5 release... etc. It isn't serious, or even useful.
And HA isn't the right place for talking about NiMh battery, transfert problem with SonicStage, or speculating about last N10 Type-S audio performance.

Therefore, creating a new section, for less than one interesting topic per week, is, in my opinion, totally useless.

[den]

MD has maybe 56 millions users, and some big dedicate board. Nevertheless, there are few thread on these forums talking seriously about sound quality. No reason to expect a miracle here.
Then, we can't expect any answers from sony (or Real) by discussing here about artifacts, flaws and others problems of ATRAC3 coding. Dear Sony, after a double blind test, I noticed than encoding with SonicStage 2 introduce more pre-echo than with 1.5 release... etc. It isn't serious, or even useful.
And HA isn't the right place for talking about NiMh battery, transfert problem with SonicStage, or speculating about last N10 Type-S audio performance.

Sad, but true. I just miss being able to converse though with people such as yourself in an area where the opinions are generally well considered and backed with some evidence. To use your example, I once posted in some MD forums asking whether it was worth upgrading to Sonicstage, as I use Open MG. I was flooded with "Sonicstage rulz", "Sonicstage sux", type crap, where as if you posted, "well actually, I've noticed that there is some extra pre-echo with some recordings featuring cymbals" I would take that on board and consider installing Sonicstage for some tests of my own, or whatever.

Therefore, creating a new section, for less than one interesting topic per week, is, in my opinion, totally useless.

Not completely useless. What is not interesting to one, may be important to someone else. The more I think about this though, ATRAC3 coverage in the Other Codecs section is probably sufficient...

Den.

[Artemis3]

MD never caught here, the media is way too expensive. These little 140MB MO discs could have been an interesting floppy replacement, but they didn't push it for data either. Today the zip discs have 750MB, just put some sort of real time encoder with any other standarized compression format (such as AAC) and you got MD killed. Now just imagine if someone does just that (such as IOMEGA?). Then we could also use 8cm DVD-(+)R(W) discs too, meaning a standard disc, and standard codec, what is again the appeal for MDs? Ah yes, recording.. But i still rather have one of those small 10GB~20GB 2.5" HD portables instead.

[OnlyReed]

owned/still own a minidisc player/recorder.

nice for recording shows....especially because they're so small, last quite a bit longer than hd recorders do as far as batteries (like the nomad 3; which is about 3x as big as as a netmd, and recording w/ it is apparently not as high quality as you get w/ the netmd, but that only based on 1 opinion)......

as far as getting mp3's on it....the software that comes with the unit sucks butt, but there are sneaky ways around it...

(in the event anyone wants to know, check out m3u2sb with daemon....do a google)

it's a pain to get stuff you've recorded onto md into mp3 format; you've got to do it at 1:1 speed, and for quality, you need digital soundcard capabilities.

other than that.....................................................well, i own a creative nomad zen now, and will likely be giving my net md player away.

all in all: i'd say they're a good bit better than flash based mp3 players, but inferior to hd based.

[OnlyReed]

and...i wouldn't call the media expensive....especially when compared w/ solid state.


you can pretty easily get discs for about 1.50 to 1.60 a piece. not bad for 2 cd's at decent quality, or 4 at mediocre quality. it's certainly expensive compared to cd's when you do stereo, but then, you can't carry 6 cd's in your pocket, and record to them.

[Cygnus X1]

I voted yes, if only to draw some MD users away from their biased boards towards a more scientific community. Sort of an audio evangelism if you will....get them here for MD, to convert them to a real format I once posted frequently on MD boards and corrected many mistakes about audio compression/etc. (mainly by sending them to HA).....crazy statements like "joint stereo sucks," "LP2 is better than a 320kbps MP3," "MP3 players are stupid," "MP3 players are going to die and MD will rule the audio world" and so on. The worst part is the fact that no statement anybody makes on those boards has any basis in emprical fact. Their enthusiam and "fuzzy feelings" for their 300-dollar MD machines somehow clouds their reason and results in a flow of stupid, unsupported statements on how great MD is Not long ago, I was an MD fanatic myself, so I know this firsthand. Once I sat down and thought logically about MD and it's shortfalls, I realized that other formats were far superior in terms of sound quality, features, and cost. In short: MD is old news and is dying a slow death. So, perhaps the "other audio formats" forum will work just as well if people advertise it.

(Edit: spelling)

This post has been edited by Cygnus X1: Jul 18 2003, 06:12

[atici]

Good Post! I actually thought it would bring so many zealots and induce flamewars. Maybe I was a bit pessimistic and cynical. HA has a great potential to squelch zealotry though. It might really work.

[NeoRenegade]

Today the zip discs have 750MB, just put some sort of real time encoder with any other standarized compression format (such as AAC) and you got MD killed.

It's not quite that simple... last time I checked, Zip disks read/write pretty slowly, so it's not certain that Zip could ever be used to play MP3's in realtime.

[AstralStorm]

Zip drives have much more than 320 kbps throughput.
These achieve their maximum tranfer on ATAPI, SCSI or USB.
Not on parallel port, even ECP.

Yes, they are slow compared to CDs, around 1.5x maybe?

/EDIT\ Did anybody say Jaz drives? \EDIT/

This post has been edited by AstralStorm: Jul 18 2003, 15:01

[M]

It's not quite that simple... last time I checked, Zip disks read/write pretty slowly, so it's not certain that Zip could ever be used to play MP3's in realtime.

Depends on your interface. I was one of the few weirdos who actually bought a SCSI ZIP drive, and it was fast (for a removable media drive, that is). 100Mb transferred easily in under two minutes, which would have been more than adequate for a portable player/recorder. One of my friends had a USB-based ZIP drive, and couldn't understand why I liked mine so much. Turned out his USB model took about ten minutes to transfer the same amount of data, which would have still been adequate for portable playback.

But ZIP drives - at least those with which I've had the most experience, which may not mirror everyone's perception of them - are rather loud. Noisy, in fact... and that would not be my choice for any portable.

- M.

[fewtch]

Zip drives have much more than 320 kbps throughput.
These achieve their maximum tranfer on ATAPI, SCSI or USB.
Not on parallel port, even ECP.

Yes, they are slow compared to CDs, around 1.5x maybe?

/EDIT\ Did anybody say Jaz drives? \EDIT/

Nope, and nobody said (Syquest) SparQ drives either, thank god (remember those?).

Wanna know what I did with mine, back in the mid 90's?



If anyone ever sees one on Ebay, don't even pay 10 cents for it.

http://www.sysopt.com/userreviews/remove/r...rnal_1_gig.html

Edit -- OK, to stay on topic... I did vote in the poll... Never did own a Minidisc player/recorder, but always thought it would be fun to have one (until MP3 portables came along).

This post has been edited by fewtch: Jul 18 2003, 15:26

[AJUK]

Think about it ATRAC has got to be just about the second most common lossy format!

This post has been edited by AJUK: Jul 18 2003, 15:47

[m0rbidini]

Well, I voted no and guruboolez said everything I could say to justify it.

/OFFTOPIC

fewtch: I also had an external SyQuest Spark (parallel port) and I was quite happy with it. Much, much better than the parallel port Zip drive I had before. It lasted 3 years without any problems (both drive and media) until one day a friend of mine disconnected it while I was transfering some files to it... from that day on it started behaving in an erratic way... I didn't know better at the time 'cause I continued to use that disk and maybe that's why the drive got ruined... (just like the ruined Zip disks "virus")...

/OFFTOPIC

cya