any other minidisc people?

[home skillet]

just wondering if there are any other minidisc owners in the crowd. i've owned 3 recorders and IMO md is far superior any portable mp3 technology out.

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[Klashe]

Originally posted by home skillet:
just wondering if there are any other minidisc owners in the crowd. i've owned 3 recorders and IMO md is far superior any portable mp3 technology out.




Naturally, it's better. It doesn't compress the sound like MP3's, does it?

My friend loves MD's. He's says they NEVER skip when he's jogging.

[BloodRed]

I've got an MD player, it's great. I make an MP3 playlist, record it, then take it to the gym or jogging. I like that the disks can hold so much music, and that they can be rerecorded.

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[AMD Soldier]

Which you guys think would be better.

A MP3/CD Player or a MiniDisc of somekind?

I'm leaning torwards the mp3 player, cause I have a burner and I can fit like 500 or whatever songs on one 700mb cd. Would it remember that many songs, etc? Also what's the bitrate on it? I know nothing about either one so I'm very curious. http://www.sharkyforums.com/ubb/smile.gif

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[Duo]

I have a mini disc recorder and I love it. Also there is no set bitrate. The mini disc records what is being played. So it will take 74 minutes to record 74 minutes. Thats the only downside.

Duo

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[GHz]

I am a pround owner of a Sony MZ-R55 minidisc recorder and have not yet regreted the day I bought it. I dont even use CDs anymore, at least music CDs.

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[Hateslife]

I detest any expensive, proprietary format. MD may be superior, but as long as Sony charges an arm and a leg to use it, it's useless to me.

I think MD is destined for failure, just like Memory Stick, Digital Eight, and Betamax.

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[home skillet]

Originally posted by Hateslife:
I detest any expensive, proprietary format. MD may be superior, but as long as Sony charges an arm and a leg to use it, it's useless to me.

I think MD is destined for failure, just like Memory Stick, Digital Eight, and Betamax.




what do you mean? sharp, jvc, denon, panasonic, aiwa all produce md equipment and it has become a fairly popular format.

also the media is excellent. for around $2-3 a piece, you get a 74min disc that can be written and rewritten a countless amount of time. it fits 74 min of cd, radio, tape, vinyl, mp3, vqf, ANY kind of audio you can transmit with optical or analog wire.

you'd need to spend a fortune in flash memory cards with wussy mp3 players to get that kind of power.

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[Vizer]

MD's have amazing sound clarity i have heard most of the brand name md set ups, they are ALL very good. the only MP3 player that i have listened to with sound close or equal to the MD players i've heard was the creative nomad jukebox, 6GB HDD http://www.sharkyforums.com/ubb/biggrin.gif http://www.sharkyforums.com/ubb/biggrin.gif http://www.sharkyforums.com/ubb/biggrin.gif much better than the wussy 32mb flash variety, the downside...that comes at a price...double and even triple what you would pay for any good md player or player/recorder combo.

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[Handyman]

I love my Minidiscs! Next car system I put in will center around a minidisc head unit. I guess MD has its small click of users who love the technology. You either hate it or love it, I guess http://www.sharkyforums.com/ubb/smile.gif

What's wrong with Digital8 and Memory Sticks?

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[Bobcowman]

Got a portable Sharp MS722 and a home unit CD/MD combo. I love the portable! Great battery life, has NEVER skipped on me (even when I dropped it...onto a tile floor) and it's so nice and small. And the digital CD->MD dub is sweet. The only problem I have is that you can't buy very many albums on MD... http://www.sharkyforums.com/ubb/mad.gif!

[AlphaZero]

Originally posted by Klashe:

Naturally, it's better. It doesn't compress the sound like MP3's, does it?

Actually, it does. Tracks on MDs are stored in ATRAC3 format.

For me, it's a toss-up between MD and portable MP3. I own a Rio 500 and I am very pleased with it. It's very convenient and the sound quality is excellent. A couple of my friends have MD players, with which they are also quite pleased. We did a bit of a listening test a while ago, and most of the people we asked preferred the MP3 player.

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[home skillet]

Originally posted by AlphaZero:
Actually, it does. Tracks on MDs are stored in ATRAC3 format.

For me, it's a toss-up between MD and portable MP3. I own a Rio 500 and I am very pleased with it. It's very convenient and the sound quality is excellent. A couple of my friends have MD players, with which they are also quite pleased. We did a bit of a listening test a while ago, and most of the people we asked preferred the MP3 player.



i can agree with that. a high bitrate mp3 played through a hardware portable player sounds excellent. IMO mp3 is just horrible as a portable solution for some people. unless you carry around a laptop with all of your mp3s, your limited to 10-20 songs unless you want to blow a ton of cash on expensive flash memory.

MD media is cheap and reusable. i carry around 3 md's full of mp3 mixes that i am changing all of the time. on top of that, i have 10 or so more md's with my fav albums recorded on them. all of this is extremely portable and convenient cause i can just stick it in my bag and clip the remote to my pocket. when they make a Nomad jukebox the size of a rio player i might go for an mp3 player.

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Antec sx830 300w
p3-1000eb coppermine
Abit VH6-II
384 mb generic pc133 cl3
Hercules prophet 4500 kryo 2
SBlive value
10x dvd, 12x10x32 Lite-on cdrw
27 gig quantum 5400 ata 66
Viewsonic e790 19" crt
Win 2k pro / Progeny debian (http://www.progeny.com)

"All we need is a little bit of energon and a lot of luck." - Optimus prime

[chickenlump2001]

Actually, its a little different. The way i understand it MP3s have a set kbits reserved for each tonal band. ATRAC dynamically redistributes more bits to places that needs it more.

Also, the ATRACs are more confusing. Theres ATRAC 1, version 1-4.5. 4.5 is the hghest one available with the best sound, and 3 being the most common.

There is a newer standard ATRAC3 version 1, that allows for MDLP which will allow lower bitrates to store 160 min on LP2 (MP3 160kbps equivalent) and 320minutes on LP4 (72kbps mp3 equivalent) on a single disc.

So when someone mentions ATRAC3, they could mean ATRAC1 version 3, or ATRAC3 version 1.
What makes it even more confusing is that SONY and SHARP has different ways of naming it, and SHARP has up to ATRAC 6 or 7 i think...

Oh, and theres no ATRAC2 because they wanted it to compete with the MP3 format. How dumb...

Originally posted by AlphaZero:
Actually, it does. Tracks on MDs are stored in ATRAC3 format.

For me, it's a toss-up between MD and portable MP3. I own a Rio 500 and I am very pleased with it. It's very convenient and the sound quality is excellent. A couple of my friends have MD players, with which they are also quite pleased. We did a bit of a listening test a while ago, and most of the people we asked preferred the MP3 player.





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[busithoth]

Originally posted by Handyman:
I love my Minidiscs! Next car system I put in will center around a minidisc head unit. I guess MD has its small click of users who love the technology. You either hate it or love it, I guess http://www.sharkyforums.com/ubb/smile.gif



The small click is pretty much the rest of the world, I think. The United States is the only market that hasn't really jumped all over the format. MD do use compression to record their music, it's just another format, I thought.

I'm pretty sure that it doesn't use .wav format, though.

I like them, and have played with a player, but not bought one myself. Definately more attractive to me than MP3 players, despite the moving parts...

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[funky_smurf]

I own a sony mz-r900 model, and had the mzr90 before that. Sound quality is excellent, even in LP2 mode. They're very small, look very cool, battery life is long (about 21hrs playback with rechargable one), they don't skip, the media is cheap and you can record just about anything. I obviously love it.
If interested in MDs (whether you're looking for reviews of units, or just want to find some info about the technology involved), I recommend people to check out www.minidisc.org. (http://www.minidisc.org.)
Cheers