Currently, .mp3 players are all the hype. Everyone has one, and if you don't, you're old-fashioned. I do not have an .mp3 player. I tried to have one, but for various reasons it did not please me. I'm a MiniDisc guy. I've always been. MiniDisc has some serious advantages over .mp3 players, whether they be flash or HDD based. Note: Sunday Eve Column.
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Member since:2005-06-29
and preventing you from writing it to more than one minidisc.
Not that I know of? I've never encountered this limitation, to be honest. It would be quite pointless as well, as you could just use an optical cable to copy it, and then your computer has no say at all.
Oh, and btw, ATRAC has improved a lot in the past 15 years. It is in no way inferior to .mp3.
Member since:2006-01-04
Hmm last time I used Sonicstage on my Windows partition (about two months ago) the transfer arrow went grey after I copied it across once. And yeah, you could still use the optical cable but it's just harder...
ATRAC isn't a bad format as such, but all my music is already in MP3 (some FLAC or OGG/Vorbis but currently I don't expect players to play them), and any time you re-encode music you will lose quality. It is noticable because you get the MP3 artifacts as well as the ATRAC artifacts unless you set the ATRAC bitrate to be higher than the source MP3.
Member since:2005-07-07
Oh, and btw, ATRAC has improved a lot in the past 15 years. It is in no way inferior to .mp3.<p />
I would have to agree. I have owned two minidisc players in the past 8 years and they are excellent devices. The sound quality has always been superior to me, even with those little earbuds.
Member since:2005-07-06
sonicstage 3.4 removed the limitation on the number of uploads and downloads you can do pr song.
in many ways, sonicstage 3.4 in combo with the upcoming hi-md player is a interestng beast. ok so it takes a bit of time to det the data onto the media (1 second pr MB or there about) but when its made it onto it, its damn safe.
rember, hi-md uses magnetoptical storage, basicly the same as in some backup solutions. and in a very small package...
Member since:
2006-01-04
The biggest disadvantage to me with any Sony media devices, as mentioned, is that they won't work on OS X or Linux systems. Even the Windows software sucks ass.
Essentially I like the idea of using big Minidiscs over HDD based devices, but until I can easily use it under Linux with my existing media in 320 kbps mp3 format, like I can with iPods or Creative devices, I'm not touching one.
I'm assuming that it still requires you to convert your music to ATRAC, lowering the quality, leaving a duplicate copy of it on your hard drive and preventing you from writing it to more than one minidisc. Just because I'm writing it to all the different players in the house doesn't mean I'm a mass pirate, it just means that the people in our house share the same music (usually listening to it at different times too).
The few people I know who bought a Sony media device became extremely frustrated at the restrictions it placed on them and the general crapness of Sonicstage. Many of them ditched their Sony devices and got iPods.
Minidiscs are useful, we use minidiscs in our school a lot for transferring recordings around, since there's quite a lot of rack-mountable equipment that will use a minidisc.
Edited 2006-04-02 22:06