I have several tapes and CDs. While tapes suffer from quality , CDs suffer from scratches after repeated usage. So whats your favourite storage media? I was looking at DAT. Looks like it has the best of both the worlds. But its not as popular as tape or CD. Anyone using DAT to store audio (in non mp3 format). Do you own a DAT player??85 responses total.
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My observation is that geezers like me who grew up handling vinyl, very carefully, don't scratch the CDs. In particular, every CD goes back in its box as soon as it comes out of the player. If the player itself is scratching the CDs, then the player is broken. Some of the CDs I get out of the library are so scratched, I have trouble imagining what the other users are doing to them.
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They do? I keep my cds in their cases, except when they're being played. How do they get scratched?!
It's not that much work. In my experience there are only two things you have to do to keep CDs unscratched: - Put them back in the jewel box when you're done playing them. and... - Put them back in the jewel box when you're done playing them. Really, that's it. A CD wallet will work too, though not quite as well. CDs get scratched when you set them down, playing side down, on some random surface. The dust and grit that are always around will inevitably scratch them if you do that. If you look carefully at a jewel box, you'll realize only the center hub actually touches anything while the CD is inside it. I've never had a CD get badly scratched (enough to affect playback) this way. The only exception is a disc that a defective CD-ROM drive dumped back in the tray while it was still spinning.
Isnt that funny. I grew up with vinyl and really like CD's because they arent easy to scratch. I think I have one scratch that effects play on one CD in my *whole* collection. I do tend to put them back into their case after listening to them though. Just like I wouldnt have ever left vinyl records laying around.
(I wouldn't recommend DATs unless you're recording audio pieces of considerable length [i.e., a half-hour radio program] or something where you don't want to skip around from track to track. minidiscs are a good option; I seem to remember that the format uses a cartridge medium, which is more resistant to scratches than exposed media such as vinyl and CDs.) (right now, my preferred format is either MP3 or OGG on a CD. as a recovering music collector, I owned a LOT of singles and maxi-singles, and there's really no point in this day an age to have just 1-4 songs on a disc when you can rip and combine.)
Most of the music I own is vinyl records (purchased at $4/bag or about 10 cents each). I also have tapes of library CDs, the ones I can find that someone else did not destroy. We got six good ones recently.
Minor scratches it CDs can be polished out using toothpaste.
((( Fall Agora item 92 linked as Music item 162 )))
Whenever I borrow a CD from the library I'm appalled by the scratches on it. I can only ever recall having scratched two of my own CDs beyond repair (out of nearly 1500) -- one of them I dropped on a gravel driveway, and the other got mangled by the CD player when I didn't set it in the tray properly and then tried to close the drawer. Lots of people must have bad CD-handling habits, though, because quite frequently when I borrow a CD from the library or rent a DVD from the video store the disc looks as though it's been sandblasted. Like the other respondents who say they have no problem with their CDs I don't feel like I do anything particularly special to care for mine -- I just always keep them in the jewel boxes when they're not in the player. Lately, however, my CDs are even less likely to suffer mishap, as I've switched almost exclusively to MP3s for listening. My record collection was too large to haul to Alaska when I moved this summer so it's in storage in Michigan. Before I left Washington, however, I ripped every album I own to MP3 and put them all on an external 100Gbyte drive that I can fit in a backpack. My originals are all protected and I can carry my music with me wherever I go.
Re #7: My main complaint about minidisc is it's proprietary. That makes it both expensive and more likely to disappear. I just can't shake the feeling that it's likely to become the digital equivalent of 8-track tape. Re #11: I wonder if the problem is all the hype that surrounded CDs when they first came out. I can remember salesmen claiming they were "virtually indestructable." Maybe people believed that a bit too well. I, too, have taken to ripping my CDs to MP3 and burning discs with several albums on them, mostly for use in the car. (This is, of course, technically illegal.)
Actually if you keep the CDs and don't give/sell copies to other people you're technically legal. I still prefer CDs. I reload my computers often enough to not want to bother with hard drive storage, plus I'd rather not compromise sound quality with MP3 or other lossy-compression format. I'll use Minidiscs in the car and on trips, though.
DAT is not what you want as a long term archive. DATs will self destruct, sometimes in very short amounts of time. DAT is barely used in the professional arena anymore, so machines and media will probably be hard to find in the near future. DAT is dying. I have a DAT and enough tape to keep me going for a while, but I only power it up about once every three months. I make copies of all the CDs I buy and play those, keeping the originals in their boxes. With bulk CD-Rs at the sub-thirty cent level it's not a big expenditure. I just do them in small batches when I can so it's not a big time drain. I'm about 1/2 way through backing up my whole collection.
I have a question for folks. I have been thinking about buying an mp3 player so that I can listen to music while I am walking my dogs. I have no idea how to turn my cd's into mp3's. I assume it is legal. Is there special software a person has to buy to do this. Also, what is a good mp3 player? Is it possible to get one that can be used in the car too?
If you break the little plastic fangs that hold the CD in the jewel box, then the jewel box doesn't give any protection against scratches anymore. I learned that the hard way. Also, keeping CDs in a disk wallet makes it much easier to scratch them. I learned that the hard way too. So it's harder to damage CDs, but not impossible.
Slynne, would you like a walkman type tape deck and a tape recorder?
No. I dont have tapes and find they are kind of a pain. I want to go tapeless. Thanks for the offer though. :)
re #162: > I have no idea how to turn my cd's into mp3's. I assume it is legal. It seems to be. > Is there special software a person has to buy to do this? You do need software which will "rip" (extract the digital audio information from your CDs) and then encode to MP3, but there are plenty of packages you can download for free that will do that. If you want a polished package with a graphical user interface, MusicMatch is a fairly decent choice. I think the ripping speed in the free download version is limited but it'll work. If you want more faithful audio reproduction, I am very happy with the results I get from "lame", which can be downloaded freely. However, although it's not difficult to use it's also not a polished package for beginners. > Also, what is a good mp3 player? I strongly recommend the Apple iPod. It's an excellent mp3 player, and refurbished 10 Gbyte models were recently selling for $169 from Apple. If you're planning on doing something much more active than walking (for example jogging or aerobics) you might want to choose a different type of mp3 player. Right now there are two main types of mp3 devices -- the hard-disk-based players like the iPod and solid-state players that use built-in memory or flash memory cards and have no moving parts. Although the solid-state-storage players offer far less storage than the disk-based players they're less delicate and more robust for high-impact exercise situations. > Is it possible to get one that can be used in the car too? Yes. Almost any mp3 player will work with the accessory kits they sell for car use. I've got one for my iPod that has a small battery-powered FM retransmitter. I turn on the iPod and the retransmitter and listen to the music on my car radio. If your car stereo has a tape deck you might prefer an adaptor with a cassette interface. Best of all, if your car stereo has an audio input jack you don't need a special gizmo at all, just a cable. I'm compelled to say again how much I really, really, really, like my iPod. Although I'm eagerly waiting for someone to produce an even better device, I don't think its disk-based competitors are in its class yet.
I guess you can use an iPod with a PC? I am going to do a little research on that.
Yes. Though originally they only came in the Mac version, now there's a Mac version and a PC version. You can also convert one to the other by re-flashing the firmware, so it's not an insurmountable problem if you wind up with the wrong type.
The flash-disk MP3 players are cool though. I think you can go upto 512MB on them. They connect to the USB port of your PC and appear as a disk drive to your PC, so you can transfer files easily (no drivers required). You can also use them for regular file transfers between PCs apart from use as an MP3 player. And most of them have a FM radio built-in too. RCA, Siemens, iRiver etc have several good models. And they are really small. Or you could buy a portable MP3-CD player.
Re #13: I've heard it's illegal because computer CD-RW devices are not covered by the Home Recording Act. Only audio CD-RW burners (that take the special audio blanks) are. Realistically, though, no one is going to be hauled into court over this. Re #19: LAME is my pick of stand-alone encoder, too. It's generally rated highly in tests. Please don't use Bladeenc. Trust me, it's awful. For audio ripping I like Exact Audio Copy. It does a great job extracting audio even from damaged CDs. I even used it to salvage a scratched CD, once. The disadvantage of doing it this way is it's a two-step process. There are products out there like RealJukebox that can rip and encode in one step, but I haven't used them so I can't comment on the quality. I like MP3-CD players because the media is so cheap. I can fit over a hundred songs on a single CD-R blank. They're bulky so they're probably not the best choice for jogging, but they work great in the car. I have two of them, a portable one (that can be used with a tape adapter) and an in-dash one I bought later.
I considered a portable MP3/CD player but ultimately decided that they weren't portable enough for me -- they're too large to fit in most pockets and if I can't tuck it away in a pocket and take it with me then chances are I won't get a lot of use out of a portable device. In my opinion the iPod is about as large as I'd like to go (at least without a compelling reason for it to be larger, such as video capabilities requiring a bigger screen) and one of the chief attractions of the flash memory players is that they are smaller still - *much* smaller in some cases. Smaller is better, at least until the small form factor starts interfering too much with other engineering goals, such as battery life and user interface.
The attractive thing about the iPod, from my perspective, is that it has enough storage that you can load in a bunch of stuff and be able to select what fits your mood later. With the flash disk based players, storage capacity is pretty limited so you have to decide ahead of time what you want to listen to.
Yes, that's a huge win in my book. It's got enough storage, in fact, that you can also carry around useful non-music stuff with you. I use mine to carry around a couple of useful applications (e.g. putty) and some other helpful stuff, plus of course the calendar and phone number/contact data for the built-in organizer programs.
I've had trays half-close on CDs that I improperly inserted. It didn't hurt the CD. I've set CDs down on random surfaces and left them there. That didn't hurt the CDs either.
The one thing about handling CDs that really makes me wince is when people pull them out of the jewel case by the edges only. The CD bends terribly until the prong thingies in the middle let go. No, no! Here's how you take a CD out of the jewel case: Thumb and forefinger of one hand grab the edges of the CD at the top and bottom of the case. Thumb of the other hand press down on the prongs. (Fingers of second hand can brace themselves against the edge of the case.) Now LIFT - do not pull - the CD out of the prongs with the first hand, removing the second hand's thumb when the CD comes clear.
Sorry, I have to correct myself above. I just tried it, and realized that I use thumb and -second- finger of the left hand for better traction when lifting out the CD.
re #27: > I've had trays half-close on CDs that I improperly inserted. It didn't > hurt the CD. Most of the time it doesn't, but at least once in my experience it left a surprisingly deep gouge in the disc.
I usually use the thumb and ring finger on my right hand to lift the edges of the CD while I press down the prongs with the index finger on the same hand. That may not work for other people with smaller hands, though. Incidentally, CDs have error correction codes built in, and for that reason scratches that go radially across the disc aren't a big problem. It's scratches that follow the direction of the tracks that are troublesome. For that reason it's best to wipe directly across the CD surface when cleaning a CD, not in circles around the hole like you would on a record. Also, the most fragile side of a CD is the label side. The playing side is thick polycarbonate. It can be scratched, but the scratches can, in a pinch, be polished out. The label side is laquer and the data layer is very close to the surface. I have one CD-R disc where a deep scratch in the label side went through to the data layer and obliterated it, leaving clear spot.
I didn't think it was especially helpful, but there was an article in the NYT this week that was basically a summary of MP3 players for those not very well acquainted with them. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/16/technology/circuits/16basi.html?pagewante d=1&8hpib
I also have ripped MANY cds to mp3,put multiple albums on one CD and repeat.Right now I'm in the process of taking my 50 cds full of data and transferring them to DVD's because I recently bought a burner for that reason. 4.7 gigs of storage as opposed to 650-700 megs is a SIGNIFICANT difference.50 data cds go onto about 9 DVDs-MUCH easierto index and keep track of.
It's interesting to think back to when the first MP3 players came out, and were immediately the subject of legal challenges. At the time a lot of people thought they'd be banned. Now they're commonly available from major companies, not just grey-market importers.
Big Music tried to get MP3 players banned; Rio fought the lawsuit and won, but was saddled with heavy legal expenses which helped to end their existence as an independent company, IIRC. What I *do* remember correctly is that the court held that a MP3 *player* is not an audio "recording" device within the framework of the Audio Home Recording Act, and thus it is not required to implement "serial copy management system." Note, however, that there are no quality MP3 standalone recorders, due to the AHRA. There's a whole rant here, but you're probably all tired of reading it in the Napster items.
dropped a cd on the floor of my car and scuffed it with my foot while driving. It is damaged.
Which one?! Aggggk!
So I have a CD burner on my computer now, and I've tried making straight disc-to-disc full copies of a few of my rarer CDs as backups. Inevitably the copy has a patch (of varying length and intensity) of crackling noise, sounding something like a radio station you can't quite pick up, starting about 5 minutes in. I haven't had any problem with copying CD-ROMs, though, as far as I've been able to tell. Any thoughts?
1) if you're having burning problems, consider switching to
a better (or sometimes simply different) brand of media.
2) try reducing the burn speed to 8x or under and see if that
helps.
3) believe the CD-burner app when it advises you to close all
other applications before it starts burning the disc.
Start with those and see if your results improve. What brand
and speed of burner, and what software are you using?
4) If you continue to have problems, rip first, burn second. When you copy on-the-fly, especially at higher speeds, there is less the software can do to compensate for errors. 5) Some drives simply do a poor job staying synchronized while ripping audio. It's a much more difficult task than reading a data CD. Try using a ripping app that's specifically designed to deal with difficult situations. I recommend Exact Audio Copy under Windows and cdparanoia under Linux. Both of these programs do an excellent job, even with damaged CDs, and just as importantly they warn you if they think the audio is degraded.
Getting back to the original question, I also have an iPod and love it. I see no real reason to get anything else, unless you can get it for free. (pre-iPod, I had a 64MB rio player that I got for free...) Now that iTunes for windows has come out, I'd recommend that as your software for cd ripping; among other advantages (such as working beautifully with the iPod), it allows you to encode in AAC format instead of mp3. (aac is actually mp4, or some part of mp4, I believe?) Ripping to AAC will let you store songs at the same quality in a smaller size than mp3, meaning you can carry more on your iPod (or hard drive). And iTunes is a free download and easy to use. I've never been able to hear the difference between cds and mp3s (even on headphones) except when listening to classical strings. Thus, I'm not going to opine on which encoder gives the best sound quality--I'm recommending iTunes based on features and ease of use.
Thanks, Mike and David. I haven't gotten to the point of figuring out how to rip CDs yet. I'm sure it's pretty simple, but two things are stopping me: the desire not to load my hard disc up with files which I will then forget what they are, and a rapidly growing passion for not learning any more new procedures of any kind than I have to. I'm old enough now that my brain is full. I'd have to crawl under the desk to see what brand of burner I have, but the software is something called Easy CD Creator 5 Basic, which is what came with the burner. I might be interested in the features of Exact Audio Copy; is this something that can be found in software stores? And can it copy data CDs too?
I'm pretty sure that if you want eac you'll be better off downloading it. I won't guarantee that you won't find it on a shareware-type collection for sale in a store but it's something you'd typically get by downloading rather than finding it on a store shelf. It's only for extracting digital audio from music CDs. You would typically use it in conjunction with another program (such as "lame") which would encode the audio data you extracted into a compressed format like MP3. The chief virtue of eac and cdparanoia is that they are very particular about doing the best job possible of extracting the audio -- not something you can say about every audio-ripper program..
Also, EAC has the option to query CDDB for the track names, then name the files appropriately. This helps combat the "lots of big files that I've forgotten what they are" effect. :> If all you're interested in is copying CDs, see if your CD copying program has an option to do a "buffered" copy, instead of an "on-the-fly" copy. That will rip the CD to a file on your hard drive, then burn a new CD from the file, instead of trying to do both at once. It has a much better chance of working well that way, but it's slower so most programs default to on-the-fly copies.
How much hard drive space is needed to copy a music CD (for the buffer)? We were just given a computer with a 6G hard drive.
About 700Mbytes maximum for an 80 minute disc.
EAC is a great program, and can help read data (music data) off discs that are sometimes unplayable in regualr CD players.
>I'm pretty sure that if you want eac you'll be better off downloading >it. So how do I find it? Google for it? And then how do I know the sites I find are legitimate? I'm not putting any executable program on my computer unless it comes from a reliable source, and web sites I know nothing about don't count as reliable sources. >You would typically use it in conjunction with another program (such >as "lame") Not ANOTHER program?! I'm having enough trouble convincing myself I want the one. >which would encode the audio data you extracted into a compressed >format like MP3. No, no, I listen to classical music: I do NOT want a compressed format and the accompanying degradation of sound quality. >Also, EAC has the option to query CDDB for the track names, then name >the files appropriately. A friend of mine with a Mac has ITunes, or whatever Steve Jobs's music- for-sale biz is called, but instead of buying tunes he uses it to organize his music files on his computer. What intrigues me about it is that if he puts a music CD in his computer, the program looks it up in some database somewhere and displays a track list. What I would like to do is query that database. I don't want to get music from it, but if it's as complete as it looks, I would like to be able to find out what things have been recorded and who's recorded them.
Get EAC from www.exactaudiocopy.de If you want to rip uncompressed data from your CDs, then EAC is all you;ll need.
In addressing the latter part of resp:48, I would guess that your friend's software is using either the cddb or the freedb music database. I do know that Exact Audio Copy (EAC) now uses the freedb database, available at: http://www.freedb.org/freedb_search.php fwiw, I have downloaded and installed EAC from the website given in resp:49.
Or you can use FLAC, which is another audio compression protocol. Unlike MP3, however, FLAC is not "lossy" -- i.e. if you compress something and then uncompress it you should wind up with exactly the same collection of bits you started from.. When people mention "CDDB lookup" for getting track names, they're talking about the same type of service, though not necessarily from the exact same database (unfortunately there was a schism a few years ago when a commercial company bought up the original CDDB and changed the license terms so that a lot of free software was unable to continue using it. So most commercial packages use the original CDDB, while many of the freeware tools use FreeDB.)
Are .avi files compressed? I've seen full-length animated Disney movies which occupied 700 MB or less of disk; are animated movies just inherently smaller than other movies?
http://www.allmusic.com is a great resource for tracking down artists and albums.
In my opinion, the All Music Guide ( http://www.allmusic.com ) is one of the best sites on the web. A huge amount of information all of which is extensively cross-referenced, vastly improving the usefulness of the whole collection.
changes are a-comin' on down the line.... RE#52 - Yes, AVI's are generally compressed.
AVI is, in fact, just a structure for video files. Internally AVIs can use just about any compression encoding, or no compression at all, for video and audio. There are at least half a dozen compression schemes in common use, though at at given time one or two are the "favorites". Currently DIVX and XVID are the most common for bootleg movies. This can make AVIs a bit frustrating, since there's no clear answer to the question "what software do I need to play an AVI?"
I have a digicam which records video in files with an .AVI extension. When I try to play these in either Win98's media player or the media player on a Sharp PDA, the software complains that the required decompression plugin or whatever is not available. How to fix this?
Find out what compression format your digicam is using, and install the codec for it. Did the digicam come with any software on CD? It may be on there. You might also try the manufacturer's website. Alternatively, if you're using a really old version of Windows Media Player, you may want to upgrade. The newer versions seem to support more formats, and are better about downloading codecs they don't have installed for you.
Maybe I don't need EAC, as I have now tried ripping CDs using my existing program, and copying them on to a new CD, and it seems to work pretty well. A few of the features are awkward, though, so maybe I will investigate further. My existing program offers two file formats, WAV which it says is uncompressed, and another format also beginning with the letter W which it says is even more compressed than MP3. So I tried this allmusic.com and first looked up Steeleye Span, my favorite folk-rock band. The bio is about 8 years out of date, their most recent new album (released in '02) is missing, some repackagings are listed and some aren't, some albums that are listed don't have track listings, and the band's "tones" are characterized as "Reverent, Gentle, Organic, Restrained, Intimate" which is ridiculous. Even the bio knows better than that. Then I tried some obscure modern classical composers on the associated www.allclassical.com and was somewhat more impressed. For Baroque composers, somewhat less so.
All Music Guide lists a live album for Steeleye Span in 2002 and one video, plus several 2003 releases. As far as the "tones" section goes, those are compiled from a consensus of reader assessments of the band, not the editorial opinions of the site.
I use Audiograbber for getting CD tracks to .wav files. The
1.82 version will now look at your disk first, to see if it has CD-text
and use that for the suggestted track/file names. Audiograbber (find
via google) also recommends you get the LAME DLL mp3 encoder file and
install it in the same directory as the audiograbber .exe file and it
will give a very good graphic interface to that command line program.
Audiograbber can also do the FreeDB/ CDDB lookups. You may have to
do the lookups, then disconnect from the internet before procedding
with the ripping to make sure you don't get a CPU use glich. It does
give various warnings for possible speed/CPU problems. It also lets
you do things like put it into 'silence hating' mode, cutting the two
seconds between tracks down to a half second or so. For stand alone
tracks, I would recommend some silence before and after (I edit to
1/3 second before, 2/3 second after--that 25 frames and 50 frames of
the 75 frames per second, the unit of time that a CD sees). Okay,
now I can talk about AG being able to be set to grab at x amount of
frames (or frame number before) a CD track mark, that can help
on CD tracks that might be a little mis-tracked, or on those songs
that occupy two tracks on a CD, but sound better as one MP3 file.
I have bunches of Cd-Rs filled with mp3s, 98% of them being
Dr. Demento shows.
I have both a portable DAT recorder and a home deck. The
portable needs repair. Anyone know someone good at that?
My RioVolt portable CD/mp3-CD player did undergo a
firmware upgrade. It now can resume play where a disk stopped. IN
fact, I think it can keep track of up to 10 CDs and the resume
point.
Do any of the newer, cheaper CD/mp3-CD playes allow resume
where you left off? Be able to access the .m3u file as a programmable
feature? Easily search within the file in additon to skip to next
file?
What is your DAT recorder not doing? Jim likes to fix things that are mechanical and tapes are mechanical. The rubber parts wear out.
My Jensen MP-3310 in-dash MP3 player remembers where I left off in the current CD, but it can't remember more than one stopping point. If I eject the disc it forgets.
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RE#61 -- www.nxtgentech.com is the only place I trust with my DAT repairs.
Mike McNally wrote, "All Music Guide lists a live album for Steeleye Span in 2002 and one video, plus several 2003 releases." Nevertheless, as I wrote earlier, their most recent new album (released in '02) is missing. The recent stuff that is listed is ephemera. "As far as the 'tones' section goes, those are compiled from a consensus of reader assessments of the band, not the editorial opinions of the site." Which makes it even more bizarre that they could be characterized as "Reverent, Gentle, Organic, Restrained, Intimate." Some individual bozo who'd never heard the band and had a preconceived notion of folk music might have come up with that, but not any group of knowledgable listeners. I suspect either a very small sampling of readers and/or the kind of options checklist that never has the phrasings you want. If you want to defend this hapless entry, you'll have to do better than that.
whore.
Since this is the audio-storage discussion item, I have a question for the minidisc users out there (e.g. Scott..) My nephew, who covets my iPod, was lobbying for an MP3 player for Christmas. What he and his mother (my sister) selected turned out to be a Sony "NetMD" MiniDisc recorder (model MZ-NF610) I've known satisfied minidisc owners before, but have never used one myself and am not quite sure what I'm supposed to be able to do with this one. To begin with, the packaging for this player claims to support MP3, WMW, and WAV as well as Sony's native ATRAC format but so far I've been unable to put anything but ATRAC on disc using the software provided. Looking more closely at the packaging, although the large print says "MP3 / WMA / WAV compatible" the small print reads "Plays back ATRAC3 audio, supports MP3, WMA, WAV". What does that mean? Will it store and play MP3s or does "supports MP3" mean that it converts MP3 files to ATRAC before storing them on the minidisc? Also, although the packaging claims "5 hours of music on one minidisc" the discs are rated as 74 or 80 minute discs and I was able to transfer (at a rough guess) 150 minutes of music on my first attempt. Again reading the fine print, I see something about "LP2" and "LP4" modes. What's the difference and what's the approximate capacity of an 80 min disc in megabytes? Finally, I had a pretty negative reaction to the software provided. I'm not going to have to keep this gadget but as the family techie I *am* going to be expected to make it work and to provide remote tech support for the life of the device. I guess what I'm looking for is some assurance that minidisc is still worth putting some time into and that I shouldn't just tell my nephew to take the thing back to the store and get a hard-drive based player like an iPod or a Dell DJ (btw, has anyone used one of those yet?)
Cynically, I'd suggest that "supports x,y,z formats" means it is possible to record those formats on the disc for storage or use in other devices, but not necessarily to play them back on that device. Just a guess.
Yes, that's what I'm wondering.. Unless you can really store several hours' worth of MP3s on a disc I'm going to recommend to Ramsey that he return this player.
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I don't know what Ramsey will prefer but when I encode my own MP3s I generally use LAME with the "--alt-preset=standard" command-line flag which encodes variable bit-rate MP3s that average about 160kbps. I can typically get 8-10 hours' worth of music on one 80 minute CD at that quality, so ~5 hours' worth of music on one Minidisc doesn't seem at all farfetched to me.. He could have an MP3/CD device that plays MP3s from CD-Rs for less money (plus the media is about 1/10 the cost) but the CD-based devices can't match an important attraction of either the minidisc-based or the harddrive-based players -- pocket-sized form factor.
I've got one of those NetMD recorders, but I've never tried using the software. My guess is that it's possible to play stuff over the USB/spdif adapter to the MD, and it'll record that content in one of the ATRAC formats. The USB/spdif (stereo digital optical link) that came with mine basically became an audio output under OS X and would likely do the same thing under Windows. The standard ATRAC format is 74/80 minutes stereo. Mono mode has been around for a long time and allowed double the capacity. The LP2 and LP4 modes are more drastic compression, and reviews I've read indicate that they are roughly like using various MP3 quality levels. I'd recommend checking out http://www.minidisc.org for a plethora of useful information.
Thanks, I guess I'll do that, though I'm visiting with family at the moment and browsing is painful on this computer (old Mac + AOL = bad combination <shudder>)
There's actually a NetMD software FAQ, and the site is mostly text, so give it a try. The FAQ was pretty interesting... not sure my unit can do the full stuff, but it involves DRM from some sources.
I'll just chime in to wish Mike good luck... Leslie and I have only used MD as a tape recorder replacement for recording live music and radio. I've seen the MP3/MD machines touted but I have no idea how they work.
Consulting the site that Scott mentioned, it seems fairly clear that the wording "supports MP3/WMA/WAV" on the front of the package is misleading (probably deliberately so.) Apparently none of the current Minidisc player/recorder devices play audio in anything but various revisions of Sony's ATRAC formats, meaning any music transferred to the minidisc device has to be converted and, in the case of existing digital music files, the software to do so insists upon doing so only through some sort of "check out" / "check in" DRM regimen that I wouldn't care to put up with. Also, the Minidiscs are much lower capacity than I thought they were -- about 160Mbyte per disc -- and the touted "5 hour play time" (also mentioned quite prominently on the package) only applies to files encoded as LP4, the lowest-quality ATRAC format. In the end, I wound up surprised by how uncompetitive the devices are and really bothered by the poor quality of the software and the cumbersome DRM scheme it apparently enforces. I'm recommending to Ramsey that he return the product to the point of purchase, citing its inability to do most of the things the package seems to promise, and save a little more for a hard-drived based player such as the iPod or Dell's new DJ. Supposedly Apple may be announcing new, lower-capacity, lower-price iPods at MacWorld next week.
Minidisc is going to be the 8-track tape of the digital world. Avoid it; it's a proprietary format that I don't think will last.
I dunno; for live recording it's wonderful. But if a recording iPod came out, I might go for it...
hmmm...I noticed that a real music CD can stand more abuse and scratches than a CD-RW...or maybe it just seems that way. anyways, my question is: does anyone else use a Sharpie to label their pirated music collection?
I use a fine-point Sharpie to label when I make a mix CD or a backup for the car. Does that count?
I use Sharpies for all kinds of things including labeling CD's :) Those pens are the best.
I like using Sharpies, but also found Fellows CD Markers to
have a very consistent fine point.
Black for audio CDs
Blue for data CDs
Green (the color of money) for DVDs
You have several choices: