Thrush

iTrader: (1)

So here is my little debate...

Backround;
I have been using Minidisc now for years and years. A lot of my shit is on MD now, and have had in car MD for about as long as I have have had a lisence...

Now, what I am pondering is whether to switch from using in car MD head unit to in car MP3/CD headunit...

Pro's and con's
So what do you guys think? Opinions?

Discuss

Graceland

mp3 rocks -nuff said

Thrush

iTrader: (1)

Paul That is not "discussing" I am after consrtuctive and intuative advice and opinions as to my situation...

PS - you sent me them software discs (it was my birthday last Monday )

Graceland

mp3 head units - get a sony with the new "drive-s" - not had it skipping at all on my cdx-m8800 unit and all the roads i drive are bumpy as shit with koni's set on super solid


i aint sent em yet matt - need to buy blank cd's

EIL132

They still make minidiscs?

Thrush

iTrader: (1)

Aye James, they do... I still rate em tho, quality invention I reckon - same quality as any CDR yet so much better in terms of useability - all the pro's of cassette with none of the cons plus all the pro's of CD

rsnissan

iTrader: (9)

my mate has a personal MD player that plays mp3's via the MD cant you get head units that do this now?

Thrush

iTrader: (1)

I have seen summat about the them Md's but don't think you can get in car ones yet.....

mattbibs

i have both in my car running through the cassette and apator wire thingy!

MD's were good back in the day when i first got it. now i think i prefer MP3 as holds a lot more songs and takes 2 secs to put on the player once its downloaded. easier and quicker to play the latest tunes in your car IMO!

Thrush

iTrader: (1)

Thats the ting Matt, your right about em holding a lot more songs and the "copy to" time is quicker than copying onto MD....

But what I don't like about it is it is not a true re-useable digital media source...

With the advent of things like this tho;

<IFRAME marginWidth=0 marginHeight=0 src="http://www.sony.co.uk/PageView.do?site=odw_en_GB&page=ProductHome&sectio n=en_GB_Products&productmodel=%2FAudio%2FPortable+ Audio+-+Walkman%2FPAW+MiniDisc+%26+Net+MD+Walkman%2FMZ-N520&productcategory=%2FAudio%2FPortable+Audio+-+Walkman%2FPAW+MiniDisc+%26+Net+MD+Walkman" frameBorder=0 width=800 height=600></IFRAME>

Now 1gig is a lot of space for MP3's, and if you couple the MP3 pro's with MD pro's - that is the bollox IMO

Now I just need a head unit that will play em

a7fco

do incar dvd players play dvd mp3's coz you can fit 30 to 40 albums on 1 disc

Thrush

iTrader: (1)

Martyn

Ive had both, and the only thing i can see that was of any benefit over cds was the edit and move functions, but i never used them anyway lol
With the price of cdrs as low as they are, its just as easy to burn a new one.
The storage space is of no comparison either, MDs are just too limited.
Unfortunalty they were like the modern version of Betamax, much better than tape but never took off enough.
Ditch the MD, you wont look back

Kevin B

I used to have a Sony MD player in my old ERST which I thought (and still do in some respects) was the business!
I've now got an Alpine MP3 player in the Cossie and thats really smart too... the problem I have is not really having much access to a PC with MP3 software on, meaning I mostly end up playing normal shop bought CD's in the Cos anyway, so I dont get the full use of the MP3 function, but if you have good access to PC etc I would say go for an MP3 headunit (just means you will only be able to play your stack of MD at home, like me )

Thrush

iTrader: (1)

Martyn - yesthe MD is limited in storage terms, by how much TIME you can fit on, but then stuff I download now and burn ot CDR I burn as audio file anyway (so I can listen to it in normal CD players) so thats just the same as MD then - still limited to 80mins of audio.....

Kevin - thats my worry - I don't have anyway to copy the stuff I have on MD onto my HDD to convert it all to MP3. If I did th\at what I'd probably to, copy it all to the HDD, all as MP3 then just make a whole bunch of MP3 CDR's......

Martyn

If u are burning normal cds to play at home on a cd player, why not just run a cable from the line out of the pc straight to an amp input? ALL music i play at home is straight from the pc, i only ever burn for the car!
I used to rip from MD to HDD, its easy, just use a cable from the line out straight into the line in on your sound card. If it doesnt have a line out then use the head phone socket. Its abit more fiddly getting the volumes right as its already amplified, but it is possible as thats how i used to do it!

Thrush

iTrader: (1)

I prefer the sound of my hifi to the sound of the PC through it - there is a difference and I can tell.....

Ripping MD to HDD, I get how to connect it up, but how to record it? Record using what? Thats what I don't get.....

I'd like to change soundcard at some point and get one with an optical/digital in and out on it - that would help....

But also looking at NET MD stuff from Sony - uses normal MD discs, but you connect the MD recorder up to the PC via USB and you can copy MP3 tracks onto an MD Disc upto 32x the speed you normally can. THe tracks aren't stored as data tho, seems they are still audio so again your storage limit is TIME not file size, but with the MD LP function you can store over 5hrs of stereo audio files.... And the NET MD can decode WMA, WAV and MP3 and convert em to ATRAC (which is the audio filetype for MD's)

SO might invest in one of these recorders so that I can copy MP3's I download or copy from CD directly to MD in a fraction of the time it normally takes.....

That way I can still use all my old MD's in the van and in the house, but also I can keep adding to discs using the NET MD set up for a bit more versitility - like having the pros' of MD with the pro's of MP3 really

xr_craig

iTrader: (2)

Change to MP3. As someone said, cost of CD-Rs is little now so the not being able to re-edit problem isn't the end of the world. Only real problem is that you will not be able to listen to your MD's in car so will lose some songs like you say.

BTW - i've got a pioneer mp3 player in my car and it is mint.

Exeter J

MP3 seems to be the format everyone is going for. Its more a case of which recording medium you use, i.e. memory stick / flash card / Ipod type device, CD-R, or even DVD.

Building a database of MP3s on your computer seems to be the way forward - then just burning or copying to your CDR for portableness.

Surely you could rip your MD back to MP3 format on your computer ? If your MDs are shop purchased albums and thus you have paid for the license to own that peice of music, then making a copy for your use/backup in MP3 format whether that is ripped off or even downloaded from P2P is legal ?

Thrush

iTrader: (1)

J - With shop bought ones it is even harder. Sony pioneered the encryption of digital media and have applied that to MD's aswell. For example if I put a shop bought MD into my MD hifi, and connect up my portable MD recorder via the optical lead it will not allow you to copy. Same if I connect up the portable MD recorder to the PS2 via the optical lead to copy say, a CD, or the music off a DVD film, it won't allow you to copy. The only way to do it is to use analogue cables and then you lose a shit load of quality, which when you burn it to CDR as MP3 it sounds awful.....

ECU Monitor Enthusiast

iTrader: (1)

I have a hard disk based MP3 player in my car through an RF modulator
to my head unit.

120 gig hard disk. capable of storing 3000 hours of music MP3 format.

Can take it easily out of car and use it on home hi fi or computer.

Got it from here: www.dension.com (model DMP3)

Martyn

Well if u have a decent sound card then there is no problem or loss atall.
Also, remember that when you get mp3s off the net and burn them to cd, your stereo is only going to sound as good as the mp3 you got. Alot of people never seem to mention bit rates when talking about ripping etc. If its 128k or less then obviously you will loose quality, but if u do 192k or above then i very much doubt you would be able to tell the difference between it playing from a pc or stereo. (Obviously you need some good cables and a good soundcard!)

Get a copy of something like Sound Forge, then u simply set your recording source to line in, or what ever you are using, then hit record and off you go....

My old soundblaster live had a daughter board which had SPDIF and optical inputs.
I used to record to and from the pc via optical.

If you use the method i just mentioned the pc will record whatever u want. The MD cant detect the fact that your pc has a program running that happens to be recording everything it hears!

Again, what bitrate did you encode them to mp3 with?
If you do it at a decent rate you would need superhuman hearing to be able to detect the difference between an original cd and ripped mp3s

Martyn

120gb = 122880mb
1mb = 1 minute of music encoded at 128k
122880 / 60 = 2048 hours of music

So, its only going to give you 2048 hours, not 3000.
Remember, that is also using 128k which is LESS than cd quality! If you had all your mp3s at 192k (cd quality) then it will be even less....

ballin

iTrader: (1)

mp3 you big spunk!!!

Thrush

iTrader: (1)

I thought CD quality was 128k? 128k to the human ear anyway is the same as CD quality, as anything above 128k cannot be detecded and percieved as "better" than the same thing recorded at 128k..... So if you record the same track twice - once @ 176k and then again @ 128k then listen to both then listen to the shop bought CD version the human ear cannot tell the difference.

Andreas

I also got a minidisc unit in my car and the only reason im not using it much is because of the hassle of creating new discs. If i had a new Net MD unit at home so I could transfer the tunes quickly to the disc im shure I would use the car MD a lot.

Sound wise I think the MD sounds better than MP3 so if its painless to transfer the tunes why not keep it?

Martyn

Thats utter bollocks!
Record a tune at 128k and play it in a car with a sub, then play it at 192k on the same system and suddenly the bass will appear
The reason being, when you encode a tune with a low encription it removes the frequencies that are least likely to be heard (ie the highest and lowest) so play a 128k tune on a good sound system with proper subs (or say for example in a dicso) and the bass will not be half as good.
Yes you can still hear the bass, but at 128 all the frequencies that give the proper sub bass will not be there

Thrush

iTrader: (1)

Thats what I'm thinking, and deffo thinking about getting a net MD for ease of copying tracks from PC to MD. Only thing that I ain't sure about is if I need an in car MD player capable of reading MDLP discs. Pretty sure I have to have one if I use the MDLP function and write 5hrs of music to an MD disc, but say I jsut wrote to it normally then I pressume it will play in a normal MD player?

Thrush

iTrader: (1)

You might be right Martyn - it's just that I thought 128 was the CD quality... So if it's 192k then thats the one where if it's any higher you won't notice the difference...

Anyway, I just copied a track from a CD to the PC and converted it from WMA to MP3. Did it once at 192k (48,000Hz freq) and another one at 128k (44,100Hz)

The 192k MP3 is 9.21MB and the 128k one is 6.17MB

Haven't tried em for comparrison sound wise as my sound card on the PC is shit and the speakers are just as crap

Martyn

Dont get me wrong, what u said about 128k being cd quality IS correct, its just that its in respect to quality rather than sound "depth".
If you want 100% true cd rips then u would have to burn them as wavs which kind of defeats the object as they are so big! But as i said, once u play a 128k on a good system the difference is soon noticed. My fave music is drum and bass which is obviously very bass heavy, so i can instantly tell the difference from a 128 and 192 because the proper low frequencies are not there when i play it in the car with a big sub.
As you have found out, the higher the bit rate the bigger the file size, so it soon becomes clear that the claims of ipod and so on are not really as good as they sound when they say X amount of gigabytes can hold X amount of songs once you realise that they are at a lower quality!
I suppose to mr average listener 128k is plenty when heard thru a pair of headphones, which is who they are aiming at.

Thrush

iTrader: (1)

That said tho, if you were to burn for a true CD sound by using WAV as the file type (I pressume at 192k then?) then surely if you made an "audio" disc rather than "data" disc (so you don't have to stick to MB limitations only to time limitations) then you get the best possible CD burn yes?

I've been doing som research on these NET MD recorders and again, seems they don't turn out as good as Sony would have you belive. One review I just read says you can't make use of the USB to MD transfer set up if your recording in normal stereo mode (which on an 74min MD gives you 74mins - LP2 gives you 148min and LP4 gives you 296mins on one disc - more so if you use an 80min disc) so that defeats the purpous a bit. Also, the sound quality diminishes the higher the ammount of mins you use, so the LP2 and LP4 functions aren't so good as you get worse sound quality (tho I can't use em anyway as my car MD won't read MDLP, only normal stereo recordings)

Also it seems the software you need to use this set up isn't great as it encodes everything (from MP3, WMA and WAV to it's own OpenMG format, which is designed for ATRAC3 which is what MD players use) Apparently this takes just as long to encode as it does to copy, so actually makes your copy time twice as long. It also doubles up all the tracks you copy onto the HDD so uses a lot of space aswell.

So thinking about it the only advantage would be that I could lift tracks right from PC directly to MD rather than burn to CDRW, then copy from CDRW to MD using optical cable from my DVD player, but if you can't copy directly via USB in normal stereo mode then thats no good to me.

So I might as well stay set up the same way I am - using MD in the van recorded normally, but maybe get a compatible CD changer that can read MP3 discs? Or upgrade the soundcard on this to one that has a much better sound on it, and also an optical in/out so I can copy straight from the PC, out the soundcard and into my hifi via optical cable....? Although this would all be in real time (like a cassette) thats no different than it is now TBH....

Martyn

Yes, that would be the same as basically making an exact duplicate copy of the original cd. I have 2 cd drives, so can do it pretty much the same way as the old tape 2 tape machines did. It reads from one and burns straight to the other with no encoding atall.

Yes, all that is possible Ive got one of these in my pc
it sits in one of the spare drive bays and is connected to the soundcard

Thrush

iTrader: (1)

Thats how I do CD copies on this machin - using two drives, but the new DEll Pc we have downstairs only has the one drive (DVD rom/CDRW combo) so can't do that....

That thing you got looks very interesting - where does it go? spare Floppy -sized slot or spare CD-sized slot?

And what sort of soundcard do you need to run it? and software?

Martyn

You can do it with one drive, it reads it first then u swap over the cds and then burn it

It sits in a spare cd slot, it came with soundblaster live and is called the live drive. All software comes with it.
Mine is slightly different than the one i posted, as it also has a remote control! Im not sure if they still sell them brand new now but im certain you can get something very similar, just have a look on creative site

ECU Monitor Enthusiast

iTrader: (1)

Oops.
I was only quoting the manufacturers details.

I should have added that the harddisk in this product can be changed for a much larger one.
Mine just happens to be 120 gig.

This is more than enough for my small music collection !!!

Thrush

iTrader: (1)

Martyn - there looks to be a couple on ebay at the mo - ranging from Ł30 to Ł55..... I don't have a spared CD slot on this machine (one is the DVDRW/CDRW and the other is the CD-ROM drive, so would it be able to sit on top? How would it connect up if I had it external?

OldSkoolRS

I used to have mini disc in my car but got pissed off with having to copy everything from cd before I could listen to it. Now that I've got access to a decent computer I'd definitely go for mp3 next.

Thrush

iTrader: (1)

What I wish the had come out with is a MD drive for the PC. Slot it in a drive bay, hook it up like you do with a CDR drive and have it appear on your screen as an extra drive (like C:, D: etc..) then I could just drag and drop

Martyn

It connects with a ribbon cable, i dont think it would be long enough for it to sit on top, plus it would look abit crap! Im certain you can get external ones now too, but obviously at todays prices.
Or could you not ditch the cd rom and just use the other for everything?

External:
http://www.soundblaster.com/products..._platinum_pro/

SeanT

Get a Pioneer mp3 CD unit mate, burn using windows media audio at the highest bit rate that isn't variable, you won't regret it, I love mine

P.S. that one looks the tits too