[eru]

It looks awesome.. "Sorry SONY..." I like that, funny. Too bad I 2 weeks ago I already bought the IMP250.. oh well.

-eru

 

[utdeep]

Wow!
It looks really good. Love the fact that it has a line out.... now if its an optical line out, I'm going to pick it up immediately. I can live with a proprietary battery (as long as it lasts for more than 20 hours with it).

 

[eru]

what exactly does a optical line out do anyway?

-eru

 

[utdeep]

connect to minidisc players or dacs I think. I guess if it has a good enough analog line out, that won't really make much of a difference. Still, its a feature found on most high end cd players but missing on all mp3 cd players.

 

[a1leyez0nm3]

Whoaaa, that is ill~! I am probably going to buy one, ahahhaha~!

 

[eru]

what's the point of having an optical out on a mp3 cd player anyway? They beat the hell out of minidiscs... the only reason I can see for having one is if a friend who has a minidisc wants one of the songs on your cd.

-eru

 

[Vertigo-1]

Quote:

what's the point of having an optical out on a mp3 cd player anyway? They beat the hell out of minidiscs... the only reason I can see for having one is if a friend who has a minidisc wants one of the songs on your cd.

And how exactly do MP3/CD players "beat the hell out of minidiscs" again? Because it's a pretty solid fact that even the cheapest minidisc players beat the hell out of ALL MP3/CD players for sound quality, which is what most of us here are concerned about first and foremost. Not slim pretty little players that say "Sorry Sony" all over them.

 

[thomas]

lol...i agree

the iriver looks pretty sweet, but i wonder how reliable it is, how good it sounds, and how good battery life/antiskip is...

and even then, the future for portables is either in much smaller +usable MDs, or much higher capacity HD players like the iPOD

 

[Buddha]

Quote:

and even then, the future for portables is either in much smaller +usable MDs, or much higher capacity HD players like the iPOD [/B]

Not so sure about that...

Consider this...
1) Every computer will soon have a cdrw drive.
2) The cost of recordable cd media is just a few cents now.
3) If you want high quality repproduction your cd/mp3 player can still play your master discs without any atrac (minidisc) or mp3 (hdd players) compression.

MD and HDD players are desirable toys for those who can afford them. Mp3/cd is the format of the proletariat.

 

[utdeep]

Honestly,
I don't care how slim the 350 is if it has optical out I will grab it ASAP for use with my minidisc player. Minidisc beats the crap out of cd players (even mp3 cd players) in terms of size (stick an mp3 cd player in your pocket? even at 16.7mm thats not likely), battery life (50 hours on ONE AA for Sony R700 vs 20 for the 350). Although 700 megs of mp3 files is nice, having 2 and a half hours on a minidisc (LP2) is decent as well. The media for MP3 CD is cheap, but that's not a criteria for me.... the $1.50 for a rewritable minidisc that doesn't seem like it could ever get scratched is great!

MP3 CD is fantastic but for active use and battery life, I'm definately a minidisc convert. I just hate having to record in realtime with MD though...
I definately think both MP3 CD and MD can coexist and have their uses.

 

[Vertigo-1]

Honestly, the realtime recording "drawback" of MDs I think is WAY overrated. I mean how many of you are seriously, extremely irked by it in that after you experience it, you'd want to give up MDs right away the next day? It has never, ever bothered me, all I do is just pop in an MD and hit synch record and just come back in an hour. The hour is over before I know it.

 

[utdeep]

Vertigo-1,
You're right, but my first audio device ever was a Rio 300. I never owned a CD Player, cassette player or anything. Having only 32 Megs of memory made me appreciate how easy it was to upload and download songs into that little device before my morning runs. The same benefits happened with my Nomad, Nomad II, Rio 500... despite the abundance of memory (had a whopping 192 with my Rio 500), I really enjoyed having the ability to pick out a distinct 2 hours of music in 5 minutes.
Now, with my Sony R700 I have to do everything in realtime so I don't have the luzury of picking out what I want when I feel like it without the realtime recording. However, I still enjoy being able to carry 2-3 disks with me whereever I go. With solid state mp3 players, you were stuck with what you had until you loaded some new mp3s from your PC (128 meg smartmedia cost $199!!!).
My only beef with MP3 CD players is the size... and thats something that they can't take care of.... although the small cd (ie minicd) models are nice. I think that the dataplay models coming out next year (MD sized 500 meg disk models) will be pretty cool.

I'm still crossing my fingers for an optical out on the 350.

 

[eru]

before I had iRiver2, I already had all my mp3s to burned to cd.. The time it takes to record onto the MD is not my beef... it's the trobule of making a good playlist. I keep my cd player in my messenger bag all the time so I don't mind the size at all.

-eru

 

[thomas]

Quote:

MD and HDD players are desirable toys for those who can afford them. Mp3/cd is the format of the proletariat.

i'm sure the iriver 350 will also be very expensive.... metal lid, LCD remote, thin nimH/li-ion rechargeables...plus extra $$$ for the sweet design (comming from a D-ej01 owner

)... it will definately be priced in line with mid-range MD or HD based players... And if you don't have a CD burner, then it would be as expensive as the best MD/HDs...

I've never found the need for a CD burner- there's no important data to back up, i can ask my friends to burn me computer/DC games, and MP3s can be recorded to MD... I could see people choose MP3 cd players as a low cost choice, like those $50 koss players (not to be confused with Koss headphones), but i doubt iriver will be cheap...

Quote:

The time it takes to record onto the MD is not my beef... it's the trobule of making a good playlist

Well, isn't it just as hard to make a good playlist on MD, redbook CD, or MP3 cd?

Actually, if anything, i see the advantage with MD again, as you can rearrange all the tracks on the disc at any time, and you can randomly delete/replace/add single songs without erasing the whole disc... So if there's a song you don't like on your playlist, out it goes, in goes a new one, you don't need to erase the disc and start all over again, as you would have to do with CDRW....


Quote:

I think that the dataplay models coming out next year (MD sized 500 meg disk models) will be pretty cool.

yeah, the technology behind dataplay is pretty cool, though i'm 99.999% sure it will be a complete failure.... First of all, its a copy of MD technology by a small company with much less resources; Sony could easily beat it with a new MD spec, like 1Gb discs which is definately plausible... Also, dataplay will be filled with copy protection scemes, stuff that forces you to pay per play, "unlock" songs, severely restricting recording/computer transfers, etc... MD will still be better, as it was created in a day when the record industry was not _______.

 

[utdeep]

I agree with some of what you said, but lets not forget here that Sony came up with the MD format. They're the guys trying to force SDMI and copyrights on MP3s (they'd be dumb not to), and they've already crippled minidisc. If Sony had allowed MDs to become a traditional data disk it would have easily killed off zip disks and replaced those floppies (another Sony innovation that should have been replaced a while ago)... there could've been MD drives on every computer and we could transfer atrac files instead of realtime encoding.
Dataplay will be better for only one reason.... those awesome crazy Korean companies who will totally ignore any copy protection scheme!!! Woohoo! MD is tooooo regulated. I like Sony a lot, but they're stuck between a rock and a hard place in terms of creating good digital audio products and enforcing copyrights.