[Whitebread]

Don't beat me down for this, I'm not familiar with MD players. Can any MD players play MP3's? If so, what are they? And, what is the capacity, in megabites, of mini disks?

 

[myself, aka me]

No, none can. All recorders can record the audio though. I think they hold 160mb or 140mb.

 

[Whitebread]

iRiver iMP-400, here I come!

 

[Braver]

well, you can ofcourse record MP3 to a minidisc. and NetMD should make it fairly easy to put MP3s on a minidisc.

 

[myself, aka me]

And that's 80 mins of very close to CD quality music..
MD isn't an MP3 player and shouldn't be considered one.. NetMD is a completely different beast.

 

[Whitebread]

Yeah but it's only 80 minutes of close to CD quality music. With the I river, I can have 700 megs of MP3's on one disk encoded at a VBR between 128 and 320 kbps. You figure out how many minutes that is. Mini disc players just don't have the capacity I need. Now, if, or when, the discs move to DVD technology, that's going to create a completely different portable that I would love to have. It would fullfill every one of my criteria and bu a lot smaller than a CD player.

 

[zowie]

I don't think you can record MP3 on a minidisc. I think they go on the disc as ATRAC. I could be wrong.

Soundwise, while MD is not full CD quality, MD players generally sound better than PCDP's. For portable use, I think you'll get overall better sound with MD than CD.

MD blows away every other format for affordable portable recording. To do better, you have to spend 3-4 times more on a DAT (and also lose random access, ability to edit in the recorder, and long-term media stability). I've bought commercial CD's that were recorded on an MD.

The MD v. MP3 sound quality has been debated in other threads (I personally prefer MD).

MP3 of course stomps all over MD for play time.

You gotta choose your priorities is mostly what it comes down to.

 

[Braver]

Quote:

Originally posted by zowie I don't think you can record MP3 on a minidisc. I think they go on the disc as ATRAC. I could be wrong.

true. the recorder will treat the signal as any other audio signal and encode it to atrac "files".

 

[myself, aka me]

Quote:

Originally posted by Whitebread Yeah but it's only 80 minutes of close to CD quality music. With the I river, I can have 700 megs of MP3's on one disk encoded at a VBR between 128 and 320 kbps. You figure out how many minutes that is. Mini disc players just don't have the capacity I need. Now, if, or when, the discs move to DVD technology, that's going to create a completely different portable that I would love to have. It would fullfill every one of my criteria and bu a lot smaller than a CD player.

M'kay, jump for an iRiver then.
"only" 80 minutes.. Bah! anyway... Mp3 vs MD is a dead debate, keep it that way

I can't do that calculation (how many mins) due to it being VBR.
CD players are too big for my needs, and I don't need 700 megs or however many minutes that is.

Besides, 74/80 mins is perfect for a mix

Gawd i'm almost contradicting myself.. I don't get whats so difficult about switching a disc every 74 mins/80 mins anyway..

Anyway, those are your priorities, go for the iRiver then

 

[Whitebread]

I don't have a problem with switching discs.

Here's my problem, if I were to get a MD, I'd have to record all my CD's onto mini discs. Because I can't stand the bad quality of the compression, I'd have to go for the best quality the MD can do. On that setting, I'd only get about 1 CD worth of musc on 1 disc. So, I'd need to buy and carry about 100 mini discs around and I'd have to record 100 of them. I'm sorry but ripping all those CD's is bad enough, I don't want to have to record them onto mini discs and that's just putting all those CD's I have ripped to waste. Plus, with the MP3CD player, I can fit 5 to 6 CD's worth of audio onto 1 cd at better quality than the highest form of compression the MD offers. At that setting, it'll hold 4 CD's.

For me, the iRiver is just better. Don't get me wrong, I love the fact that MD's are small but it's just not worth the extra work. As I said before, when Md's come out based on DVD technology, then I won't hesatate to buy one.

And I know MP3CD players can't compare to MD in terms of quality. Plus the MP3CD is cheeper.

 

[Whitebread]

Lemme put it to you this way.

If you can find me an MD player that meet the following criteria then I'll get it.

Must have LCD remote
Must have EQ (Not crappy bass boost thing and not pre-selected junk, just a 2 or more band eq that I can change myself)
Must be able to record at least 2 CD's worth of music that sounds as good or better than a CBR MP3 encoded at 256kbps.
Must let me record the MP3's on my HD to the MD player
Must let me sort music by artist and album and must let me change name. It would be best if the player or software could just use the file name(from computer) of the song name that the player would display.
Must have line out
Must be no more than $200 US

 

[leon]

I think you've already got the answer, hon.

There are trade-offs between formats for all kinds of reasons, and since we're not engineers, it's not our responsibility to suffer your big fat list of musts.

And I'm willing to bet money that some day that DVD-something player of your mental fabrication will come out, and you will have some kind of complaint about it. That's how it goes.

 

[Whitebread]

*Left blank*

 

[Vertigo-1]

Quote:

Originally posted by myself, aka me Gawd i'm almost contradicting myself.. I don't get whats so difficult about switching a disc every 74 mins/80 mins anyway..

I used to think in those terms as well, but I think what it boils down to is not so much as the playback time, but rather the recording time that's inconvient. I'm a perfect model example of somebody that used to be hardcore about MDs, was willing to take the time to record each MD, and live with swapping discs. But now I've discovered I simply don't have time to go recording disc by disc, particularly when my CD collection builds up faster then I can buy MDs. I've made the switch over to MP3/CDs myself as a result of the time inconvience of the recording stage...ironically something I used to argue that I had all the time in the world for.

 

[Whitebread]

Would recording an VBR MP3 (128 to 320kbps) to an MD in LP2 mode decrease sound quality?