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Music Media

MP3/MD Combo Player 152

Posted by justin++ from the books-on-tape dept.
egnarts writes "Drag and drop mp3's to your minidisc, and better still generate voice overs from text. See zdnet for the story " Interesting. Every time I start thinking MD is dead, something happens to it. I wonder how successful this will be. Text-to-Voice could be quite useful.
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MP3/MD Combo Player More

MP3/MD Combo Player

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  • Did anyone come across the battery life for any of these things? It doesn't say on ZDnet or the homepage [sharp-usa.com] for the player as far as I can tell.
  • This sounds like it could be a very popular MP3 player - the manufacturers already have many different styles of Minidisc hardware available, so their engineering cost should be much smaller & be more refined than if they were starting from scratch.

    How many minutes of MP3 can a Minidisc hold, anyway?
  • http://www.sharp-usa.com/new/index.html [sharp-usa.com]

    15 hours or 7.5 hrs record with AA, 12 hr playback with NiMH rechargable.
  • From reading the article, it looks like the MP3s, or whatever, get converted into the Minidisc's sound format then stored on the disc. They don't get stored in their native formats.

    This is kind of disappointing. I always thought the minidiscs were kind of cool, especially after I saw STRANGE DAYS [imdb.com], but I want to be able to use them as data diskettes, not proprietary sound format diskettes.

    Oh well, there's always the CDR MP3 discman that showed up a few weeks ago...

    Jon Acheson
  • So I was wondering whether or not it stores MP3s on the minidisc (the atrac system has a fixed bitrate of 256 kbs, IIRC). Ifso, that'd be great. At 256, mp3s kick ATRAC's ass! (at 128, mp3s are slightly worse than ATRAC, IMHO). However, I suspect that the software is just a glorified format converter.

    I tried to check the website or call sharp, but the site is of course all glitz, and 1800 BE SHARP
    seems specially designed to keep you from actually speaking to anyone. Why do they have those systems? Do they think that by pissing me off, I'm more likely to buy their products?

    Anyway, end of rant. If anyone can answer my question, I'd be grateful.
  • You can purchase the add-on equipment to make it compatible with ANY Sharp MD portable.

    Unfortunately, I can't find the link that allows that purchase just yet.

    That REALLY needs to happen soon. I want this on my MT831.
  • thanks. now for the $250... guess it's time to sell the other kidney...
  • From what I hear, MDs are huge in Japan. The impression I got was that CDs are history over there, while MDs are everywhere. I was also told that CDs were huge in Japan while North America was still using tapes. Take from that what you will....

  • Or is it just a software package which will let you decode mp3's onto your MD player?

    The article doesn't even imply that the product converts text to speech on the fly, and there isn't much to say that it stores MP3s, only that the software allows you to manage and play MP3s.

    To do this Sharp has teamed up with Voquette to bundle its NetLink software. This will let you download, record and manage Internet audio files and create personalised playlist. The software will also let you convert text into voice. These playlists can then be recorded onto MiniDiscs for playback on the MD player.

    The pricepoint seems pretty average for an MD player too. Does anyone have a link to the product on Sharp's site?

  • Before you say that MD is dead, try a day as a sound technician. MiniDisc is your friend. One small disc, not hundreds of CDs all over the place. Ability to edit at 1/75 sec resolution (anything more, and it just becomes too clumsy -- try to do editing on any PC program...) and good enough sound quality (yeah, yeah, it sounds different for classical music -- I don't care) -- in short, MD isn't dead. It's wonderful.

    /* Steinar */
  • I think the MD had a chance once, to have been the "next floppy" (as well as zip, ls120 etc) but they blew it. It has never been a data-format really. Losers.
  • Sony intended to make minidisc-data drives from the start, but it was never done... I really wonder why, as the 140meg disks would probably have been a huge hit since they were several years ahead of zip or ls120. Wonder what Sony was thinking there. Anyway, Sony's own ATRAC compression that allows to store 74 minutes on 140 megs is similar to mp3 and I don't see the deal with halving the bitrate and quality just to say that it's mp3 instead of ATRAC. In the end I don't even see what's the deal with storing mp3s on a 140 meg disk anyway! Think big like Compaq!
  • Product Info From Sharp [sharp-usa.com]

    Funny that they would write about in the UK when it's supposedly only available in the US.
  • Did anyone else notice that the only way you can connect this to your computer is through a PC Card? I didn't find any reference to any other options...

    Granted, you can put a PC Card interface in a desktop, but that's more money spent trying to talk to the thing.

    Hey, Sharp! How about USB, Firewire, or Ethernet?

  • I love my MD player, and the only reason that I haven't gotten a portable MP3 player is because there's just not a big enough advantage over MD, either in size or in fancy-pantsness of the technology. So far, it's been a cumbersome process to pipe data out onto MDs.

    I guess Sony has realized that MDs are going to die without being reinvented, or at least do more than take out full-page ads in Urb for a decade at a time. Hopefully, this will help. (And it's sure a hell of a lot cheap than flash RAM.)
  • All this does is decode the MP3 and record it onto the minidisc, so you get the native capacity of a minidisc. You can get either 74 or 80 minute mindiscs, but the 80s are kinda expensive.

    I don't see the big deal about this, I already do this a lot. I just use xmms and record the MP3s onto my MD. $2 for 74mins for a MD versus $100 for another $64MB memory for a Rio? You make the call.
  • MD is far from dead. The media's getting cheaper and more people are using it every day. Check out minidisc.org [minidisc.org] for info.

    I can't begin to tell you how convenient it is to have a portable digital recording device. Yes, that's right RECORDING device. It amazes me that noone ever mentions this in their comparisons to the MP3 players. Show me an MP3 player that you can take to a concert, or into the studio, or out into the world to record with. Uh, they don't exist? Right.

    And FYI, MD data discs have existed for a very long time. We use them in our 4-track Tascam minidisc recording deck. They're available in any decent music store.

  • It holds 74 minutes of audio

    Personally I don't even think this item is newsworthy. Let's be realistic, mp3's aren't being stored in data form but in MD's native audio formt. So, by my calculations, I'd say that this has been possible ever since MD's were introduced. Bleh, another company trying to jump on the mp3 bandwagon.

  • The impression I get from reading the product pages is that the text-to-voice feature consists of a software synthesizer, which produces audio files that are then sent to the MD, which seems a poor use of storage space. Has anyone found anything to the contrary?

    What I'd like to see is a reader that I can dump nice, low-bandwidth raw text files into, so I can listen to articles, Gutenberg etexts, or whatever, while driving, washing dishes, etc. It doesn't seem like it would be too difficult at first glance, but I may be overestimating the state of the art in speech synthesis. How well do the reading machines for the blind do it?

  • Glorified format converter, unfortunately. But you've got to start somewhere.
  • Hmm? Have you tried comparing to ATRAC 3.5? MiniDisc isn't quite a standing-still format, so you'd have to have a recorder that is less than 2 years old to make a fair comparison. I have seen comparisons of people claiming that their newest MD player/recorder was better than 256kbps (neither you nor they mentioned the encoder, it makes a difference in MP3 quality)

    This idea is possibly a good one, as current MP3 players are overpriced garbage shackled to Wintel, and uses ludicrously priced Flash upgrades. Why pay 80$ for a 64MB flash cart for !~60 minutes or 128kbps when an MD recordable costs nearly 2$ for 72 minutes, and the player/recorders cost as much as a good MP3 player? For portable applications, the surrounding noise should mask any noticible artifacting either way.
  • I could well be wildly off the ball with this one, but in the dim and distant past (when MD was released) I remember someone asking Sony how much computer data would go on an MD. They said 100 Mb.

    But then that was years ago...
  • Well before Iomega launched its popular but hazardously flawed ZIP product line, Sony announced a portable MD data drive for laptops. The device could access something like 270 MB of data, and at the then-market price of US$15-18 per disc, it should have been a killer. There were several MD data formats slated for rollout: read-only, random access, and a hybrid that had read-only and space for writing.

    Imagine what things would have been like if this line had actually become popular, all those years ago? Pocket players using MD to store games, and your place in them. Digital cameras, voice recorders, and PDAs using mass storage smaller than a floppy, with the stability and speed of an optical format and was random access, to boot.

    Before you think putting MP3s on MD is a no-brainer, consider this: in an era where laptop drives were under 1/2 gigabyte and single-speed CD writers (not even rewriters) were still priced over US$1000, the market went for "click-of-death" instead of these downright sexy little discs.

    That reminds me, I need to go rent Strange Days again.
  • Sony presented a prototype of a 650MB data MiniDisc on the IFA, a german consumer electronics show, this september. They intend to use it for MPEG1 Video on MD (interesting, eh?), but who says your can't use it for mp3 as well? 8-) 11 CD-DA's on one MD!

  • A 74-minute minidisc is about 120 MB, so assuming a 128kbit MP3, you can fit about two hours. I don't know, however, that this is such a great idea. I mean, the quality of music on a minidisc is really great, I can't tell the difference between my CD's and my MD's. For an extra 45 minutes, you're sacrificing a small amount of quality, but a large amount of compatability, I'd imagine. How's my Sony MD recorder going to behave when it finds an MP3 on a MD? I think it's a cool concept, but this is a bad way to do it. Unless they can come up with a foolproof way to "hide" the MP3 tracks, they're going to ruin compatability. Who knows, maybe I'm wrong? This would be very cool if it works.


    -David Ziegler
    -dziegler@hotmail.com
  • Hrm. I dunno. I bought the newish aiwa (w/ the blue back light remote control on the headphones and 40 hours batt life) recorder/player, and Esp on massive attack's deep bass voice-overs, I thought I heard quite clear artifacts of compression. Could be my imagination tho. Used the optical cable, so digital transfer all the way.

    But BTW, a question about ATRAC:Do all ATRAC implementations compress the same bitstream identically?Is it merely a file format, like MP3, or an algorithm for generating that file format?

    What's I'm looking for is an excuse to blame the cheap (presumably) encoder in my aiwa and be able to rest assured that professional equipment would do a better job (not that I'd go through the hassle -- the quality is still quite acceptable -- but I'd like to know it's there).

    Johan
  • Good call. I've had my MD-MS702 for awhile now, and use it every so often. More for recording concerts, tho... ;-)

    An add-on product would be kinda neat, and possibly add value to other manufacturers MD players...
  • this device sounds very interesting, and as an avid MD user myself, i'd like to see exactly what its functionality includes. but i've got another questions:

    is there an MD-based device that can be used on a personal computer to directly read tracks (digitally) from MD to the hard drive? (like "ripping" an AIFF or WAV from a CD-ROM drive)

    i'm a DJ, and i use MDs a lot to record sets (both live and in the studio). it would be a godsend to be able to record and edit tracks on the MD and then copy them to the harddrive for CD-mastering. (especially if the track information could be relayed). currently i'm just recording through my audio ins, which requires doing the track layouts and editing all over again -- a HUGE hassle, as this is MUCH easier to do on MD than on the computer.

    i know that an MD-data drive exists, but the MD manufacturers, keen on their closed standards, ensured that data MD-drives cannot read audio-MD disks (and vice-versa). (i won't get into bitching about this -- slashdot users are more than familiar with how closed standards harm consumers).

    so does anybody have any information on this? perhaps this new device from Sharp might even save the day? (of course, that is if there's software for it available under Linux or MacOS).

    - j
    ---
    "The only guys who might buy [the Apple iBook] are the kind who wear those ludicrous baggy pants with the built-in rope that's used for a belt." - John C. Dvorak, PC Magazine
  • I might be wrong on this, but a MD can hold about 160MB of data - it uses ATRAC compression (the native MD audio format) to hold 74 minutes of music. If this player reads mp3s natively, I might just be tempted to get one. If it takes the mp3 stream and compresses it again (with a loss of sound quality - mp3 and ATRAC are both lossy compression formats) than it doesn't seem worth the bother, I'd be just as happy with an MD player/recorder and a CD player with a digital output.
  • Okay, just so you know I'm not asleep at the switch, I saw the "Voquette" device. I can't find any info on what kind of interface it has. USB? It might be... They certainly allude to connecting it to a PC, and it's software is what's going to be doing the text-to-speech grunt work. It'll be on the minidisc as audio. For some reason, I was assuming otherwise. Oh, well.

    What I was looking at was the Sharp MD-X8 system [sharp-usa.com], which is a bookshelf system, and only offers a PC Card interface!

    I might forgive a discman-type device that interface, but a (relatively) stationary unit? Please.

    I can't find any definative information on the interface of this Voquette device. Anyone have any ideas? Find anything I missed?

  • Sony unveiled their 650MB MiniDisc digital video recorder at COMDEX (information at C|Net's COMDEX coverage)... it would be nice to see an equivalent version of the high capacity MD as an audio MD. Sony also has a consumer MiniDisc deck that would connect up to a PC via a serial port and digital or analog out to record and send the TOC track and disc names to the device, which then writes it out to the disc. What I would like to see is a iLink/FireWire version of a 650MB Data/Audio MD... that would be able for use with ATRAC and MP3 audio and MPEG videos.

  • Text-to-speech for Linux (Score:3)

    by Ledge Kindred ( 82988 ) on Tuesday November 16, 1999 @07:36AM (#1528633)
    A little offtopic, but insanely cool:

    Festival [ed.ac.uk]

    It's something of a hassle to get set up (there are a few software dependencies that you might have to get working first) but once it's going, it's unbelievable. It does stuff like real-time text-to-speech that lets you decide to either have the software "speak" the text directly or write it out as a sound file, "pluggable" voice databases so you can plug in your own phoneme samples that the software will speak with, a scheme-based scripting language and all kinds of other nifty things. Oh yeah, and it is distributed under an X11-style license.

    It does a remarkably good job of figuring out how to pronounce words. It's obviously computer-generated, but nonetheless very understandable. The pluggable voice databases is possibly the coolest part, but I've not yet put the effort into figuring out how difficult a new database would be to create/set up.

    I think somewhere out there is even a Festival script that gets and speaks the latest /. headlines. Now if only we could get a CmdrTaco voice database for it....

    -=-=-=-=-

  • I've found that my optical link between my computer and my MD recorder works just fine. The card was cheap ($79) and allows me to record any audio from my computer on my MD recorder.


    Is this what this what the hardware that is bundled with the "Internet MiniDisc" player is, or does it use the analog 1/8" jack?

  • The way I see it, its one of the few high-quality, portable audio formats that can be recorded onto. Its great for recording a live concert, or recording a lecture.

    I know everyone is shouting about how MP3 players are better than MD players, but what most people don't realize is that yes, one MD disc only holds 74 minutes of music, but its really easy to pack 5 or 6 discs with your player, and have quite a bit of listening time.

    It comes down to a question of cost and portability. Unless you have a laptop with a huge HD that can re-d/l to your MP3 player, MD is a better portable solution. And at an average cost of $200 for a recorder/player, it beats the pants off a 64mb MP3 player, or even a 96mb player. Plus, as others have pointed out, $2 for another 74 minutes of listening time is damn cheap compared to a 32mb SmartMedia card (and you don't get the same amount of music).

    I own both portable MP3 players and MD devices. My Sharp MD recorder/player is much more useful.


    But thats just my take. ;-)
  • MD is selling like crazy in Japan. I'm not too sure about the European market, but I never am sure with them on any product. It's failing in the states because it was kind of shoved into a niche market. It is better than tape, but too expensive. Worse than CD, and still too exensive. I won't buy production MD's because there is no reason to. I have a CD player with digital outs and can dump a CD down to MD easier than I can rip it to MP3. As far as sound goes, MD started as "almost CD" quality but after a couple generations of reworking, it is now "close to perfect CD". I love them and hope that Sony finishes the HD-MD soon so it may get a good push. Sharp is also working on theri own version of a HD-MD that stores 740 megs of data. I use my MD all the time, it's just too cool. Editing your CD? Never thought I would miss it until I had it. I also use MD instead of DAT for music performances. Try doing random track jumps with a DAT player.
  • From what I hear, MDs are huge in Japan. The impression I got was that CDs are history over there, while MDs are everywhere.

    Yes, MDs are huge in Japan, but not at the expense of CDs... at least not last year. The MD has, however, entirely replaced the cassette tape as the portable medium of choice.

    MDs are also rapidly becoming very popular in Europe, portable MD players are selling like hotcakes. Prerecorded MDs are in short supply though: MDs are used almost exclusively for copying CDs, legally (for own use) and otherwise.

    Cheers,
    -j.

  • you get to go for hayrides around the barn

  • Re:MiniDiscs (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    For starters, check out the Xitel Storm Platinum. It has A3D 2.0 and a fiber optic digital out. I got mine for $80 with a set of bitchin' speakers (they're billed as force-feedback, but it's really more like a subwoofer in a headphone, but I digress). The fiberoptic interface plugs in nicely to my 3.5 year old Aiwa AM-F1. The fiber optic interface acts like a line out, so not onlyl can you record mp3, but any sound coming out of your 'puter. PRetty kewl.
  • The whole MP3 -> MD thingie Sharp is toutine has been around for years. I bought a Sharp MS702 a few years ago and there was an option to buy a linkup to my PC that would allow a digital dump. The ad at the time was throwing it as your "internet music" tool and when I talked to a rep he told me that it did more than dump MP3's out, it would dump all audio out. I'm assuming that it was all audio that was processed by the CPU since a lot of the CD drives have the direct link to the sound card.

    What I think is new is the voice thing. I don't ever remember hearing about that one before today.

  • Where MD really shines is in the portables. You can get portable recorders that are barely bigger than the discs (2.5 inch square) themselves and high bitrate) MP3's.

    CD-R is great. The media is certainly cheaper than MD. CD sounds better than MD. But it is record-once, and portable playback units, by necessity of the media size, are about 4 times as big as MD units. My MD player runs 12 hrs. on a single AA, it displays album and song titles, and it fits in my shirt pocket. I like it.

    Betamax was DOA. MD, however, is extremely poplular in Japan, with sales of pre-recorded MD's outpacing even CD's. That ensures a long life even here, where it is less popular. Just my .02

  • This doesn't look very exciting - based on the system requirements, it looks like it's just a portable MD recorder bundled with MP3 management software, with the various supported sound formats just played through your soundcard and recorded (analogue) by the MD recorder. You can do this with any MD recorder out of the box. The text-to-speech function of the software looks pretty cool, but, again, there are other solutions that offer this functionality. Looks like they're charging $250USD for the prestige of having the word "Internet" on the box.

    How many minutes of MP3 can a Minidisc hold, anyway?

    Based on my assumption above, this device doesn't hold MP3 at all, just re-records it into ATRAC format, so it holds ~74 minutes in stereo, ~148 minutes in mono.
  • Betamax had something to lose to (VHS). What has MD lost to? MP3 players? Come on, give me a break! Ever seen the media cost of those? Must been something I haven't heard of before...

    /* Steinar */
  • Minidiscs are just as good without mp3-support.

    The sound quality on the minidisc isn't more cd-quality than the quality of mp3s. Why store mp3s on a minidisc, when you can store music on it the normal way?

    Storing mp3s on a minidisc instead of regular music doesn't gain you anything. You can't have more music on a minidisc just because you choose to store it in mp3 - and the quality doesn't get better either.

    The only thing that would make that part more atractive would be if they increased the amount of data that can be stored on the discs...

    The voice-thing does sound cool though ;)
  • Now, why would you want to store MP3s on MiniDisc? I saw a test of ATRAC (the compression used on MD) vs. MP3 once, and ATRAC (even in the early `version' it was in then) came out as the winner.

    Sounds like a weird product to me, perhaps I should read the article? ;-)

    /* Steinar */
  • No you can't. It has to be a "Voquette Enabled" mini-disk player. Looking at a page on Voquette's site [voquette.com] they say : "Automatically record your playlists onto Voquette enabled devices."

    Kinda sucks... any one want a portable MD player? Mine's about to go onsale for about... oh, how's $240 sound? =)

  • It's only not seling well in the US, maybe because people like walkman (tape) here... I got 2 MD walkman myself, and I hardly ever use my discman anymore now.

  • MD is coming in NOW (Score:3)

    by Ryandav ( 5475 ) on Tuesday November 16, 1999 @08:28AM (#1528653) Homepage Journal
    I've been doing this for the last month since I picked up a Sharp 722 for $200 bucks from minidisco.com. There is no end of the advantages to having MD over plain old mp3 player.

    * everytime you want a new song or want to tweak the contents of your MD, you have to reload the whole thing. I feel like a new playlist, I just pop in a new disk.

    *Easily dump cd's, mp3s, voice, or mic to the MD. Everything you can dump to a mp3 player.

    * MD is standardized. No worries about what nastiness the RIAA can cook up.

    * similar battery capacity and size of current mp3 players.

    Now that the price for portables has dropped quite a bit, I really think MD's gonna start heading into the mainstream in america. They're insanely popular in japan, and have been for awhile.

  • Hi Peter.. i would like to get some information about the sound card you are using to dump audio to your md recorder..i am looking for something like this but all i can find are high end professional cards.. cheers, nitin@dccnet.com
  • How do you connect to your PC? What type of cable do you use between the MD and your PC? What's xmms?
  • ---- begin cut and paste ---

    What hardware is required? I imagine i need a sound card w/ optical out, but your site says nothing about how your technology interfaces with the computer or portable player.

    Can I record saved MP3 files from my hard disk onto an MD player with your software?

    What Mini-Disc players are "Voquette Enabled"?

    What does it mean to be "Voquette Enabled"... is it merely a company endorsement or is there some kind of special firmware required to be present on the portable device for you to be able to record onto it?

    Also, your feedback form is broken. It complains that "all fields must be filled in" even when they already are.

    --- end cut and paste ---

    I'll let everyone know if they reply...
  • I miss 8-track!!
  • OK. So some of the answers were on the web site...

    http://www.sharp-usa.com/inte rnetminidisc/create.html [sharp-usa.com]

    Also, if you look at the image on http://www.sharp-usa.com/inter netminidisc/index.html [sharp-usa.com] you see some sort of special black box with the Voquette logo on it. So there's some bundled hardware...

    Also, the Voquette softare looks decidedly Win98-ish.

  • MD vs MP3 (Score:3)

    by jivany ( 101917 ) on Tuesday November 16, 1999 @09:06AM (#1528666) Homepage

    As the proud owner of a Sony MZ-R50 portable MD recorder and a Sony MDS JE510 home MD deck, and someone with a 3GB+ collection of MP3s and over 220 CDs, I can say that MD rocks!

    Find me a portable MP3 player that fits in your jeans pocket and holds 74 minutes of CD quality music. I haven't yet.

    CDs portables are too bulky to transport and you can get a MD recorder for the price of a good anti-skip portable CD player.

    Not only are MD recorders getting smaller and better battery life, they have a standard media that you can swap any time. I can carry my MD player in one pocket and 4 MD in the other. And with the battery life on just the rechargeable, I can listen to all of those MDs a couple times before my battery dies.

    If I want to listen to MP3s I just copy them onto a MD via my JE510. Excellent. Get a sound card with an optical out and your talking digital copying to your MD.(Xitel Storm Platinum is an example)

    MD is far from dead. Get your mind out of the US centric world and take a look at Europe and Japan. More MD units are sold in Japan than any where else in the world and they obviously sell, other wise why would new units be made? Check out the new Sony MZ-R90. It's only millimetres larger than an MD and only two MDs thick. And it has a battery life of something like 30 hours.

    MD is much more versatile than MP3 and until MP3 units are able to store in the region of 128MB, I won't be buying one.

  • Okay, here is what I want to do: I want to get what I have on my minidiscs burnt onto CD's. What is the best way to do this which preserves the track info? If there were MD drives (like IDE or SCSI) available, then it would be simple.
    * Stereo component CDR's are no good cuz they can't detect track endings (AFAIK).
    * Feeding the sound in through a sound card makes me weary because of the noise that might be picked up, and I'd have to manually split up the tracks.

    Anybody know of a good way? Looks like others also want a way of getting MD tracks onto their hard drives for one purpose or another, it's amazing that there really doesn't seem to be any way to do it at this point. Please tell me different! :)
  • MDs are great and all, but if you're not starting up your own in-home hi-tech audio studio on an unlimited kevin-shields kind of budget, if you just want to play stuff back, why use any sort of removable media? mp3s are fine for just listening--so what i await are small firewire hard drives that have a very simple player attached, or maybe one that's compatible with any range of other devices. plug it in to firewire, download a few gigs of mp3s and hit the road. the VST drives [vsttech.com] are getting close to the right size, and notebook ones are getting smaller all the time. and honestly, if i can carry gigs of music in one package in a bulky coat pocket, i'll be happy. ...not like it has to be palm-sized or anything.

    forget mini discs, i wnat the mini drives.

  • Now you can purchase a Sharp Internet MiniDisc bundle or you can create your own Internet MiniDisc solution by purchasing any Sharp MiniDisc digital recorder/player and the VOQ-070201/MD package separately.

    I know next to nothing about MD players, but since Voquette apparently works with *all* Sharp recorder/players, what would prevent it from working with *any* MD recorder/player (such as Sony, Aiwa, etc.)?

  • yeah, okay...how would you power a full scale hard drive on the go?

    back to the source of the original article, batteries [zdnet.co.uk] from zdnet uk.

    just as an aside, if i were an investing man, i'd be checking out who has what on tap for batteries of the future. it's going to be a huge niche...

  • If anyhitng MD in on the upswing. All the hype is long over and prices are falling like stones. Sony's new midd-line portable MD recorder is cheaper than a WM-D3 (about USD $280) pro recording walkman. MD may not be quite up to CD quality but it kicks the crap out of casette tape, and adds tittleing and randon access to boot. As for MD as a storage media for data, it;s been done. You can even still get the things. Problem was speed. They used 2x MD drives...an MD holds about 250meg or so, pretty good for it's size, but not mind blowing, and at 2x it took almost 30min to read/write a disk. Not impressive Also MD's develop errors after about 300-500 re-writes, not fabulous for a data media, but well above average for a music media. AS far as i know no one has tried with faster mechanisms since Sony's failed attempts. If you need portable recoding with good quality MD is cheaper, easier to deal with and more affordable than tape.

    PS, anyone know where i can get a Hyper-beta pro deck for less than $5000?

  • Nasty, lossy, horrid little thing. Great if sound quality is not the primary concern, but otherwise...still, it's a new toy, so maybe...

    What I can't understand is why there was never (and AFAIK is still not) a PC-type MiniDisk drive - approx 300Mb of re-writable storage for 10 quid a throw, they'd have walked all over Iomega.
  • I personally belive that MD is nifty, but not nifty enough. I like plain ol' CDs these days seeing as I don't have to buy new hardware to listen to the same music. Some mention that prices are falling like a stone, well, you look at the price for an NES these days? It's dropping because its... lets say it together folks... ob... so... lete! Oh well. I could be wrong. I didn't think... and still don't think... DVD is gonna last.


    If you think you know what the hell is really going on you're probably full of shit.
  • Don't get me wrong, I love my MD. It's far better than a wimpy Rio and there's some advantages that nothing can compare with:

    Even if you had discman that didn't skip, it'd still be pretty large. An MD player and a few MDs is nothing in your pocket.

    You CANNOT beat the versatility of recording on a MD. Add, Delete, Combine, Seperate, Move... even the fact that the tracks have name is nice change from CDs where you have to listen to listen to a second or two.

    I record easily from CD or MP3, all digitally; the only source of loss is from the ATRAC compression of the MD recorder. And although it only compresses to 1/5 of the size (opposed to 1/12 or whatever with MP3s) even my audiophile friends can't tell the difference (ATRAC has come a long way). The only problem is that MDs have some silly protection that only allow one generation of digital copying (SCMS). I've never had that problem with my MP3s, though.

    MDs are cheap! I get 10 packs for $25. I'm sure if I was really stingy I could find 'em cheaper on the net too.

    Finally, MDs just look cool! Holding a MD makes me feel like I'm Tom Cruise guarding the NOC files or something high-tech and futuristic. Okay, okay, I'm a geek.

    But, especially with that 4.3 GB MP3 player coming out soon, I kinda doubt MD players will go past being a novelty toy. It's only a matter of time before MP3 players shrink to comparable size and incomparable storage. I hope I'm wrong, but I have a feeling I'm not. But until then, I most definitely am enjoying my MD player (A Sharp 722, BTW).

  • Sharp's Press Release [sharp-usa.com] has all the spin-doctored details. They've also has a web page [sharp-usa.com] dedicated to it. You can buy it now. (Anyone know if they're actually shipping?)

    Apparently the Voquette [voquette.com] software is the key to all of this. It will allow you to easily put mp3s and Internet audio streams onto any recording medium. They're selling a cassette recorder deal very similar to Sharp's offering. A salvation for those of you without a CD player in your car and no CD-R burner. ;)
  • What they are showing is the MDMS-15... That is just the a cost reduced version of the MDMT-821. There is nothing special about that recorder.

    from Shar p's page [shopping-today.com] on the topic...

    Sharp® MiniDisc Products
    Voquette Software and Minidisc Combo.
    Item Number MDMT15VG

    Features
    Includes MiniDisc MDMS-15 and Voquette Software.

    Price: $249.95

    This sounds like the recorder could be almost anything. Better yet, get the MDMT-831 and you can control the playlists, edit titles, etc. from a docking station that also serves as a charging stand. I then use the optical out on my soundcard to record anything I want, CD, MP3's. Until I get the digital out of my CD player functioning properly, the track marks are being striped when recording CD, but with the ability to edit MD, that isn't a problem.

    Time flies like an arrow;
  • xmms is an MP3 (and more) player for Unix/X11.
    You connect to the MD recorder with analog or digital cables. Best thing is a soundcard with an optical digital out (TOSLink). The only drawback is that no consumer grade soundcard (or professional for that matter) can send track marks, so you either split tracks manually or insert ~3 seconds of silence between tracks so the MD recorder can detect track changes. The sweet thing with xmms is that is has a built-in pause function.
    As Smurphy said, the amount of MD recording space you get for your money beats MP3 hands down. Plus, portable MD recorders/players are cool and sexy, MP3 players are not. (Uuhh , flamebait :)
    For more info see: http://www.minidisc.org
  • Different format... when the MD drives did come out... even if only for a year or so, they used different discs for data. The two were incompatible. I assume for the sake of compatibility, they will keep audio the same, but you may see them introduce a higher density drive.
    Time flies like an arrow;
  • The kit you are talking about was really just soundcard that had optical out... PCMCIA only.

    About halfway down Sharp's page [sharp-usa.com], the AD-AJ1.

    Time flies like an arrow;
  • as i am currently a sound technician at my college as well as the sound technician for two hotels and several production companies, i have found that nothing beats a minidisk when it comes to 'show audio' demands. they are more rugged than cds and the tracks can be rewritten/moved/deleted on a whim. the tracks can also be named which is a tremendous help when trying to run through a set of cues during a large audio sequence. i have also used my linux system to run a show with .mp3s. it looks neat to observers, but then you have to baby the equipment. it is a Bad Thing to get into a sound test and have your hdd crash.
    mostly, i've found that the best way to do a show is to use my laptop to keep track of my cues/levels/counts/etc as well as timing between cues and then to use the minidisk for the sound itself.
    long live the minidisk!
  • Isn't this sharp md just a normal md with a cable to the pc?

    Isn't it just a software that plays the music to be re-recorded into the MD just like as if I'd record it from my CD?

    Why have I waited for the next generation of mp3-players?

    I want it to be able to load my mp3's and files fast (not the parallell port), and fit atleast an our of good quality music.

    But... this sharp thingy is just another md, isn't it? Still moving parts, still compression with loss (cannot be used for data transports). I can't download a file from mp3.com at work, and unload it at home without having to recompress it to mp3 (with loss).

    Or is it just me who just didn't understand the function of the thing?

    Jeez... comeon... uncompress mp3's with winamp/xmms and record it through your soundcard... Hey, I can do that with my cassette walkman aswell!

  • Nope... can't agree.

    I travel a lot, and a 10pack of MDs and my MD player wipe the floor with my Discman, in terms of size convenience and battery life.

    When you're travelling, be it a longhaul flight or the train into work, you really notice that space saving. I can fit my MD player in my pocket, no chance with a Discman.

  • You *are* kdding right?

    Just how do you come up with that? The ATRAC algorithm is far better than MP3. It adapts to the music, so you get quality regardless of classical, hiphop, whatever. Areas where MP3 can fall over - percussion and woodwind etc.

    I have a Sharp MD722. I also encode CDs to MP3 at 256kbps. I know which I'd choose, and it's not MP3.

  • Actually there was a MiniDisc drive for the PC and mac. There's a page on it at Minidisc.org [minidisc.org]
  • From the MD FAQ [minidisc.org]:

    For a stereo signal it's 292162.5 bits/sec. ATRAC compresses 512 incoming 16 bit samples (1024 bytes) into one ATRAC ``sound group'' (212 bytes) giving an audio compression ratio of 4.83:1. Here is the math:

    44100 samples/sec (incoming single channel rate)
    / 512 samples/soundgroup (giving 86.133 soundgroups/sec/channel)
    * 2 channels (giving 172.266 stereo soundgroups/sec)
    * 212 bytes/soundgroup (giving 36.5K stereo bytes/sec)
    * 8 bits/byte (giving stereo bits/sec)
    = 292162.5 bits/sec.

    How does ATRAC compare with MPEG compression? At what bitrate would an MPEG file be equivalent to a song compressed with ATRAC?

    ATRAC is 292kbit/sec, giving ``CD like'' audio fidelity. MPEG Layer 1 (i.e. PASC) gives transparent CD fidelity audio at 384kbit/sec, Layer 2 (i.e. Musicam) and Layer 3 give ``CD like'' fidelity at 224kbit/sec and 128kbit/s respectively. A user has compared ATRAC and MPEG Layer 3 and rates ATRAC far better.

  • this has probably been iterated and reiterated, but for MD to "take off" (if it's not too late) as a viable mp3 format, they need to produce a cheap IDE drive. that way it could be used for data and music.

    that's the one thing that CD's have going for them: cheap drives are available now to write discs that are easily transportable.

    that's another reason things like rios and nomads and other mp3 players are not really worth the $$: you need to plug it into your computer to d/l the stuff, adding memory ain't cheap, and it's not like you can lend your tunes to anyone else unless you lend the whole player!

    sony, get a cheap IDE MD writer to the peeps and bundle it with an equally cheap player. that'll get people's attention. and forget that funky memory stick idea (:

  • FWIW, the reasoning behind this, from what I understand, is that there are shops in Japan where CDs can be rented, and ofcourse, duplicated to MD at home, and returned. I have invested in MiniDisc my self, and have been very pleased with it, even over portable CD players. -ceedub
  • Again... According to Sharp...

    "Now you can purchase a Sharp Internet MiniDisc bundle or you can create your own Internet MiniDisc solution by purchasing any Sharp MiniDisc digital recorder/player and the VOQ-070201/MD package separately."

    That Really tends to indicate to me that the Voquette-Enabled part is a package that adds to a normal product.

    The VOQ-070201/MD package is bundled with the $249 player/recorder that started the post. I'd think it's safe to say it would work with the other MD players (at least other Sharps).

    As far as I can tell, they all use the same remote interface, which can be used to control pretty much everything. At least, the same remotes work with the 700-800 series..



  • The MD-DATA format (yes, it is specced) allows for 140mb of data, not 300.

    You can buy a MD data recorder for PCs if you look rather hard.

  • Of course, the question becomes what exactly the effect of the encoding-decoding-encoding process will have on the sound quality. Since MP3 and MD use different compression schemes (even if they are only mildly different) it seems that MP3 would lose data in a different frequency range than MD (which uses a variable bitrate encoding scheme that loses more data in the midrange since your ears mostly care about treble and base-- I think www.minidisc.org has a link somewhere to the actual encoding description from Sony Labs) you would end up with a pretty limited dynamic range that sounds kinda flat and nasty.

    Other than that, I'm happy to see that companies keep trying with MD's 'cause that just makes it easier for me to find discs for my Sharp MD-722 (battle-worn but surviving much better than my portable CD players ever have-- and it fits in my pocket so I can carry it everywhere :-))
  • One exists now, and has done for years. The other is vapourware for the time being. That's the difference. Yes, I realise the MP3 players will come, but still.

    HD-MD - 6 hours audio. Yes, I want to carry all those MDs with me, so I can have as much or as little music as I like, without having to redownload music into my MP3 player.

    Battery life on a MD is pretty decent too... 15 hours. My Discman used to get 10-12 if I was lucky. Oh, and the MD is only using the internal Li-Ion battery. Mine also allows you to attach an external AA to further increase battery life.

  • It's an open book, like the CD standards...

    Rainbow Book, I believe. ATRAC is algorithm based.

  • Budget? MD722 - reasonably highend for a portable - $200. Pretty comparable to MP3 players.

    I'd love to see the costs of that HDD option.

  • Personally I don't even think this item is newsworthy
    Well put. The MD player isn't playing MP3s directly, it's just playing music like they normally do. (Pity I used up my moderator points yesterday...)
  • MD is much more versatile than MP3 and until MP3 units are able to store in the region of 128MB, I won't be buying one.

    Heh, if you are waiting for 128, then go ahead and by one, most 2nd generation players have 128 megs chips or flash cards...but the cool stuff is the multi-gig stuff. Like the Empeg [empeg.com] and the HanGo Player [pjbox.com]

    I have used both, and both rock.
    -Davidu
  • I've wanted the same thing for some time now.

    My minidisc recorder can export tracks onto my hard drive digitally through my Sound Blaster Live, but the tracks don't get split up, so there's no good way to export to CDR without babysitting the whole process or later splitting up massive WAV files.

    Anyone heard of a software fix?
  • Sound quality is not my primary concern, my primary concern is being able to actually have sound in the speakers, without spending those precious seconds looking for a CD, or find out that the CD is all scratched up. I wonder, what do you use instead? Just plain old CDs? What do you do if your dancers come over to you and ask `could you please remove the verse -- we don't like it'?

    OK, this sounded real professional. I'm no pro at all, not even close ;-)

    /* Steinar */

  • MiniDisc is far from "dead" (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    In order to believe MD is dead, you must deny yourself exposure to the Asian consumer marketplace at large. MD is primarily pushed by Sony, and there exist other backers such as Kenwood and Sharp, all of whom produce nifty, tiny MD players that are typically even smaller than the mp3 players here (notice Asian vs. North American attention to size/convinience).

    Music is sold through retail outlets on CD (in Japan, a lot on MD), and copied onto MD in private collections. Most of my friends here (in N.A.) have MD portable players that they record mp3 audio onto, and subsequently listen to them on the MD decks in their cars.

    This is but a partial substantiation of the fact that MD is gaining a larger audience, in part due to the advance into foreign, third world countries, such as the split russian states...

  • MiniDisc and MP3 audio do not target the same market. Sony is currently busy marketing MD to those who are looking for the next generation Compact Cassette. This includes not juse audiophiles, but DJs and the like. Philips are currently targetting exactly the same market with CD-R (I wonder who's going to win :-). Who are MP3s players going to? People who want their MP3 collection portable. A quite different market segment.

    MiniDisc is taking off (in Australia). Blanks are ~AU$7 each and still falling. I know of at least three friends who are into MiniDisc. I couldn't say that 6 months ago.

    Wade.

  • I know that Sony sells a MD recorder that plugs directly into your serial port. It only works on windows (ugh!) but it supports drag and drop recording from your CD drive(or .wav files I would assume).
  • probably one of the biggest things holding back minidisc is that alot of us are lazy as hell.
    I want to just mount that drive, cp over some .atrac's *faster* than realtime, and be done with it. even if the designers were anal and wouldnt allow copying files off the minidisc and onto your computer i wouldnt care, i just want to get them onto the disk fast, and not worry about titling, or "scheduling" the next dump session of mp3's.
  • Sony already makes a MD player recorder that uses a serial port interface(IIRC). It costs $300 and supports drag and drop from your cd-rom drive. Very cool IMHO and a lot better than this piece of crap that sharp is pushing. I would be able to tell you exactly how cool it is, but I'm too broke.
  • MiniDisc were released for data, seems like ages ago. If you be "nice" if someone came out with this again. I am seriously considering one of these. Also a company offer software with a PC-link to title tracks etc.

    here's some links.
    http://www.minidisc.org --THE Community page
    http://www.minidisco.com --TOSLINK Soundcard and MD's
    http://www.jaran-direct.com -- cool stuff from Japan

  • Your assumptions are correct. 74 mins stereo ATRAC 4th Generation.
  • It's just a minidisc player + some windows software that will 'record' whatever you want onto the MD, possibly in a more automatic fashion.
    ie: it decompresses the mp3, and re-compresses it to MD.

    No big deal. Boring. Ho-hum.
  • You DO have to wait for the entire playback with this unit. This does NOTHING new other than supply some Windows98 shitware to play back the sound. I dont think the original kit even comes with a DIGITAL interface, it just has a 3.5mm piggy back audio cable that plugs into your soundcard and a piggyback ps/2 adapter to control the recording and track mark buttons on the unit. What a useless piece of shitware for a price of a good Sony MD player. Sharp sucks anyway.
  • I respectfully disagree.

    If you use an MD-ROM, then you open up the possibilities of:

    A: Using the device as a laptop drive (cool as shit, I'd *DEFINATELY* get one). It's the same legal loophole that allows the MPMAN to first be sold in the US, since it is more than just an audio playback device, it can be used separately as a data storage device. Of course, with the low prices of MDs (say, in the Asian market) it will actually be *VERY* feasable to use the device as storage alternative.

    B: Better transfer rate. To dump 74 mins of audio via Audio out requires 74 minutes. Even if TosLink supports 2x recording, that's still 30+ mins per disc. How long does it take the USB ZIP drive to copy 100Mbs of files? By copying the data accross and have the device being able to natively decode the MP3 off the disc, it would speed up transfer a lot faster.

    C: No conversion loss. I have a hard time believing that the transfer is lossless. Even though both formats are digital, both are *LOSSY COMPRESSION* formats. Ever opened a compress TIFF, saved it as a JPEG, and repeat the process a few times?

    Minidiscs are cool. Small form factor, virtually indestructable. How many CDs have you scratched? I've washed my Dad's Minidiscs before (oops) and they play perfectly after I dried them out.

    Sony makes Discmans with a PCMCIA adaptor to be used as a CDROM drive, why can't they do the same for Minidisc?

  • If I understand this correctly, they are simply recording MP3,RA,etc onto MD?

    Anyone can plug the output from their sound cards into the input of any portable recording device. The only 'new' thing I see with this is that they have some of the playlist editing capabilities built into a PC program.

    Most MD players with recording capabilities can do the same anyway.

    Another thing to note is that you are converting from the lossy MP3 audio model to the also lossy but different MD audio model. I would assume this would lead to sound quality slightly below the original MP3s.

  • I think the US (and I believe Canada) have some kind of fool tax on recordable audio media that have plagued cassettes for ages and affect minidiscs. Blank MD's here, if you can find them, are at best US$3 apiece, while I've heard that in Japan they sell for the equivalent of US$0.50.

    Apparently, if I remember correctly, the biggest reason for the difference is NOT overseas manufacturing, but rather that the US charges the manufacturers a tax on EACH DISC PRODUCED, to help ASCAP (or whatever that horrid acronym is -- rhymes with "asscrap") avoid the piracy losses derived from people trying to understand why an audio CD that costs $0.23 to press costs the consumer $17.

    My local Tower records actually has a small rack of pre-recorded MD's, and I've noticed that CDNow appears to be starting to stock them. Sony's got a website that sells them for slightly cheaper than the CD equivalent (in most cases). I'd almost be inclined to start buying them, but it's cheaper for me to still buy plainjane CDs, and then if I want to transport them, make a (temporary) digital-to-digital dub from my DVD player to my MD pack.

    Leave it to the US lawmakers to completely screw over great technology in one of the largest consumer markets in the world.


    --
    If it's not important, you can probably find it in...
  • You can tell the difference right out. It screws up classical music significantly. Enough to where the common person can usually tell.
  • ...I used 1/4" two track @ 15ips - the classic Revox B77 - and edits were with razor blades and chinagraph pencil.

    However, last tour I did (a few years ago now) I did the rehearsal playback using my PC and an early version of SAW - then burnt a couple of CDs and toured that.

    Cost of the PC + burner was (and probably still is) less than a B77.

  • MD Data (Score:1)

    by acb ( 2797 )
    Alas, there seem to be no MD Data drives for actual computers; MD Data seems to be only usable as a medium for multitrack recording.

    Btw, how do MD Data discs differ from normal MDs? Is it just a matter of the makers marking them as usable for data and charging 5 times as much for them?
  • Software Audio Workshop. When I used it, it was a 16-bit Win3.1 (please don't shoot, it was a long time ago) stereo HD-recording tool.

    I know there is are many tools like this out there now - some must be available for Linux - but unfortunately (at the behest of my GF) I have a real job now :(

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