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MiniDisc Drives for the PC?
scHarvey asks: "I recently purchased a portable MD player so that I can take mp3s with me where ever I go. I know that the MD format had almost died out until the popularity of MP3s and the cheapness of MD discs brought it back pretty strong. My curiousity was sparked though by the thought of having an internal MD-RW1 in a 3.5 drive on my PC. Has anyone else ever thought of this, and is there a product out there that one can buy off the shelf? I know the discs are a little more expensive than standard CD-RWs, but they are also smaller and in a permanent protective case, and I thought this might be a cool idea."
Just purchased a JVC XM-EX90, which is a little bookshelf-add-on Minidisc recorder unit, it's as high as a minidisc is wide, 7 3/4" wide, and 11 1/2" deep... fits *perfectly* on my computer desk's little side shelf bit.
I've got a 6' Monster Digital TOSLink cable going to my 'puter, and the remote control that comes with the recorder has a built-in QWERTY keyboard for titling.
The 'puter has an 80gb RAID array with my entire CD collection ripped at VBR using GoGo. I was on the RIMPS team (check sourceforge for a copy), so I use that as my web interface to do the jukeboxing / streaming.
Cost:
'puter: You already have it. DOesn't count.
Minidisc recorder: $199 CDN
Long cable: $50 CDN
Minidisc blanks: $4 CDN
(in any Chinatown) for 74
minutes of storage
Sony MZ-F40 AM/FM Player: $199 CDN
Total: Under $500 CDN!
Still sounds a *heck* of a lot cheaper than MP3, doesn't it!
mindslip
You could always modulate data just like a modem does and then record that on the disc.
It won't fit alot of data on the disc this way though. Some 20kB/s would perhaps, but then you might encounter problem with that lossy ATRAC compression.
20kB/s *1024kB/MB * 74min/disc * 60s/min = 86.7MB/disc
Add stereorecording to that and you could fit som 150MB on one disc. Would take 74min to store/retrieve though.
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It's not an mp3 player, but I have a Fuji Finepix digicam that works like this. It uses the USB mass storage driver which mounts up the smart media card just like a scsi disk. I have used it with complete success in Win98, MacOS 8.6 and Linux 2.4 (I got 2.2 to work, but it took some kernel compiling and stuff like that).
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74 min * 60 s/min * 44100 samples/s * 2 bytes/sample * 2 channels * 1/5 = 150MB
just as you suggest. In fact this should be slightly bigger because of additional data such as timestamps and titles (Audio CDs use 1/4 of the data capacity for time codes and such). But you'll get some errors because of the lossy compression. I did this calculation back in '93 or so when I first heard of MD. 150MB on something smaller than a floppy would have been pretty cool at that time.
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What I've seen with some of the portible mini-disk players, is that they doubble as data drives.
l e/ mdwalkmanrtm/pctomd/mz-r37sppc_specs.shtml
I bought my sister a portable MD player for her birthday last year, compleete with a usb cable to transfer mp3's and other computer formats to the drive. It said it could play mp3's, really what it ment was that the software translated mp3's to uncompressed audio tracks and wrote it to the disk. That was the only thing that pissed me off. I digress however.
The cool thing was when I read through the docs, it said that the driver-disk contained drivers that could read and write data to the disk!
I've looked up a few other ones since then, even some parralell port versions, and lots of them do this. The only problem is that I can't find linux drivers for any. I would love to use one of these little things as a replacement for my usb cdrom. here's a link to the MD player I was dealing with, good luck! Maybe an older one with a parrlell port interface would be easier to hack drivers for?
http://www.sel.sony.com/SEL/consumer/ss5/portab
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Of course, anything that removes detail from the sound will degrade its quality. As time has passed, the algorithims employed in the compression have improved, allowing for higher quality.
So, while the compression system does degrade the sound quality, it isn't for anti-piracy reasons. In fact, the first portable Sony unit, the MZ-R1 was one of the few portable MiniDIsc recorders featuring a digital output. There is a MiniDisc technology working against piracy (or fair use): SCMS. The Serial Copy Management System is designed to record in the disc's TOC information on each track's origin. In conjunction with compliant players, SCMS prevents digital copies being made from MiniDisc tracks that were themselves digital copies. Its implementation is essentially the same (and interoperable with) the copy protection system on home audio CD recorders.
MD recorders compress the audio data when recording, so there's obviously some quality degredation there (I've had an argument with someone once about whether MP3s or MDs had higher quality). But I'm not sure if it's for anti-piracy reasons. I think the MD specs include two formats: rewritable formats for recording, and ROMs. ROMs are for commercial MDs where music is sold recorded on to them, like CD's (I've only seen this in Japan though). I've also heard that such ROM disks had some kind of copy-protection scheme, but that's pretty much the extent of my knowledge...
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And I found this web site http://www.maya.cz/minidisc/minidisc/equipment_bro wser.html It lists 6 different minidisc drives from Sony and Sharp.
Perhaps MD will be CD-Rs as 3.5" floppies are to 5" in floppies.
Ian Zink
Unlike some other technologies (*ack*DVD Region Coding*ack* CSS *ack*) SCMS is in line with fair use. You can make as many copies as you like of a piece of digital media that you have purchased (or borrowed, or traded or whatever), what it prevents you from doing is making copies of those copies. Second generation copies generally aren't within the realm of fair use rights anyway.
SCMS is also a technology that it fair to musicians. Compliant players do not add copy protection to recordings made from an analog source (microphones, guitar amps, etc.) so the musician is free to make all the digital copies that they need for distribution. You still probably wouldn't want to do mass duplication on consumer grade equipment, but you could if you wanted to.
Another bonus to SCMS is that it doesn't impact the quality of the sound. The only way in which the sound fidelity of a recording is reduced by doing a digital transfer to minidisc is in the compression used to get the small form factor. I find the ATRAC compression scheme to be quite good, CDs copied digitally to minidisc sound much better than (so called "CD quality") 128kb/s .mp3s or FM radio. I generally can't tell the difference between CDs and MDs in a moving vehicle while I really can tell the difference between a minidisc and FM radio (this is mostly due to the fact that radio stations boost the bass signal to make music sound good on shitty radios. It adds a bunch of noise and distortion that makes it sound awful with a good amp).
Overall, I would say that SCMS is a good and fair compromise between citizens and content owners. I don't object at all to being prevented from making copies of copies since that isn't fair use anyway. The only thing that I do object to is that DVDs set the no copy bit on their soundtrack so that you can't make a digital recording of a DVD soundtrack onto a minidisc. Then again, that's the fault of the DVD producers and we already know all about them.
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I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
I'm a huge fan of Minidisc. Now that the new MDLP format is out people can store 320 minutes of music on an 80-minute Minidisc. However, the method that is used to write the audio data to a minidisc is *not* the same as writing to an Audio CD. An Audio CD can have file references to the audio data itself (CDA, anyone?). However the TOC on a Minidisc is just an offset to a point on the disc containing the audio datastream. It's not compatbile with FAT, or any other file storage format, so storing MP3's on a minidisc simply isn't possible in their native format.
:-) And if you want to play MD's in your car, there is an FM audio adapter you can plug most (if not all) MD decks into and listen to the player via your car radio.
Yes, MD Data used to be available (as others have said here it was called a MO disk) but the disks were a different format (not compatbile with audio MD discs) and the drives were 750 dollars each. Combine that with the fact that MD data only holds 170MB of information and you can see why the format isn't around anymore (Sony doesn't even service the drives anymore, IIRC).
However, with a soundcard and a digital output, it *is* possible to record your MP3's into any decent portable Minidisc recorder. I have a Sony MZ-R900 and I can record up to 5 hours and 20 minutes of MP3s for about 1.50 USD a disc. Try getting 5 hours of MP3 on an MP3 player for only a buck and a half...
Hope someone finds this information helpful.
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http://www.sweetwater.com/store/results.tpl?acti on =full&cart=9903370874831392&--eqskudatarq=MD8&Crit eria=Results
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I haven't seen any MD drives for computers, at least not ones compatible with the audio format. However, you can get smaller CD-R media in 3-inch and business-card sizes. The looming problem there is that slot-loading CD drives have started to catch on.
When Minidisc first came out, there was a data version. However (get this) the audio and data disks were different and not interoperable. You can still go buy a MD Data disk, if you want, at Minidisco. However, they're $13.49 each!
I remember seeing MD data drives a LONG time ago. But I haven't seen one marketed in years. There is still no really easy way to title audio disks without buying one of the expensive decks. Bah humbug.