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Why Sony Should've Put Its Weight Behind Hi-MD
An anonymous reader writes "OSNews has an article making a case for Hi-MD: 'Currently, .mp3 players are all the hype. Everyone has one, and if you don't, you're old-fashioned. I do not have an .mp3 player. I tried to have one, but for various reasons it did not please me. I'm a MiniDisc guy. I've always been. MiniDisc has some serious advantages over .mp3 players, whether they be flash or HDD based.'"
Why do I use a HD mp3 player? It stores a large amount of music. I don't want to have to juggle around dozens of cds or in this case minidisks, I have over 15 gigs of music on my mp3 player and I don't have the time to find the disk that I want when I want to listen to certain things, nor does the space it takes to store all the disks appeal to me. I like having a device which can store large amounts of data - after trips with groups I'll normally get a dump of all the pictures that the group has taken and put them on my mp3 player to transfer.
I've tried the mp3 cds (which was giving me 700 megs of storage compared to the 305 megs you get from older minidisks using the hi-md format), but I ended up having too many... and when I wanted to add music to it it meant that I had to burn a whole new disk... and I just plain didn't like using it... and my mp3 player has proven to be a whole lot more solid than any cd player I've come across (I've dropped it many times, left it out in my car through all the extremes of Michigan's weather, and its still been great).
The last thing Sony needs is a new proprietary format (hardware or software). Hard drives can be re-written much quicker than optical media, and no-one wants to buy a device whose media may become obsolete within a few years. If people want a lot of storage capacity they'll get a hard drive based player, if they want quick loading times and durability they will get a flash based player. If they want to buy preloaded physical media, they will buy a format that's been around a while (cds).
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
I've also been a Minidisc 'fan' since day 1. I'm on my 4rd unit now. I'll be brutally honest. The only reason I still have the damn thing is because it cost me about 300 bucks. I'm on the verge of getting a flash-based MP3 player. The arguments in the article of MD vs. other players isn't entirely with merit. But the author does cite some advantages that were great a couple of years ago. But with flash-based players out in the market, the advantages of MD diminish. Sony DID have the ability to push them and totally dominate a market. But they misstepped with the RIDICULOUSLY INSANE SonicStage software. It's a true piece of garbage. My mother could write a better software package. Sigh. In the early days, even with SonicStage, there was no alternative. MD was 'the bomb.' I would record concerts (shhh, don't tell the f'in RIAA...), record notes for classes, it was great. Only NOW, after years of complaints to Sony, can you download these recordings to your computer as WAV files with no restrictions. YEARS of complaints I tell you. Almost all the complaints were about SonicStage. Sigh. Most of the fans of MD (the ones that still clamor about it, at least) have been fans forever. And most of us are feeling far less than nostalgic. We're ready to jump ship. Sony can still save MD. A flashy ad-campaign touting the indestructability of MD's would help. Drag/drop support would help. Sleeker low-end models (with prices that directly compete with low to mid-end flash-players) would help. Just a handful of things that would cost a behemoth like Sony a few million dollars to implement. But, as the author implies, the Sun may be setting on MD. I still have glimpses of hope. But these too seem to be, well, sigh.......
Nearly all Mp3 players (if they record at all) are limited to voice recordings.
If you want to record music and lots of it, MiniDisc is the way to go.
Leave the expensive DAT for others, a Minidisc can get you up and running with
live recording and onto CD in no time.
Im not a fan of all their Atrac stuff, nor am I a fan of Sony's constant annoying
search to create their own standard. Some day companies will learn there's more to
gain from open standards than a gamble on closed standards. Sony for instance loses
nearly every time.
Betamax, Sony Memory Stick, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.
My new Minidisc from Sony is more open than their previous models.
Works great - musicians, HiMd with Mic Input ! Great sound, on the cheap.
Lk4
"It's what you learn after you know it all that counts", Earl Weaver - Legendary Coach of the Baltimore Orioles
MiniDisc offers unlimited storage space.
Sure they do, if you buy unlimited discs. You could also buy more flash drives for your mp3 player and carry them around or you could be satisfied with the hour after hour of songs most mp3 players offer (4 gB with the iPod nano). To say that mini discs have unlimited storage is intelectually dishonest. That's like saying that floppy disks have unlimited storage.
No Sigs!
In this day and age, I simply can't understand why ANYONE with an ounce of taste and technical knowledge would buy an device that can only play music, regardless of how many formats it can support.
.wav's for perfect sound reproduction.
My AU$250 PDA (sure, I bought it off eBay, but that's not the point) is LESS than the RRP AU$389 for a 4GB iPod Nano, has survived umpteen drops and falls, which a HDD-based music player of the same physical size would not be able to do.
You can get 4GB SD memory-cards now, the same size as the largest iPod Nano, and you can expand the PDA storage even more if it supports CF memory-cards as well (as mine does).
Where the heck is this guy pulling his figures from?
"The new Hi-MD format offers 1GB per disc (which can add up to 45 hours of music on one disc)"
Unless Hi-MD offers some w00t compression, he must record his songs at really, really low quality, because, say 3minutes at 3MB a song (averaging around 128Kbps... what I'd call pretty low-qualiy at the best of times), my maths work out 1GB to equal a little over 16 hours of music.
Then there's the age-old argument of quality over quantity... that CD's have a much higher quality because they are not stored in a lossey compression algorithm.
Of course, this argument is negated once you start using flash storage half a gig in size or higher, as you can just save the
I have an old school MiniDisc player that was bought on eBay. MZ-R70. What is it about 1999-vintage technology that is still so good? The little devil is 3" x 3.25" by less than an inch thick, and made of anodized aluminum. It gets ridiculous amounts of playtime and somewhat less ridiculous amounts of record time on a single AA battery. It's not CD quality but it does the job for both podcasts and live recording of my husband's many bands.
Yes there are new MD players out there. They now can record in non-compressed PCM, which only yields 15 minutes of record time per disc. However, Sony totally overcomplicated the interface with bells, whistles and a jogwheel. I couldn't figure the new one out...I will have to study TFM to figure it out for my friend Jim. The MZ-R70, however, is very easy.
I hate Sony. I really really HATE Sony. But their electronics, particularly their vintage stuff, still rocks.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I don't approve of the way MD locks me out of my own music. I didn't give Sony the authority to put DRM on stuff I record, but my MD recorder takes this liberty. I don't want to hear about how I can buy a "pro" deck that turns off DRM, and I certainly don't care about "Soundstage" software or whatever the hell they make you use now, where you get three chances to copy your original or some such, and it's *erased* -- I *certainly* didn't give Sony permission to *erase* my masters.
I loved the idea of MD, but I hate, absolutely seethe with hate, to let Sony abridge my copyrights by putting DRM and copy-limitations on my work, just because I chose to use their cheap media. No thanks. CF-recorders may start at the $400 price point, but at least they don't seek to lock me out of my own work.
I really don't care how badly Sony wants to control things. When they try to control *MY* work, I tend to get very, very upset.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
1.) These devices are cheap. Cheap as in, you can buy a CD player that can play MP3s at walmart for $25. These players are much cheaper than the flash/HDD MP3 players making them much more accessible to people who don't want to break the bank on something they won't use every day.
2.) The media is much cheaper than the Mini Discs. Most players can even read from CD-RWs. The cheap media is also a plus over the priceier MDs. (Your "unlimited storage" costs less; MDs don't come on spindles of 100 last time I checked.) You can also play your music in a computer if you wanted to using CDs rather than MDs.
3.) You can use MP3s! You don't need to transcode to Sony's format. But some people will probably want to reencode lower bit rate MP3s anyway.
Summary: Cheaper, non-proprietary, works with your existing hardware and software, some players have excellent battery life.
What I discovered, after breaking down and buying a high-capacity iPod (though this would hold true for any high capacity player) is this: Once you can carry around your entire music collection, you begin to think differently about your music. I listen a lot more now. But much more importantly, I listen more to "obscure" things. I have rediscovered those one-good-track CDs and those off-the-wall good songs that have lurked in my collection for years, gathering metaphorical dust, because the one good song was never worth the bother of digging out the CD -- and because eventually the one good song drifted out of my immediate namespace due to info crowding.
Sure, you could archive it all on computer and then just custom-make MD versions of your playlists. You give up spontaneity, though. Often I think of a song I'd like when doing something when I'm not at the computer. (I know, it's hard to believe there are such times...)
Perhaps as significantly, using iTunes+iPod, it's ridiculously easy to make playlists that range over my entire collection and to have those updated easily to the iPod. I don't need multiple copies of songs, because they're all symbolically linked, an efficiency that appeals to this aging geek.
To sum up, having a large-capacity player revolutionized music for me, because it put me back in control of what I listened to, when, and in what order.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
In addition to playback, each 1GB disc can record 1h 34m of Linear PCM (lossless) and about 8-33 hours in the various ATRAC formats. Unlike the old MiniDisc format, Hi-MD can now digitally tranfer these recordings to a PC via USB. The MiniDisc's high-quality recording capabilities are why MiniDisc have found a niche among people recording live performances.
I think that looks pretty sweet for the price. However, I'd like it better if you could replace or supplement the flash memory with an SD card. I'll assume that player's recording quality is not nearly as good as a Hi-MD player/recorder.TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
The new Hi-MD format offers 1GB per disc (which can add up to 45 hours of music on one disc)-- and a disc only costs a few Euros
....) playlists, all using the same music library.
.mp3 player revolution, MDs only competitors were CDs and before that, tapes. :)
45 hours on 1 GB? that's 53kbps... 1 GB (1GiB) is still 18 hours @ 128kbps.
One disk costs EUR 7.00, so here's a little price comparison for people who want an mp3-player (and don't use the recording or video functions) (all prices in Euro's):
1 GB iPod Nano: EUR 159
1 GB hi-MD: 150 + 1*7 = 157 : roughly the same price
2 GB iPod Nano: EUR 209
2 GB hi-MD: 150 + 2*7 = 164 : MD is the best choice, but the iPod has no moving parts.
4 GB iPod Nano: EUR 259
4 GB hi-MD: 150 + 4*7 = 178.00 : MD is the best choice, but the iPod has no moving parts.
Here's the gap between occasional music listeners and music lovers. Non-existing market according to Apple. You either have a handful or a lot of cd's. My iPod 3G 15GB is too big for most people while I can't even put half of my collection on it. Maybe the hi-MD could fill this gap up.
30GB iPod: EUR 329
30GB hi-MD: 150 + 30*7 = 360 : iPod is better
60GB iPod: EUR 439
60GB hi-MD: 150 + 60*7 = 570 : iPod is better
Add to that the ease of selecting playlists (of any size you want, not limited to 1GB) instead of carrying a wallet with md's around, and I don't see why I should buy a hi-MD recorder. The only advantage over mp3-cd players is the size.
Another thing, if you want certain songs on multiple playlists (disks) with the hi-MD player, you need to copy them on multiple disks, decreasing the actual capacity even further. On my iPod I have a couple of similar ("all music", "best", "hard", "easy",
Before the
He forgets DCC
Now, I think that that is a pointless battle: you won't beat Apple in its current winning mood. Forget it. It ain't gonna happen.
True.
I wouldn't exclude any pc that runs Windows 2000, Windows XP, or OS X from the category "anything else." Also, I wouldn't exclude home or car CD players - and you can quite legally create a CD that contains iTMS songs on it and play it on your home or car CD player. The only things you can't do with iTMS music are 1. play it in electronic form on software other than iTunes (which, unfortunately, means no Linux or BSD), and 2. play it on standard mp3 players other than iPods. Annoying, but the DRM requires it (i.e., requires the iTMS software to encrypt the music files to your key, and to decrypt it from your key; and requires the iPod to decode the encrypted music format), and you simply are not going to get the major MPAA (or most independent) record companies to release anything without DRM. It's not going to happen. ever. They believe that P2P + un-DRMed music files = goodbye to their business model, and since they have cartel control over the product, they will do what they can to break that equation.
Now, if you can name some other DRMed music format that works outside a closed ecosystem (and no, WMA doesn't meet that requirement), perhaps there is something better out there. But the record companies are starting to realize that they'd be better off sticking with DRMed music stores and dumping CDs, so sooner or later you'll be stuck choosing a limited DRMed format if you want to listen to any commercially released music. Good luck to you.
Most of us bought our first iPods before the iTunes Music Store, to play mp3 rips from our CDs. 95% of my music fits that description, including the four CDs I bought this weekend.
Yes, MD had many advantages "back-in-the-day" and even today some may find it to be a suitable platform. But this guy is living in another reality.
2GB SD costs $50 (slickdeals.net/techbargains.com) and nowadays flash MP3 players are dirt cheap, tiny, durable, and feature-rich. Minidisc players have slow access times, inferior interfaces, and cumbersome transfer procedures.
Most people do not want to deal with the hassle of juggling dozens if not hundreds of discs to carry a large collection. A 1.5-ounce 4GB flash player can carry a decent amount of tunes. And there are 60GB hdd-based players coming in at under 5 ounces that are slower than flash, but faster then MD (and are reasonably durable).
He makes one good point: Sony should've used a backward-MD-compatible disc in the PSP. Otherwise his post is simply an example of someone blinded by years of frothing-at-the mouth fanboyism.
I'm a pro audio engineer based in London and got an invite to the unveiling of the Sony MD in 1991 at their newly acquired studio in the West End. Went along, free drinks and all that, and a nervous Japanese guy came out and demoed the amazing new machine. Sound quality wasn't that great (first version of ATRAC I believe) and wasn't well EQ'ed but it was impressive for its size and resistance to jog and shock. The amazing part was when he took the disk out and it still kept playing! I can remember thinking 'we really don't need another format' (cassettes, vinyl, CD were all going strong) and noted that no other music labels seemed to be interested in supporting it. I questioned the engineer at the end who told me the disk was about 100Mb in size and I begged them to release the thing as a super-floppy storage device telling them this is what people really, really needed. Just drew a blank on that suggestion.
The next couple of years saw the release of Iomega Zip drive at 100Mb and was a worldwide smash selling millions of units while the Sony MD limped on like some forgotten part of evolution. They could have taken that market in 1991 but obviously didn't fit in with their music division plans - such a shame.
Of course now, Sony has a unreliable and unattractive reputation in pro-audio and is going nowhere whereas when I started (end of 80s) Sony Broadcast ruled the whole business. Basically a company in decline not helped by different divisions actually competing with each other.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
I totally fail to understand the appeal of managing your music that way. iTunes' database completely abstracts me from the location of any given track, and I can get to any given track by searching the metadata, whose cleanup is made pretty straightforward by iTunes.
So, from my perspective, dragging folders around to manage music seems like turning a big crank on your car to start it. Sure, you could do it that way, but WHY?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!