$ony Quality

[maskrider]

What great advantages does MD have over MP3?

MP3 advantages:

Players can be very very small and lightweight.
Solid State ie no moving parts.
Low power only requires 1 AAA battery for like 10+hrs of use.
Very good sound quality depending on bitrate.
Format can be recorded to CDRs and played back in many CD and DVD players.

MD has wide acceptance in Asia I suppose, there are many MD devices available.

And MD is cheap, people can bring along their favorites to swap. MD is a more appliance level device, it is easy to manage.

Anyway, the above is not what I care, as any lossy compressed kind of music is like semi-rotten canned food to me. Just that I think MD is currently better until flash memory can be cheaper than it with comparable sound quality and storage. Ease of use is another important factor.

And, in my experience, most Sony's products are of excellent quality and design.

 

[Phil]

Sorry but audiophile and MDs shouldn't even be in the same sentence. Looks like your superior comprehension is missing some common sense

*shakes head*

Your missing the point here son. Seems like stating simple facts is beyond your comprehension level. Despite your lack of hearing skills or the necessary equipment to hear a difference in sound quality between above average encoded mp3s and current ATRAC compression on higher-end MD-players, MD quality > mp3 quality. Contrary to your above arguement, that's one advantage right there, nothing more. Deal with it. 8)

 

[PC-Engine]

What great advantages does MD have over MP3?

MP3 advantages:

Players can be very very small and lightweight.
Solid State ie no moving parts.
Low power only requires 1 AAA battery for like 10+hrs of use.
Very good sound quality depending on bitrate.
Format can be recorded to CDRs and played back in many CD and DVD players.

MD has wide acceptance in Asia I suppose, there are many MD devices available.

And MD is cheap, people can bring along their favorites to swap. MD is a more appliance level device, it is easy to manage.

Anyway, the above is not what I care, as any lossy compressed kind of music is like semi-rotten canned food to me. Just that I think MD is currently better until flash memory can be cheaper than it with comparable sound quality and storage. Ease of use is another important factor.

And, in my experience, most Sony's products are of excellent quality and design.

Huh? so you think ATRAC has the same sound as RED BOOK? Keep on dreaming. DVD Audio is also compressed

CDRs with MP3s are even cheaper.

 

[maskrider]

What great advantages does MD have over MP3?

MP3 advantages:

Players can be very very small and lightweight.
Solid State ie no moving parts.
Low power only requires 1 AAA battery for like 10+hrs of use.
Very good sound quality depending on bitrate.
Format can be recorded to CDRs and played back in many CD and DVD players.

MD has wide acceptance in Asia I suppose, there are many MD devices available.

And MD is cheap, people can bring along their favorites to swap. MD is a more appliance level device, it is easy to manage.

Anyway, the above is not what I care, as any lossy compressed kind of music is like semi-rotten canned food to me. Just that I think MD is currently better until flash memory can be cheaper than it with comparable sound quality and storage. Ease of use is another important factor.

And, in my experience, most Sony's products are of excellent quality and design.

Huh? so you think ATRAC has the same sound as RED BOOK? Keep on dreaming. DVD Audio is also compressed

CDRs with MP3s are even cheaper.

You have problems with comprehension or may be I have a problem in writing.

I have never said MD is not compressed, I have said the above is not what I cared for, I mean both MD and any lossy compressed music.

DVD Audio is compressed with MLP Merridian Lossless Packing, the audio compression is lossless.

Even red book CD sound sucks.

CD-R is big, MD is small, for sure flash memory is smaller, but not cheaper.

 

[PC-Engine]

Sorry but audiophile and MDs shouldn't even be in the same sentence. Looks like your superior comprehension is missing some common sense

*shakes head*

Your missing the point here son. Seems like stating simple facts is beyond your comprehension level. Despite your lack of hearing skills or the necessary equipment to hear a difference in sound quality between above average encoded mp3s and current ATRAC compression on higher-end MD-players, MD quality > mp3 quality. Contrary to your above arguement, that's one advantage right there, nothing more. Deal with it. 8)

Sorry but MD do not sound better than a 320Kbps MP3...your SONY goggles are clogging your judgement. Highend MD player? What's the point?

Let me go hook up a pair of highend Labtecs to my $30K system yeah that makes a whole lota sense

 

[PC-Engine]

CD-R is big, MD is small, for sure flash memory is smaller, but not cheaper

I don't know where you live but where I live most people have CD players not MD players and a lot of CD/DVD players can play MP3s.

 

[maskrider]

CD-R is big, MD is small, for sure flash memory is smaller, but not cheaper

I don't know where you live but where I live most people have CD players not MD players and a lot of CD/DVD players can play MP3s.

I mean portable devices, for home use the DVD/CD players (MP3 capable) are extremely wide spread nowadays, because there are many pirated movies from Mainland China.

For portable devices, people have been changing over for quite some time already, they tend to use MDs (for the more casual people) or flash memory players (for the more computer geeks like people).

 

[PC-Engine]

Reality check for Phil,

FACT:

MP3 players can be very very small and lightweight.
Solid State ie no moving parts = more reliable.
Low power only requires 1 AAA battery for like 10+hrs of use.
Very good sound quality depending on bitrate.
Format can be recorded to CDRs and played back in many CD and DVD players


OPINION:

ATRAC encoded music sounds better than 320Kbps encoded MP3s.

 

[Ty]

Sorry but MD do not sound better than a 320Kbps MP3...your SONY goggles are clogging your judgement. Highend MD player? What's the point?

Let me go hook up a pair of highend Labtecs to my $30K system yeah that makes a whole lota sense

Who uses 320Kbps MP3s? How many songs (of average length) would you actually get on an average MP3 player? I haven't listened to MP3 players in awhile (nor my broken MD player - damn) but I was actually surprised at how 'full' the MD recordings I made could be. Before I bought one, I actually was VERY against the idea of lossy compression but I have to admit, ATRAC isn't bad at all.

What kind of system do you have that costs 30k?

 

[Phil]

Sorry but MD do not sound better than a 320Kbps MP3...your SONY goggles are clogging your judgement. Highend MD player? What's the point?

Let me go hook up a pair of highend Labtecs to my $30K system yeah that makes a whole lota sense

I admire people that own such expensive equipment but fail to notice such distinct differences in sound quality... I really do...

 

[V3]

I admire people that own such expensive equipment but fail to notice such distinct differences in sound quality... I really do...

Isn't prolong used of headphones screw up your hearing anyway ?

 

[BoddoZerg]

After reading this thread, I can say I'm glad not to be an audiophile.

As long as I don't try to learn anything about high quality audio, my scratched old CDs and my 128 kbps MP3s and my cheap speakers and crappy headphones all sound perfectly fine.

But, just wondering, where the hell do you find minidisc players in the USA? The only time in my life I've ever seen a minidisc player is when I visited Taiwan 2 years ago. (Then again, there's probably some little store around here selling minidisc players... I just haven't been there.) Everyone I know has mp3 players with Zip disks or Memory Sticks or hard drives... but I've never seen one with a Minidisc!

And who the hell uses 320 kbps mp3s anyways? I mean, thats hardly any compression at all. You could probably fit 3 songs on a 128 MB mp3 player. Why don't you just use regular CDs?

 

[London Geezer]

Sorry but MD do not sound better than a 320Kbps MP3...your SONY goggles are clogging your judgement. Highend MD player? What's the point?

Let me go hook up a pair of highend Labtecs to my $30K system yeah that makes a whole lota sense

Who uses 320Kbps MP3s? How many songs (of average length) would you actually get on an average MP3 player? I haven't listened to MP3 players in awhile (nor my broken MD player - damn) but I was actually surprised at how 'full' the MD recordings I made could be. Before I bought one, I actually was VERY against the idea of lossy compression but I have to admit, ATRAC isn't bad at all.

What kind of system do you have that costs 30k?

and more importantly, why would u wanna spend 30k on a sound system unless u're Micheal Jackson....

 

[Phil]

After reading this thread, I can say I'm glad not to be an audiophile.

So true... sadly, I don't listen to even half the CDs I once used to listen too, because I just can't bare the low-quality anymore. Differences I never used to hear become so evidently when played on good equipment, it's quite sad indeed.

And who the hell uses 320 kbps mp3s anyways? I mean, thats hardly any compression at all. You could probably fit 3 songs on a 128 MB mp3 player. Why don't you just use regular CDs?

I would if I could. Problem is, it's pretty hard to find music out of the underground electronica scene. 320kbps mp3s is better than nothing and as close as you'll get to CD quality...

and more importantly, why would u wanna spend 30k on a sound system unless u're Micheal Jackson....

...especially if you don't notice differences between mp3 (even at 320kbps) to ATRAC 4.5...

Honestly though, here's an article:
http://www.techtv.com/callforhelp/features/jump/0,24331,3387580,00.html

The specifics of each can get pretty hairy and confusing so I won't go into them here. Suffice it to say both do well in an ear-by-ear test using the maximum bitrates of 320 Kbps for MP3s and 285.3 Kbps for MiniDisc.


With pop, pop-country, rock, or hip hop, most people won't notice anything, as these genres tend to be heavily produced with effects filters, sound compressors, and the like. You will notice that MiniDisc has a slight edge in music that has greater dynamic range, such as classical, jazz, and operettas.

Unfortunately, other comparisons by sites such as CNET and some Audio sites have either ceased or deleted their articles. It has been proven though that ATRAC 4.5 is better in quality than 320kbps mp3, even if the majority will only notice differences in music such as classical or other music with greater dynamic ranges. It's a shame it's dead in America, because over here in Europe where people do use them, you'll be hard put to find someone who wouldn't agree that ATRAC is better in sound quality.

 

[maskrider]

After reading this thread, I can say I'm glad not to be an audiophile.

So true... sadly, I don't listen to even half the CDs I once used to listen too, because I just can't bare the low-quality anymore. Differences I never used to hear become so evidently when played on good equipment, it's quite sad indeed.

It can be troublesome when you are used to high-end systems but you are not the kind of people who can afford such a system (such as me).

Anyway, export Sony products are never close to high-end grade, they can only be regarded as close to mid-end at best. The best ones are reserved for domestic Japan consumption.

 

[PC-Engine]

Regarding 320Kbps MP3s, well the reason why I encode my MP3s at that rate is because of sound quality of course. An average song encoded at that rate is about 8-10MB so I can fit about 16 songs onto a 128MB flash memory card. Keep in mind that this is for my solid state MP3 player which has 128MB builtin. Imagine how many songs I can fit on a 700MB CDR if I wanted to use a CD/DVD player for playback.

Regarding the sound quality of MP3s. MP3s use a two layer compression scheme. The first is psychoacoustic modeling which is the exact same method ATRAC uses. The second is the Huffman compression algorithm. When you encoded MP3s with a good encoder, you have the option of turning on/off either or both of the compression steps to control the sound quality of encoding. The Huffman compression step is lossless btw.

Oh and one more thing some audiophiles prefer tube amps over transistor based ones while others prefer vinyl over CDs...go figure.

 

[Vince]

Regarding 320Kbps MP3s, well the reason why I encode my MP3s at that rate is because of sound quality of course. An average song encoded at that rate is about 8-10MB so I can fit about 16 songs onto a 128MB flash memory card. Keep in mind that this is for my solid state MP3 player which has 128MB builtin. Imagine how many songs I can fit on a 700MB CDR if I wanted to use a CD/DVD player for playback.

320Kbps? Dude, you have problems. If you're going to buy a CD and rip it yourself, you use the CD and store it in a 50+1 or 100+1 platform or in a library if it's a stand-alone player.

You use MP3's if you're downloading and trading or in college - in this case you're not going to find 320Kbps MP3's on the 'net. It's not going to happen, good luck finding 190Kbps on Kazaa for example.

If you fall into the second case, then MD is awesome as it's small and portable, cheap and holds enough. It's clearly superior to CD-R on all facets and is second to Solid State only if you have a Sony Laptop and have a built in MG slot - otherwise it's limiting in size and a pain to transfer whenever you want new tunes.

 

[PC-Engine]

Hi Vince nice of you to join in dude

Anyway my specific style of use don't fall into either of those two categories. First of all i only encode MP3s using my own CDs for playback through my tiny little utraportable solid state MP3 player. I don't want to carry a MD player or a CD player as they're too big and bulky. My utraportable is the size of a wristwatch. Also I don't download any MP3s or trade them. For home I use backup CDRs for playback and only use CDRs with MP3s encoded on them when I want to listen to a lot of different songs. I do have a 300 disc DVD changer but it's packed with DVDs with only enough room for a few music CDs so I just play the CDs through my standalone single disc CD/DVD player.

The tiny MP3 players are VERY nice and some even have voice recording, FM tuner, equalizer builtin..all in a package the size of matchbox. I just can't live without it.

 

[V3]

and more importantly, why would u wanna spend 30k on a sound system unless u're Micheal Jackson....

Hey, a friend of mine has like a 20k system on his car. You wouldn't wanna know how much he spends for his home. Audiophile are insane I tell you.

 

[PC-Engine]

and more importantly, why would u wanna spend 30k on a sound system unless u're Micheal Jackson....

Hey, a friend of mine has like a 20k system on his car. You wouldn't wanna know how much he spends for his home. Audiophile are insane I tell you.

A pair of really highend speakers costs about $15K for example like these Mission Pilastros:

Just for a pair, then you gotta buy all your other surrounds and component separates