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Music Media

Are there MP3 Players that use Minidiscs? 52

Posted by Cliff from the more-mp3-mediums-are-good dept.
Delboy asks: "I was wondering if other people have thought that a Minidisc player would be a good alternative to a portable mp3 player? The thing that puts me off a mp3 player is the lack of storage, with a Minidisc it's practically unlimited, just carry more disks. Okay it's limited in the fact that it would take a lot more time to load it up with mp3's, but you have a very cheap storage medium and probably comparable sound quality. Comments?"
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Are there MP3 Players that use Minidiscs? More

Are there MP3 Players that use Minidiscs?

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  • make you think, doesn't it. Until they make memory staicks cheaper, there is no comparison between MD and mp3. Yes, I am biased as I own a nice Aiwa. It has saved my sanity on the London underground. No skip, just like MP3 and cheaper too.
  • Check out

    http://hive.me.gu.edu.au/~csand/md/mdpage/min idisc/

    For details on all the formats. They may be using the specialised MD for data to do this. the two are not compatible to my knowledge.

  • http://hive.me.gu.edu.au/~csand/md/mdpage/minidisc /part_links.html#mp3

    Good info on all things MP3 -> MD related. Winamp skins, User guides and info on products aimed at making it easier to copy MP3 to your MD. (as analogue of course) One link there for a USB to optical conversion, but read the warning about the advertiser's financial status. Also:

    http://hive.me.gu.edu.au/~csand/md/mdpage/minidi sc/

    This is the regular hompage (if you're too lazy to delete the extra chars in the URL) where you can find loads of MD tips and tricks, even hacks. This is 'THE' /. of the MD world.

  • I think that's because Sony etc. thought it would make piracy easier, i.e. go round to your friends house with your portable and copy your stuff to it.
    Seems pretty stupid to me, but there you are.
  • I agree, If Sony had marketed the MD as a data format in a big way we would all be using minidisks for our portable storage, not those shite zip disks that are nothing but trouble IMHO.

    Minidisks are rock hard, at least with music on them, I don't know how reliable with data. (cos a little bit lost in the middle of an ATRAC stream isn't gonna make much difference)
  • The writing speed of a mini-disc varies depending on what kind of setup you have. SONY makes an MD recorder that has a cd-drive also built in, and that transfers at 4x. My MD recorder (no cd-drive built in) is forced to use analog input from my disc-man and/or computer (so i can put mp3s on MD's). All MD recorders that i have seen support optical input as well, and if you have a sony cd player and the sony recorder, there may be some further speed inprovements you can do.
    -Danny
  • Just saw an ad for Sony's new NW-MS7 MP3 Recorder. It claims it plays back in ATRAC3, supports MP3. Uses 64MB memory sticks to hold the MP3s -- about 2 hours' worth. Retails at $150.
  • No, I saw them for sale at Frys in Canoga Park (CA). A friend of mine bought one, and you can bet I'm gonna.
    The company that makes them is called Raite,
    here's their [english] website:
    http://www.raite.com.tw/edefault.htm
  • http://www.minidisc.org/md_data_table.html

    Try this out for a start. Links to different manufacturer pages too.

  • ...these things are already transformed from analog media Hi8 to digital media DV by using the same tapes ... some people even tought of heaving Digital8 for beckup ... with FireWire speed is very good and media is cheap ... I think SONY wan't do it because of other products ... but could it be hacked ?
  • The reason is to make you buy a MD deck as well. You don't have much of a choice do you? The decks sound way better than the portables anyway.
  • I recall just hearing about something like this in this month's issue of Popular Science. Seems Aiwa and another company are coming out with something like this on the summer. It's going to be around $300 and I think the Aiwa one is called CDC-MP3 or something. This is kind of vauge, as I heard it from a friend of mine.
  • The minidiscs used in sony's new camera are not the same as the audio disks. The audio disks are able to store ~140 MB of data. The camera disks do a lot more, even tho the physical format looks the same

  • Hammacher Schlemmer [hammacher.com] has a large size MP3 player that while rather expensive seems nice.

    It's only glaring failing I can see (without buying one of course) is that it uses Windows based software.
    Maybe it will work under WINE. ;-)


    The Tick - "Spoon!"
  • Most MP3 players use an optical digital line-in to record audio directly from a digital device.
    Many soundcards now have this output. Some have only coax digital out, but you can get converters.
    Admittedly it is a chore to take the stuff out to MD from MP3 in realtime, but this only has to be done once, not every time you load up your player, like an MP3 player.
    I usually carry my player plus about 5 disks with me (they are tiny) and I get to take my pick from the 70+ disks I own. That is over 80 hours worth of music I have access to without having to dock or download anything, and I also have the option to record from CD or live if I want to.
    The sound quality is also better than MP3.
  • OK..OK..
    • BESIDES
    the fact that it costs $800.

    The Tick - "Spoon!"
  • There's actually several systems out there for backing up your HD to VHS, upto 8 gigs i believe, although it isn't digital. They run ads for them in those Tiger Computing or whatever magazines, and occasionally Microwarehouse. I'm listening to spybreak right now so it's kinda messing up my thought process, but i'm sure with the VHS backup, you could abuse the original purposes, a CSS encoder, firewire, vid out and a dig8 tape some how. yeah.
  • Errr, I don't think so. If you run MP3 at the sort of bitrates that ATRAC currently runs at (circa 256kbit) MP3 sounds at least as good.

    In blind listening tests with trained listeners at a recent perceptual audio coding conference, 192kbit mp3 was statistically undistinguishable from the source cd. Going to 256k only hammers the point in more - mp3 is good, but isn't at its best at 128k.

    Problem is, you've probably not heard MP3s though good equipment, whereas MD players are mature products which have to compete on sound - most mp3 players compete on price alone.

    Hugo
    empeg
  • The sound on a minidisc is already compressed (I think the algorithm is called ATRAC) and you won't be able to gain that much storage.
    I guess that uploading songs to a minidisc usually is done in realtime (1x spin, in cdrom terms), and not very conveninent. Does anybody know of a way (presumably using some proprietary hardware) that accept transfer of a raw audio data stream (or similar) onto the MD?

  • MD + MP3... (Score:3)

    by Chops-Frozen-Water ( 2085 ) on Wednesday February 09, 2000 @06:14AM (#1292508) Homepage
    As the previous comment mentions, MDs use their own compression scheme. So whether or not Sony will make an MD-MP3 player is up in the air.
    However, Sony's put out MD Digital Cameras now, that use MDs as their storage medium (a HUGE number of still images or a small amount of motion video), and reportedly are looking at ways to use MDs in more devices, so it's possible that a digital music player based on MP3 (or something) could use MP3s as it's storage medium, though Sony's also putting out their memory stick players, so I don't know if they'd want to hamstring that business...
    --
  • I wanted to say that I'm frustrated too with the lack of memory in the various portable MP3 players.

    We're in year 2000, and probably there are many small devices that can store a lot of information, like chip-sized HDs. I understood IBM developed one.

    So why are all the companies so cheap? Why can't they create an MP3 player with 1gb storage space? We are past the Commodore64 days, for god's sake.
  • I never understood why Sony didn't originally market the MD as general computer storage. If it had, there would be MP3 MD players by now and perhaps even MD drives in laptops. I know 150MB isn't huge, but the disks are small and protected from the elements better than CD's. The other floppy replacement technologies don't look that much better even today and how long has the MD been out?

  • MD storage. (Score:3)

    by booch ( 4157 ) <slashdot2010NO@SPAMcraigbuchek.com> on Wednesday February 09, 2000 @06:24AM (#1292511) Homepage
    The MD format only holds about 150 MB. The music format uses a compression method that is supposedly similar to MP3, but only compresses about 4X. The compression scheme is called ATRAC. (Someone had a sense of humor, because the name sounds like 8-track.) At the time it was released, 150 MB re-writable media of that size was impressive. Now, it's not all that impressive. Even though the MD media is cheap, the read/write mechanism is not. I think you'd probably be better off using one of IBM's tiny hard drives or some type of flash memory stick.
  • Yeah, I thought this back in 1991'ish when I first saw a mini-disc. I was convinced it was going to replace 1.44 floppy disks.
  • Try 4.8gb at www.pjbox.com [pjbox.com] - the PJB-100 (covered on slashdot twice before actually).

    Mine should be here tomorrow :) It's not that small and portable as the other 32/64mb MP3 players, but far more portable than even the smallest Biblo laptop.

  • What's the writing speed of MiniDisc?
  • Doesn't ATRAC do variable bit rate encoding?

  • Does something like that exist?

    I've read about at least one DVD player that can also do MP3 CDs.
  • But that's just one of the countless DVD/mp3 players.
    Portable cd's with the ability to play mp3's have been demonstrated by companies like thomson but noone is selling them
  • But the mp3's get converted to ATRAC first and I guess that kind of destroys the whole point of it. I think there was a story posted on slashdot about it a few months ago.

    There are minidisk replicators and recorders that can write at 4X speed which is probably not more than 200 kb/s so.

    Probably the best solution is to get a soundcard with a digital out and record your mp3's that way.
  • Sharp and Voquette [voquette.com] together have a solution that transfers MP3s to MDs. Still, the data is probably just being converted to audio then re-compressed via ATRAC. I have a Sharp MDMS722, and to be honest, the loss of quality (as long as you use a QUALITY sound card and QUALITY cables) in analog recording mp3s to MD is usually not noticeable. sk
  • Hard drives are a lot more sensitive than than MD. Dropping an MD player won't damage the disks. My first gen MD walkman can take more abuse than most devices. I wouldn't want to think what would happen to a hard drive if I treated it like that.
  • But you can't buy them. The companies making them probably think that the costs of a potential lawsuit is to high.
  • No one ever mentions useing a tape drive. Large amount of storage cheap. Removeable, more stock resient(sp?) than a hard drive, in fact I dont think that shock unless very big would matter to tape. Plus if something happens to it your are out of $15 tape not $150 flash card. I myself am working (in my nonexisent free time) on a mp3 player that uses a dat drive (I have about 300 2 gig dat tapes that I can get for free) Tape is slow but with a good amount of memory you can buffer several songs in a row. Tape drives do have a tendenisy yo be noisy, so it would not work well for hand help units but would work great for car mounted units and console units.
  • I believe that Sony actually did start to market it this way. But not until Zip showed up did we get the "need for a need" so to speak. Unfortuantely we then already had Zip disks.

    For the enthusiast there are MD players for computers (MD-Data) they are not compatible with MD-Music though. (Since it's proprietary I doubt that we'll see anyone changing that too unfortunately.)

    The MD-Data discs are mainly sold in Japan though, I don't know if you can get them in the US/Europe. Using MD for cameras is a great idea though, bigger cheaper and not very large. Great stuff!
  • Have seem to have the idea that you must put standard audio on minidiscs; However, sony also uses them for Digital Video. It would be trivial to put a file system on them with mp3's, unfortunately no one appears to have done so.
  • Someday, compact flash may be economical enough to power the next generation mp3 players. I too feel that *all* of the current portable mp3 players are way underpowered in terms of memory. An hours worth of portable music that you have to hook up to a computer to get "a different" hours worth of music does not seem all that appealing to me. Actually, it seems like a waste of time and money.

    For me, the perfect mp3 portable would be about the size of a walkman and have at least 30GB of storage. We'll see how long it takes for technology to catch up with those requirements.
  • u can put files on mindisc but the drives are expensive as well as the media i'm building an mp3 player and for a week i looked and looked and it was not worth the money right now the safest way to go with mp3 is either laptop hard drive or cdrom with a buffer so it encodes ahead and there is no skipping mpg123 has settings for buffer size u can actually have it encode the whole darn mp3 b4 it starts to play ;)
  • you can go to www.mambox.com they sell a portable
    cd player that can read cd-r and cd-rw disks
    and will play mp3's as well and normally you can
    get about 170 songs or more on one cd

  • I have a minidisc deck, and i love it. Granted my reasons are prob. different that yours.. i love the editing and titleing features of the deck. I personaly run the Sound Effects for entire plays off them: between random access, awesome editing, and long play time they just rock. You can get a minidisc bundle from sony with a nice home deck and a portable for like 260ish(US).
  • Here's a bit of what I've been grappling with lately:

    I recently purchased a sharp minidisc player. What I have learned thus far hasn't been impressive, but it's wirth mentioning.

    Minidiscs are like cd's in that they store data digitially, except that it's compressed using an algorithm called ATRAC. My player uses atrac3.5. Anyway, the compression is done in realtime by a processor inside of the player/recorder. Most agree that ATRAC is an exceptionally clear algortihm, and presonally, I can't tell the difference between the original cdda and the encoded version.

    So that gets us onto the question of why. Why would one want an MP3 player that uses minidiscs?

    1. More data - MDs hold substantially more than a compactflash card or whatever MP3 players use
    2. The option of realtime recording (I'm sitting in my piss-boring french class copying tunes off the girl who sits behind me's discman)

    In doing this, several tradeoffs will be made:
    1. MP3 players, in their current form, are absolutely skip-proof, being that they are completely solid state and such. Abandoning solid-state media will always open the door to skippage.

    2. Higher power consumption - it's undeniable that making something spin and reading it with an optical pickup will consume more power than simply reading/decoding data off of a flash card.

    3. Size - all the MP3 players I've seen are VERY small.

    So then, I step back, and I look. In my opinion, it would definitely be worth it. All this would take is to make a MD player with an embedded mp3 decoder. It would probably be wise to keep an atrac en/decoder around too, for realtime recording. The MD player would have to be able to read some sort of filesystem, but MP3 players are already doing that, so really, ho hard can it be?

    The more I think about this, the more I think of some Sony gadget I saw that had the words mp3 and minidisc in the same title, maybe it's already been done. Might be a bit pricey, but definitely worth it...
  • I can understand you wanting to have the convenience of just moving your mp3's to your MD, but you can do the same from CD, just use the digital out (if you have one) to the MD and you have the same quality - I think better then mp3. But you might say "I don't own the cd and mp3 is cool and free." That's not the point. Just because mp3's are out there, doesn't mean you should dload them and use them without paying for them. Call me naive or institutionalised, but I do feel that if you like a product you should pay for it. I'd hate to work as hard as a lot of musicians I know, to see my product floating around free of charge. Yes, I have been guilty of copying other people's cd's but if I like it I will usually buy them. Granted, original (pre-recorded) MD's are more pricy than cd's and are less common, but what's to stop you buying the cd and copying to your own MD? You also have the added security of a 'hard copy' backup. One of the things putting me off the whole mp3 thing is that the record co.s are going to try and sell them to you, and if you're hard drive goes bye-bye, so does your investment. The disk also stores the same amount as a CD too. The way I see it, mp3 is a great way to store and play music on your pc, but can't compare to the versatility of MD and it's accompanying format, which I do not imagine will go through many changes in the near future to prevent copying as will the whole mp3 player industry. Unfortunately, I believe the music industry has enough weight to lean on any mp3 player manufacturer to follow policy that will protect their product - just look at DECSS for further proof. Slashdot did report on a 80Mb mp3 player that used a harddrive, several weeks ago, (check the archive for 'personal jukebox' or 'mp3') but I checked it out and the guesstimate opening price is about $700(US). If you MUST use mp3's, try using the lineout of your pc to your MD, and record as normal, assuming of course that you have a seni decent sound card.You won't get to compress it any further to put more on the disk, but if you need more, you can now buy 80 minute disks. (yeah, I know, it's only another 4 minutes, but it's a start.CD max is 74)
  • I know this is somewhat off topic, but then, most of the posts here are.

    I am interested in using a portable MD for field recording, but I have never seen one with digital audio out (only digital audio in). Why is this? It does me no good if I need to re-sample in order to get my audio onto hard disk. Is there a reason for this lacking that I don't understand?

    Percival.

  • hmmm, how do you record to it? Line out from your soundcard and record the output? If that's the case then it's not really playing mp3 files, but the format that MD uses having recorded the signal of the played mp3 file. I am assuming it is the regular MD and not the datadisk, right? I think the original question was to ask how to actually store mp3 files and play them back on the MD.
  • absolutely wrong. it uses a variable compression rate that averages out to 2.8 bits/s (150MB = 1/5 a CD)

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