MiniDisc Drives for the PC? 31
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."
MD audio on PC possible with patched firmware (Score:1)
under $500 CDN? (Score:1)
- A.P. (lameness filter encountered!)
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Forget Napster. Why not really break the law?
Would someone put a USB port on a MD recorder? (Score:1)
It would be really simple to put a USB port on one of those players and write a small driver and end this sillyness once and for all. An external, portable drive/music player that can record music at better than 1x speeds.
I strongly suspect that the technology agreements between companies for MD prevent the use of the technology in a computer. There are products that use MD as storage, but only Sony has one that can actually allows a computer to read the disk (via PCMCIA no less) as a data only media and costs big bucks.
- Mike
A long long time ago (part 2) and now. (Score:1)
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Vidi Vici Veni
Re:In a Galaxy Far Far Away (Score:1)
IIRC, I saw my first MiniDisc data drive as an external SCSI device in a MacWarehouse catalog in 1995-- right when the Zip first came out, and CD-R was too expensive to be more than a fantasy for the average computer user. What I'm trying to say it, the de-facto successor to the 1.4MB floppy disk was nowhere near being decided by market forces.
The MD-Data drive was horrifically expensive, which is what doomed it, IMHO. The Zip, on the other hand, was priced much more reasonably and was something that would be so useful to me, the first time I happened upon it in a catalog, I ordered it before turning to the next page.
~Philly
MD-Data (Score:1)
In a Galaxy Far Far Away (Score:1)
Re:Recording data on MiniDiscs (Score:1)
Re:Good Idea, buy Sony Killed it (Score:1)
Re:Good Idea, buy Sony Killed it (Score:1)
Intentional degrading (Score:1)
MO drives???? (Score:1)
Re:Except (Score:1)
Re:Would someone put a USB port on a MD recorder? (Score:1)
All depends on what you want to do... (Score:1)
Re:Intentional degrading -- Inherent degradation (Score:1)
As long as the MD firewall remains intact (preventing direct access to the compressed audio data) the lossy, assymetric nature of each decompression and recompression generation makes it a perfect copy protection scheme (in that no external signal hacking can defeat it).
Note that with special care, an audio codec can be designed to minimize generational loss (see Frank Kurth's paper [minidisc.org] (PDF)). See also a discussion of the MD generational loss problem [minidisc.org] and Minidisc.org [minidisc.org] for further general coverage of the Minidisc format.
Re:A long long time ago.... (Score:1)
Re:Recording data on MiniDiscs (Score:1)
JVC XM-EX90 (Score:2)
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
Recording data on MiniDiscs (Score:2)
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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Re:A long long time ago (part 2) and now. (Score:2)
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ATRAC problems & actual data capacity of MD (Score:2)
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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portable minidisk players sometimes doubble.. (Score:2)
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
Re:Intentional degrading (Score:2)
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.
Re:Intentional degrading (Score:2)
A quick search on google (Score:3)
Perhaps MD will be CD-Rs as 3.5" floppies are to 5" in floppies.
Ian Zink
Re:Intentional degrading (Score:3)
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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MD Players can't play MP3 in native format. (Score:3)
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.
perl -le '$_="6110>374086;2064208213:90<307;55";tr[0- >][ LEOR!AUBGNSTY];print'
Re:A long long time ago.... (Score:3)
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/results.tpl?acti on =full&cart=9903370874831392&--eqskudatarq=MD8&Crit eria=Results
If you want smnall discs... (Score:4)
A long long time ago.... (Score:4)
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.