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[Martin_1962]

I have loads of them, my head unit is fine, but I can't see any new ones.

Does anyone make MD players any more?

[TheBoy]

I have loads of them, my head unit is fine, but I can't see any new ones.

Does anyone make MD players any more?

hope not, sony over engineered junk.  I will happily educated your HU with Sammy

[Martin_1962]

I have loads of them, my head unit is fine, but I can't see any new ones.

Does anyone make MD players any more?

hope not, sony over engineered junk.  I will happily educated your HU with Sammy

Alpine & Sharp made them too

[tunnie]

MD has gone the way of the VHS player... out dated and rubbish to begin with.

[TheBoy]

MD has gone the way of the VHS player... out dated and rubbish to begin with.

MD did have the advantage of being relatively robust.  But still sony junk.

[TheBoy]

I have loads of them, my head unit is fine, but I can't see any new ones.

Does anyone make MD players any more?

hope not, sony over engineered junk.  I will happily educated your HU with Sammy

Alpine & Sharp made them too

Yes, but I'd wager you have a crappy sony version

[tunnie]

MD has gone the way of the VHS player... out dated and rubbish to begin with.

MD did have the advantage of being relatively robust.  But still sony junk.

I never seen the point of a 'robust' media for inside a car.... i have a wallet full of mp3 cd's, which is just fine.

If i get really board there is an aux jack for the ipod.

[TheBoy]

MD has gone the way of the VHS player... out dated and rubbish to begin with.

MD did have the advantage of being relatively robust.  But still sony junk.

I never seen the point of a 'robust' media for inside a car.... i have a wallet full of mp3 cd's, which is just fine.

If i get really board there is an aux jack for the ipod.

I agree, MD is pointless as a copy of your CDs.  Its robustness may be useful for databackups though.  But OOF will stick to LTO tapes

[Martin_1962]

MD has gone the way of the VHS player... out dated and rubbish to begin with.

Vhs is crap but MD was robust pretty good sound (better than MP3 players) and conveniant.

[TheBoy]

MD has gone the way of the VHS player... out dated and rubbish to begin with.

Vhs is crap but MD was robust pretty good sound (better than MP3 players) and conveniant.

MD is about as convenient as a bloody great fart juice tank using all your boot space

[Martin_1962]

I have loads of them, my head unit is fine, but I can't see any new ones.

Does anyone make MD players any more?

hope not, sony over engineered junk.  I will happily educated your HU with Sammy

Alpine & Sharp made them too

Yes, but I'd wager you have a crappy sony version

The Walkman is pretty good, I prefer it to an mp3 player as it lasts for ages on one AA battery, and sounds great through my Sennheiser PX100s.

The home deck - definately no QS but is over 7 years old and still works well. Car player is around 7 year old too.

[Martin_1962]

MD has gone the way of the VHS player... out dated and rubbish to begin with.

MD did have the advantage of being relatively robust.  But still sony junk.

I never seen the point of a 'robust' media for inside a car.... i have a wallet full of mp3 cd's, which is just fine.

If i get really board there is an aux jack for the ipod.

I don't have a CD burner in my hifi, and being small are good for Walkman type players.

As to robust - I have an icecream tub of the things

[Martin_1962]

MD has gone the way of the VHS player... out dated and rubbish to begin with.

MD did have the advantage of being relatively robust.  But still sony junk.

I never seen the point of a 'robust' media for inside a car.... i have a wallet full of mp3 cd's, which is just fine.

If i get really board there is an aux jack for the ipod.

I agree, MD is pointless as a copy of your CDs.  Its robustness may be useful for databackups though.  But OOF will stick to LTO tapes

I leave originals in the house, MDs are much easier to use in a car - don't have to polish off finger marks when changing them.

Also why make cassette head units then?

[TheBoy]

I have loads of them, my head unit is fine, but I can't see any new ones.

Does anyone make MD players any more?

hope not, sony over engineered junk.  I will happily educated your HU with Sammy

Alpine & Sharp made them too

Yes, but I'd wager you have a crappy sony version

The Walkman is pretty good, I prefer it to an mp3 player as it lasts for ages on one AA battery, and sounds great through my Sennheiser PX100s.

The home deck - definately no QS but is over 7 years old and still works well. Car player is around 7 year old too.

I bet most solid state MP3 players last better on similar batteries to portable MD players.

[Martin_1962]

I have loads of them, my head unit is fine, but I can't see any new ones.

Does anyone make MD players any more?

hope not, sony over engineered junk.  I will happily educated your HU with Sammy

Alpine & Sharp made them too

Yes, but I'd wager you have a crappy sony version

The Walkman is pretty good, I prefer it to an mp3 player as it lasts for ages on one AA battery, and sounds great through my Sennheiser PX100s.

The home deck - definately no QS but is over 7 years old and still works well. Car player is around 7 year old too.

I bet most solid state MP3 players last better on similar batteries to portable MD players.

Over a year on one AA

[TheBoy]

I have loads of them, my head unit is fine, but I can't see any new ones.

Does anyone make MD players any more?

hope not, sony over engineered junk.  I will happily educated your HU with Sammy

Alpine & Sharp made them too

Yes, but I'd wager you have a crappy sony version

The Walkman is pretty good, I prefer it to an mp3 player as it lasts for ages on one AA battery, and sounds great through my Sennheiser PX100s.

The home deck - definately no QS but is over 7 years old and still works well. Car player is around 7 year old too.

I bet most solid state MP3 players last better on similar batteries to portable MD players.

Over a year on one AA

I'm sure I could dig out one of my old MP3 players that has same battery for probably longer.

I'm guessing you don't use it much

[Martin_1962]

I have loads of them, my head unit is fine, but I can't see any new ones.

Does anyone make MD players any more?

hope not, sony over engineered junk.  I will happily educated your HU with Sammy

Alpine & Sharp made them too

Yes, but I'd wager you have a crappy sony version

The Walkman is pretty good, I prefer it to an mp3 player as it lasts for ages on one AA battery, and sounds great through my Sennheiser PX100s.

The home deck - definately no QS but is over 7 years old and still works well. Car player is around 7 year old too.

I bet most solid state MP3 players last better on similar batteries to portable MD players.

Over a year on one AA

I'm sure I could dig out one of my old MP3 players that has same battery for probably longer.

I'm guessing you don't use it much

Not overly much but it's there when I want it.

[tunnie]

I have loads of them, my head unit is fine, but I can't see any new ones.

Does anyone make MD players any more?

hope not, sony over engineered junk.  I will happily educated your HU with Sammy

Alpine & Sharp made them too

Yes, but I'd wager you have a crappy sony version

The Walkman is pretty good, I prefer it to an mp3 player as it lasts for ages on one AA battery, and sounds great through my Sennheiser PX100s.

The home deck - definately no QS but is over 7 years old and still works well. Car player is around 7 year old too.

I bet most solid state MP3 players last better on similar batteries to portable MD players.

Over a year on one AA :o

don't talk 'dangle berries', single state has no moving parts, unlike MD. You can't be using it more than once a month.... and taking the battery out when its not used.

[Marks DTM Calib]

And what prey tell is single state......other than a broken piece of silicon.

[Dave DND]

And what prey tell is single state

Not sure myself, but did a quick Google to find an expert, and apparently Ahmed Qureia, the Palestinian prime minister is working towards a single state . . . . . . .

[MaxV6]

ROFLMAO

If tunnie's your prey Mark   maybe he should say his prayers  



oh the fun, on So many levels....  

I liked mini disc , it was far more robust and reliable out on location than any form of purely optical disk (DVD-CD-etc) and took up less space in the flight case...

I still have Sharp portable and Sony & Tascam full size units...  , although they get relatively little use now.

how good the sounded depended almost entirely on which version of ATRAC you got, the later versions were almost acceptable for music, and many location ENG broadcast teams tracked audio to MD as well as Camera, at the time, it had an excellent compromise balance between sonic quality, and OB reliability.

Now largely made redundant by flash based devices, and the odd hard disk in a small box....    I've even seen some reporters using a Modified iPod for recording interviews.

[Marks DTM Calib]

Its a shame that flash is only suitable for reliable short term storage at the moment.

[TheBoy]

Its a shame that flash is only suitable for reliable short term storage at the moment.

My own experience does prove flash is unreliable. Shame that the last one to fail was a bloody expensive 32Mb one that set me back over £200  

[tunnie]

oops meant solid state....

I have found flash great for short term memory card use... and thats what its for at the end of the day, and with 64Gb SD.... can take a whole load of pictures.

Just back it up to HDD when done....

[TheBoy]

oops meant solid state....

I have found flash great for short term memory card use... and thats what its for at the end of the day, and with 64Gb SD.... can take a whole load of pictures.

Just back it up to HDD when done....

And HDD is probably as bad or even more unreliable

[tunnie]

oops meant solid state....

I have found flash great for short term memory card use... and thats what its for at the end of the day, and with 64Gb SD.... can take a whole load of pictures.

Just back it up to HDD when done....

And HDD is probably as bad or even more unreliable

So RAID it... and make sure you buy the drives at staggered intervals!  

[TheBoy]

oops meant solid state....

I have found flash great for short term memory card use... and thats what its for at the end of the day, and with 64Gb SD.... can take a whole load of pictures.

Just back it up to HDD when done....

And HDD is probably as bad or even more unreliable

So RAID it... and make sure you buy the drives at staggered intervals!  

Still not a reliable long term storage solution.  If you saw how many drives we replace on servers used by most people here, you would understand why we back up to tape, which probably still remains the only viable high capacity, high speed, reliable backup medium

[Phil]

Mini Disc is fantastic, it NEVER jumps like a CD does when going over bumps in the car, and it will change from disc to disc without the 10 seconds of nothing like a cd changer does.

one AA battery in my MD walkman far outlasts a full charge on my samsung and sony MP3 players.

I have 2 systems in the house with mini disc players and 2 6 disc changers for the car, well worth buying in my opinion.

Don't forget Mini Disc has been around since 1992, at that time there was no such thing as recordable CDs, only DAT and i don't know anyone who bought one of those!!!!

Far easier to record and remove and shuffle tracks than a re-writeable CD will ever be!

Unfortunately the last 'new' head unit i know of was a couple of years ago when Panasonic bought out a unit that played CDs and Mini Disc via the same slot

[TheBoy]

Mini Disc is fantastic, it NEVER jumps like a CD does when going over bumps in the car, and it will change from disc to disc without the 10 seconds of nothing like a cd changer does.

one AA battery in my MD walkman far outlasts a full charge on my samsung and sony MP3 players.

I have 2 systems in the house with mini disc players and 2 6 disc changers for the car, well worth buying in my opinion.

Don't forget Mini Disc has been around since 1992, at that time there was no such thing as recordable CDs, only DAT and i don't know anyone who bought one of those!!!!

Far easier to record and remove and shuffle tracks than a re-writeable CD will ever be!

Unfortunately the last 'new' head unit i know of was a couple of years ago when Panasonic bought out a unit that played CDs and Mini Disc via the same slot

rechargable batteries aren't suitable for low power devices, hence AA outlasts rechargable devices.

[Martin_1962]

oops meant solid state....

I have found flash great for short term memory card use... and thats what its for at the end of the day, and with 64Gb SD.... can take a whole load of pictures.

Just back it up to HDD when done....

And HDD is probably as bad or even more unreliable

And my photos are copied onto 3 or 4 DVD-Rs each, and two external hard drives

[TheBoy]

oops meant solid state....

I have found flash great for short term memory card use... and thats what its for at the end of the day, and with 64Gb SD.... can take a whole load of pictures.

Just back it up to HDD when done....

And HDD is probably as bad or even more unreliable

And my photos are copied onto 3 or 4 DVD-Rs each, and two external hard drives

My father, bless him, used to have a little saying - there's a difference between scratching your bum and tearing it to bits....

[Martin_1962]

oops meant solid state....

I have found flash great for short term memory card use... and thats what its for at the end of the day, and with 64Gb SD.... can take a whole load of pictures.

Just back it up to HDD when done....

And HDD is probably as bad or even more unreliable

And my photos are copied onto 3 or 4 DVD-Rs each, and two external hard drives

My father, bless him, used to have a little saying - there's a difference between scratching your bum and tearing it to bits....

Ever had data loss?

Can't be too careful with pictures

[TheBoy]

oops meant solid state....

I have found flash great for short term memory card use... and thats what its for at the end of the day, and with 64Gb SD.... can take a whole load of pictures.

Just back it up to HDD when done....

And HDD is probably as bad or even more unreliable

And my photos are copied onto 3 or 4 DVD-Rs each, and two external hard drives

My father, bless him, used to have a little saying - there's a difference between scratching your bum and tearing it to bits....

Ever had data loss?

Can't be too careful with pictures

Does it really matter if you lose a few pictures? I suspect not really.


I've never lost data at home. Lost plenty at work, but thats the way our disk subsystems get thrashed to bits.  Also, local ops think its a good idea to reseat all disks in an array when replacing a disk.  Needless to say, the array controllers mark them as bad, and lose the array.

[Martin_1962]

oops meant solid state....

I have found flash great for short term memory card use... and thats what its for at the end of the day, and with 64Gb SD.... can take a whole load of pictures.

Just back it up to HDD when done....

And HDD is probably as bad or even more unreliable

And my photos are copied onto 3 or 4 DVD-Rs each, and two external hard drives

My father, bless him, used to have a little saying - there's a difference between scratching your bum and tearing it to bits....

Ever had data loss?

Can't be too careful with pictures

Does it really matter if you lose a few pictures? I suspect not really.


I've never lost data at home. Lost plenty at work, but thats the way our disk subsystems get thrashed to bits.  Also, local ops think its a good idea to reseat all disks in an array when replacing a disk.  Needless to say, the array controllers mark them as bad, and lose the array.

Children growing up?

I am rather careful with photos, also DVDs can fail - hence multiple backups

[TheBoy]

Children growing up?

I am rather careful with photos, also DVDs can fail - hence multiple backups

Would it matter if you lost a few? It really wouldn't make much difference, would it.

When you were young, I bet your parents had no 'backups' of your pictures, and I bet she lent and lost a few.

Additionally, I suspect you have plenty of piccies of your kids, far more than your parents had of you?


You are right to take the precautions you do (though I seem to recall you use naff DVDs?), as the pictures are fairly important. But not critical...

[Kevin Wood]

I wish my Dad had used a slightly less secure storage medium for all the 8mm film of me thro-gro-wing up. And mother KW senior in a mini skirt.

 

Still, at least his projector's broken, but he is talking about getting it transferred to DVD.

Kevin

[Marks DTM Calib]

The only reliable storage medium for photos is to print them using a wet process!

Flash can also suffer short term failure to, I have cases of field failures after anly 1 week!

Of course it makes bugger all difference in most cases i.e. jpg and MP3's as you wont notice the odd few missing pixels and MP3 quality is naff at best anyway but, is probably still happening without you knowing it.

The flash drives have some protection for this by using FEC to compensate for some of the errors and they try (but not well) to wear level (flash wears out quite quickly!).

The key thing is to not use flash for storage of bit critical and important info as a single error can totaly knacker say an exe file or config file.

One other thing I have seen on more than one occassion with flash is the FAT getting corrupted, when this happens its bye bye the lot!

[Kevin Wood]

The key thing is to not use flash for storage of bit critical and important info as a single error can totaly knacker say an exe file or config file.

One other thing I have seen on more than one occassion with flash is the FAT getting corrupted, when this happens its bye bye the lot!

Been there on both counts.

Fortunately a once-expensive flash device seems to become both laughably small in capacity and cheap to replace at about the time it dies. The data on it may still be valuable, of course..

Certainly wouldn't trust them for storage long-term but they are very convenient short term.

Kevin

[x25xe]

Going back to the main subject of this thread, I am sorry, but I am with Martin on this.  I have a MD head unit which could record as well.  I found this really useful.  Unfortunately, the MD section of the Head Unit has failed and I really miss it.

I have a full size MD deck as part of my HiFi setup and still use it although only occasionally.  IMO, MD deserved to do better.

[Martin_1962]

Children growing up?

I am rather careful with photos, also DVDs can fail - hence multiple backups

Would it matter if you lost a few? It really wouldn't make much difference, would it.

When you were young, I bet your parents had no 'backups' of your pictures, and I bet she lent and lost a few.

Additionally, I suspect you have plenty of piccies of your kids, far more than your parents had of you?


You are right to take the precautions you do (though I seem to recall you use naff DVDs?), as the pictures are fairly important. But not critical...

Nope negatives and slides were carefully stored.

[MaxV6]

 IMO, MD deserved to do better.

yeah,, OT a sec, but what REALLY should have done better was DCC.

In it's later generation, it sounded nicer than ANY other consumer Digital format, CD included....  technically, although there were data compression aspects to it, it was actually 18 bit, so had a much greater dynamic range available to it than the other formats, all of which were (are) 16 bit...  and the data compression was the most benign anyone;s come up with yet....

sorry.... i'll get me anorak.

[Marks DTM Calib]

 IMO, MD deserved to do better.

yeah,, OT a sec, but what REALLY should have done better was DCC.

In it's later generation, it sounded nicer than ANY other consumer Digital format, CD included....  technically, although there were data compression aspects to it, it was actually 18 bit, so had a much greater dynamic range available to it than the other formats, all of which were (are) 16 bit...  and the data compression was the most benign anyone;s come up with yet....

sorry.... i'll get me anorak.

Max, the number of bits does not affect the dynamic range, its the sampling rate that does.

[MaxV6]

 IMO, MD deserved to do better.

yeah,, OT a sec, but what REALLY should have done better was DCC.

In it's later generation, it sounded nicer than ANY other consumer Digital format, CD included....  technically, although there were data compression aspects to it, it was actually 18 bit, so had a much greater dynamic range available to it than the other formats, all of which were (are) 16 bit...  and the data compression was the most benign anyone;s come up with yet....

sorry.... i'll get me anorak.

Max, the number of bits does not affect the dynamic range, its the sampling rate that does.

I trust you're deliberately trying to wind me up Mark...


errr...  just in case...     Audio&Acoustic engineering IS my job mate....  

Sample rate determines the bandwidth of audio available...   and thus the upper limit of the frequency response , See "Nyquist theorem".



In Fixed word length digital audio (16 bit, 24 bit etc as opposed to DSD type bit streams)  the bit depth determines the smallest signal range reproducible, (they all share a common maximum of 0 dBFS), therefore determining ,  the dynamic range available (144dB for 24 bit, 96dB for 16bit) , and the format noise floor (relates to SNR)  


anyone wanting to know more than they'll ever need to about digital audio would do well to read this series of articles written by Sound On Sound's technical editor (a Colleague/Friend  ) Hugh Robjohns

http://www.soundonsound.com/search?url=%2Fsearch&Keyword=%22All+about+digital%22&Words=All&Section=8&Subject=13&Summary=Yes


Note that the article pre-dates the Pro-audio industry's move towards 96K and 192K sample rates...  , and, offhand I think DSD and other bit-stream very high sample rate (we're talking 2+ Ghz, as opposed to KHz...)   systems.

none of which have much import on the substance of the theoretical basics of digital audio....  

[Marks DTM Calib]

On the hook Max  

You do realise what little it truely means in real world electronics though with supply noise, schott noise etc which totaly out weighs the significance of the LSB.......

[MaxV6]

On the hook Max  

You do realise what little it truely means in real world electronics though with supply noise, schott noise etc which totaly out weighs the significance of the LSB.......

actually it means a great deal....   you need to live in a world of ubergeek audio electronics mate....   there are mixing consoles and mic pre-amps out here with who's designers are aiming for noisefloors approaching that of  a piece of bare wire......   8-) (Re : Johnson noise)

real world figures for 24 bit systems using professional grade converters , are a typically of the order of 112-120dB  (A-weighted) useable , linearly accurate Dynamic range, some claim better than that, ( but my god you really don't want to know the price !)

domestic/semi-pro is usually more like 101-110 dB (A-weighted)

SOME manufacturers put it a little differently, dCS for example...   won't happily refer to a product as being capable of 24 bit resolution, unless the LSB is of some demonstrable use.....     and other foibles, like insisting on using the more technically accurate description of Sample rate " Kilocycles per second" as opposed to a KHz figure...

http://www.dcsltd.co.uk/technical_papers/bits.pdf



others have shown ways of dithering the audio data stream to allow perception of signals  theoretically below that of the applicable system noise.. effectively, (according to some) getting 20 Bit performance from a 16 bit media. ( Apogee UV22 for example, Prism-Sound also have similar technology )

the use of balanced signal paths,  proper power supply implementations, and all sorts of other silly tricks get thiese guys in to noise performance territories that domestic manufacturers don't even dream about....  


bear in mind , for example that the Pro-audio market generally uses balanced connection protocols, and, further example,  Schott noise is a "Common mode" form of noise, and therefore theoretically rejected at the receiver end of a balanced connection.

not to mention intelligent installation design ....  


there's lots of interesting stuff being done at the far edges of the audio geek universe (and i'm NOT talking about bloody snake oil Hifi 'dangle berries' like Russ Andrews and that lot purvey... )

[Martin_1962]

DOn't you mean DAT not DCC?

[Marks DTM Calib]

It makes no odds, you cant ignore the physics of a PN junction.....it adds noise, quite a bit and it adds up very quickly.

Its the real world.

Do they run off batteries, probably not and nobody has yet produced the perfect power supply (battery is about as close as you can hope).

Performance claims are one thing, real applications are another and I doubt there is much kit that stands up to its claims.....christ, it would be a virtual impossability to produce a test to check for such claimed levels.

I would not be in the least bit surprised if the figures quoted are taken from the non-real world of analogue simulation and pasted onto a datasheet and dont allow for PCB cross talk, track impedance matching, noise, power supply noise etc...

[MaxV6]

DOn't you mean DAT not DCC?

Nope, DAT (under most circumstances) was nominally 16 Bit, 48K . (although most could also run at 44.1K)

(the qualification in that was because there were  one or two higher resolution machines made for DAT format tape, (DA45HR from Tascam for example) but they're not compatible with ordinary machines, so the tapes created on them can only be played back on the same type of machine, not any other "normal" DAT machine... )

Mark,  there are some looney's and some geniuses working in high end audio development....
people can really truly get anally retentive about it.... I'm not generally one of them....  I'm  merely wish to point out that what the majority of people, electronics engineers or not, encounter in audio, is usually a long way from what is possible....   but that one should look to the Pro-audio guys to see what's possible, what's being played about with, and how far one can achievably go, , NOT the Hi-Fi crowd.... who'll gleefully sell you a  wooden plinth to sit your amp on,  that apparently cleans your mains power supply for a 10 foot radius  mains by means of quantum interaction....      (I think their version of Quantum is the one where you change the state of a thing merely by looking at it... (in th wrong way  )    you know, like, if you look at what our thing does, it doesn't work... but we promise you it works if you don't look at it....   )

as to test equipment....  you're not kidding....   although there are some esoteric test and measurement devices out there that defy my ability to comprehend how the hell they can tell which gnat farted on another planet .......  but it DOES exist....  

there are designers out there in Pro audio , whose entire 50 year career is largely based on creating better PCB designs with minimal cross talk, and matched stable capacitance and impedance characteristics... good ground plane shielding, and specifically designed wound component placement to minimise unwanted inductance effects (Rupert Neve springs to mind)


and they were doing this was way back before computing was able to do "non real world analogue simulation"

 

[VXL V6]

Just wanted to add.... I got into hifi seperates a long long time ago, my kit is old by todays standards but I still laugh at the appalling sound quality when I hear any sort of 'combined system'.

I also prefer the warm sound of my Linn turntable to that of any CD player i've heard. Infact I prefer the sound of my cheapie Rotel RP855 turntable to any form of MP3/WMV (whatever, who cares!) type media.

As for in the car.... The Bose setup with the NCDR Cd player is acceptable for a car system, but then a car is never going to be the most remarkable place to listen to music.

But whatever equipment you use, be it an Ipod or a turntable, a radio program through your phone or a dolby cinema system wrapped around your TV.... The single biggest improvement you can ever make to the listening experience is...... To get some Q tips and clean your ears!

[Andy B]

...... To get some Q tips and clean your ears!

According to the nurse at work, the only thing you should use to clean out your ears is, your opposite elbow!

[MaxV6]

. The single biggest improvement you can ever make to the listening experience is...... To get some Q tips and clean your ears!

yes and no... clearing out the ears yes, using std cotton buds NO....

Ear Candles,    (chinese thing...    acts asa wick and chimney to draw out all the wax and crap in the ear canal.
or Specially shaped cotton buds that have a large ballshape lump in them to prevent the bud being able to be slipped too far in and rupture the ear drum , which is all to easy with Std cotton Buds.