Minidisc anyone?

[Dorkenstein]

Did/does anyone use minidisc in their home? I am struggling to decide on my home format of choice, and looking for opinions.

 

[The Boston Dangler]

minidisc would be a poor choice, unless you like obsolete, proprietary hardware and the underperforming, lossy ATRAC format.

for stand-alone stereo equipment, you can't do better than CD's (excluding SACD, DVDA and other abandonware). for pc-based playback, i like FLAC. if you're starting with mp3's or other lossy rips, nothing will make them sound like the original recordings.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php
http://www.avsforum.com/
http://www.videohelp.com/

 

[erwos]

Originally posted by: The Boston Dangler
for stand-alone stereo equipment, you can't do better than CD's (excluding SACD, DVDA and other abandonware).

SACD and DVD-A are still very much alive and worth looking into, depending on the OP's tastes in music. For your average alt rock fan, it's probably not going to matter a lot[1], but for classical music enthusiasts, they can make a big difference.

[1] IIRC, Incubus' new album is on SACD, so there is a variety of stuff out there.

 

[Koing]

I have spent over £1k on MD hardware and stuff.

MZ R30
MZ R50
MZ E900

About 30 MD's? Not a lot but quite a bit.

I liked it a lot. The Sony stick remotes were and still the best remotes I have ever used. I'm gutted that none of the mp3 players haev a stick remote. It's fast and easy to use and you can show at least one line of text. I can just leave the player in my pocket and use the remote to navigate the album/ playlist that I am on.

The sound quality in SP was amazing imo. The real time record sucked and the NetMD stuff wasn't without some software issues etc...

Koing

 

[sdifox]

You are like 20 years late if you are talking about MD home use

 

[Dorkenstein]

Ok, then let me ask this, what is a good home use cd player AND a portable that sound really good?

 

[sdifox]

Originally posted by: Dorkenstein
Ok, then let me ask this, what is a good home use cd player AND a portable that sound really good?

Price range? for portable player, as long as you don't over-compress your music, it sounds fine.
You want it to sound good, you get good portable cans.

home music, depends on a lot more than just a CD player.

 

[erwos]

Originally posted by: Dorkenstein
Ok, then let me ask this, what is a good home use cd player AND a portable that sound really good?

You need to clarify what you're asking for. Are you asking for "what's a single device that could be a really good home use CD player _and_ also act as a portable?" Because, in that case, I'd just look for a CD player that had digital output (coax or optical) and hook it up to my receiver.

 

[iRONic]

T-Bone Burnett has helped develop a new audio code. I'm anxious to check it out.

"Piersante, Burnett and a few other engineers have developed an innovation in audio reproduction technology called CODE. The high-definition format, they say, features reproduction that?s virtually indistinguishable from the original master tapes, and can be played on most DVD players."

"Like Neil Young, Burnett has long felt that the sound quality of compact discs was hardly an improvement over analog reproduction. In fact, it was a step backward. ?T Bone never bought in. He thought the sound of most CDs was a weak, pale substitution,? imparts Jenkins. What?s worse, he adds, is that record labels have been feeding these substandard CD versions into the digital retail marketplace, often forgoing a high-quality transfer of the original master in favor of a simple data transfer, with tweaks."

Link

and:

"The album is presented on DVD with all tracks in 24-bit/96kHz uncompressed audio tracks, which is the resolution used when albums are mixed and mastered. Standard CDs are encoded at 16-bits and 44.1kHz. In other words, the sound is compressed from its original form to "fit" on the CD, as it were."

Link

 

[erwos]

Another standard to check out is "HDCD".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...ion_Compatible_Digital

 

[FP]

Why lock yourself into a specific physical media format?

Get one of these

We have one at work and it is awesome. Full uncompressed audio formats support....

 

[erwos]

Originally posted by: binister
Why lock yourself into a specific physical media format?

Get one of these

We have one at work and it is awesome. Full uncompressed audio formats support....

That's a playback device. The media that goes onto it has to come from somewhere, and you're generally not going to be buying uncompressed audio via digital means.

 

[FP]

Originally posted by: erwos

Originally posted by: binister
Why lock yourself into a specific physical media format?

Get one of these

We have one at work and it is awesome. Full uncompressed audio formats support....

That's a playback device. The media that goes onto it has to come from somewhere, and you're generally not going to be buying uncompressed audio via digital means.

Well, it works in my case because I have ripped all my CDs with FLAC. The op was wondering about buying a CD player for his HT which I think is kinda silly when something like the Duet gives you full access to your CD collection as well as internet radio, etc.

 

[erwos]

Originally posted by: binister

Originally posted by: erwos

Originally posted by: binister
Why lock yourself into a specific physical media format?

Get one of these

We have one at work and it is awesome. Full uncompressed audio formats support....

That's a playback device. The media that goes onto it has to come from somewhere, and you're generally not going to be buying uncompressed audio via digital means.

Well, it works in my case because I have ripped all my CDs with FLAC. The op was wondering about buying a CD player for his HT which I think is kinda silly when something like the Duet gives you full access to your CD collection as well as internet radio, etc.

How are you going to get music from your SACDs and DVD-As over to it, though? Having support for lossless compression is nice, but it's not going to make a CD sound better than an SACD or DVD-A or HDCD.

 

[FP]

Originally posted by: erwos

Originally posted by: binister

Originally posted by: erwos

Originally posted by: binister
Why lock yourself into a specific physical media format?

Get one of these

We have one at work and it is awesome. Full uncompressed audio formats support....

That's a playback device. The media that goes onto it has to come from somewhere, and you're generally not going to be buying uncompressed audio via digital means.

Well, it works in my case because I have ripped all my CDs with FLAC. The op was wondering about buying a CD player for his HT which I think is kinda silly when something like the Duet gives you full access to your CD collection as well as internet radio, etc.

How are you going to get music from your SACDs and DVD-As over to it, though? Having support for lossless compression is nice, but it's not going to make a CD sound better than an SACD or DVD-A or HDCD.

Right. The op was asking about which format he should standardize on. My answer is use CDs and the Duet because it offers the most flexibility in both formats and portability. Like others have said, SACD and DVD-A are quite limiting in terms of adoption and value.

 

[The Boston Dangler]

for a portable player, i'd look at the iriver products, as they support flac. unfortunately, my antivirus (antivir) is currently going nuts on the iriver website. maybe someone else can confirm?

for a home player with sacd and dvda, this is worth a read:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1056367

especially this part:
Is $99 cheap enough? Pioneer, free shipping too.

honestly, hi-def audio discs are pretty hard to come by, unless you deliberately seek them out. the vast majority of sacd/davd/hdcd recordings are classical and some jazz. the only non-classical album i've seen with hdcd is one of my Dead shows. hdcd cd's will play normally on a non-hdcd player, as the extra info is invisible to the machine.

http://www.musicdirect.com/