I've seen the Sony MD commercial on MTV serveral time now selling MD as a
way to record music from the Internet. While I think it's great that we're
finally seeing MD ads, I wonder if this is really the right approach. I am
a big supporter of MD, specifically Sony (I have a JE520, an MZ-EP11, an
MDS-PC2 and 3 MDX-65s), but it seems to me that its *more* difficult to
record MP3s to MD than it is to, for example, a Rio. It takes longer, since
the MD has to be recorded at 1X; the titles don't transfer automatically,
etc. I'm afraid these commercials might backfire if MD newbies are
disappointed when they find out that MD is actually not the best format for
this specific application.
Sony *could* have addressed some of these issues:
1) There are digital soundcards that will support 88.2KHz, so 2X transfers
would be possible today if it was supported by the firmware in the MD
recorder; the hardware already mostly supports it! Not much PC support for
higher than 96KHz yet, but that may change with DVD-computer integration; I
think AC-3 uses 192 or 384K, so theoretically 4X and 8X would be possible as
newer soundcards become available.
2) Some PC software to make things easier. Drag-and-drop hard disk to MD.
Maybe somehow integrate a CD ripper into it, so that you could just do
drag-and-drop beween the CDROM, MD, or HD.
3) Right now, the digital audio goes via TOSlink and the control goes via
control-A1 (which portable recorders don't have). Maybe they could figure
out a clever way of embedding deck control into the user bits of the
TOSlink. That would certainly make it a *lot* simpler to set up...
Any thoughts about this?
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