Hi. I'm going to be moving and am selling off as much stuff as I can. I pulled out one of my portable MD recorders (no, I don't plan on selling the portables, I sold the deck). I had bought a new pair of headphones and couldn't find my portable CD player. So I auditioned them on my MD recorder. Once again I was reminded just how great MD is. Unless I am missing something big time, I still don't think that they will be able to get the cost of flash memory low enough to make building a library of music on them. In addition, isn't Flash memory really meant as a temporary means of storage? Not archival? I think that it is time for someone to reintroduce the MD. Maybe they should even change the name (but of course it would make the claim that it is compatible with standard MD players-because it would actually be mini discs). Then they should have an interface on it to make it compatible with either serial and or USB. There are two ways that they could turn Mp3s into ATRAC. The first would be by having firmware right in the recorder. The other would be a software solution that would convert Mp3s to wave files and them spit them out as PCM through one of the ports mentioned above. One of the first USB peripherals I saw were speakers. If you can go from USB to speakers, I don't see any big deal in going from USB to PCM. Actually there is a third option. This would be a software hardware solution. I don't think that what I am about to describe is the best way to go because we want to keep it as simple as possible. You have a computer card that converts mp3s into PCM and has a USB or serial. This is too complicated. Besides, I realize that in order for this crazy plan of mine ot work, you would have to be able to have instant transfer of mp3s to ATRAC. In that way, the recorder would be able to create an MD in seconds instead of real time. But today's recorders can't input ATRAC. I realize that this is going to take a new breed of recorder, with high speed recording capabilities. But if people are will to put up with CD writers that give you 2X real time, if the new MD recorder could make the transfer in say 5 time (the compression ratio of ATRAC), I think that the majority of the people would be happy with that. If it could do it faster, fine. I thought of yet another way to do it. I guess first of all, they should wait until all of this mp3/Napster stuff settles down. If an agreement is reached that allows companies such as Napster and Mp3. to exist legally, that would be the time to strike. I don't know anything about mp3 compression. All a do is download songs and play them by either converting them to wave files or on my Apex DVD player. I know that ATRAC is bit wise reduction. You throw away the bits that you don't hear. Couldn't ATRAC be used instead of mp3?? Can't you use ATRAC instead of mp3 to provide you with files small enough to download, so you wouldn't need a life time to record just one song. >From what I have seen of mp3, it seems to have about a 5:1 ratio like ATRAC?? If so, the ATRAC files should take up about the same amount of space a mp3 and be able to be downloaded at about the same speed. I'm getting into areas that I know little about (which is just about everywhere <G>), but even if the songs on an MD are the compressed equivalent of music tracks on a CD, you should be able to do some of the things I have mentioned using a form of digital audio extraction. I really don't understand it, but I'm told that the tracks on a CD are not real files, but rather virtual files. If you take a CD and check it with Windows Explorer, each track is listed as only 1KB. Now you know that it is actually much larger then that. I think one problem with the MD is that it was born too early. The MD is 21st century technology. At the price of solid state I feel it is going to be 21st century plus 10 years or more (maybe never) technology. I may be shocked in a year or so, but I just can't see 140MB of memory dropping to $3.00 in my life time. Larry ----------------------------------------------------------------- To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
