> First off, I absolutely love my MZ-R90. Now onto rant mode:
I think everyone here "loves" their MD gear. (sometimes just
a little tooooooo much :)
> I do play music, and I am looking for super long recordings.
> If I want quality recording I go DAT. Don't kid yourself, MD
> is lossy compression, is not CD quality, and is unsuitable for
> archiving (or mastering for a CD, if you prefer) for that reason.
The question is not over the actual technical ability for MD
to faithfully reproduce CD sound ... the key is in the users
*perception* that MD is CD quality. No-one debates the fact that
compression using ATRAC = data loss, but can people tell?
I can point to the fact that the AC3 5.1 soundtrack is actually of
lower quality then CD, but do people complain? ... NO. And that's
because of "fitness of use".
If you can't ever hear tell the difference, does it matter? I
will challenge anyone in a doubleblind listening test to identify
the difference between CD and the latest ATRAC version. If you can,
then you are certainly in the minority. For the rest of the world
population MD meets "fitness of use", this can include (but not
exclusively limited to) archiving, portable audio, master
recordings, car audio, bootlegs and any other of the 1000's of uses
MD has been put to.
LP2/LP4 also have their use ... whilst I can't attest to having
"actually" listened to a LP4 recording, I can imagine what they may
sound like based on my MP3 experiments and the effect of ever
reducing bit-rates can have on recordings. Taking this into
consideration LP2/LP4 will certainly have their use ... LP4
seems to be the ticket for lectures, talking books, Whilst LP2
seems a candidate for portable audio, car audio and other places
where external noises interfere with sound quality.
Here is an experiment just WAITING to be done ... pick a piece
of music, something simple but complex (dynamic range, tempo,
instrument placement). Do a digital recording in SP, LP2, LP4
dump back to CD digitally and compare on a reference system.
(remembering that the recording can only be a s good as the
original). Make the WAV files available for all, so that
others can burn a CD and make a decision for themselves. 30 sec
clips should be enough (x3 = approx 15Mb download)
> It amazes me that people will spend thousands of dollars on their
> instruments, including microphones and preamps and other miscellaneous
> recording gear, and then balk at shelling out $700 for a DAT. Instead
> they go for a $200 MD. (I'm just going with rock bottom here.) And then
> they throw away a lot of the signal. Does it sound great? Yes. Does
> it sound as good as it could? No. Plus you have severely
> degraded your chances of future restoration possibilities.
What amazes me more, is people who spend $1000's on Hi-Fi and put it
in a 10'x10' room, full of furniture and wonder why it doesn't sound
that good.
> MD has many uses. Long Play mode is one of them. Recording music is
> one of them. I will even go so far as to suggest that recording music
> in a LP mode is one of them (oh, no! heresy!) But don't delude yourself
> that you are getting high quality recordings in whatever MD mode you
> use.
Don't delude yourself you are getting an "exact" copy, but do recognise
that using 5:1 compression, MD is probably giving you the best damn
"real time" compressed recording available. "Fitness of use" :)
L8R GC
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