> Yes, I found that fairly to-the-point "computer peripheral"
> too. This addresses most of my gripes about MD. MD sucks
> compared to MP3 in that MD is totally not computer-literate.
Well, of course MP3 is computer-literate: as you quote, MP3 is a
"computer peripheral." If you want to do anything with MP3s you need a
computer. Period. It requires a computer to download the MP3s, or to rip
and encode them, and then to transfer them to your player or to burn
them to a CD. MD is an audio format, perfectly usable without a
computer.
> Every time you "transfer a file" to MD, so to speak, it
> forces another layer of degradation as the bits are, for
> no reason, run through yet another generation of lossy
> compression. That sucks.
The recompression isn't on the MP3, lossy-compressing what was already
lossy-compressed, but on the restored, now-uncompressed audio *decoded
from* the MP3. Like inflating a balloon, giving it to a friend, and then
he deflates it again. Certainly, this is inefficient, but how else could
it be? MP3s boomed after MD was created. We'll see what Net MD will do
about it, if and when it arrives.
> MD should be completely re-architected, thoroughly, to match
> the MP3 paradigm of a general-purpose file-system scheme.
Why, because you said so? If MD is so bad and outdated, then why are we
on the MD-L still using it? For that matter, if MD sucks, why are you on
a mailing list about it? Are you trolling, or did you just think that
the MD-L wasn't active enough lately?
The "MP3 paradigm" has been an unstandardized mess since MP3 players
came out. If I put my MP3s in directories, will the player see them as
separate albums? Will it even be able to see those files in the
directories? Some players handle it intelligently, some don't even
recognize the directories, and others just present you with an
semi-random list of your 150 MP3s. The CD-CA "MultiAudio" standard will
help this, but it's only been implemented in one CD-burning program so
far, and no players.
> MD is inferior to MP3 because the MD track marks and titling
> are treated as an afterthought -- by default, these do *not*
> get transferred -- that's so lame, that's the cassette
> paradigm.
Of course it's the cassette paradigm. Sony intended MD as a digital,
random-access replacement for cassettes, yes? (Then the marketing
department fouled it up by trying to position it as a CD replacement,
but that's a separate issue...) Don't complain about MD being what it
was meant to be.
> They call CD and MD "digital", but they are *brainless* digital,
> lacking digital *intelligence*. Yes, the music is stored in
> binary, but aside from that, CDs and MDs completely missed the
> point and are unclear on the concept of digital intelligence.
The "Redbook" CD-audio standard was created in, what, 1980? What a shame
you weren't on the committee back then to enlighten them. "Digital
intelligence" was not a consumer-electronics concept in 1980, and it was
barely a concept in the PC world of 8086 processors. When a PC cost
$4000, nobody was going to design something that required computing
power for such a prosaic task as playing music. Don't blast CD and MD
for not doing things they weren't designed to do, or for not doing
things that nobody had thought of yet. Yeah, my rotary-dial phone sucks
too, because it doesn't stream MPEG-4 video of the person I'm calling.
> We need to move toward MD-data; we must have the ability to
> drag-and-drop any filetype to the MD like to a floppy
Again, MD is an audio format. It's not meant to carry your Excel
spreadsheets and some JPEGs of Angelina Jolie along with your music.
Yes, it'd make a cool computer-storage drive, but Sony bungled that
opportunity years ago and I don't think anyone expects a comeback. If
you want to transport your files, then get a Zip drive or a CD burner.
Don't blast MD for not being what it's not supposed to be. My car sucks
because I can't drive it across the lake.
> Then we find out that the extra ATRAC generation is forced
> upon us for copyright reasons. Well then forget MD and stay
> with MP3. We must engineer our own MD-burner technology that
> can do it the right way -- to make MD and possibly ATRAC a
> lossless bit-for-bit general file transfer and storage
> medium, *fully* computer-centric just like MP3.
Oh, yeah, MP3 is ignored by copyright lawyers and the RIAA. Ask Napster
about that one.
No, the extra ATRAC is because that's how MD stores the music. If you
put music on a MD, then it has to be in ATRAC---SP, LP2, or LP4
flavors---because that's just how MD works. Certainly, if you want to
engineer that MD burner, go right ahead. We'll be waiting. But turn
ATRAC into a lossless bit-for-bit etc.? ATRAC is an audio encoder,
designed to make music smaller, just like MP3, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, TwinVQ,
and so on. If you want a "lossless bit-for-bit general file transfer and
storage medium" then, again, get a Zip drive or a CD burner. And if you
want lossless compression on that, use Zip or Rar or Ace or Gzip or so
on.
As to "*fully* computer-centric just like MP3"... Who wants that? Let's
see a show of hands. I don't. I don't want a computer peripheral, I want
an audio device. If you want MP3, then use MP3, don't demand that MD
turn into MP3. My car should be redesigned because I can't drive it
across the lake, no wait, that's what a boat is for.
> We should combine the best aspects of all these media:
> o The $0.25 8 cm Mini CD-R or a hypothetical magneto-optical
> 8 cm CD-RW. o MP3 technology. o MD editing and portability
> and durability.
Yes, we should. But I think that all MD needs is the ability of
high-speed audio transfers from PC, and easy titling via PC, which Net
MD will [supposedly] provide. Oh, and by "PC" I mean any computer: Macs
included, and preferably also computers running Linux, BeOS, Solaris,
QNX, Free/Net/OpenBSD, etc.
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