I’ve recently seen portable Minidisc players that support playing MP3s from the minidisc. Since both Minidisc (ATRAC) and MP3 are compression formats, how well do they work together? Granted ATRAC is a fixed rate and MP3 is not, but if I were to put a 128KBPS MP3 on a minidisc, would it take up less space than if I simply recorded the track from a CD to Minidisc? Would I notice sound degredation from combining the two?
I guess the basic question is: other than a possible time saver (eliminating MP3>WAV conversion time) are there any benefits/drawbacks of a Minidisc player that supports MP3?
are you sure this just wasn’t a “put MP3s on a minidisc and go” kinda thing? i know several people (myself included) that have soundcards with digital outs so we can record MP3s to minidisc as audio (not data)…
i know there’s plans for portable CD players that do that (MP3 data on CD) but i don’t think any of those are shipped yet.
personally i don’t think that you could get much more compression out of the MP3 without reducing quality…however, those new portable video cameras that put the data on MDs are pretty sweet. so, i guess what i’m saying is, i don’t know.
that mzr55 is just a straight up portable…just a fancy portable. if that’s the one the OP is talking about, then the feature is “hey, you can d/l MP3s and record them on this and go” meaning, “this has a digital (or analog) imput, which most portable recorders don’t have, so you don’t need a home deck to record your MP3s on to listen to music as you go, and you don’t have to buy a stupid Diamond RIO.”
Te blurb also says that it comes with an adapter and software. I’m thinking that it just copies the track to the minidisc, converting it to .WAV in the process- just like you can do with Winamp and a soundcard with audio ins.