gbrigman,
Respectfully,
I've used
the Yamaha MD4S, but my main experience with MD's stems from extensive use of Sony MD-decks and portables. The MD4 (and the MD8 also i'm sure) is a really good portable MTR, nothing more, nothing less. It's way ahead of PortaStudios and other tape based low end MTRs, but try to match any MD against quality gear recording at 24bit/48 or 96khz and it's game set match the latter. I love using MD's, but they're just not up where i think you want to put them.
I first got into MD's back in March 1993, when i sat down with then marketing director of Sony Music Sweden, who gave me a copy of Toto's 'Kingdom of Desire'. Sony was trying to market the MD but the other big record companies got scared shitless because they thought their profits were at stake if people could copy CD's with digital sound quality. That's why MD never really took off in any other countries than Japan and few other in south east Asia. All the major companies except Sony went on to support Philips DCC system, as they thought it wouldn't be a very convenient format anyway.
Why am i telling you all this? Well, when i heard what was happening i kinda dug into MDs and how good they actually were/are and why the record companies were so uptight about the whole thing. As for how it really works, i recommend reading what Mr. Tsutsui and his colleagues at the Sony Research Lab wrote about it back when they presented it at the AES convention. The paper is somewhere at
www.minidisc.org if they haven't removed it. It's a very technical piece, but you'll understand that ATRAC is not about eliminating blank spaces.
I did some A/B-testing a long time ago, and i still do it with people when i get a chance, just to see if they can tell the difference between a CD and an MD. Although i will never claim that my testing is scientific in anyway, there are obvious consistencies. People who are not recording professionals clearly have tendencies towards a 50-50 accuracy. Some of the music professionals (mainly musicans and sound engineers) that i've asked to do this have come close to 100%, but only a few have nailed 10 out of 10. I haven't tested anyone with ATRAC 4.5. BTW without question, the funniest test was when a friend's friend who's an 'audiophile' got 3 out of 10 and then gave me speaker cable for birthday present...
gbrigman, based on facts that i've gathered and on my experience when it comes to MD's i disagree with you on the sound quality of minidiscs and how ATRAC works. I do not think that MD8's are crap, nor do i think they are top quality these days. But MD's in general sure are getting very, very good.
micmac
