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wrote:
> Why is there no software available to directly play MD
> recordings? or is there? or am I very confused? /:b
Evil control freakery by Sony. MD was introduced about 10 years after
CD. Despite the fact that home taping didn't kill music in the 1970s,
Sony thought 'What a good idea if we cripple our digital recordig
format so people can't copy their compressed copies of uncompressed
CDs'. Digital recording was so terrifying for them in the hands of
the proletariat despite that fact the the original MD (not HiMD) had
inherent generation loss built in due to inbuilt compression. So they
used a proprietary disc and data format, keeping it closed and not
letting anybody else make the software by keeping the details secret.
A hardware form of DRM.
We can only thank our lucky stars that CD was invented in a more
innocent age where people were trying to improve signal quality
rather than control what you do in your own home with stuff you've
bought. It seems that all other media have to go through the DRM-
hacker cat and mouse game. Not enough people were interested in
hacking Minidisc so you still have to use Sony software to access the
digital data. This policy probably stiffed the adoption of MD as the
defacto consumer digital recording medium and will hasten its demise
when somebody learns how to make a CF recorder for $150 with low-
noise mic preamps to match HiMD.
The only correct use for that Sony software IMO is to get the data
off the MD into something you can play with anything. However, if you
really want to play your compressed omg files in something else
without expanding them, and if they don't have Sony's DRM (ie you
have recorded them yourself on a HiMD recorder not via the digital
input and are using SS3.4 or later)
http://www.infoanarchy.org/en/ATRAC3
seems to claim there is a winamp decoder. I've never pursued playing
the .omg files in anythign else as I record uncompressed PCM. If you
record compressed I guess keeping the compressed files and playing
them in something less user-hostile that SonicStage might be
attreactive.
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