My apologies to everyone who is waiting for the mp3 recordings of the At Large meetings in Amsterdam, but the Sony NetMD Mini-Disc recorder that I used (Model MZ-N707) is broken — by design. This is a spectacularly awful product. It’s a Mini-Disc player/recorder that accepts microphone input and makes digital recordings, but it blocks any transfer of a digital recording to a PC! [icann.Blog via boing boing]
SCMS is the original DRM, and Sony never says anything about digital retrieval. Fact is, digital output is rare on non-professional MD gear. The nearly $500 MDS-JE780 is about the cheapest. Still has SCMS, but computers don’t care.
What really bites about MD is that, even with Pro gear that ignores SCMS and has digital outputs, it’s impossible to make a bit-for-bit copy. The native MD format is ATRAC, which is lossy. The digital output is raw PCM. Sending it to another MD deck results in another ATRAC conversion.
Generation loss for the digital age.
Update: Brett wrote to me:
Last year I was interviewed by a reporter for Sweden’s National Public Radio. He had an old DAT recorder that had clearly seen better days — in places it was held together by duct tape. I asked him why he didn’t upgrade to something newer. He said the old DAT recorders were the only ones that would “do the job.” Now I know what he meant. They were pre-DRM.
DAT pre-dates the AHRA by a half-decade or so, but manufacturers began implementing SCMS several years ahead of the legislation. I suppose that these days any DAT gear could probably get away with claiming the “professional model” exemption. Upside: Raw PCM. Downside: Professional prices, tape is icky.
