Thread: MD master
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Old 2010-01-04, 07:32 PM
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Recording/Mastering Engineer
 
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Victoria, BC, Canada
Re: MD master

I have used ATRAC MD's as well for years, and now they have been taken over by better gear that is actually cheaper than what I originally paid for 1 of my oldschool MD decks.

In this day and age of (relatively) cheap lossless hi-res digital recorders, there's no real reason to continue using a format that's really been dead or seriously dying and flawed by being "almost" as lossy as eMPty3 files.

Having said that, I still haven't made the switch to a Microtrack / Edirol R09 / what-have-you yet as I'm a broke-ass guy right now. Then again, I'm also too broke to afford any shows!

Older atrac MD recordings are still grandfather claused in and are still allowed. Stuff recorded before Jan 1 2008 on older MD decks is still ok, since there weren't that many new hi-res lossless digital recorders out there. I'm preparing my MD recording of a Van Halen show from dec 5 2007 in Vancouver to post here (just under the wire!) but technology (and times) have changed. Older recordings can stand, but today there's not much reason to continue using these crappy lossy things that have been outdone 100 times over by tons of 24bit 96khz wav recorders.

This site is trying to be at the forefront of a higher standard of standardness (to steal an old bootleg label's tagline) and keeping quality to an amazing level. Although I had my doubts originally, I see their point.

There are lots and lots of other trader sites similar to this one that haven't got these elevated levels of excellence. Please feel free to share your newer atrac MD's there.

Analog gear is analog gear - it doesn't literally throw away data to make the music fit the format in the same way that MD atrac does. It doesn't necessarily have a hard and fast set bandwidth limit like atrac does (or the dreaded eMPty3 files do!) so a skilled user can still pull of some excellent frequency response and dynamics from tape.
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