minidisc generations

[Dr Eaerth <leper@mindspring.com>]

someone said (god knows who) ...

>text/plain;    charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit  
>IMHO: If
>you have the choice between D->D copying or D->A->D  ALWAYS take the D->D
>copy.  You may not notice a great deal of generation loss at first, but
>it's there.  D->D recording is completely LOSSLESS, meaning you can make
>100 generations of copies without ever hearing the slightest hiss, but 
>just
>the mere fact of going through a  digital:analog converter, and then back

etc on to other stuff, mainly the minidisc losing in the audio hardware.

I just wanted to clarify the posting that this was a response to (not my
post, but I have a nice example).  In addition to any loss you get in going
to hardware, you'll get the compression error.  Here's a way to look at it.

JPG compression is lossy compression.  Take a photo and save it in 
photoshop
at, say, 6, which is good quality.  Now close the window and reload the
file, and save it again at JPG.  Repeat.  Soon, if you look closely, or
later, if you don't, you will be able to actually see the differences.

(I feel it's easier to illustrate with pictures.  Easier to compare.)

That is what the compression side of minidisc does upon copies, as the
compressed file is rendered to raw form, then compressed again on the
recording side.  Add that to the analog errors.  Doesn't seem the best 
plan 
for making copies.

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