Ummm... yes, I quite understand that. To my awareness, we are not debating anything here.
"Pining"? Hardly. Like I said, I'm happy to discover that I can transfer these in the format they're in, without losing anything else.
My comment was simply an acknowledgment of not having a better understanding of the format back when I recorded those shows. To my ears, and most others who have heard many of these recordings, they sound just fine. I was simply remarking in the sense that if I knew more about MD back then, I would have used a different recording medium.
I've been recording shows for something like 35 years, and it's always a learning curve. When I was a kid, I didn't get how using a better brand of cassette, or a better microphone, would vastly improve the sound quality. Learning things like that along the way is what turned it from a casual hobby into a more serious archiving endeavor in my adult years.
My original question had to do with finding out what other people thought, particularly given the previous discussion about the possibility of 20-bit AD conversion, etc. It all sounded like a lot of speculation, and I since some of those questions had not been answered yet, I wondered if there was any empiric data to substantiate anyone's claims. I stated at the beginning that I personally didn't think it mattered whether it went to 24-bit or not. So, ummm.... I wonder why you seem to be stuck on that point, when I pretty much agreed with you a while ago.
This has got to be the strangest thread on TS I have ever set my foot in. Sorry to have bothered you folks - you seem like you would prefer to be left alone with each other, so I will gladly leave you to it. Enjoy yourselves.
Sadly, they will still be lossy recordings, because like a lot of folks who jumped on that technology in the early days of MD, I didn't understand the limitations of ATRAC. Still, it's great to discover that there is hope for transferring all these old shows as data in their original state.
Look - they will ALWAYS be lossy...no matter what you do. That loss is built in to ATRAC. Not coming back. Its like going mp3 > wav. The data is thrown out for good.
Dont take this the wrong way - But I think pining over the virtues of 24 bit when you are remastering a lossy source via a portable deck's headphone output is bit ridiculous.
The best you can hope for is the most direct ATRAC > WAV conversion.
A. Hi-MD > Computer
B. Standalone > Microtack (via spdif)
I think - for the most part - these can be considered equivalent processes.(probably some quibble room here)
I think the jury is still out as to the virtue of reconstructing the wav as a 24bit file. If there was any archival advantage...obviously that would be great. But you'd still want 16bits if you need to go to CD.
Another MD user and member here had a standalone MD that had the spdif output set at 24 bit as default. (according to the manual). So - thats why I wonder. Sony made it an option...before there were any real 24 bit devices available (for the most part). Why bother unless it made a difference?
I know I've owned Sony standalones with 20 bit ADs - so some confusion there for sure.