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MoCoChris

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Firstly, Hello guys and gals!

 

A bit about me:

 

I bought my first Minidisc unit in 1999 at 14 with all my worldly savings, it was a JVC I bought from an acquaintance who needed the cash. He gave me a few blank and pre recorded MD's (One was Cypress Hill - Skull and Bones which I was most grateful for!) I used this for 2-3 years, copied most of my CD's to it - Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, QOTSA all my music of the time.

 

The JVC was pretty good until I had a battery explosion, not in my pocket thankfully. I managed to clean it up and recouped £80 for it from cash converters, which I thought was a good deal for me as it didn't work perfect after that. I immediately took that money and invested in a Panasonic MR-200, which I though was the bees knees. The clear LCD screen on the remote with a blue backlight was the main attraction, I loved it! I also used it to record some band practice (we were rubbish) and used it as a dictaphone for some of my A-level studies, to great effect.

 

In 2003, I joined the Air Force, bought an iPod with virtually my first pay packet (not a bad move) and also bought a Nokia N-gage (very bad move). I kept the iPod under lock and key and treated it like it was gold dust, I still have it and I think it's worth more than I paid for it new. But anyway the MD unit was still my preferred music standard, I believed at the time the iPod may have been a one off. So I bought a MD Mini hi-fi, cant remember the model but it was Sony. I loved that too but that had an unfortunate accident courtesy of an Army storeman, whom I still hate. At around the same time a roommate ditched his MD for an iRiver so I inherited his Sony player (from what I remember it didn't record, so I didn't like it.) But he gave it for free, so I accepted and then passed it on to my younger sister with some pop music on a few discs to keep her happy.

 

Anyway, if you're still reading, after a horrendous break up with the ex wife, I was left with my clothing and my car so none of my tech survived. A few iPods/iPhones later I would like to give some love back to MD.

 

So the questions are:

 

Which unit should I buy? Portable preferred so I'm looking at the Sony RH1 which looks the nicest, but I'm reading that it has issues, especially as it ages? Where should I look to buy? I'm in the UK for reference.

I never tried Hi-MD either so that would be a nice feature to have, is there any specific issues to note with it?

Is SonicStage still the preferred transfer software? Is anyone running it from Parallels on a Mac?

 

I look forward to sharing knowledge here, looking around this forum there is a lot of information, support and enjoyment for the MD.

 

- Chris

 

 

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hmmm....  although i got mz-rh1, but it's so expensive there, mz-nh1 surface got problems also, so i suggest mz-rh10 would be a good choice, u can still find it on ebay with reasonable price. if u have enough budget, then choose RH1 without any doubt. 

 

Hi-MD could use for data transfer but i never do that, coz the speed is to slow, any with 1GB, i don't think you will use it for storage.  besides, with hi-md blank disc, i could fulfill with around 60 songs in 352kHz quality.

 

SonicStage 4.3 maybe the best transfer software you can using~  i'm using VMware fusion on my mac, but i still using my HP elite book to run that dirty jobs, download, transfer and watch japanese AV. :)

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I would go for a NH700 as its easy to use and performs on AA Cells.

Can be cheap if you find a good one.

Why do you think you need Hi-Md ? IF so you should go for a walkman for portable use and/or just listening outside they´re the best choice.Especially in Terms of Battery not running out that quick.

EH50 - EH70 are the ones you should look for. There´s an EH930 too but this is hard to find and rather expensive

:D I´m glad i got one by myself

 

Once infected in all these nice MOdels you´ll be looking for a SP walkman too i think ;)

 

Greets

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As Punkrockaddict says, is there a particular reason you need Hi-MD? Or is it just because the RH1 looks nice? I suggest you think long and hard about this before committing to buying anything. To buy an RH1 you will need pretty deep pockets. 1Gb discs are also known to fetch silly money although of course you can still use standard discs.

 

If it's capacity you're bothered about bear in mind an ordinary NetMD in LP2 mode will give approx. two and a half hours of music on one disc and still retain perfectly good sound quality.

 

And welcome to the forum. There's usually somebody that can answer the majority of questions that come up, and there are plenty that are more knowledgeable than myself, especially regarding Hi-MD.

 

Good luck

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Thanks for your suggestions guys.

So I gave up on Hi-MD (for now) instead, I've got myself a Sony MD deck for £30, still new in box, which is nice. Also got a job lot of 3 portables, a N710 a NF810 and another for £30 which is also nice.

Now to find some MD albums that I want to collect!

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Nice finds.  Indeed what the others have said is spot on.  RH1s are insanely expensive to acquire, for several reasons.  The main one of which? It was the only unit that allowed you to upload SP recordings to a PC.  It was also never produced in very big numbers to begin with and has long gone out of production (along with everything else MD). 

 

Though I get your enthusiasm and nostalgia over MD, I can't see why anyone would want to go back to using it today as a main source of music playback.  Flash memory is so darn cheap and there's so many other options out there to record/store/play music.  For example even a low-end cellphone will have more storage than several HiMD discs, nevermind regular MD discs.  The average phone will have like 20 times the storage of one HiMD disc not to mention mostly free of the draconian restrictions and sluggish speed of NetMD. 

 

Don't get me wrong I still have a relative wealth of MD gear (some of which I'm re-discovering now that I've been doing some cleaning up at the house), but I dunno I'd never think of using any of it seriously, lol.  I even have two NW-HD3s in a cabinet which have been unused for probably 6-7 years or so.  Yeah they were 20GB devices and at the time very small for that capacity as well.  They were great back then.  But today?  LOL.

 

Anyway you did get some nice finds esp. a new in box deck for that price :)  Personally I wouldn't be putting the effort into trying to use MD as a main format anymore, but if it's just for nostalgia I get that as I'm firing up some of my old MD stuff right now myself :)  Either way though, hope you have fun with the new gear :)  If you get tripped up by SonicStage and start swearing and cursing and stuff though, just remember that's all part of the fun of MD ;)

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