sfbp

Wow! I have to try it on a real recording of something live, but so far, so good. The mp3 playback is quite adequate. WAV of course sounds much better. Mono is possible, for ridiculous amounts of storage of speech. Recording - I simply set something going on speakers and recorded a segment in MP3 and a segment in STHQ (LPEC) using my Soundpro BMC-SP3's. Not very scientific. But the LPEC recording sounds MUCH closer to ATRAC. What's the betting this is MD technology transformed? Drag and drop, but still the MD style convenience of editing before upload. I can live with 17 hours of 128kbps. Of course 96m of LPCM is very nice too. The 22khz stereo LPCM (which I tried after the STHQ) is eminently acceptable, too - I bet there are LOTS of applications for which this would be perfect. I am guessing the application they provide is needed to get those LPEC codecs decoded in the PC (playback, and converting to more "normal" formats). I tried the line-in and it works nicely. There's a software switch you have to set to change over from MIC to LineIn. The best novel feature.... the record button acts as RECORD-PAUSE. And the whole thing isn't a lot bigger than my toothbrush. Needless to say it charges via USB the supplied NiMH batteries from either PC or the MZ-RH1 charger.

The one I find interesting (given my recent dabbling with lower MD rates) is the 128kbps STHQ recording - 17 hours 20 mins! Also 22kHz LPCM Stereo might be interesting (3hrs 10m). Does anyone know what this would sound like?? This recorder seems to have a lot of options I have read and re-read people here asking for. Mono, for instance. Voice-activated recording (as an option of course). I just broke down and got one. We shall see.

Scan follows. I might even put some key pages from the manual. This sounds like a hot ticket. 52g without batteries, MP3 and LPCM recording.... Specifications lc recorder section Capacity (User available capacity) 1 GB (approx. 970 MB =1,017,610,240 Byte) A part of the memory capacity is used as a management area. Recording time*1 See page 31. *1 When you are going to record continuously for a long time, you may have to replace the batteries with new ones in the midst of recording. For details on the battery life, refer to page 17. Frequency range  LPCM 44/16: 50 - 20,000 Hz  LPCM 22/16: 50 - 10,000 Hz  MP3 192kHz: 50 - 16,000 Hz  MP3 128 kHz: 50 - 16,000 Hz  MP3 48 kHz: 50 - 14,000 Hz  LPEC STHQ: 50 - 20,000 Hz  LPEC ST: 50 - 16,500 Hz  LPEC STLP: 50 - 7,000 Hz  LPEC SP: 50 - 6,000 Hz  LPEC LP: 50 - 3,500 Hz Bit rates and sampling frequencies for MP3 files*2 Bit rate: 32 - 320 kbps, VBR Sampling frequencies: 16/22.05/24/32/44.1/ 48 kHz *2 The playback of MP3 files recorded using the IC recorder is also supported. Not all encoders are supported. Bit rate and sampling frequencies*3 for WMA files Bit rate: 32 - 192 kbps, VBR Sampling frequencies: 44.1 kHz *3 WMA Ver. 9 is compatible, however, MBR (Multi Bit Rate), Lossless, Professional, and Voice are not supported. A file of which copyright is protected cannot be played back. Not all encoders are supported. General Speaker Approx. 16 mm (13/32 in.) dia. Power output 150 mW Input/Output  Microphone jack (minijack, stereo) - input for plug in power, minimum input level 0.9 mV, 3 kilohms or lower impedance microphone  Headphone jack (minijack, stereo) - output for 8 - 300 ohms headphones  USB connector - High-Speed USB compatible Playback speed control (Ope) -75% to +200% Power requirements Two LR03 (size AAA) alkaline batteries: 1.5 V DC Two NH-AAA rechargeable batteries: 1.2 V DC Operating temperature 5

Sure but I didn't like to post the whole operating manual. At about page 128 or so there is an extensive list of features, bitrates and on and on. Extracting that was a problem. These are "marketing specs" which are often "misconstruable". One more thing that isn't obvious unless you have it in your hand or read the manual all the way through... it accepts external microphones of the type we are all familiar with. It's even switchable between line-in and microphone. Why couldn't you have done this before, Sony, and why did we never hear about this model?

There are others here with real knowledge. Sounds like the (Sony) PCM-M10 is cost effective, and there are many posts about it on this site. I also found a small recorder ICDSX700 at my local drugstore, and there apparently is a whole range of these that noone here has ever commented on. I tried to reproduce the specs from the Sony support website but they protected the document. It really seems Sony doesn't want anyone to find out about this one. http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/model-documents.pl?mdl=ICDSX700D Summary (I will edit later if I can): PCM down to 32kbps, uncompressed, LPEC (sounds like atrac but different), MP3 recording, + WMA playback. Built in mics with plug for external USB 1GB capacity (flash) I have no clue why noone has ever commented on this.

Rename the first album to the same as the first. If you do it before upload, put the recordings to be uploaded into a folder with the identical name, on each disk You can change all the properties of a folder by right clicking it

From what I have encountered so far, it's not the actual DRM itself but the restrictions on operations that ought to be 100% no-brainers (eg uploading MD to a computer) that are the problem. I don't even care about most things that are protected in terms of Video (which is what most efforts are directed towards) because as long as I don't have a monster display, digitally stored and replayed Standard Definition is enough. Kind of like the megapixel camera argument - who wants all those megapixels when all it does is fill up my hard disk and take longer to transmit? From what I can see, HDMI is no great shakes technically. It "just" makes things easier for those non-techies who want to spend less time connecting things up. Even then, HDMI has all sorts of artificial problems (such as not being able to tweak the aspect ratio if it's wrong). The one big benefit (if it actually works) is that HDMI cable runs can be long enough to hide all the equipment in another room. That was what finally tipped the scales for me. There's still a noise factor (I had to disconnect the loudest of the 3 fans on the HTPC but in warmer climes - this is temperate British Columbia - the noise of the fan(s) might be a pain). Also I have another problem which is quite unrelated (for a while I thought it was related) with some sort of interference being picked up from the TV. Eventually I shall have to get an LCD, Plasma or LED TV and it will go away, for the moment I get this nasty hum-like pickup from the TV even on the inputs that are optical. Can't figure that one out at all. It's probably a ground loop but there's no rhyme or reason to it.

One (quite) small consideration about bitrate selection is that the higher the bitrate, the more power you use. This is well documented in the battery specs (see the equipment browser here). I'm sure 132kbps ATRAC is way better than 128K MP3. I wouldn't go so far as to put an equivalence, but I was underwhelmed by 192kbps MP3 the one time I tried.

I know that my LP4 compilations sound great transferred to a HiMD. I have not messed with Hi-LP at all. But I wouldn't a priori expect good results. Having said that, I recall buying a second hand unit (NH600D) complete with the owner's collection of MDs and being surprised how reasonable they sounded. Not my music, so I didn't expend time critiquing the sound. I would probably want to try recording real-time HiLP as a test, rather than downloading. So far I am working on the theory that the real-time recording is better than the transcoding (although it may depend what substrate the transcoding started from, as hinted in my post above). The second factor may be the digital filtering Avrin has referred to. If you transcode in stages it may actually be better than going direct - perhaps what happens is the high frequencies don't use up audible bandwidth (this way). Perhaps Hi-SP (on hard disk) to Hi-LP might work. I really don't know. There are soooo many untried combinations and possible ways to do things, I tend to stick to one set of steps I know to work, and run with it for a while. After all, the source quality can be so variable, you cannot assess what you started with unless you do approximately the same thing to each piece of sound. Make any sense? It took me about 2 years to turn full circle on the LP modes, just because I didn't have the methodology down. Stephen

Quick answer: the MZ-RH1. The only way. Period. (it's currently sold with a mic, new, by Sony, as the MZ-M200, but the same machine)

I think you will be surprised if you follow my recommendations. Added: by way of confirmation I just took the first disk I ever made at 352 kbps (A 1GB disk). This was made by ripping from CD to PCM (1411 kbps) format in SonicStage and seemed at the time very nice. I recall trying out different bit rates (by transcoding that to LP2 for instance) when I first got a HiMD portable about 3 years ago. On that basis I discarded LP2 (and of course LP4) as viable listening media. Knowing what I now know, I just repeated the process with the intermediate step being AAL (352kbps import setting), and the destination LP2 (132kbps). Amazing! Not only does the complete set of 4 CD's fit on a single 80m disk (formatted as HiMD of course) with room to spare (I could have used a 74, I think), but the quality is great. The music encoded was the complete Chandos Anthems (Handel) recorded by Harry Christophers and The Sixteen (see here for disk #1). Total of 4hrs 04m. This is a pretty good test, as it includes loud choral passages with fair size orchestra (alright, I know it's not Mahler) as well as solos, with the usual complement of strings, trumpet, organ - most of the sounds that might have been considered problematic in any analogue transcription 10 years ago. The dynamic range is terrific, quiet passages seem noise-free (and rests are absolutely silent), loud passages are undistorted. I have yet to hear a serious flaw. I am a choral singer (and will be singing something similar by Handel in a few weeks) and I swear to you what I am listening to is not significantly different from actually being in the middle of such a chorus. So I seriously question the talk of 352kbps. Logically some pretty discerning listeners were happy with SP (292kbps) 10 years ago just before MDLP, Type-S and HiMD were introduced at all. It is not entirely unreasonable to suppose that improvements in coding over the following 5 years might mean that technology using roughly half the data rate (LP2) could match that.

I recently posted some extensive discussion on LP4, no less (66kbps). As I believe that in most cases for portable listening, all you really need is LP2, I recommend you take a look at some of my posts recently (rather than having me rant on and on in your thread). Welcome to MD! summary: unless you have EAC or something that does a really good job of ripping, relying on Sony's highspeed ripping of CD to WAV, followed by transcoding to almost any bitrate, really doesn't work. However using Sony's software to transcode (convert) directly to LP2, or coding VIA the intermediate form of Atrac Advanced Lossless (AAL) to the bitrate of your choice, seems to work rather nicely. If you have only 80m disks this advice becomes important rather quickly! Stephen

The problem for myself (and therefore most people I would guess) is that the only way to get to 352 kbps is by ripping a CD to PCM, and then transcoding it to 352kbps. However as I have maintained for a while now, using Sony's high-speed ripping, you get junk. Therefore I would not expect the 352 kbps to be the least different from many worse bitrates that all sound dreadful after transcoding from ripped PCM (to each one). (disclaimer: I even like some, maybe even most, music in LP4, depending on how it is prepared so you can discount my comments entirely on that basis). The one thing I WOULD expect to work as a valid way of getting 352kbps is to rip to Atrac Advanced Lossless (AAL) with the import setting to 352kbps. If the result of transferring to HiMD starting from that file sounds different, then I will stand corrected. But sound imported/compressed as AAL from any legitimate (WAV, properly ripped CD) source and then transferred to hiMD at 256k (Hi-SP) sounds better (to my ears) than imported PCM (assuming PCM is transcoded subsequently down to 256k). So you need to compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges.

My impression is that from time to time someone or other tries to corner the market by buying everything of a given category at any price. Sooner or later they give up, but meantime, someone somewhere has made some money. I'm very cynical about it, believing that some folks will do almost anything to "make the market" if they believe that it will benefit them. Hang loose

Indeed. MP3 files are somewhat more likely to have long names, and in combination with the silly long name default (above) will cause some problems. Strongly suggest you move the library, in particular you should change the Tools->Options->Location to save imported files to somewhere like C:\SS\imports, i.e. nice and short. You can also COPY (using windows) all the files to that new location and then reimport them (and delete from the old - once you know the new ones are functional). If there are ATRAC files in your library (as opposed to MP3), you should seriously consider removing the copy protection BEFORE messing with anything like this. Once they have been unencrypted, these ATRAC files can be played even if you reinstall or move computers. If not, you may lose some of them (though not the MP3s which are, I believe immune). Good luck!

You won't be able to ***upload*** via USB. But it is possible you can record it via line-in during playback on the NH700 (I know this is suboptimal but when you gotta have it you gotta have it). No idea what software on the Mac end is needed.

Just a small note: I was "virtually" present when the SP codec got added to ffmpeg, and the new format .aea got created. So linux players that use ffmpeg library should be able to play such files once people have figured out how to upload them. Currently the only way is with the RH1 and the QHiMDTransfer program.

I think this is a worthy experiment, thanks for doing it from all of us who don't (yet?) have our Xitel-DG2. Small comment: probably a good idea to use Sonic Stage to change the title from blank before uploading. In retrospect those numeric titles are hard to get rid of later, and one number looks like another (except when you record the same ol same ol thing every day for 100 years!!!!). OP: Sonic Stage is very peculiar (I just finished a battle with it which I won't bore you with, last night) and I expect it's something silly that you couldn't possibly be expected to know. Keep on telling us what you're doing and we will try to dig you out of there. Stephen

OK. That's a good start. Question: does a microphone (or analog line in) recording in HiSP upload successfully, or not? Stephen

You'll have to define your terms better. Please explain exactly what you did and what you are trying to do. Stephen

You've put your finger on why it is desirable. There are so many stupid things done by SS, that the Xitel seems like a better way (not that I have tried it). Also I have a desktop with optical out (card) and it always seems to work well. So USB would be great for laptops of which I have 2 1. No stupid protection on the files that end up on the MD (they can be uploaded again) 2. No SP restriction.

My HTPC ended up with THREE audio devices (the HDMI card with the graphics chip, the motherboard sound card, and bluetooth Audio). The difficulty (usually I think) that I have had is that the default is hard to control. This has meant on occasion disabling one of them completely to get one of the others to work. I'm intrigued by the orange one because of its ability to accept recordings IN. Not sure how this will work but I am always being amazed by the little things Stephen

I'll be getting one in a few weeks (mail will take a while). Will let you know how I get on.

Another possibility is some sort of unresolved interrupt conflict. Often freshly-installed sound cards suffer from this - they tend to need their own dedicated IRQ. I recall booting XP multiple times after a new sound card and its drivers added before it worked properly. Ah yes, I remember what I wanted to mention... try cleaning up the device map. Instructions under "Solution to slow SP upload", if you can't find we will help.

TBH, the second one looks newer (and therefore more capable), and more likely to work with 7. At the ridiculous prices (no more than a simple cable) I got myself one for a rainy day anyway. About W7: good question, I have no idea. That's the first thing I will do before my W7RC version expires forever on 1/June. Stephen