highlandsun

Yeah, I didn't know what to do with the free mic either since I always use my SP binaurals anyway. But I guess I can hand it off when I loan my other recorders out to friends now, got an MZR50, MZR70, MZN10, MZNH1 all idling now. (Well I sometimes bring the MZN10 to gigs to play my break music, recording gigs with the RH1 now. Used to record gigs with the NH1.)

I just noticed, uploading an old SP track without a title, SonicStage sets the title of the transferred track to the current date and time, not the date and time the track was actually recorded. (And yes, all of my MDs have recorded datestamps...) Stupid. Nor does it display the recorded stamp, so it looks like I'll have to use something else to display that info and set the track titles before transferring. Amazing how they can come so far and yet still be so stupid.

I just received my MZRH1 that I pre-ordered from Sound Professionals in May. It's black. They actually shipped last Monday, arrived Friday but I was out of town so UPS delivered it today. The first thing I did after opening all of the packaging was to plug in the USB cable hook it up to my laptop. The OLED display came on, and Windows recognized it as a NetMD device. Then I inserted an old MD (recorded in 1999, SP) and started up SonicStage 4 and transferred a track from the MD to the laptop. Yay... I have a "dumb" USB power supply here but it looks like the RH1 won't charge from it. It charges OK from the laptop, and there's also a Sony power brick (with a USB plug output) which I haven't tested yet, but if a dumb power supply doesn't work, that makes me wonder why they would bother to put smarts into their power brick. Oh well.

Agreed. I'll probably buy an RH1 so I can conveniently upload all my old SP recordings. But I'm going to still resent the fact that it's lagging their other players (since Sony is now supporting AAC). They should have supported FLAC too; that would be the best quality/capacity compromise for a portable.

Interesting. I have a feeling that a little TOC editing with an MD-Data drive would fix that.

I would probably buy a new deck to replace my JB920, but then again, I might just plug my PC into my stereo. (Actually, I have that all connected already.) The deck is certainly more convenient though, power, insert disc, hit play. With the PC I have to fuss around more before the sound starts playing. For the car, I have a JVC deck with a single slot for both CDs and MDs, and a 12-disc CD changer. I would only buy a new deck if it offered HiMD without losing any other features that I already have. The single slot/single-DIN form factor is most important, because I don't have space for a double-DIN unit or two separate single-DIN units for CD and MDs. If they can't provide that, then I'll just keep plugging my NH1 into the JVC's Aux input. The other two must-have features are full CD-Text display for CDs (or more plainly, full text display for all inputs, CD, MD, radio, changer), and speed-sensitive volume control. And of course, JVC makes the world's smallest 12-disc changers, the new changer would have to fit where my current one fits.

Kind of a tough call, but I voted for the price drop. I've got hundreds of SP discs of live music that I haven't listened to in years. In some sense I don't miss it, but it would be nice to get it online. Just not an urgent priority any more...

This is what they should have released instead of the DCM-MDM1 years ago. MD capacity was way too inadequate for video, but as a still camera it would have done very well. And if they had released it back then, it might have sold well enough to justify further refinement, so that today it would be the tiny size one would expect...

Yeah, I tend to agree. HiMD would have to come up at least one order of magnitude in actual read/write speed to really win. The fact that MD is faster than floppies is pretty much irrelevant today - just about every thing you would have needed floppies for is done with USB flash drives now, and they're only a couple inches in size. Definitely more convenient when you just need to move a few files from one box to another. The only things MD has going for it are the reasonably compact form factor, random access read/write, and data longevity. The things it has against it are slow speed, insufficient density (compared to other options available today) and idiotic proprietary data formats. But really, the biggest thing MD has going against it today is that it is a Sony product. Until the balance of power in Sony leadership shifts back to Sony Electronics, away from Sony Music/Entertainment, they might as well forget about being a consumer electronics company. Certainly I've stopped thinking of them as such.

Yeah, I'd be happy with a JB980-equivalent to replace my JB920. USB, etc...

No, all the multitrack MD recorders use the same format. All MD hardware uses a compatible UTOC. There were some differences for MD-Data discs, they were supposedly built to tighter tolerances, but nothing else. I've used my MDH-10 data drive to examine all of these discs, so I know. And yes, I have a Sony MDM-X4 4-track MD recorder too.

I just played a track from my MDS-JB920 and recorded it optically on my MZ-NH1, and it uploaded fine using SonicStage 2.2. Of course the track was originally recorded live (analog) on my MZ-R50, so it shouldn't have had any SCMS protection in the first place.

Hmmm, I've never tried that. Will give it a shot. I wonder if SCMS will make a difference.

Hm... You could write a new filter that just provides a clock reference. I wrote one of those, based on sample code in the DirectX SDK, it's a pretty small amount of code.

All the multitrack recorders were orphaned years ago. There are no drive upgrades.