Russell Letson

Er, um, yeah, itsa piece a crap. I'll give yuh, uh, twenny bucks. OK, twenny-fi. Just give it here quick, before somebody else notices. . . .

About recording: I started with DAT for recording both live music and interviews because the quality was terrific (for music) and the record times were long enough to do a whole interview session without worrying about cassette-flip. When I found a used MZ-B3, MD immediately became my new standard medium--less fragile than DAT, with long mono record times and good-enough stereo quality for music, plus the ease of editing, place-marking, and so on. I do a lot of interviewing, and I've kept an eye out for devices that are sturdy, reliable, portable, and easy to use. MP3 units had either no mike input (and rigging up an outboard mike pre-amp to feed into a line-in violates my ease-of-use requirement) or a crappy mono internal mike (there goes live music recording). Even the new products aimed at recording have serious problems, such as non-removable proprietary batteries and expensive media. So MD remains my tech of choice. My two MZ-B100s are still my workhorse interview machines that double as music notebooks. Last fall I started using an NH-900 for live music and will almost certainly move up to an RH-1 when they're available and prove to be free of problems. (For the record, I have a now-obsolete Pogo RipFlash Plus that I use as an emergency backup unit on field interviews--it has a mono mike, takes the same SmartMedia cards as my camera, and is a little bigger than a Zippo lighter. But it isn't nearly as flexible as a B100.) More serious journalists (mainly in radio) than me have been using MD for a lot of the same reasons I chose it--there are a couple links on the "press coverage" page on this site. And lots of musicians find it perfect for keeping track of musical ideas or rehearsals. I think guitarist El McMeen even recorded part of an album on MD in his living room. So the recording capabilities of MD have always been a large part of its appeal.

And while we're pointing out tacky links (again, provided by Google), ExampleEssay.com, which keeps showing up on the Hi-MD forum, is (despite disingenuous disclaimers in their FAQ) a site devoted to supplying essays to would-be plagiarists. Aren't there any criteria that can be applied to what kind of businesses whose links appear here? On edit--I just noticed two more links to similar services at the bottom of the Hi-MD page--who the hell does Google think hangs out here?

All right, in my ignorance of the finer points of the innards of the technology, I'll say that while standard-MD units lack the necessary hardware, I can't see any *technical* reason a Hi-MD unit should not be able to transfer standard MD data to a computer. If a standard MD disk is *playable* on a Hi-MD unit, the data ought to be transferrable via USB as well--though I'm willing to hear from those who have analyzed the internals of the hardware and firmware on this topic. I'm assuming that it's a firmware rather than a hardware issue--I can't see how the circuitry can care about the nature or format of the data. (Unlike the transfer-speed ceiling, say, which is rooted in things like the rotation speed and data density of the disk rather than refusal to implement USB 2.) The prime suspect for the motive behind the upload limitation would be content protection, though the latest release of SonicStage suggests a loosening of that particular paranoia. I suppose one can hope that a third-generation Hi-MD might offer more complete backward compatibility with standard-format data.

As nice as Hi-MD is for many applications, I do not use mine for interviews (and I've done hundreds). Instead I've used the B-series ("business" models) with built-in mike(s) and speakers. The current models are the B-100 (stereo mikes, mono speaker) and B-10 (mono mike, two tiny speakers). I've used my two B-100s for phone and field interviews and never lost one. They run on a single AA cell and give long recording times (2 hrs 40 mins) in mono, which is all you need for voice. The automatic level control works fine, and the unit fits in a shirt pocket (if a bit heavily). The only feature I miss is auto track-mark--though there is a quick-search function that lets you pop ahead a minute at a time and a track-mark button right on top where you can get at it easily. Unless you anticpate really long interview sets, or really, really need to dump your interviews into a computer at data rates (which I wouldn't mind doing), a B-series is all you need.

The short answer is, only Hi-MD recordings can be transferred via SonicStage, so you're pretty much stuck with real-time analog re-recording via the computer's sound card line-in--unless you have access to a digital-output deck and a computer with SPDIF input, in which case you can go digital. Either process means some format conversion on the way to a WAV file that can be burned to a CD. I don't know what equipment the 3M guys have, but there's no avoiding some sort of transation from ATRAC to WAV. In any case, despite the clunkiness and slowness of the process, the results should be more than decent--I've transferred many hours of regular MD recordings and found no fault with them that didn't originate with the mikes, the recording environment, or my playing. (The other musicians involved only faced the first two of those issues.) I'll leave to more knowledgeable members the technical (and business) explanations of why this is the way it is.

I'll second Sparky's one-word critique: shoddy. While many users have clearly experienced zero problems, it seems that once you get away from the vanilla XP setup specified in the system requirements, all the app's flaws are exposed: it's fragile, cranky, badly behaved, and badly documented. The install process is inflexible and opaque and just about impossible to trouble-shoot. If it weren't for the good folk on this forum and their willingness to re-package the install files, I doubt that I would ever have gotten any version to work. (And I've been a tech journalist and product tester for almost 20 years.) And that's just the implementation. The thinking *behind* the program represents the kind of proprietary paranoia that protects a product by making it dysfunctional: it encrypts *my* data, makes ordinary backup procedures difficult or useless, and puts arbitrary limits on how the device it serves can be used. I finally got SS 3.2 working on my main computer, and now I hesitate to upgrade to 3.3 because it's entirely possible that I will not be able to reproduce the steps I took to get a reasonably stable system--or that a new set of glitches will show up. Short answer: SS in any version is a design and implementation mess that is both a symptom and a cause of MD's problems in the US market.

I meant a better-than-realtime transfer. It's not unusual for my interviews to run an hour, so realtime isn't an option. As for motor noise--I've never had a problem with my B-100s, though the Hi-MD mechanisms might not be as quiet. Actually, a solid-state recorder with USB 2 data transfer would be fine with me, though I do like to archive many of my interviews, and with MD I just stick the original in a box rather than taking the extra time to burn a copy to CDR.

I'm in pretty much the same position--my old B-3 and then my two B-100s became indispensable tools in my boy-reporter kit. Sony seems slow to recognize how valuable journalists and researchers find these models, and it took them forever to come up with the B-100 and B-10 as replacements for the B-3. I'm hoping (probably foolishly) that they'll shorten the loop this time around. But, hey, they fixed most of the idiocies of Sonic Stage, so maybe there is hope. The ability to dump field-recorded interviews onto a computer and run them through a transcriber application would be an enormous convenience. If you really want to dream--imagine a B-100-style machine with one of those Organic EL displays and a foot-control option.

My beef with SS is that installs crap out with no indication of what the underlying problem might be, and the tech support is automated cluelessness. I've had to troubleshoot OS and install issues going back to CP/M, and I appreciate support that can point to trouble spots and potential conflicts, name the files that need to be present (or absent, or updated), and generally understand the whole process. On one troublesome 98SE system, I found out (on my own) that the glitch was a read-only log file (left in that condition by a backup process). So SS 3.0 is operational. Now the SS 3.1 install is claiming that downloaded files are corrupt and that I should try again. Five times. Arrgh.

Standard SP-mode recordings made on standard MDs on a HiMD unit *will* play on a standard deck--I just did that today with my NH900 and B100. Sorry if I gave the wrong impression.

If I'm reading your requirements correctly (that is, if the target playback machine is a standard MD deck), then a standard MD portable is enough--a standard MD deck will not play back a 1-gig disk at all, no matter how it's formatted. And something like the built-in mikes of a B-100 might be useful. (The B-100 and -10 are excellent interview machines--no wires and fairly large, simple controls.) So if PC connection isn't an issue, just go with an older standard model and avoid all the fuss (and the cranky and restrictive SonicStage software).

I have to concur with dex--I'd find data storage on MD a step backward despite any price advantage. Both ATAPI and USB Zip drives are fast and stable enough to be usable for backup and file transport, but I would not trust my data to a MD unless and until the software got to be at least as reliable as Iomega's. And while Target might carry MDs at the moment, I've seen them drop products like a hot rock. Zip media will remain available at any office supply or computer store, if often at a less-than-rock-bottom price. (But I stock up at sales, as I do with MD blanks.)

As nice as my NH900 is, it is still hasn't replaced my B-100 as a field recorder, and the new units are even less suitable (no AA-cell options). When Sony gets around to a HiMD version of the B100--or when they fix their wretched, paranoid software--I'll be very interested. At the moment, their design philosophy seems intended to sell Edirol R-1 units to field recordists. For the record: zero interest in MP3 playback or reduced physical size or 3 months of uninterrupted play-time or looking at photos on my audio recorder. That's what iPods and their kin are for. Much interest in integrated mikes, good mike pre-amps, flexible power options, usable controls and readable displays. And no #$*%@ copying restrictions.

My particular experience has been that SonicStage is cranky and fragile and won't even install on two of the four systems I've tried it on, so I can't bring myself to recommend it, though I know that plenty of others have had no problems. I also like the recording simplicity of a built-in mike for voice recordings, though if Sony does something smart, like a B-series-style HiMD, I'll be on it like a rooster on a June bug.

I have to say (reluctantly) that for your particular situation (fast upload, ease of use, relatively low quality requirements), a recording MP3 unit might be best. I've used a RipFlash Plus for interviewing with surprisingly good results. And there are other (probably better, more widely available, and better supported) options. Several of my guitar-playing e-friends like the iRiver units, some of which, they insist (to my surprise), have a mike-level input for and external mike. If you didn't need high-speed upload, then I'd absolutely recommend a Sony B-series MD, but those are still limited to analog/real-time transfer. (When oh when will Sony recognize the importance of a loyal and enthusiastic customer base of journalists?)

I have a drawer full of original recordings of interviews that I keep around just-in-case, and I don't worry about the stability of the medium. On the other hand, if ease and speed of transfer to a PC is important, Hi-Md still isn't anything like optimal. On the gripping hand, once the recording has been transferred to the computer (I'm not much bothered by analog/real-time for most of my work), you can edit away with the original stowed safely someplace. I've been using standard MD for interviews and musical-notebooking for more than five years with no tech glitches that weren't caused by operator error. Of course, I'll be extremely gratified if Sony ever recognizes what professional users might need and supplies same, but in the meanwhile I don't see any product that works as well.

Putting aside for the moment discussions of relative stability of OS generations, it still seems to me that Sony is needlessly coy about exactly which factors one needs to watch out for with the SS/Hi-MD system. I spent a lot of years building my own computers, reviewing products, and writing user manuals, so I am pretty impatient with a company that won't break down the possible problem areas on something as basic as installation failure. Blanket disclaimers say to me that they don't want to dedicate support resources to real-world customers who might have something beyond a vanilla turnkey system. If there were another Hi-MD vendor, that would send me to them.

Yeah--and the MS update won't install, either (says it can't open a logfile). I'll have to keep digging--or maybe bite the bullet and "upgrade" to XP. (I'd hoped to avoid that pleasure for a while yet, since this system is mostly not broke.)

I'm not sure exactly which parts of their anatomy Sony is covering with this disclaimer. I've tried installing SS on four systems, and it works on an IBM laptop (factory-installed Win98SE) and an aging 300MHz AOpen homebrew (much-patched 98SE), installs but won't work right on a Gateway tower (98SE), and won't even install on a new homebrew (98SE). The install failure, by the way, seems to have to do with the database portion of the system--the drivers work (the unit shows up as a storage device), but SS itself won't load. And Sony's tech support is pretty spongy, even though I've sent the page fault error message that DASETUP delivers. All they seem to know how to do is send stock responses and finally a suggestion that I phone them. The problem has been consistent with all versions of SS, so it's something pretty fundamental, and probably linked to some missing or damaged component in my OS, and silly me, I thought the support people would know enough about their software's architecture to be able to suggest a troubleshooting path.

I just got my venerable MZ-B3 back from the repairman, and find that while it seems OK with 74-minute disks, it will not initialize or reliably read 80-minute ones. I hadn't used them before the B3 went into the hospital, so I can't say whether this is 1) a function that it never had or 2) a problem with the repair. With a blank 80, the machine just thrashes and never initializes. But if I record a few seconds on an 80 with a different (and newer) machine (B-100), the disk will initialize (sort of) on the B3, though with a lot of indexing and thrashing. If I try to *record* on one of these disks, there's a MEM OVER message and then lots more thrashing. If I stop the recording, the TOC EDIT goes on indefinitely and can only be stopped by a power-down. A medium-serious rummage through various sites and manuals yields no answer. Has anyone used 80-minute blanks with a Sony of similar vintage--say, an R-3 or R-35? Or is this a firmware limitation of some sort?