tekdroid

Use a drive imaging program. Image your drive after a fresh re-install with all your apps. Restore image as needed. Keep any changed docs and things on a separate partition, so that when you restore a virgin image, they aren't gone.

I think it would definitely be smellworthy too.

what's funny is their brochure mentions: A low signal-to-noise ratio provides virtually noise-free recording quality. I assume they will correct this soon Har. http://bssc.sel.sony.com/BroadcastandBusin...res/pcm-d50.pdf

great link. About time, Sony.

nature of the beast, i'm afraid. MiniDisc simply doesn't transfer the data off the disc as fast as solid-state flash drives (or higher speed optical drives). 'Cause the hardware itself doesn't save as unencrypted standard files you would expect. Sony designed it around policing what you can and can't do with digital content. Of course they hurt their customers and themselves (big time). Credit to them, nobody's broken it. I've said it before but I think millions of customer interactions with NetMD did the most damage to MiniDisc and Sony's name in portable audio in general, after that it was all over - perceptions of the technology had been shaped. Even today the encryption and decryption just adds another point of failure (and complexity to hardware and user interactions) to an otherwise good product that does far more things right than wrong, IMO. I would pay decent bucks for a native drag-n-drop Hi-MD model, but I'm not holding my breath.

1) recording in linear pcm (and slicing and dicing during and after the fact) 2) replaceable batts and being able to swap them instantly (no charging downtime) without dissecting a unit to get to the ill-conceived single embedded battery (the useful life of which severely reduced after it reaches approx 500 charge/discharge cyles and needs replacement). 3) power choices: ac adaptor, battery or usb bus 4) input choices: mic, optical, line, usb 5) sound 6) oldschool LCD displays that can be seen in full sun better than any other display 7) no need to touch main unit or look at useless big screen or even take it out of your pocket when using a good tactile remote when out and about. 8) acceptable enough size 9) good battery life 10) not overly reliant on PC for half-decent functionality (deleting, editing, etc). Self-contained goodness. 11) last but not least, removable storage media, level meters, recording and playback choices, sane overall design and logic in both playback and recording options.

Higher device complexity = higher costs = less profit per unit. When pumping out millions, believe it or not, small cost differences (and less user support issues) become big returns, financially. They tried ATRAC hardware/software for years. They failed. Almost nobody cares about ATRAC. They don't do any open source lossless codecs. I won't be happy til they do, but I don't think I am in the majority at all.

IMO, an inaccurate statement. Quite simply, they gave it their worst shot for years and lost. Great technology marred by their paranoid draconian digital rights restrictions. Now they directly benefit Microsoft's "more open" format. Oh now I laugh at how they describe Windows Media.

it's for many formats. Including FLAC and Ogg Vorbis. The FLAC frontend has Replaygain support, too. Once you work things on the PC in appropriate format, it's easily transferred to MD.

always liked the design of this unit, particularly after the first (jumbo) model that came before this When i bought the mz-r3 they inexplicably didn't decide to include a carry case with a belt clip, so i actually bought the case of the MZ-R2 you have pictured, which I still have somewhere here. Memories. That unit is still looking good despite its age.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replay_Gain I have never been too much into this business, but ReplayGain is supposed to solve this.

The level shouldn't change, but you do miss out on trackmarks when playing an entire album, for instance. All depends whether or not that matters if it's gonna be edited on the machine, anyway. The keeper is the ability to extract audio from anything the pc can play (not just a standard CD/DVD), and avoiding some of the losses analogue conversion adds.

transfer optically (or use regular cable) There are cheap soundcards with optical output.

FLAC and Sony in the same sentence? True "The FLAC file format plug-in has been added to allow you to open and save FLAC files." Things are indeed changing in Sony land. Albeit in software land only...

Guitarfxr, Honestly I'm at a loss. That includes people saying "like an iPod" and a whole bunch of posts unrelated in any way to comparisons between MiniDisc an iPod. I just don't see how you can avoid mention of the market-leading portable audio device, yes, even on a MiniDisc board. I fail to see the problem, too. If you actually READ some of those results you would see the forum is actually not inundated with inane iPod mentions. So after years and years and years of selling the iPod you would expect no mention of it in here at all? Or perhaps 5 pages? Or...? I fail to follow, with all due respect. I just fail to follow. Personally I don't feel it's an ego thing most of the time. I just feel people have preferences and like to share them. Who gets offended that their latest purchase has been dogged if they love the sound? I wouldn't. I love the sound of my MZ-NH1 (but like any unit, has unrelated design compromises), but I'll argue that it can sound shrill on lower-end crapphones compared to so-called "bassy" non-digital-amp models. The sound really comes into its own with better headphones, and I love it. I haven't heard anything but first-gen Hi-MD and oldskool MD though, and several iPods and iPod-like devices. Generally speaking, I think the whole DAP market is in a sorry state and very few things out there compel me to buy (but then again I am anal about removable batts n flash and the ability to record...)

the designs that make it to market never cease to amaze me

not sure what you mean here. Isn't that standard? To get an alphabetical listing of artist/ album ?

Cool. Hi-Fi is going PC FLAC makes me wet, though, and I saw a similar Denon device linked from http://flac.sourceforge.net : http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/denon-line-show...ions-281952.php Not that I'm in the market for a device like this, but nice to keep up to date.

if we take Sony's professional video cameras into consideration (and Panasonic's), the age of solid-state is upon us (love it or hate it). It also allows the things to work in challenging climates with widely varying temps and humidity (and allows for new framerate capabilities, format capabilities, etc). It also makes for (potentially) smaller devices with far less mechanical complexity and unit noise (and cost to manufacture/ service). There is some merit in having a format for everything, to record anything on and to connect to anything (video recorders, audio recorders, computers, the works). That's one of my dreams, but I think that things will be segmented for some time because of cost and size and capability constraints with each respective format. I think the spinning disc will be around for some time (particularly for pre-recorded content), but it is really starting to be challenged in several areas for recording. In a few years solid-state will be far more pervasive (and far cheaper). This is why I don't think Sony would invest in a new MiniDisc-like format. But they may invest in a solid-state format that can do some MD-like codecs.

I did but still unsure what this proves.

banning talk of iPods? C'mon... Has this thread been totally useless? I doubt it. Discussing the merits and / or cons of MD in relation to iPods (and even other Sony flash/HD devices) is to be expected, not to mention comparisons with the multitude of other things. Honestly, I don't understand this "iHate" thing. These are all our opinions, and if someone expresses a negative opinion in a competitor's (?) product it's labelled iHate? Some criticisms are justified, just like they are when talking about MD. I don't get the vibe that every thread is talking about iPods at all. But is it unreasonable to expect that some will ask about MD versus iPod? If the original poster here was trying to create a stir or being insincere, I must have missed it.

IMO, it's not discouraging; it's just market realities. Other devices tempt with (in many cases) lower pricing and plentiful availability, and other features like smaller size, blingy displays, etc. As always it comes down to what's most important to the person buying and what they are looking for. Lately Sony has tried to differentiate by bundling higher quality earphones and things with their kit, and IMO I'd like to see more of this (the sub-par earphones bundled with Hi-MD weren't doing them any favours). Their latest conference call mentioned they grew their audio market share (domestic I think, from memory) but the iPod was still worrying them (understandably). Apple has incredible momentum/ mindshare now. Comes down to the best tool for the job. I think I may purchase additional units since I still find Hi-MD to be bargain devices which are pretty unique sonically and feature-wise given the (mostly) crap that's out there on the market (some of it Sony itself ), but these devices are obviously catering to a different user with totally different expectations and priorities to those of the average Hi-MD user.

so you're essentially saying that anyone that differs from your opinion is unreasonable, if I'm reading this right. There are far too many variables to draw anything but subjective conclusions (so I'm not going there), but I wouldn't go so far as to say Sony's (Hi-MD/MD) signature sound(s) is not quality. It's just a different sound to everyone else, IMO, and I think that from the first-gen Hi-MD models I own that it is certainly among the best in portable land, if not the best. Certainly the best I've heard. Haven't tried the RH1 but I have several first-gen Hi-MD and have tried several non-Hi-MD and most of these sounded sub-par by comparison. I'm sure there are some models that are great, but I'm in no rush to hear them (MD's benefits steamroll all for my uses, I'm afraid). Your comment about how well Sony pairs with headphones is probably due to a more balanced better sound to start with, relying less on the need for certain headphones to 'colour the sound right'. Then again I could be way off base. It's all subjective in the end, but I've made my mind up for the next few years at least

when MiniDisc was intro'd, this was mentioned in countless articles talking about the technology. The head had to be low friction and touching the disc was necessary for the tolerances involved. Not sure why it isn't mentioned as explicitly nowadays. As far as I'm concerned it's fact.

heavily scratched CDs and things like that can degrade the sound of the disc because the cd player itself interpolates (guesses) the missing data. But it's not something the average user can pick up, normally. I believe MiniDisc works the same way. What matters with mediums like MiniDisc is the chemical stability of the medium with regards to writes/rewrites (and of course wear from the magnetic head, which actually touches the disc). All these things add up over many cycles. Digital or analogue, both cd and cassette (and md) are still reliant - in the end - on old-fashioned chemistry and the chemical properties of their mediums (and hardware) in doing what they do. Degradation with digital just has different characteristics (ie. not normally noticeable, or totally noticeable). Though there is some "in-between" with interpolation artifacts, it normally isn't as noticeable.