anont

So I got my MZ-RH910 today. Mostly I got it for recordings, but the MP3 feature looks pretty cool, thought I'd try it out. Anyway, it works well once you have it on the MD, but Sonic Stage 3.0 is the worst piece of software I have ever used. It takes several minutes to load on my 2.6 GHz 768Meg Ram Machine (admittedly with a large MP3 collection). It will crash SO EASILY. It's very slow. The interface is actually OK, but it's so slow and crash prone you barely interact with it. It truly sucks. Is there any alternative? Anyway my impression have otherwise been positive, I'll have to post a review when I have a little more experience with it.

I dunnow, the idea of a Data-drive Hi-MD seems really goofy to me. A DVD-R is much larger, much cheaper, burns much faster, and already works on most computers. For something convenient, key drives aren't so expensive. Sony is out to lunch on this one, I'm afraid.

http://forums.macgeneration.com/vbulletin/...8386#post808386 says it works under Virtual PC, but only under OS 9. Seems me, with the cost of Virtual PC and the bother of having to run it under an alternate OS, it's too much a time and bother to be worth it.

Thanks for the info Markr041. By "upgrade", I meant the converter program to upload recordings to a format the PC can use. Having to use sonicstage and total recorder is enough of a pain that I'd rather put off the purchase and make sure reviews are positive.

I get the impression most bootleggers are sitting out Hi-MD until Sony upgrades the format. But, has anybody out there used Hi-MD to record concerts? How well does it work, does it sounds as good or work as well as a Sharp MD? I'd be curious to hear general impressions.

To be elitist, the difference between LP2 and PCM to the average consumer is nearly nil.

To my mind, MD has two advantages: they're still the best for making easy concert recordings, and the battery life is much better (and with many models, an AA battery adds energy, which is important when you're traveling for extended periods). In other regards, certainly MP3 players are better than MD players. The NH3D doesn't record and doesn't have such an extended battery life. It's made to be prestigous, which I find silly - most people aren't familiar with MD at all, there's no prestige in which brand you own.

You're talking about an almost irrelevant matter (the very small sound quality difference at 256 kbps) like it's the central issue. People prefer MP3 to ATRAC because it's what they already have, it's not DMAd, it works on almost every music hardware or software, and it doesn't lock them into an irritating Sony program that only works on Windows. If people cared *that much* about sound quality, they would just be using a CD player, or a lossless format.

Obviously this isn't true - Sony has all the licenses. If they didn't want Sharp to make MDs, they wouldn't have licensed the product to Sharp in the first place. I was in France a little bit ago. I was in a big electronic store and thought I would check out MDs. To my surprise, there were dozens of portable CD players and MP3 players, but not a single MP3.

Many medical studies have FAR less than 1000 participants, and can still be considered statistically significant. The statistical technique is to show a margin of error based on how small the small sampling size was - and that's what Mr. Amorim did. I agree with this - who uses 128kbps? Now that hard drives are cheap, this doesn't seem like the most useful study. SP does sound very good, if not quite CD quality. On the other hand, so do the other compression formats at a similar bps.

I think there's more-or-less nothing that can be done about bass echo, which is a big problem for club recording. Sure some mics are better than others for it, but a lot of the time the bass is mixed so loud, it'd be impossible to do much. If you're recording for a documentary, an MD isn't the best equipment for what you're doing - try something lossless, that can be digitally uploaded. I'd also recommend telling the band what you're doing, you can probably arrange to record off the soundboard.

Battery life is much better, and you can just replace the AA battery instead of re-charging. If you're not going to be recording live music on it, I'd only recommend an MD if you go on long trips where the battery life is important... Because, CDs are more convenient (in that you don't have to record CDs to your MDs), cheaper (both to purchase, and that you don't have to buy blank MDs), and have better sound. Also MP3/CD players mean you can listen to MP3s should you want. And MP3 players are smaller, hold more music, and are generally more convenient. Plus the MP3 software for MDs is just terrible. Then again, if you're on vacation or on the road, having to drag along an iPod re-charger (which often doesn't work with foreign electricity) is kind of a drag.

It should sound fine - at least, it sounds decent (if not great) driving my stereo off a Sony NE410, and a boombox in your office won't be as demanding at a stereo system. If you're really feeling cheap about it, a headphone->cassette unit (like people use to play CDs in cars which only have a cassette deck) should work with the boombox you already own.

What I mean is, you can buy rechargeable AA batteries, even if the 600 doesn't have a built-in recharger. Maybe the external recharger will cost $10 or $20?

Rechargeable batteries aren't so expensive, if that's a make-or-break point. Hate to be a spoilsport, but I think it's a waste of time deciding now whether or not to buy a certain Hi-MD model. Wait until they've been released, and a few reviews come in.

My point was, other widely-quoted independent studies have yielded results that are obviously false. So I'm a little suspicious about independent studies, especially when their claims are so hard to believe. You'd probably get a better picture from just trying it out yourself.

These tests aren't trustworthy, because I (and most other people interested enough in sound to go to a MD discussion board) have different standards of music listening than the average person pulled off the street. I hear that 64kbps .WMA=128kbps .MP3, when that's obviously not true. I hear that 128kbps .MP3s are approximately CD quality, when that's also obviously not true. I have to believe that either these musical tests are somehow manipulated, or that the average person who signs up for these tests has a tin ear and evaluates more on volume than accuracy (Windows Media player encodes the songs to be loud, which is maybe why it tests so well - loud music sounds better). It just doesn't make sense that Sony would have a Hi-MD compression model twice as effective as the other well-researched compression formats, especially when Lo-MDs sound so similar to MP3.

I don't have access to any 64 kbps ATRAC3 files, but I really doubt the truth of Sony's listening tests - MP3 is pretty good. I know Microsoft was able to manipulate it so 64kbps .WMA tested better than 128kbps .MP3 files, when a simple listen shows that that's not at all true.

It's tough to quantify sound, and it depends on the quality you want. MD compression definitely sounds very good, but on a close listen, definitely has a different sound than the source CDs they're recorded from. If you care enough about the sound that you have some kind of home studio, you probably don't want any compression artifacts at all. But if you're getting out something just for fun or for future reference, the quality-loss is so minor than it won't get in the way. Sony has changed its mind about uploading issues before, and I'd want to hear other reviewers say that they can digitally upload their recordings, no problem, before comitting to Hi-MD. I do home recording myself. For some purposes, MD is great, like when I just want to make a quick recording of a rough demo. However, for general purposes, I think some kind of Hard Drive system designed for home studios would be much better. There won't be compression artifacts, you can do higher than CD quality recording, and time limits won't be an issue. So overall, while I think MD is a handy thing for a musician to have, I don't think its suits your purpose. At the least, it's probably worth cancelling the pre-order, and then reading other people's comments and reviews before purchasing.

You'd think, but that's not the way business works at Sony - the hardware division of Sony has been losing lots of money for a lot of years. They don't specify the profitability of each product they sell, but I think it's reasonable to believe that the MD isn't profitable for Sony, but they keep supporting it for strategetic reasons. This is what Sony did with the Beta video format - and until recently, with their CRT TVs.

Keep at it, and definitely try recording with other programs, but be aware of the possibility that the Extigy just doesn't work, as that was my experience with the Extigy.

Hello, sorry for the slow reply. I may have a different version than you, mine is an old one. First of all, Magix has an auto-recognize, that works pretty well for recordings that make a clean break between songs (not all do this & it's worth double checking, though). Secondly, to set the track marker, there's the line where the audio plays from, marked by the yellow triangles (hard to describe plainly, but it's obvious when you have a look). When it's where you want it to set a track marking, right click on the line and "set track marker." You have to do this by listening & looking at the levels, but since you can go around so quickly and have the visual aid, I find this much quicker & easier than MD's slow & clumsy forward/reverse. Later, when you export the audio to MP3 or WAV, make sure the "each CD-Track in a file" is clicked. ALSO, about the Creative Audigy 2: I had it, and I think it's TERRIBLE. The installation software is buggy, it doesn't sound much better than the on-motherboard sound (with huge amounts of hiss), it's poorly magnetically shielded, and in general I can't recommend it. I ended up selling it and just getting an internal card. Then again, I don't know if there's anything better in terms of external USB audio. Reading reviews, all the Creative products seem to get pretty low marks from Audio people - they're more made for gamers with money to burn, I'm afraid!

Yeah MP3 bitrate makes a difference. Different people will have different opinions, but to my mind, 128 kbps (or lower) bitrates are only good for listening in a noisy environment - which is OK if you listen while jogging, on the bus, etc. I think at 192 or 224 kbps, you start having music which sound pretty good even when put through a stereo system. And, of course any MD copy of a MP3 will sound slightly worse than the source MP3. 320 kbps will sound very good, as will SP-MD. But even high-quality compressed music will be noticeable in a side-by-side comparison to the original, at least on my equipment. If you're concerned about getting the best audio quality, it's best to use CDs, or FLAC compression - it compresses to about 600kbps, but doesn't lose any audio quality.

It's real easy. Looking through the message boards & asking questions, you can figure it out no problem.. The Magix program is great, you can get a used copy off Amazon or EBay for just a couple dollars. It is a pain that you have to register for MP3 compatability, though. Contrary to another post in the thread, using Magix to determine where the track markers should be put just takes a minute, and is much easier than doing the same thing on your MD.

True, but that's not what Hi-MD was designed for in the first place. If you have computer music you want to archive, a CD-R or (even better) a DVD-R is a much better format for that - it's much cheaper, it's easier for computers to read, it's much faster, and it won't involve the (however negligible) quality loss that comes from converting between lossey formats.