Qwakrz

Trouble is that WMA9 is not gapless in sonicstage..... I dont know what they did to the decoder of the codecs in SS but its really poor. I get some very small gaps between tracks from my WMA9LL album collection. What I would really like is something like Daemon-tools that can mount a cue sheet of a flac CD image, this way I can use SS or SB to dump it onto a disc without gaps and at whatever bitrate I need at the time.

Yep, I agree that you would need to heat the disc surface upto over 100C to change the data with a small magnet. Heating luggage to this temp would cause all sorts of problems so it is very unlikely that this will cause a disc to be erased. Magnetic fields can cause errors on MD's but the last time I saw anything on the net about this it needed a rare earth magnet on the outside of the disc case or a speaker magnet placed directly onto the disc surface. Both of these fields would be dangerous to work in for extended periods of time when done over a large area so thats also unlikely. More than likely it could be the old broken magnetic recording wire in the MD device that erases a non-write protected disc on access.

LP2 and LP4 use joint stereo recording which is basically a mono signal and a difference signal recorded on the 2 channels. This way they have more bits to play around with because 80-90% of music is mono with a small amount of difference between the channels and encoding a mono signal and difference signal uses the few bits there are more efficiently than recording 2 seperate channels. If you record in mono in LP4 mode you gain very little over stereo because of this MS encoding, you definatly wont gain any extra recording time. Dont try what some people did on SP recordings and record 2 different sources on the left and right channels. SP uses 2 channel recording (i.e. one channel records Left and one Right signals) unlike LP2 and LP4 and you will end up with very very poor quality recordings as there is no relationship between the channels for the recorder to save bits on.

I have read a few myth based facts before, e.g. "My buffering CD player plays back disc X better because it has lower Jitter" - The buffer removes the jitter from the digital data so you just debunked your own reason. "The sound is clearer from disc X" - As long as there are no read errors then digital is digital and there will be no difference, this has also been debunked by feeding the digital stream through a PC to do a CRC check on the 2 discs digital audio stream, both had the same CRC's yet people swore blind they can tell the difference. Technically there will be no difference between audio stored on a 1GB disc and the same audio stored on an 80M disc. Now, there may be a difference between them audiably because of drive motor noise on the battery voltage etc but if the digital signal is fed to a seperate digital decode & amp it will sound the same.

Sounds like the old broken record head cable problems. There is a cable that links the magnetic record head that sits above the disc to the electronics below. When (not if as it happens eventually) this breaks any recording done on the unit wipes the disc clean as the device is unable to write any data using the magnetic head. You can try and repair it yourself using a new ribbon cable or its time to upgrade to a newer unit (sony will charge more than a new unit to repair it).

And remember, the only Hi-MD unit that can transfer old MD recordings to a PC over a USB cable is the RH1, all previous Hi-MD units are limited to only transfering Hi-MD recordings.

You cant.... The only unit that can copy digitally via USB from MD to PC is the RH1, and then all except discs you made with your PC. The only way to get audio off of a MD disc without using an RH1 is to play the track back with the audio output of the MD player connected to the line in on your PC and using some recording software like Audacity.

I use mainly VBR MP3's on my RH1, these have bitrates covering 32-320kbps. I have also played MP3's in 128, 192 and 320 kbps without problems (but prefer VBR due to size v quality, wish they did ATRAC VBR).

Make sure you have Quick mode enabled, this will store the point you are at BUT it costs battery power when the device is off. If quick mode is disabled then all positional settings are lost when the unit self powers down and this includes in-track position but not track number.

Yep, go for the 40ELK One nice feature of the 40ELK is that instead of the group + and - you can scroll through th groups. CLick the scroll wheel, then when the current group tracklist is shown press << (move the play button to the left) and you get the group list up and can then scroll to the group you want. Not quite as easy as using group forward but if you have alot of groups it is alot easier.

I have had one disc that had a bad spot on it, this was one of the sony original 60min discs that were made. The disc would fail to record over a specific point on the disc so I would loose 2 seconds of audio with the rest before and after being fine. Checked the disc for dirt etc and found none. Funny thing is that it only did this on my old MD equipment. When I got my Hi-MD I used the disc again in both MD and Hi-MD mode and it worked correctly with no problems. Some discs I have found work better in some recorders than others, try using discs that you find "iffy" in a different recorder to see if they just dont like each other.

If you transfer a PCM, Hi-SP or Hi-LP from a Hi-MD unit onto your PC in the same format (i.e. dont convert it) and then put it back onto a different minidisc in the same format then there should be no loss. If you import an SP recording using the RH1 you will get a quality loss as you cant re-send SP back to MD and also SS does a convertion from SP to Hi-SP or WAV on import.

The RH10 (and I think the RH910) can also charge from USB but its not as fast as the RH1 can charge. The manual states the RH10 cant fully charge from USB but I have seen mine stop charging but it took a full 18h connection via USB so it looks like its just a normal charge and not a fast charge. As for the NH1, this is a first gen unit and none of them is designed to charge from USB. The NH1 is worse than the NH900 as it needs 6v to charge and not the usual 3v of most other Hi-MD's. I have tried a 5v power supply and it did charge the NH1 so modification of the custom USB lead could be possible but the results may not be what is expected and could damage the unit if it overcharges the battery due to the lower voltage not powering the charge cutoff circuits.

I presume you are leaving it plugged in after the charging light goes out as I think this signifys the end of fast charge but it reverts to trickle charge after that. Might be worth leaving it overnight on charge and see how it goes in the morning. I have now given up with my RH10 but while I did use it I used to charge the battery in a NiMH external changer as its just slightly longer than a AA battery and could get the terminals to fit. Sony also do an external charger for them.

I am just waiting for the "Pay per Play" MP3 player that charges you $0.05 every time you want to listen to music you have already paid to download or because there maybe someone else overhearing your headphones they class it as a public performance and charge a few hundred $'s per minute. It wont be long before the RIAA works this out and forces all MP3 devices to impliment built in charging. Oh and they stop sales of CD because "No-one is buying them" whereas in reality its because they can jack the prices up from online music sellers without too many people noticing an album now costs over $40 to buy all the same tracks that used to be on a CD. Sorry but the RIAA et-al really do nark me off.... After nothing but money whichever way is quickest.

Version 1.09 here on a 1 week old unit from Amazon.co.uk

The audio books I am currently listening to have a musical background (Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - Complete Radio series, all 6 series fit on 1 Hi-MD using LP2), hence why at 48Kbps I find they sound horrid (but again this is just my taste). I have encoded normal audio books at 48Kbps and they do sound fine. Greenmachine is correct in thinking that a mono mode on Hi-MD will gain nothing. I find M-S encoding (Joint stereo) easier to think about as a big piece of cake. As the signal comes in it is converted to a mono signal and a difference (the difference between the left and right channels) signal. This is then fed to the encoder that dishes out parts of the cake as needed to get the best tradeoff between the stereo portion and mono clarity. If there is nothing but mono then the difference channel takes up no space and all available cake is allocated to the mono signal. If there is nothing but the difference signal (out of phase mono will generate this) then everything goes to the difference signal. Most audio that we listen to is about 80-90% mono with just a hint of difference between the 2 channels. The upside of M-S encoding is that it uses less bandwidth to encode normal sound due to the similarity between 2 channels in a stereo recording. The downside of M-S is that at low bitrates the difference signal can become distorted and this leads to swirly sounds because the mono signal is reproduced fine but the difference signal that is used to modify the mono signal moves instruments and sounds around where they should not be. The common place you will find M-S encoding is in FM stereo radio, the mono signal is transmitted for older mono only FM recievers and the stereo difference signal is transmitted with slightly lower power to enable newer equipment to produce 2 channels from the single mono the older radios use.

If you go for the best quality that both formats have to offer (320K Atrac and 320K MP3) then you will be very very hard pushed to tell the difference. If you go down to low bitrates (64K Atrac and 64K MP3) then its no contest. However saying that I use alot of ~128K MP3 (VBR rates) as this gives me a good compromise between space and quality, plus Atrac does not do VBR so for audio books you have to either use a high bitrate or putup with poor quality, VBR MP3 allows lower bitrate for parts that dont need alot of quality (like silence).

Only if you keep re-writing the media from scratch each time. Thats the thing about large media, you only really overwrite the music / data you are bored with. I dont think I have ever yet re-written the whole HDD on my 60GB AV500 jukebox, only ever added and removed the odd album.

Ok, Model RH1 can upload any MD / Hi-MD recording (thats Hi-SP, Hi-LP, PCM, SP, LP2 and LP4) from a disc that you reorded via optical, Line-in or Mic-in even if these were recorded by another MD / Hi-MD unit. It cannot upload items recorded via USB onto a disc (e.g. Items put onto a disc with sonicstage etc). Other Hi-MD units (e.g. RH10, NH1 etc) can upload Hi-MD recordings done in PCM, Hi-SP or Hi-LP only. They cannot upload any MD recordings (e.g. SP, LP2 or LP4) MD units cannot upload recordings. All units can copy to a PC in real time (using an audio lead to your soundcard) but I gather from your post that this is something you may wish to avoid. Upload speeds via USB are faster than real time but the actual speed depends on the recording format. The more compressed the original format the faster it uploads (because there is less data) but the worse the quality. The quality required however depends on your needes, I used Hi-LP which is the highest compression for my lecture recordings purely because they did not need clarity as I only needed to understand what was being said.

The filing system used on Hi-MD is FAT, this has a partition limit of 2GB due to the 32k sector size limit. BUT..... If the drive itself formats it then it could get away with larger sectors, this will allow upto 4GB by using NT's 64k sector size but will not allow windows 95>ME to access the disc. It would also rule out disc tools etc but this should not cause any problems. 4GB would be the physical limit without partitions.

Use it for times when you dont want to risk your RH1 I have an RH10 that I will be using when I dont really want to risk damage to my new RH1. I also have an R900 that I would probably not loose to much sleep over if I loose it.

No, the R900 does not have NetMD support. I ended up buying an N707 as well to use as an uploader to discs so I could play them on my R900. This worked out great as it meant I could keep the recorder hooked up to my PC and not have to keep shuffling things around

Has to be my R900 I have sat on it, dropped it, had stuff fall on it and it keeps on running. Had to bend the front cover back slightly as it now looks like a satelite dish but I have yet to kill it. All the lettering has worn off of it on the front so I had to use it by feel only. It still records and plays back faultlessly. If I was to try and replicate all the things that have happened to it with a MP3 player (even flash based) I would have needed a few over the same time frame. Its now hardly used as I have a range of Hi-MD units to listen to that take priority over MDLP units.

Ok, I voted no a while ago..... BUT Curiosity has got the better of me and I have just placed an order for one to go with my NH1 and RH10.