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Qwakrz

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Everything posted by Qwakrz

  1. Qwakrz

    Charging NH3D

    There is no technical reason that the NH1 cant be charged from the USB port, I just think sony wants you to carry the charger around with you. When I get my NH1, one of the first things I will be doing (after filling it up with music) is to see if I can modify a cable to allow either USB to be used on the charging cradle (should be a simple matter of linking the pins up to a cable) or making the USB cable charge the unit. USB = 5v, PSU = 6v. Worst case is a small charge pump to increase USB voltage to 6v for charging. The problem will be if the charging electronics are built into the cradle and therfore not allow charging unless the base station is used.
  2. Steve, unlikely the Li-Ion bat will work on the 900. The differences are Voltage - 900 = 1.2v, NH1 = 3.2-4.5v depending on charge Size - I believe there is slight differences and that the 900 battery is very slightly longer Connections - 900 has posotive one end and negative the other, same as a normal battery. NH1 has 2 contact pads on the back of the battery Capacity - 900 can have a capacity of 1400mah, NH1 has a capacity of 350ish mah (hope they release bigger) There is to much difference for them to be interchangable
  3. or £189.99 for an NH1 at www.be-direct.co.uk I have never ordered from them before but at that price...... Anyway I have a standing pre-order with amazon at £249.99 and have notified them of the price so I am hoping they will reduce their price to match.
  4. Just tried to obtain the NH1 from Argos, says its out of stock in all locations I could think of to try. BTW, it took me 5 minutes of "You are forbidden to view this page" while trying to get to www.argos.co.uk, what are they hiding?
  5. DRM can be proved to not play a part in the slow transfer as it also affects data that is placed onto the new discs. Also a little bit further down is the physical specs for the disc's including a theoretical maximum read speed of 9.83Mbps but this does include all error correction etc and refers the the bits actually being transfered from the disc. I would presume it is read speed as it falls into line with the read tests reported on minidisc.org's site. Write speed will however be lower.
  6. Hobgoblin Magneto-optic recording has always been slow. Remember that the main use of the Hi-MD is as an audio player and as such the recording and reading rates for the media will be limited to the speed needed to perform these functions. Sony has added the ability to use the discs as data storage but I doubt they will increase the speed that they will move data at The unit only uses USB1.1 as the speed that information can be placed on the disc is slower than the max speed for USB1.1, therefore USB2 is not needed
  7. Yet again I have seen this appear. I know this applies to the MZ-EH1 but for the life of me I cant see one in the accessories shot & the MZ-NH1 does not have it listed in the sony specs. Oh boy will I be happy if it does come with one but not holding my breath.
  8. HDD based equipment is not able to handle shocks as well as MO equipment, the main reson being that even slight damage to the surface of a HDD can place particles inside the drive that can go on to damage further areas of the drive when operated. If at any point the heads come into contect with the media surface it is good bye to that HDD. Even when the drive is off, a sharp shock has caused one I had to unload the heads and scratch the disc surface. (took the drive apart as out of wnty and failed to initialise) MO drives can sustain a shock while in use & even if the head touches the disc it may leave a mark but no further damage can result from this. Also it takes heat & magnetics to change the information stored on the disc & not just a weak magnetic force (Boy have I had fun with PC's and magnets when trying to return as DOA). I think the main limiting factor with MO on a minidisc is the time it takes for the spot of information to cool down enough so that when it passes under the magnet a 2nd time (to write the track next to it) it is cool enough to not be affected. Anyway, this is my personal experience and also my feelings. I believe that HDD based players are ideal for gentle use (I even own one) but prefer minidisc because if I drop it (you should see my N900, all scratched and bent) it will keep working without problems (has sofar).
  9. iPod (either mini or standard) = HDD based technology MiniDisc = Magneto Optical technology MO technology used in minidisc has always been slow but is less prone to errors or corruption. It originally only had to playback a 300ish kb/s data stream from the disc & only had to record at that pace as well.
  10. There is a higher capacity gum stick available. My NZ-R900 has a 1200mAh gumstick in it & it is the same as the type as on the MZ-NH900. This would give you about 1/4 more time to play with. Also if you purchased a multi battery charger with sliding arms to clamp the batteries in, you can sometimes get the gumstick to sit in it & charge. Its a NiMi after all so most battery chargers will charge it correctly I hope they release a bigger battery for the NH1, 350ish mAh is pritty poor for that player tbh
  11. Thought I'd clear this up Most radio stations do broadcast from CD's, yes In UK, Radio 1 used to use CD, then switched to MiniDisc (yay) and has just moved over to digital storage devices (PC based juke boxes)
  12. Ill take a stab at the answers It would be best to use the bundled software that comes with the Hi-MD to copy the audio off of your PC's CD drive and onto the Hi-MD, doing it this way will name all the track's and should put them into a folder as required. You can currently use Atrac3plus 256Kbps for the highest quality, and as soon as the patch to v2.1 (I believe) you will also be able to copy in PCM format (Raw uncompressed, same as a CD) However, the slower way is: If your CD player supports sending track marks over the SPDIF (Optical) link (AFAIK 99% of CD players do, not sure on DVD) then the Hi-MD should place the track marks at the relevent locations. However you will then have to title each track by hand (can be a pain in the ......), just read the manual as some functions will disable the Hi-MD from reading track marks from the data stream & I believe you have to be playing in standard mode on the CD as well (Not programed or shuffle mode)
  13. If its a type A to a mini USB then just make yourself a mini cable from bits. All the items should be available from somewhere like RS or Maplins in the UK (or an Electrical component shop)
  14. Technically they do support MP3 as the program that is used to pt the information onto a HiMD will convert from MP3 into ATRAC. I personally dont think they should use the word support as it can be misleading. As to copying files from a MD As far as I know this is possible for any recording made using the inputs on the Hi-MD (with Hi-MD formatted disc) unit BUT cannot be done for recordings put onto a HiMD via USB. So basically you cannot copy a CD onto it using your PC and copy it off somewhere else. However you can make a recording via Line-in and copy it off to ANY PC later using the USB cable to retrieve the data. All of this must be done using Hi-MD formatted discs. It will not work using the older format discs as the MD will be treated as a Net-MD then with all its restrictions. Net-MD cannot copy ANY information off of the MD in a digital format. I currently am awaiting my NZ-NH1 so I dont have a Hi-MD to play with.
  15. Any minidisc does not play MP3 format files. They can only play ATRAC(plus) formatted files. The softare converts them & puts them into a special area on the disc as an encrypted (Disc serial number presumably) file that can be understood by the audio playback inside the MD
  16. Pixmania no longer seem to be listing the NH1 on their website, however Amazon uk is listing it as a pre-orderable item for £224.99 inc VAT. I am SO tempted to get one & a few spare cells for use on the road. -Edit- Temptation took the better of me, just placed an order for the NH1 and recieved an estimated delivery date of 7th August Oh well I guess Ill have to wait till then
  17. I read somewhere that MD's can be damaged by magnetoc fields but we must take it in context. Magnetic fields found in the home will not damage a MD, Magnetic fields found in a lab that rip iron out of blood cells will damage MD's The heating of the MD disc lowers the strength of field needed to flip the bits on the disc. While the disc is hot it takes a small magnet to flip them. When the disc is cold it takes a huge magnet to do it. So basically an MD in a home environment is not suseptable to magnetic corruption, just be careful in a magnetics lab.
  18. Thanks for the reply, Im glad to know that I can still get a resonable ammount of music onto a minidisc at a resonable quality. The main point I was trying to put across is the lack of a mid point in the Atrac3plus encoding system. Its either 256kbps or 64kbps, there is no middle 128 or 160kbps. I wounder what would happen if you encoded them at something like 160kbps on a PC and transfered them, will they be re-encoded or transfered as valid files and played back? I would presume that having a similar bitrate in Atrac3plus is preferable to Atrac3
  19. Why does sony seem to think that the end user will either want really high quality (Hi-SP) or really poor quality (Hi-LP). I would really like to know if it is possible to record to a 1Gb Hi-MD at a data rate and quality similar to the old MD-LP2 rates.
  20. If the N1 had a battery pod for an AA cell then I would be spending the extra on that. As it stands I will probably go for the 900 as I can attach an external cell if it runs flat. I suppose I am biased as I already own the MZ-900 but can only just read the writing on, it has seen that much use
  21. I would love to see an iPod take the abuse my little portable MZ-R900 MD player has done over the years. It has been sat on (I aint exactly small), dropped out of a first floor window, down the stairs, been at the bottom of a large bag during flights etc Its slightly bent (had to bend from back into shape as it was causing noises when disc spinning), got several large gouges on the case & has most of the lettering scratched / worn off. IT STILL PLAYS without problems The only experience of HDD recorders I have is that if you shock them while playing, you need to replace the HDD I cant wait for the Hi-MD to be released in the UK, I will be replacing the MZ-R900 with the 900 Hi-MD.
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