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There is no easy way to increase the processing speed without loosing some quality. BTW there is no dual core version of lame currently (there was a beta floating around but its not official) so single or dual core CPU's will have the same sort of speed when running one instance of the program. Have you thought about running 2 copies of your encoder program to do twice the ammount of work at once, because you have dual core you will then use one instance of each program on each core and this should almost double the speed of compression (same time to encode a file but its doing 2 at once). Get one running on one group of files and set the other running on another group. 320K VBR is actually ABR (average bit rate) but because the upper limit is 320K anyway it will turn it into CBR.

I'll point out the one obvious thing but we do need more details. When the AC is connected to the unit you need to press the stop button until the unit says charging on the display. It will not just charge when AC is connected.

I use nero to make an audio CD and then use the image recorder option in nero to make a disc image. This allows you to overburn the image upto huge sizes. I then use Daemon tools to mount the image but you should be able to use the built in virtual drive in nero as mentioned above.

I think the main differences can be summed up with SB is used for a quick copy of a CD to a Hi-MD/NetMD device. SS is used for the storage and manipulation of Hi-MD audio files.

And for my next april fool joke I will be cutting the brake lines to my mates car.... I'm sorry, bad taste

MDFreak, can I request a test on the RH1 please. Can you tell me if there is any noise on the output when you play a totally silent piece of track. The NH1 is totally silent, even with in-ear earphones The RH10 has alot of background noise (relative of course).

The only time the door is locked on my NH1, RH10 and R900 are during recording or file transfer. The door becomes unlocked during playback or after TOC edit has happened even when the unit is locked.

Dont try and use the device off of USB without the battery, it seems to work but randomly crashes when copying leading to loss of the minidisc and the need to reload all the music again. If you want to store the battery somewhere, just take it out and turn it over.

I will add this. The Jap website is listing the 3 line 40ELK remote as an extra accessory so it may be that the RH1 will not support it with the europe model, changing the region setting on the unit will allow it to work. The RH10 was exactly the same, in europe it only supported 1 line, change the setting on the unit and it supported all 3 lines and partly removed the volume restriction.

I totally agree. I have never used my MD equipment for recording, apart from my R900 that I used for a while (non NetMD so recording the only way). My current audio equipment: Creative Nomad (v1) Archos AV700 and the list of MD in my sig. The AV700 is the newest but the audio quality is just not as good as the NH1's, I now use it for video playback only as it kills a few hours on long journeys. I have a large collection of CD's recorded into SS that I just copy onto disc as the mood takes me, there is little choice to be made when out and its just throw the disc in the player and click play. Trying to do the same with the AV700 I found myself spending more time flicking through the track listings rather than listening to music. The MD equipment is small and light enough to just throw in my pocket and walk with, tried that with the AV700 but it just wont go in my pocket. MD is ideal in my case and to be honest the only thing I may change it for is a really small HD based player but it must have better sound quality than the MD equipment, its still not happened yet.

All Gen 1 units could record in MD modes (SP, LP2 & LP4) from audio sources & did not need SS to do it. Some didn't have any direct record function though (NH600) and needed SS to put music on them All Gen 2 units cannot record directly into MD modes (SP, LP2 & LP4) but could use SS to tranfer them onto a disc formatted in MD mode (SP was fake SP) MZ-RH1 will record in SP, LP2 and LP4 modes + will be able to transfer them back to the PC. All units that are able to record can do the Hi-MD modes (PCM, Hi-SP & Hi-LP)

Yes, thats why MP3 is not a good audio codec as it always has that drop. The drop though is at 19KHz and should not be noticable by many people (some dogs might notice though). The old playback used to have a massive cut at the 10KHz point causing a loss of high frequencies (basically, imagine that drop point appearing half way along the graph and not at the end) -edit- God this thread updates quickly....

The new RH1 has fixed the MP3 problem. Graphs of MP3 and Atrac show the usual drop of level at 19KHz that MP3's normally have. Upto that point it follows the atrack levels closely, so Sony have fixed the problem but it means waiting for the RH1.

NH1 is very very slightly smaller. All but NH1 have more information on there displays All but the NH1 & the camera one take NiHM or AA cells in some way but over all this.... the RH1 is just... well, it is so much better than what has preceeded it. Oh, I think the 40ELK remote will work as the Japan website has it as an option for the RH1. Think it may just need the change in settings the same as the RH10 needed to make it work.

There are ways to get 5v from a small single 1.2v NiMH cell. With a few components and a single AA cell this chip (http://www.st.com/stonline/products/literature/ds/11378.pdf) should give enough output to power the unit over the USB connector. Its small enough to be build into a connector or very small box. I will be looking at doing this when the RH1 is released as it should make things the same as using an external power pack and you can make it run off of as many AA cells as you need for the time you want. I just need to find a supplier for the chip.

All Hi-MD's have a type-S encoder / decoder (that includes the RH10 as it is used in type-R mode for playback).

They are suceptable BUT nothing like NiCD are. With NiCD you had a window of about 10 partial recharges before you get memory effects, with NiMH you have 100-1000 window BUT it can still get the effect. Li-ion is the only MD battery that does not have a memory effect. Partial recharge is ok as long as once in a while you flatten it fully and recharge, say about once a month.

It looks like it has better decoding of MP3. Supports 32-320K in 32/44.1/48Khz. Looks like it may still have problems with audio books etc. Also, does not suffer from the high freq cutoff that the Gen 2's have. More details over at http://www.mdcenter.nl/redirect.php?file=h...opic.php?t=2084

1) I love it. Its fixed the MP3 bug (see massive thread on the RH1 for details) and uses USB to charge the unit so can be recharged by my mobile phone charger in the car. Shame it only has effectivly a single line display and does not (currently) support a MC40 remote. 2) Yes, 5mW is ample power as I only listen at a maximum of 15/30 on my NH1. I have a few friends that, when listening to my minidisc, always turn it up full and then comment that its very quiet. When they use their iPod's I can name each track they are listening to from 100 yards away. 3) Digital amp is supposed to have a higher definition than the analogue amp. In all honesty there should really be no difference if the analogue amp is built correctly BUT there will always be differences. I like the NH1 digital amp as it makes things seem clearer. 4) Thats down to personal opinion. Personally the iPod has not been built to profesional standards so will probably use cheap amp chips and cheap D/A converters. The Sony seems to be marketed at the profesional end of the market so should use lower noise components. I can deff hear a difference between my NH1 and RH10 in terms of quality, they are still both very good but the NH1 just sounds "better" playing the same disc. However, crap in equals crap out so in effect if you feed a poor quality recording into any device you will still get a poor quality playback. The 2 things Hi-MD has over iPod's are... 1) Removable battery 2) Removable media.

I think of it like this.. You can pay £20 for a poor lossy copy of a record, it arrives in several files that can be lost, has nothing but the files so no nice artwork. The files are so wrapped up in DRM that you can only just get them to play on one PC if you are lucky, God forbid you want to listen to them away from the PC you downloaded them on (infact I think the RIAA would prefer it if you could not play them at all) Or You can pay £12 for an original PCM lossless version on a silver disc that comes with inlays and all cover art work but might have some DRM restrictions that can be removed if needed (CD > TOSLink > Hi-MD in PCM > PC). You can play this disc on ANY CD player and if it does not work you can either exchange it or get a refund. So, you can pay less and get more.. hmmmm, I wounder why I will NEVER buy music online.

Nope, the files are now just taking up space. The option is when you go to rip files from CD, when you go to change the bitrate is SS3.2 or above there is a tick box that likes to stay ticked, remove the tick and it will not add encryption.

The OMA file you cant play are encrypted. Where did these files come from? If you have reloaded your PC or moved them from another then they were originaly recorded with encryption set on and the key has now been lost so you will not be able to decrypt them. Only choice is to re-copy them from the original source but this time without encryption (remember to un-check the box)

FC is bit for bit and has been for a long time, it reports any bit errors it finds. Its fast because thats all its doing, no conversion or modification. Bit for bit comparisons take very little processing power. The simple fact that the term "lossless" means no loss seems to have escaped you. What you feed into the Atrac LossLess should be what you get out when its decompressed or they could not call it lossless. There are loads of compression codecs out there that are lossless (Monkey, Flac, WMA Lossless, Atrac Lossless). They all do the same as ATLL and most do it alot better. As has been said quite a few times WMA Lossless is importable into SS but has file sizes even smaller than ATLL because it uses a better encoding method. Again when making a WAV file from a WMALL file you will get back the exact same as you put in, bit for bit with 0 differences. If you dont trust this one then all I can suggest is to find a bit of music that does not compress well to 64K AT3+ (there are loads of them) and try putting both a version that was recorded in ATLL64 and then transcoded upto 352K and a version ripped at 352k from the cd on a Hi-MD together, you will be able to hear the difference. If Sony had used the LL bit of the capture for transcoding then there would be no difference. I know that I can hear a difference so I believe what I see when SS tells me there is a quality loss because my ears have told me its true. I agree on this point, Sony should have done this in the first place.

Ok, took me 15 mins to run these tests.... Lets see the outcome.. Ok, Atrac LossLess at 64k and attempting to transcode to 352K onto Hi-MD... oops, SS reports that the sound quality will be 64kbps even after the transcode. So this proves that SS ignores the lossless part when transcoding to Hi-MD. (this is the stupid bit that I dont understand.... why do it this way) Ok, take that same file & right click it, choose the option to save as a WAV file. Rip the same track from the same CD in WAV format as well to compaire. Run FC (file compaire) to see if there are any differences. If the WAV file is transcoded from the lossy part there will be differences throughout the file, from lossless there should be none. Well, that proves that converting to wav uses the lossless part of the file as well. One final thought I had was what would happen if you send ATLL and convert it to WAV on the fly same as in my point 1. SS wont do it as its not an option. Hope that clears things up

When copying to the Hi-MD it uses the compressed section, if you rip in AAL using 64kbps and then select to transfer at 352 to the minidisc you get a warning about quality being poor as you are going from low bitrate to high. When transcoding to WAV I believe it uses the lossless part as well but this is almost pointless as you should already have the original. The only use I can see is for compressing PCM captures from Hi-MD but even then you cant copy them back to the Hi-MD in the original quality once you compress them and get rid of the original.