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It is technically possible to go upto 2GB but not beyond. Hi-MD uses the FAT formatting sytem and that has a limit of 2GB (4GB under NT/XP but ONLY with special conditions). To go beyond 2GB would mean adopting a different format on the disc and thus will break the current compatability with Hi-MD. As far as I remember there was a paper to say that the disc could technically store 4.7GB while staying backwardly compatable, however you have to think along the lines that 4.7GB was realised in a lab and would probably not suvive the standard usage pattern that most MD's get.

Yes you can get most chargers that have a sliding base to take any size battery to work BUT its a pain in the rear to get it working. Best bet is to buy something for the job.

Nope. Its either Charge or Play not both

DJ The Crow, I would disagree with your MP3 encode settings, but only slightly LAME uses lossless joint stereo (its not the Psycho acoustic version) therefore I would always suggest that Joint Stereo is used as it gives better compression for the same quality OR better quality for the same compression, as in this case. Your stereo line would change to -b 320 -m j -o -q 0 -k

I will add another slant... You can count the number of MP3 players that actually record on one hand, you can count the number of affordable MP3 players that record on 2 fingers and the number that actually record in studio quality on one finger. MD does all this on 99% of the recordable units. Hi-MD does everything that I want it to do, it has long battery life that is also swapable on the move (single AA cell), its almost blast proof, and has such a good dynamic and quality output that I can listen to it on the move or plug it into a high end Hi-Fi and it still sounds good. Its small, compact and limitless in the storage space by swapping disc. Personally MP3 can only ever get to half the quality that MD can, MP3 @ 320K is about the same as Atrac3 @ 132 personally, MD still has Hi-SP and PCM to go further up in quality. As was stated above, I have an Archos AV700 for playing MP4 video and MP3 audio but whenever I go out I always grab my MD as if I drop the Archos I know the HDD will be toast (its just my luck). I have dropped MD's more times than I care to remember without any problems.

The spec's for Atrac3+ are actually quite lax. They specify a bitrate from 8Kbps upto 1411(ish)Kbps and from 1 to 10 channels. I dont think there is any shrotcuts, I think the NH1 (and others) can play back any bitrate that Atrac3+ can be recorded in, its just Sony that limit the datarates we can transfer at.

The problem with the conversion inside SS is that it will always transfer the best quality track to the NH910. The way you do it is Convert inside SS and then goto the properties page of the track, you will see under files that you have 2 files. One Hi-LP and one MP3, delete the MP3 file and then transfer the track to your Hi-MD. The reason your Hi-MD cant play the track normally is that they must conform to 44.1KHz with a minimum bitrate of 32Kbps. Most podcasts are 22KHz

If its in MP1 then to preserve quality you will be looking at recording in PCM. The recorders will still only offer Hi-SP because that is all they were designed to record upto (as has been mentioned) If you record in PCM, import into SS and convert to SP352 then that will retain as much quality as possible. Personally I think you will be hard pushed to hear a difference between Hi-SP and MP1 320K as MP1 is not as good at removing unused audio data as Atrac is, its an older encoding method.

No. Only tracks that have been recorded on the unit itself either optically or via line / mic in can be uploaded.

How about SP352 or +352 I can see it getting shortened to one or the other on the forums very soon anyway.

If this is so then what is the point of lossless in SS? It means that recording in AAL256 and converting to 352K will mean you have a file that is only as good as 256K would be normally. This is pointless then (mind you it is Sony). One thing I did notice is that if you encode in AAL64 and then choose to force a transfer to Hi-MD at 64K (same applies if you rip in AAL256 and transfer in 256) it goes through a re-encode again of the track. If you just say transfer as is then it will use the lossy part of AAL for transfer.

Yes if you rip at AAL64 you will have a SMALL lossy file and a BIG lossless file, however If you rip at AAL256 you will have a BIG lossy file and a SMALL lossless file. They kind of cancel out. It could be that AAL64 is getting the encoding closer to the original and needs less correctable bits than the AAL256 when they are finally combined, or AAL256 has a small continuous error that has to be corrected for at all times by the lossless add-on.

What I really want to know is that if I rip all my CD's in AAL 64K, can I use this to convert to Hi-SP later without re-ripping or loosing quality, i.e. does it use the AAL version to convert and giving Hi-SP quality. I say this because there are times when I like listening to Hi-SP and times when Hi-LP does the job. Its mainly Hi-LP I listen to at present as the background noise makes it pointless for Hi-SP.

Yes 352Kbps ATRAC is supported on the RH10 (as I sit here and listen to it). There is no way to encode from a disc straight to the format though, you either have to go lossless encoding or PCM and then convert. True SP is lossy. All previous ATRAC codecs appart from AAL are lossy.

It should be about 3.5x as much as a 80m disc (going by capacity) or 350mins, just under 6 hours. Someone will actually have to try it though to check, I have gone on capacity of the media. BTW is it my imagination or does Hi-LP 64K sound better with the new version of SS. I listened to a recording in PCM, Hi-SP 352 and Hi-LP 64. I am finding it very difficult to tell the difference between them all now, it was easier before.

My R900 (pre NetMD) used to have a habbit of removing spaces from those hidden tracks at the end of the last track on CD's. It use to add all the correct track marks using optical out but I always ended up at the end with the extra tracks tagged correctly without any of the long spaces.

The radio will not decrypt the music from the MD discs so the files you use with the radio will not be playable on the MD unit, you will need to keep 2 copies on a disc, one to listen to on the Minidisc player and one on the radio. Also, The fact they can use a USB storage device does not mean they will talk to a Hi-MD unit. My AV700 has a native USB controller for reading from cameras, memory card readers etc BUT refuses to work with my Hi-MD as it is not fully standards complient (?). It just produces a red cross and says it cannot access the device as its not a storage class device. The other thing, not all WMA players play lossless. My AV700 will play all WMA v10 files including encrypted, that is all except lossless. It just says that the format is not correct and fails.

Emeb, I dont suppose the problem with garbage could be a simple big endian little endian problem could it? I know PC's use one and Mac's use the other so any data transfered from one to the other will be around the wrong way and look like garbage. The M series could take this into account when transfering. Just a thought

Remote: Pass, have the RH10 with standard c****y remote, never used it & is still in wrapper. MP3's <32K: NO , 44.1KHz 32-320K VBR / CBR. High Freq capped by unit though Hiss: On my RH10 compaired to my NH1, Hiss is present but seems to vary, might be headphone impedance related. Volume Level : PASS, RH10 is loud enough for me with in ear earphones.

I doubt a virus will affect the Hi-MD as it does not open or use any data files, a PC virus can, however, destroy a Hi-MD disc by trashing the data on it. Yes, you can copy data files to a Hi-MD unit as when it is connected to a PC and SS or SB are not running, it will appear as a data drive. usual space is 300 odd meg for an 80m disc and 993MB for a 1GB disc (takes into account formatting overhead)

I presume you are trying to charge a flat battery. If the battery is partly or nearly full then the charging icon will come on for a few mins and then go off. I would suggest flattening the battery and doing a full charge, should take a few hours before the display goes off.

To record, make sure you either have a full battery (is a must) and a spare (just in case) or that you can plug the unit in (just in case again) but for 1.5h recording you should be fine with the supplied battery. For the length of time you are recording I would probably suggest using cheaper 80min discs in Hi-MD format with Hi-SP. This will give you just over 2 hours of recording per disc and is (personally) slightly more relyable than 1GB Hi-MD discs, using a standard disc also allows for longer recording times on a battery than 1GB discs. To copy the audio into wav format you wil,l of course, need a PC and make sure you get a copy of Sonic Stage 3.2 (downloadable from the download section) as it removes quite a few bugs and allows multiple uploads from a recorded disc. One thing, don't edit the tracks on the Hi-MD unit itself as this has been known to cause problems with the upload, just upload and edit on the PC when needed.

Stereo is 2 seperate signals, left & right Join Stereo converts these 2 signals into a Mono signal and Side signal (or sometimes called stereo or difference signal). It takes advantage of the fact that most of the time the audio has similar sounds on both left & right at the same time and thus you can encode using better compression as you are only encoding one signal and a difference signal rather than 2 seperate signals. The drawback is that the side channel is usually the one that gets cut back on the most when the bitrate gets squeezed causing a slightly muffled stereo image but does not cause artifacting as much as you would get on a purely stereo encode. If it is encoded correctly and at a high enough bitrate you will not notice the difference between S & JS. I encode all my MP3's in JS with a high bitrate (192+) -NOTE- There are 2 versions of JS. I would imagine that the JS version DAB uses is the lossless one I mentioned above. The other version uses a Phsyco Acoustic function to reduce the bitrate even further but makes the audio sound horrid as it is a lossy conversion.

Sony did make a media connector that you could plug a Hi-MD into, this would allow you to copy all the files off of a flash card onto a Hi-MD disc, I dont know what the model was but a search should bring it up. I also agree that the NH1 or RH10P would not be suitable for you as they use a Li-ion battery and I know the NH1 requires the cradle to charge and cannot use standard batteries. Reccomend the NH900 or RH10 but as above this one could get easily scratched.

Well it was either that apple replaced them or they were dragged through the courts again by the Americans. I will NEVER buy anything from Apple, in my eyes they cut corners where you cant see it until its to late. "Sorry, your waranty is invalid, you unboxed it"