Qwakrz

RH10 is 2nd gen NH1, NH900 etc is first gen

Its NOT confirmed. Its also quite confusing because sony want to keep the Walkman brand going which does include MD but it may get dropped anyway, no-one knows yet (appart from sony's over paid bosses)

Units: RH10, NH1, R900, N707, R3 and 503 Deck Daily Use: Audio player for car & personal use. Mainly personal listening on way to work & between lectures. Recording lectures for archive (Hi-MD). Data drive for Uni work speed does not matter as its only documents. Fav Use: High Quality Audio Playback and Recording (nothing else comes close) Requests: Dont kill off (Hi)MD as it is a special device. It is not a HD based player so still works after excessive shock, its not a solid state device so you can swap out the discs quickly when bored with one disc. You dont need a PC to use it (very important). Its small, light & very portable. Market Hi-MD and its advantages and you have a winner. If you dont advertise it you wont sell it, simple.

Alexx, if you get an ipod you'll hear stories like this http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/23/ip...ano_scratching/

There is not much that is the same as LP2, except for Hi-SP but thats the same as SP to my ears. If however you use SS to transfer all your music just keep using LP2 as it still workes with Hi-MD formatted discs but only when transfering over USB to the Hi-MD.

UMD is not recordable BUT it is mass producable from a stamp Hi-MD is recordable BUT it is not mass producable from a stamp. Because of the way Hi-MD works you cannot make a glass master with data on for mass production of data discs, they have to be recorded the same way that tape did. UMD is mass producable using a glass master so this makes it very easy to mass produce discs. It would have been good if sony made a universal drive and installed it into the PSP and Hi-MD that could read both UMD and Hi-MD, this would allow them to mass produce audio discs for MD again (remember the old days) but in PCM format and also allow for cheap storage on the PSP using Hi-MD discs. But this is $ony we are talking about and that probably never even crossed their minds, or it did but they though they would like to kill both formats and extort lots of money from people.

Alexx, I have seen this as well in one of the manuals somewhere. I think it is $ony covering there backs incase something goes wrong. I have used Ni-MH batteries in all my MD equipment including the external case with the RH10 & R900 without problems.

If you are constantly topping up the battery I would reccomend discharging it fully at least once a month to stop the onset of the memory effect. Although Ni-MH are no where near as bad as Ni-CD cells they will exibit memory effects after a few months of top up charges.

Yes I have and the roll off at high frequency is still present when the MP3 is played back through my RH10 and the MP3>Atrac one sounds like the original.

One other thing, in the SS settings there is an option to use smoothing when reading the CD, this interpolates the data stream by re-reading before and after the required sample to allow it to align them all together (needed if you have an old CD drive that cant read audio data correctly). Enabling this may help. Also if you import into SS, do NOT re-encode the audio as this introduces gaps (If you rip at Hi-SP, stick with Hi-SP as converting to LP2 etc WILL introduce gaps).

I think the Hi-MD's can only handle 16bit audio but can handle sample rates of 32, 44.1 and 44 KHz. However the unit will convert them to 44.1KHz internally so its usually better to stick to 44.1KHz

I just wounder if Sony are trying out the various options for Hi-MD with the portable market first before commiting to a deck. This would make sence but then knowing Sony it will never probably happen.

None of the NH1 cradles have USB, it was a pre-production mock-up that was never followed through with.

I think MP3 recording went the way of the USB connection on the NH1 cradle. It never happened.

The NH1 does show all the levels on the remote while recording. The remote when used with other units though does not seem to show the levels though so I think its only with the NH1.

You are not stuck, as said above this option is now wide open to you. (and may be faster than doing things in realtime. Use the new Hi-MD to record your interview in Hi-SP or PCM. Use sonicstage V3.2 (allows unlimited checkin's) on a PC, upload the recordings onto the computer and edit them as you need to. Use sonicstage to copy the edited file onto a normal MD in SP or LP2 format. The RH10 allows using sonicstage to make an old style MD disc.

One thing I have noticed, sometimes if I plug in my Hi-MD and then start SS or SB my antivirus starts checking the Hi-MD disc. This locks out SS and SB saying the disc is in use (antivirus check) and I have to unplug & then plugin my MD with SS or SB open. It may be that you have something trying to read/write to the disc that you dont know about, I suggest trying what I do above and also doing a virus check on your PC (with an uptodate virus scanner).

Yep, if the disc is blank the Hi-MD will automatically use it as a Hi-MD disc, unless you tell it otherwise. Remeber that if you want to copy your mic recordings off of the MD onto your PC you MUST record in Hi-MD mode.

The artifacts in Atrac are different to MP3, Atrac does not produce harsh errors that cause a tinny-ness to music, it produces a washy effect that seems to blurr the music and makes it swim around abit. Its most noticable, I find, on instrumental music. Anything accoustic I have to record at LP2 rates or it sounds wrong to me. Best thing I can think of would be to record a track you know very well 5 times onto a disc, one at PCM, one at Hi-SP, one at LP2 (132Kbps), one at Hi-LP 64k and one at Hi-LP 48k. Put the MD onto random and see which one sounds the best to you. (remeber to label them but DONT LOOK at the display while listening)

The only exception that I know of is the MZ-NH1, that uses a custom cable. All other Hi-MD stuff uses that mini usb plug. (Have not seen that camera Hi-MD unit yet so not sure on that one).

It works fine. I use an external 1800mAh NiCD battery with my NH10. The capacity of the battery is just a measure of its lasting power.

I have decided that using SS and SB with my minidisc is just not the done thing (to many hoop jumps to put up with long term), the final straw came when trying to reload my PC and having to do an SS backup, 100GB is to much when all the music files are on a seperate drive anyway and wont be deleted. I have decided to place a pre-order for this. Its an AV700 widescreen MP3 / MP4 player from Archos (Should be here 18th July). I like the idea of having un-DRM'd MP3's available as a backup that I dont need a key to playback. I will still be holding onto my minidisc equipment and will use it when I go away on long journeys when I dont have room for the jukebox or need AA battery support. I will probably be putting my NH1 and N707 on ebay for sale but I'll hold onto the RH10 as its so easy to use. I wont sell the R900 as its a bit bashed and uses the same battery as the RH10.

The other way would be to make something that attaches to the extr battery contacts that the AA cell pack uses. If you are crafty with a soldering iron and dont mind damaging the extra battery pack, solder some wires onto that & put a single D or C cell rechargable on them. Should give you all the low batt warnings etc but last loads longer.

I have seemless on my NH1 and RH10. It could be that your CD drive you used for ripping the tracks is not to good at audio extraction. If you transcode the files as well then this introduces gaps as it has to fill out the space of a non full frame with empty data. Try going into the options menu and selecting the option to error correct the ripped audio off of the CD (think it says something like smoothing).

The only sony units that needed the internal battery fitted & charged were the ones that used Li-ion batteries & had the external option.