Qwakrz

Actually its the reverse for me. I had a few discs that had failed in use with my old equipment. Put them into the Hi-MD and the problems have gone. Not had any skips or jumps from any discs I have tried yet (old and new)

Its also worth checking the MP3 format. The 2nd gen's can only play MP3's in 44KHz sampling (displays "Cannot Play" if its 32 or 48 KHz) and has to be above 48K bitrate.

No, to record in real SP will need the disc in MD format & not Hi-MD format, this will not allow you to transfer the contents to a PC, only Hi-MD discs can be transfered.

All MiniDisc units are USB1.1. The difference is probably because the NH1 spins the disc faster as it now has to cope with writing and reading PCM data. I dont think the original minidisc's span the disc at great speed as they were all dealing with SP as the highest transfer rate.

There should be no difference between the CD and the original BUT sony only allows one transfer of the original to a PC.

RH10. It supports AA batteries so you can extend the recording time as long as you like without having to find a mains socket. The NH1 is also very good but you cant use a battery pack with it so for long recording sessions you will either need spare (and costly) batteries or access to a mains socket & cradle

There are some things you can do in the same situation next time, it may allow the unit to have a 2nd life. If you dunk it in the sea, you MUST fish it out VERY quickly, remove the battery and dunk the whole lot into normal tap water (battery as well but not inside the machine. Then put the unit into very clean (pref distilled) water and rinse it out, clean the battery off using a cloth. Then let it dry out completely somewhere warm. The main idea is to remove the corrosive salts that are in the water and stop them from eating away at the electronics. This has saved one or two items of equipment I had forgotten I put in my pocket when down the beach. It does not work on all equipment & dont assume it will save it but it is worth a try. In your case though I think the damage has been done already.

I own both the NH1 and RH10, to my ears they are NOT the same amp. It maybe the same chip but the other components are not the same quality. The NH1 is crystal clear, produces very nice sounds and is a pleasure to listen to. The RH10 has background noise, slight (as in just noticable) loss of clarity and, personally, is suitable only for my everyday use. (lots of features I use on the RH10 are not on the NH1) The above is very noticable if you like listening to things like classical music or jazz e.g. striking levels and breif periods of slience. I use the NH1 at home when relaxing and the RH10 when out, about and at work.

I am guessing your MP3's are in 128K format. If this is the case then SS will not transfer them as LP2 as they are deemed to be in a worse quality already. SS will only allow shrinking of the bitrate, it will not allow you to convert upwards (or what it see's as upwards) The only way around this is to convert them to WAV format and then to LP2.

You do know there is a recording and playback side to the volume control in XP (and 98/95). Open the full volume control and choose options then properties. Make sure recording is dotted then click ok. Now make sure that the input you are using has the select box ticked.

I can see it now..... "Sony new In Car Hi-MD player, Output power 5.0mW per channel, euro model 1.0mW per channel" Sorry, off topic but had to say it. I have now given up on MP3 playback on the RH10 as I cannot get it to sound "right". I let SS convert all my MP3's into LP2 or Hi-LP depending on the source quality.

The RH10 states in the manual that it can only charge to 60% when using the USB cable and this may take...... well forever springs to mind. To fully charge the battery you need to plug it into the mains adaptor and press the stop button to stop the unit and then I found if you hold the stop button down you eventually see it say "Charging" and you can leave it like that until its charged.

I dont have details of the pinout but will point out that the PSU for the NH1 is 6v and not 3v like all other Hi-MD's. Reason being is that the Li-ion battery is 3.7v and not 1.2v like the others

Ok, I have ripped all my CD's (slow going) into 256K AT3+ and let SS convert them down on the fly. The drawback is when converting down you will get occasional blips between tracks as the frame sizes are different and it seems that SS converts on a frame by frame basis and not decode then recode. The above, however, works fine for me and I dont notice to much lost quality.

As requested I have checked. Ok, the light comes on when a button is pressed however there is no way to keep it on 100% of the time. The display button if held in for 5 seconds will cause the back light to come on again without affecting anything going on with the remote so that should be a way to toggle it. With the 40 remote I have never been able (afai can remember) been able to get the remote to light up when it was on hold.

Yes, but please remeber I have hacked my RH10 with the firmware hack shown on this site. AFAIK the original UK spec only shows 1 line on the remote. At the very least you will have to hack yours as well.

Or you could be greedy and just have both....

Ok, dug out my 40ELK remote and atached it to my uk but hacked RH10 What I have found 40ELK cant do recording from the unit, no record button BUT it can pause etc. 40ELK shows 3 lines on remote (same as it did on NH1) 40ELK can pause etc Unknown if it can make track marks, dont think so due to lack of record button. Not tried to do a recording yet. 40ELK will allow moving between groups, it is different to the NH1 as you use scroll wheel to bring up current list then use FR to goto group listings. This is the same way you do it on the buttons on the RH10 anyway. Hope that helps

I will just re-make the point of our little discussion as a few people seem to not notice what we have proved. We have taken an MP3 & coiped it onto a 2nd gen Hi-MD (e.g. RH10). We have also taken a Hi-SP copy of that MP3 (converted the MP3 track into Hi-SP using SonicStage) and transfered that onto the same Hi-MD, this is done so any problems in the MP3 should be carried across into the Hi-SP track as well. In the perfect world the 2 should sound as near as damn it the same, but...... What we are finding is that the frequency responce is limited when playing back the MP3 and not limited when playing back the Atrac file (remember the Atrac we are playing started off as that first MP3 file originally) so the unit must be falsely limiting the MP3 playback bandwidth to make Atrac look good. Hope that clears things up. All my home encoded MP3's are done in Lame with the -k switch unless I need to limit the size of the files. I also dont use presets as I prefer to specify the max & min bitrates for VBR as well as quality and speed settings.

Well I can say that LAME encoded MP3's show the problems as thats all I use.

MDfreak, we are not compairing the codecs. This has been done to death. We are however trying to point out that $ony has put a limit to the audio bandwidth that is available when playing back MP3's & only MP3's. This, we believe, is done to lure people across to Atrac. Why does the same MP3 file sound better when converted to Atrac and the 2 compaired on the 2nd gen Hi-MD's? The proof is above.

Yet another reason I will NEVER pay for downloaded music. I prefer to spend LESS money and have a proper CD & case.

It all depends on how you treat it. Li-Ion batteries hate being left fully charged for a long time (like being left on the cradle for 2-3 weeks at a time) or deeply discharged. If you are planning on not using it for a while (month or so) then leave it half charged for the longest life. I would think that if you charge it when you have finished with it and then used it again within a day or two you would get 800 or so equiv full charges (1 full charge = 2 50% -> 100% charges for example)

You can overcome the poor frequency responce by turning the trebble up (Only after the hack). It does not seem to make it sound bad, infact it sounds like it should have done. -edit- I have a set of sony's that clip over the ear, dont know the model as had them ages and they have worn abit. I was also supprised that VBR at an average of 160 & 320 sound the same. I would think that it may even be that 64kbps sounds ok but personally that would just sound bad.

I have just recieved my NH10. I have a vast number of my CD collection already in MP3 formats as I use an in-car MP3 player. I have encoded most of the tracks with LAME using my own preset of Compression Quality 2 and Encode Quality 2. The difference between the original and the MP3 is negligable when using my headphones. I put these MP3's onto the NH10 and...... Talk about having no high frequency responce. It seems that if the unit plays back MP3's it uses a roll off of about 1 or 2db per octave from 8KHz upwards. I tested this by encoding some music at 320Kbps and using that as a compair. Still *censored* I then used sonic stage to convert the MP3 (same as on unit) into Atrac3+ (256 & 64) and both sounded LOADS better than the MP3, had better frequency responce and more life. Why did sony decide to cause a MAJOR frequency roll off when using MP3. This could also explain why some people cant tell the difference between MP3's at different bitrates when playing back on this unit. SONY YOU HAVE FAILED YET AGAIN