jazmaan

It's hard to get details yet, not many people are reviewing the Microtrack who actually OWN one. But from what I've read its THREE hours of phantom-powered recording or EIGHT hours of NON-phantom powered recording. I have never been a fan of the Minidisc for archiving and playback/listening. I use it for recording live performances and musical rehearsals - and that's ALL that I've ever used it for. Once the recording is complete, I transfer anything worth saving to computer. Anything worth sharing, I will burn to CD or save it to my iPod. I would never carry around my Minidisc recorder and a handful of discs just for listening pleasure. So I don't expect to use a Microtrack any differently. But for MY limited purposes, the Microtrack seems superior to MD or even HI-MD. The only people I know who have actually purchased the Microtrack are musicians. Maybe if Sony had produced a line of Hi-MD's aimed squarely at musicians, I'd be singing the praises of Hi-MD too. But as far as I'm concerned, Hi-MD was just a tease. And now the speculation is rampant that Sony will be abandoning the format. So I welcome Microtrack. I'm just waiting for a round of reviews from actual owners before I make the plunge.

http://www.upgradenation.com/ProductDetail...ctCode=FM%2DM22 2.2 GB microdrives $78 and free shipping too! By the way, today in my local paper, Fry's Electronics is advertising 2GB Compact Flash cards for $98!

I'm just waiting for the first round of reviews and hopefully a price drop on the M-Audio Microtrack before I buy mine. I had high hopes for HI-MD but Sony never really seemed to court the musician market the way M-Audio is doing. By the way, I saw 1GB CF cards advertised in todays paper for $49.

I've been a member since before HI-MD was even released. I had HI hopes for the format and was seriously disappointed by Sony's crippleware. Microtrack is more expensive, but not prohibitively so. Especially when it does what a musician needs. Maybe the competition from Microtrack and others will cause Sony to get off its butt and release a recorder that is EASY for musicians to work with. By the way, Microtrack even works with Macintosh. Last I checked, there was no Mac version of Sonicstage. I apologize if my posts have been too strident. But I wasn't the one who began by saying that one format "beats the Sh--" out of the other. That post was the one that set the tone. I will try to be more civil and not rise to baiting from now on.

1) No denying that HI-MD media is cheaper than CF or Microdrive media. But I don't need more than a few media cards. I don't intend to use them for archiving. Just for temporary storage until the recordings can be downloaded to computer. 1a) Microdrives and CF's are a lot smaller than HI-MDs so I guess I can stuff a lot more of them in my pocket. 2) DRM is still a part of Sonicstage, don't try and deny it. Sure there are hacks and workarounds, but why would I even WANT to be forced to used Sonicstage at all? With Microdrive I can download to ANY folder on my computer or anybody ELSE'S computer with no limitations whatsoever. How many hoops do YOU have to jump through to download your live recordings onto someone else's computer that doesn't have Sonicstage installed? 3) Microtrack's 8 hours of battery life is plenty enough for me. 4) MP3 is the standard, like it or not. Nobody trades Atracs. Winamp doesn't read ATRACS does it? You can keep your double secret proprietary format. And I notice you don't even want to discuss Microtracks 24/96 bit wav capability or the fact that it can deliver phantom power to PRO quality mics.

With the M-Audio Microtrack now available for 399 and 2.2 GB Microdrive cards going for 79, why the heck would anyone want the NRM-crippled, Sonicstage-bound HI-MD? I'm so glad I didn't buy HI-MD. The Microtrack is the size of a deck of cards. It records 24/96 bit WAV files or 96-320 kbps native MP3s. It has USB 2.0 for quick downloads to computer. It has line-in, SPDIF-in, and even has Phantom Power mic preamps. It saves to Compact Flash media or the (much cheaper) Microdrive CFII cards. For MUSICIANS this appears to be the ANSWER. Isn't it?

I'd rather have an ATRAC to MP3 converter that didn't add more lossiness.

I also recently bought a 40gig Ipod. My only reason to buy a HI-MD would be for recording my band, I'll pass until I see a review of the wav converter this fall. Or I'll probably even wait until a 2nd gen recorder comes out tailor made for musicians.

But doesn't that defeat the whole security system if you can rip and burn CD's to and from ATRAC? I don't get it.

Hmmm. Maybe I missed it but I didn't see much detail at that link about its recording capabilities other than the paragraph about "upgraded voice recording" where they say "Makes it easy to record VOICE". I'm suspicious that's codespeak for 8-BIT MONO mic recording just like the Ipod. What do you think?

Let's hope the conversions are speedy.

So now that its officially confirmed that the Hi-MD players are hogtied, thwarted and eunuchized by Sony's crippleware, Sonicstage 2.0 -- is there any rumor, knowledge or even the slightest hint of when Sonicstage 2.1 might be coming out?

It's going to take more than longer recording capability to get me to shell out the big bucks. I'll stick with my trusty R-50.

Read it and weep: UPLOADING One of the biggest questions about Hi-MD is the upload capability. Let me outline what it is: - Uploads are simply carried out through the same transfer window in Sonicstage that you use to transfer music to Hi-MD. - All uploaded files, be they Hi-LP, Hi-SP or PCM are encrypted with the OpenMG digital rights management. - You cannot burn uploaded files to Audio CD. You can burn them to ATRAC-encoded CD's for playback in ATRAC Discmen. - No third-party programs to edit OpenMG encrypted files are available at this time. - You cannot email the resulting .OMG file to other people as they do not have the rights to play the file back. - You CAN create copies of your own recorded material to other Hi-MD/MD discs, and of course you can listen to the files on your PC. The end result is that the upload facility is of diminished usefulness in a practical context, and will be of a particular disappointment to one of the major niche users of Minidisc... amateur musicians. The only way you'll get recordings into Cubase et al will be to play the sound in via analog in the old way, or to grab the WAV stream internally on the PC as you play the sound back in real time. This MAY change in future versions of Sonicstage, but it's not guaranteed. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Sony Sucks!

This gets more bogus every week, Sony can take their HiMD and shove it!

Thanks for link Focal. In addition to the text you quoted, the link shows a girl with an acoustic guitar recording PCM live into a HI-MD recorder. Hopefully this is the last word on this subject and will serve to squelch any rumors that PCM is disabled for mic input.

Yes I know you could use an a/d converter, but my point is that Sony wouldn't be advertising its "live" PCM recording capabilities unless you could record "live" out of the box without needing additional hardware.

"For true audio purists, you can record from CD, MD, DVD or live in uncompressed PCM audio for true CD quality." Thats from the Sony. I guess its still a little obscure as to whether "live" = "from mic input". But how could you record "live" from an optical input?

Needs to be PLUGGED IN while recording from mic? Doesn't that defeat the purpose of remote recording? Where did you read this? I didn't see it at that link. In fact they give projected battery life of 1 AA battery while recording PCM on a 1gig disk of 2.5 hours.

My next car stereo will play MP3/CD discs and have a front panel aux line input. That way I can just plug my minidisc player into the front.

That is a MAJOR disappointment and may well be the straw that broke the camel's back for me. I won't pay top dollar for crippleware!

Does anyone here have any experience with or knowledge about Sony's D-NE710 discman player? Apparently you can burn ATRAC CD's using Sony's software and play them back on this machine. I'm wondering whether this might be a useful adjunct to a HiMD recorder, but I'm not quite sure why I might need to transfer from HiMD to CD while retaining the ATRAC format.

Good questions. The short answer is nobody knows. :wacky: Uploading and editing .wav files made from mic or line-in, and how those files will be handled in or out of SonicStage is a question that nobody seems to know the answer to. Perhaps it will be better than we imagine. Or worse. I won't be buying an NZ-1 until some definitive answers are known.

Will I be able to do a fast digital upload of a mic-recorded WAV file to my computer and then have access to that same WAV file outside of Sonicstage so I can manipulate it in Cubase or Soundforge? Same question for line-input recorded WAV files.

Thanks for the answers. Do you think Sony will continue to support the Plug-In Power mics? I hope so since I spent over $50 for mine. Yes, I knew I was recording ATRAC as WAV files. I am confused by all the different ATRAC formats being discussed here. Which ATRAC format is my R50? Also I have always suspected that ATRAC > WAV > MP3 can cause artifact weirdness. Is there any scientific support for my suspicions? Is there any kind of a Winamp plug-in or other PC player that will play ATRAC? I guess the new SonicStage 2.0 will play ATRAC? But it sure would be nice to have a small easy to download ATRAC player so people could hear my music from a website.