aeriyn

For you. For me, my favorite kind of music is that which costs LOTS of money, because Japanese CDs are expensive plus throw on high shipping costs (from places like yesasia.com). FYI, all of my locally-bought music is encoded in 256kbit/sec lame MP3s, and the CDs are put up where I might once again use them once I buy me a good CD deck. Even when it comes to hunting down J-Pop on the internet, I'm very picky. I'll spend six hours looking for one album if I can find it in 192kbit/sec MP3, which is what I generally have (soulseek seems to be the best p2p client for finding music encoded at higher bitrates). I own very few 128kbit/sec MP3s. I don't watch TV. I occasionally go out to see movies. I read constantly, but usually while listening to music. Music is my preferred entertainment choice, and to stay as music-happy as I want to be, I'd have to spend hundreds of dollars in CDs, which I can't do since I get paid a paltry amount (a pox on you Alabama, and your crappy wages ). I'd rather listen to "muddy" music than no music at all. But I'm going to do everything I can to make the "low" quality music sound better than it would if I did nothing at all to it. Btw, my profile's out of date. Last week I accidentally crushed my EX71s with the heel of my strappy sandals. :sleep: I have been using the sennheisers that came with the DS8. Looking into other options; I have a pair of shure E2cs (arrived yesterday) but they sound far too quiet on the DS8 (even at max volume), and the cord is really long in any case. I imagine that the E2cs will be coiled around that pink iPod mini i've been eyeing for quite some time... :laugh: The etys will have to wait. :sleep:

Good for you. :whatever: I don't have the money to be picky and want to listen to things in higher bitrates. I can't afford to go replace my 70+ albums of MP3s with the real thing. So I make do with what I have. I think it sounds good to me, so lay the hell off. Sheesh. I'm not going to turn all audio elitist and pretend it somehow injures me to listen to things in LP2 or 128kbit/sec MP3. Sometimes I think you people are just never satisfied. That includes you too, Skyther. :laugh:

You all should check your local Best Buy if you live in the US. I managed to locate NiMH gumpack batteries there, Energizer brand, 1200mAh (yeah, yeah, low capacity but wait till you see the price). They were on clearance. Four dollars each. :laugh: I bought all they had. All three. And, btw, I'm still waiting for the 2 NH-14WMs I bought off eBay. It's been two weeks since I ordered them. :whatever: Starting to get a little annoyed, here. Hopefully the energizers will do me till my 14WMs get here.

:laugh: If you look at the jack again, you'll see it labeled OPTICAL/LINE IN. Optical in and line-in. :grin:

Well you can do that too. But if you do, you should get one of the new Sharp Auvi players, or one of the Kenwoods. Both sound way better than Sony, but I am partial to the Sharps considering how I am totally in love with my DS8. If you get a player only and a recorder, I suggest getting a deck or a bookshelf system as the recorder. You can dub CDs directly with bookshelf systems (and a lot of bookshelf systems are also NetMD ready), and decks are awesome because you can hook them up to your stereo system and listen to MDs (and record them) at home. There's a few decks with NetMD also, but the ATRAC DSP in the decks (and even in the portable recorders) is a whole lot better than the encoder in SonicStage. x.x Although... iPod is everything you need, all in one package. The only bad thing about it is the low battery life. ~7 hours per charge for the mini, and ~12 hours per charge for the 4G big pod. BTW, the E75 is not MDLP capable. It only plays in SP mode, so getting a deck or standalone (non NetMD) recorder would be crucial since SonicStage will not encode in SP mode, just in SP "compatibility" mode, which is just LP2 with a compatibility layer.

Hi there. :happy: The E75 is a player-only unit. It only plays MDs that have already been recorded (if you were to look inside it, all you'd see would be the optical pick-up block; the magnetic write head present on recorders is not there). The NE410 is probably the cheapest MD player (it's actually a downloader too) that exists, but I do not recommend it at all because it has all the downsides of MD and none of the good parts (mic recording, track editing functions, etc.) Among the MD recorder world, I would suggest the Sharp IM-DR80 or the Sony MZ-N920. The DR80 pwns the N920 in terms of sound quality, but the N920 isn't bad either (I believe it has a digital amp as well). Both units have NetMD, so they can get tracks from SonicStage via the USB connection. Both use the NiMH gumstick batteries, which I am more fond of than internal Li-Ion batteries and like better than having to deal with a battery bulge. Check these units out at . Also, Audiocubes also offers them both. If you want extreme sound quality, ease of function, and you will not be doing any sort of recording (like recording bands, field-recording, sound samples, etc.) then I suggest an iPod. The iPod will do everything you need, offer you more storage space, is totally easy to use, and is more than worth the price. Get the mini, it's really small and very sexy looking (FYI I'm saving up for a pink Mini myself). :laugh: So there you go. :rasp:

:laugh: I can't afford to be that picky. I can't live without music, and my ears aren't so great, and honestly I think my Sharp MD is a lot more forgiving of compressed audio than anything Sony's ever made (could be that Auvi amp in there covering up some of the bad spots). I mean, yes, LP2 does not sound like the CD. Not even close. But it doesn't sound bad to me. I'm listening to the music, it sounds clear and I can't hear any fuzzing or overt flanging, and my musical mojo is going and it just flows. :grin: Maybe if my sources weren't 196kbit/sec MP3s, I might have a little more leeway in choosing bitrates and everything. But that would require me to actually spend money on import Japanese CDs... ouch, expensive! I'll agree with you right there. SonicStage's encoder blows. My R900's ATRAC DSP is way better. :whatever:

The Carbon has buggy firmware. :whatever:

I'd go with one of the newer Sharp recorders, either the MD-DR7 or the IM-DR80, although for your purposes I recommend the DR7 slightly more. The DR7 can start recording from the remote I believe. It has a nice big 3 line display that's great for monitoring recordings (while the DR80 has no display at all on the main unit). Compared to the Sony units, the Sharps are a little big. The DR7, to me, feels like a solid piece of equipment. Also has nice battery life, and the Auvi 1-bit Digital amp, which makes them sound really nice. :happy:

I don't think he's getting mad because of the lack of a USB connector on the NH1's dock. I believe he is upset because Sony's France website still displays the NH1 as having a "USB dock" and an "external battery case." He is mad, it seems to me, because of false advertisement and the impression that Sony is trying to fool its customers, rather than the actual practicality of the design. It's the principle of the thing, here, I believe. Even though the whole thing is probably just a translation error, and Sony probably doesn't even know about it. Btw, the NH1 seems to work better without the USB port on the charge cradle. Having to click and unclick the NH1 every time you wanted to swap discs would've been annoying. Willykyu, why dont'cha just get an iPod? :laugh:

:laugh: The MZ-S1 leaves a lot to be desired in terms of sound quality to the DR7. Remember the Auvi. :rasp:

Honestly I don't recommend Hi-MD for listening only. If you're going to do live recordings it's pretty much the best thing there is short of a professional CF recorder like Marantz makes. It's also quite a bit smaller than that Marantz CF recoder... For listening, I totally recommend the iPod Mini. Once upon a time I was an iPod hater, just like half the people in this forum... but I got to play with my friend's silver iPod Mini, and fell in love completely. It's really small. It sounds great. It is so easy to use. Completely recommended. And for day to day listening you won't need any more HDD space than 4 GB, especially considering how you come home, pop it in the dock (or connect the cord if you don't have a dock) and sync it up with iTunes, and boom. Fresh, unlistened-to music on your iPod. :happy: If you absolutely want to stay with MD, as in you have lots and lots of blanks or an MD deck or MD accessories, I would totally recommend any of the Sharp players or recorders. I own a DS8 myself, and honestly I find that while it has a puny headphone amp compared to iPod, and can't deliver nearly the detail (or use high-impedance 'phones), I believe it is much more forgiving of compressed songs than iPod and that it produces a very warm sound, especially with a decent pair of 'phones, like the D66 eggos or whatever. So there you go. My suggestions in a nutshell: iPod Mini, Sharp MD-DS8, Sharp IM-DR80 (if you want the record functions as well).

Check out the Sony BC-7HT. This wall unit charges NiMH gumstick batteries (e.g. the NH-14WM) and is compatible with any voltage wall current. I've seen these all over eBay, for quite low prices. They're probably bootlegs, but I'm sure that just like the bootleg Sony batteries, they work just as well, and cost a lot less.

Moving to proper thread... not everything belongs in the Hi-MD subforum, kthnx. Personally, I don't like the iHP-120. I find it overly large and chunky, and the interface is incredibly cluttered and un-user friendly. The record capability is not even close to the record capability of other HDD recorders such as the Creative Nomad Jukebox 3. NJB3s can be found used quite inexpensively, and it's possible to retrofit a larger HDD into the unit. It records well, but... if you think the iRiver is huge, wait till you get a load of this thing...

Getting MD music off the MD and onto CD is something of a pain in the ass. With normal MD, you really have to either get it out analog line-out to your sound card (in realtime unfortunately) which degrades quality, or buy an MD deck with an optical line out that you can connect to your sound card and acquire digital signal from (expensive, and still realtime). Hi-MD, however, can play over USB so you can make a direct recording from USB using Audacity (free) or Total Recorder ($15). Still realtime, at least until Sony releases the Wave Converter and you can actually make use of uploaded tracks. Also, all Hi-MD units except for the very lowest-end model (MZ-NH600D) have microphone jacks. Since you're on a budget, I'd suggest an NH700. It may not be the prettiest thing around, but it has a mic jack, it can offer 100% digital replication of your music from MD to PC to wherever (only the slow way though, at least until Sony releases this Wave Converter thingy) and it can record in uncompressed linear PCM. Also uses normal AA formfactor batteries which I find that I like in a unit used primarily for recording. When I make recordings with my old R900, I don't always check to make sure my NiMH gumstick is juiced up and ready to go... :sleep: So the ability to use AA batteries (in my case with the detachable battery case) is often quite time-saving. There are countless threads on this forum about the process of getting your recordings to a place where they can be used easily, but these are the basics as I see them. If you're going to do a lot of recording, I'd suggest Hi-MD primarily for 1) all-digital replication of recording (and eventually USB uploading, one day if sony is telling the truth) and 2) linear PCM recording with no loss of quality at all.

Personally I'm not really recording experienced. I've done a bunch of small minor recordings, and have recorded things for my own purposes, but I'm not a big scary recording person like dex Otaku. :rasp: I use a soundpro sp-cmc2 dual point mic for the few recordings I've made. Personally I think it works well, but I'm sure there are many, many better things out there than my mics. You should really ask either dex or A440. They are big recordists and know much more about this than I do. :happy:

FOCL? What does that mean? :whatever:

Erk. Under $100? That might be difficult. If I were you I'd check out older models that people may not want as much, e.g. R900, N1. You can also use a unit without a mic jack by plugging a small preamp into the line-in and use that in conjunction with the microphones. That could allow you to get something like an N505 or an N510 (I've seen N510s at wal-mart on clearance for 40 bucks... I should really go grab one). You should check that out. :happy:

He's talking about a different unit. The NH1 has one USB cable, and one alone, since it is proprietary. Although I believe you can use the N10 cable with it, but I dunno if it has the correct pins for providing power to the unit while it's connected via USB.

I don't take offense. Well, sort of. Um, I'm always concerned about the details when it comes to things I spend my money on. I'm 20 years old and I don't make a lot of money, so when I want to use it for something, I try to make sure it's worth it. (Thus I regret ever even considering that N10...) I've always been teh ubernerdgirl, didn't have many friends in HS, etc. Popularity at my school for girls seemed to be proportionate to breast size, or something like that. Being gay (lesbian if you prefer) seemed to have a major negative impact on my popularity level, so while I still loved doing the "girl" thing, I really got into computer games, fantasy writings, electronics and more recently, audio gear. :happy: I also love to learn, and I'm totally fascinated with how sound and audio works. So you can just say that my lack of a life caused me to immerse myself in the details. I can't see the forest for the trees, however, and I have a hard time putting up with "normal" girls. They just seem like void-brains to me. :laugh:

:laugh: :laugh: :laugh: Shall I use my powers, Skyth? :grin:

ATRAC3+ @ 48kbit/sec is most certainly better than 48kbit/sec CBR MP3... ... due simply to the fact that ATRAC is a subband encoder while MP3 is a subband/transform hybrid encoder. However, both codecs at that bitrate horribly suck just by virtue of being only 48kbit/sec. :laugh:

OpenMG files themselves are secure, so even if you used another company's software (even though there isn't another company's software to use) you still wouldn't be able to use it on your PC since DRM would prevent that.

Actually, I don't really know, but several people have assured me that you can do this. I've never done digital recordings on my own PC; usually I did them on a friend's PC through his MD deck and to his sound card and Soundforge. So... o.O I dunno.

Well look at that. :laugh: You learn something new every day! Seriously, though. How could you not guess I am female?