Ipaqman

Yesterday, I recorded the football game from a radio to my MD recorder. I used a small Sony digital AM/FM radio SRF-M37V ($30 at BestBuy) and a short stereo patch cord (stereo miniplug to stereo miniplug available at Radio Shack and BestBuy). I picked the SRF-M37V for its sensitivity, great sound quality, long battery life, and a hold button to lock the keys. I plugged the headphone jack of the radio to the line input (not mic) of the MD recorder and turned the radio volume to about two-thirds. I plugged my headphones into the MD output and left them plugged in to provide a good FM antenna back to the radio. Then I pressed record on my MD. I normally use the LP4 format for radio recording. That lets me record a football game and the postgame comments on one MD blank.

Apparently, J&R has a reasonable supply of Hi-MD blanks. I was notified by them on Wednesday and placed an order for four blanks @$6.99ea. They shipped the same day and I got them on Thursday. Shipping was only $4.95 (minimum).

I just received my NH1 today. I noticed that the NH1 remote backlight is noticeably dimmer than my R900 remote. Did anyone else have that same experience?

One more feature that is critical for some users: track date-time stamping. None of the other Hi-MD recorders have that feature. I need it for my voice/lecture recordings. I bought the NH1 for only $350 (expect to receive it tomorrow), making the price difference more worthwhile.

BestBuy is now shipping the MZ-NH1. Mine should arrive on Tuesday. The price at BestBuy is $349.99 with free shipping plus tax. I chose them over the cheaper online sites because of the return policy (local return) and the option to get an extended warranty. The price (less than list price) made my decision. With the price difference (700 - NH1) down to $100, it was worth it to get the necessary date-time stamp, the docking station, and the magnesium construction. I did not like not having an extra battery option (except buying more Li-ion batteries), but I do have a portable 5 volt USB powering battery case which hopefully will work with the NH1.

I just started following this thread. I tried using my PC and sound recording software (Total Recorder, Sound Forge, etc) to move audio from my R900 reliably. What I found was that it was almost impossible to transfer hours of audio without introducing occasional skips/hiccups. Moreover, I needed to use my conputer for other tasks (email, web browsing, work). After some experimentation, I found an excellent solution in the Nomad Jukebox 3. It can record up to ten straight hours of audio to lossless WAV or to MP3 format. Then you can upload the digital file to a PC in minutes. No skips or hiccups or extraneous noises in the re-recordings. The NJB3 even has an optical input for those with MD optical outputs. For those who want a good, reliable PC method, a possible solution is the XP Media Center PC. The best of these PCs have a video tuner card which outputs a hardware encoded MPEG2 stream to the file system. Very little CPU power is used. These systems are designed to record TV shows in excellent quality without hiccups or skips even during use. A user could plug an MD line-out to the audio line-in of the tuner card and record reliably. On an HP M470 PC, this recording process uses less than 2 percent of the CPU. I can browse, email, and even do LAME conversions without affecting the recording transfer. I used to run an ATI All-In-Wonder tuner card on another PC and I could not even touch the PC without causing dropped frames. Not so with the XP MCE PC.

I have been waiting for an uploading MD recorder. I have been using an MZ-B100 to record lectures and sermons and then re-recording them to a NJB3 for digital upload. With the new Hi-MDs encrypting all uploads, it seems I would be stuck with an analog re-recording via Total Recorder before I could burn them to a CD. Right now, I have switched to using an Olympus DS-2200 voice recorder to record speech in 64kbps stereo WMA format. Uploading takes a few minutes per hour of speech. Burning to a data CD can be done as is or they can be converted to WAVs for an audio CD. With the limitations to the new Hi-MD, I will not be buying any of the current line of Hi-MDs unless my MD recorders fail.