dex Otaku

It is reasonably likely [since there are prerecorded MDs as well as recordables] that the MDLP upload support may respect SCMS. What this translates to is the possibility that only 1st-generation recordings might be able to upload [i.e. recordings made via analogue or using an external ADC or, for that matter, with an SCMS stripper]. I'd say there's likely a 50/50 chance on this one. No one will know until someone has one in their hands and actually tries it. I think it's likely that they'll "sort of" respect SCMS. Technically speaking, prefab MDs should be copiable under SCMS' rules, though I think the likelihood of Sony allowing this is somewhere around 0%. It seems equally likely to me that they'll allow uploading of digitally-copied CDs, which under SCMS rules should -not- be allowed. All pure speculation, of course.

Really, A440. *slaps on the wrist* If you have an older model with no USB port, your only choice to connect it is the analogue route [3.5mm male stereo .. to the same .. cable]. Trackmarks will not be transferred, &c. This is the same method you would use to copy music with ia cassette deck or any other analogue device. Just connect the line-out of your player [if it's an SP only unit it's likely to actually have a line-out] to the line-in on your computer's sound card. Settings levels, using recording software &c. can be learned from any of a bazillion howto sources across the net, so I'm not going to repeat those instructions here.

Neat. I never knew this [i rarely use the controls on the unit for playback] .. When using the scroll wheel to navigate, it appears that << ducks "out" of a group, and >> ducks "in" to a group.

This was not a bug with the units, rather one in SS. The last batch of upload tests I ran [with an RH10 and NH700] suggest that it has been fixed in SS 3.4.

You can use it with other Sony a3+ supporting devices, such as their hard disc players.

HiMD's supported bitrates [with SS 3.4] are: [and this can be found about a hundred places elsewhere on this forum, including threads specifically titled as such] 48kbps atrac3plus [HiLP 48k] 64kbps atrac3plus [HiLP 64k] 132kbps atrac3 [LP2] 192kbps atrac3plus 256kbps atrac3plus [HiSP] 352kbps atrac3plus LPCM [uncompressed] The product literature that came with your unit would tell you that only 48+64kbps [HiLP modes], 256kbps [HiSP], and LPCM are available. 352kbps became available with SS 3.3, and 192kbps with 3.4. Also, older versions of SS allow transferring of atrac3 66kbps [LP4] and 105kbps [LP3] modes, which have become more or less superfluous for HiMD.

Item 2 is probably a control rocker of some kind. Take a close look at the controls as they're shown in the photos - note that there's no play button or roller/jogdial visible. Ergo, my guess is #2 is probably the main control. Thoughts: The record slider implies to me that the "manual levels" setting is probably superfluous with this unit; they may have done what I've been suggesting for 2 years and returned the the slider with which a simple slide+pause or play = record with AGC, and holding the slider for 2 secs [either initially or with the unit in pause] turns manual levels on. If this is the case, there need be no menu function for this control, and remembering the setting is completely unnecessary as you set it every time you start recording - with the record button itself. ------------------- Use of the LIP-4WM battery means "real" line-out is possible. For those of you who complain incessantly about the lack of a real line-out, well, the higher supply voltage of these cells is what's enabling it. Otherwise the unit would require 2 NiMH or AA cells to do the same job. For those of your who were talking about petitioning Sony to change the battery format - it would necessitate a complete redesign, and would make the "true" line-out impossible, so don't bother. I personally would rather have no line-out and to run off NiMH with the option for the AA sidecar. The lithium batteries are extremely expensive here and ordering online is not an option that's open for me. As for attaching external batteries, the unit will likely use a 3 or 4.5V PSU/charger. This means that anyone with half a brain can go to Radioshack, buy an appropriate battery holder [2 or 3 AA cells], a piece of wire and a connector to match the PSU jack on the unit. Voila, AA-sidecar. Or, for that matter, you could make one with C-cells and have something like 65 hours of battery life [made that up off the top of my head, the number is not real but you get the idea]. ------------------- Someone, I forget who, has already asked about SP uploads not being in SP - I take this as Sony's final word on the subject, that they're never going to make an SP codec for any computer. With uploads directly to PCM possible, I see it as somewhat superfluous anyway. People will get the most critical part of that function. What would be nice though, is 20- or 24-bit uploads as an option from SP sources. Actually, the same could be said for HiSP [and 352kbps with this unit] since the units themselves all have 20-bit ADCs in them. This is more an 'icing' feature request, mind you. Having access to SP recordings will likely make these units sell much better to universities, colleges, radio stations, &c. who still use SP-only units in the field on a regular basis. ------------------- On the one-line display: [to repeat what I've said elsewhere] If they're marketing this unit primarily as a recorder/uploader [which seems pretty clear to me that they are] then the multi-line display is not a necessity. Having the most important info available at a glance, all on the display at once, means as little info as: the record meters; recording mode/bitrate; group and track #; time display. From the photos shown, this is already the case. Also, the display may be only a single line, but is far wider than the RH10's. ------------------- My only real question at this point? What contract am I going to have to take specifically to get the cash to buy one of these and 2-3 additional LIP-4WMs?

To add to what A440 said already: this will happen when recording with mic and using any remote with a display. The key to whether it's bothersome or not is simply whether the source you're recording is loud enough to mask the noise. Line-in recordings should not be affected at all, as the EM noise is so low that it only becomes a problem when significant gain [i.e. by the mic preamp] is applied to it. In any case, I simply don't record with a remote connected. It's not worth the risk, in my view.

If having something you can edit later is your desire, then DO NOT use ANY equipment whose first generation of encoding uses DVD-compatible MPEG-2 video [which is not frame-based encoding]. The quality is CRAP [read: Hi8 and SVHS analogue video cameras look WAY better] once you've edited and re-rendered your work. if your pupose is to have something where the first generation of encoding is as far as you go, it's fine. Otherwise, MiniDV and other frame-based digital video formats [DV25, DVC, DV50, MJPEG even] are vastly superior.

Perhaps, but both of my drives [an older SL Panasonic/Matsushita and a cheapo DL BenQ that was an emergency replacement at the right price of $49 but doesn't take the caddy] write at 2x. The security is worth the wait though. That you found a drive that specifically fits your VAIO is actually surprising to me. I've never actually seen a notebook drive that fit any computer except the specific model or line it was made for. I take it the replacement you found was made for the VAIO line? As someone who has serviced notebooks for a number of years [on and off for at least 10, and I still do if only irregularly now .. units from Sony, Toshiba, HP, Compaq, Acer, Dell, Gateway, IBM, and basically anything sold in Canada except Apple..] I'd disagree with this on principle. Notebooks are invariably of proprietary design and there is absolutely no consistent standard [that I've seen, at least] for internal optical drives outside that of the OEM who made the notebook, and those standards tend to vary between models and/or model lines [the bastards!]. If the OEM has a drive available, or someone makes a replacement that fits the case and connections of the one you've got, go ahead and install it. Otherwise I wouldn't recommend just buying a drive and expecting it to fit. Aside from that, external drives are much easier to deal with [in terms of standards compliance, at least]. I've used PowerDVD with DVD-RAM. Whether it works depends more on what the disc was written with and how standards-compliant it is, by my experience at least. [DVD-cams, for instance, tend to suck for this, regardless of what advertising tells you. But then, DVD-cams tend to suck in general. Anything that writes a first-generation copy that isn't frame-based is useless crap for editing.] We're way off topic, here. Heh. Maybe we should go jabber in the off-topic forum?

E means that by transcoding you don't have to deal with the lowpass that applies to native MP3 playback.

Something sounds profoundly wrong there, 1kyle. On my machine, and other every machine I've used SS on, if you try to download a pre-encoded 352kbps track, it goes quickly. Single progress bar, no mention of conversion, it simply downloads. If you try to transfer a WAV file in as-is mode then it copies it as PCM [which takes significantly longer since it's around 5x the amount of data]; in forced-bitrate mode, it converts [with a progress bar saying it's doing so], then downloads [with a second progress bar]. The amount of time for on-the-fly conversion isn't that long but it's noticeable that it's doing it, since it both indicates that it's doing so and takes longer. Sounds to me like you've either got something set oddly or .. I don't know. What you're experiencing is definitely NOT what I'm experiencing, and what I've been experiencing since SS 2.1 [minor interface changes to progress bars and the implementation of as-is mode notwithstanding]. Something is definitely fishy there.

I'm aware of DVD-RAM. I used it for my primary rotating/incremental backup medium [with caddy, even]. It's slow, but it's reliable as heck.

Truex ozpeter. The one design aspect I'd question as useful is putting the jacks on the opposite edge instead of one of the sides. If you want it in your pocket so the display faces up, you'll most likely want the jacks on a side rather than all the way around the bottom. Hmm.

Can you post a sample of the recording? Recording by mic with remotes that have a display can cause issues like this, though the noise is far lower in the audible band [voice frequency] than 15kHz. TV sets can cause this but the EM noise from them should be constant, not intermittent. If you're not using a remote with display [the tuner remote has one], perhaps you could also try recording in a completely different location to see if it still does the same thing.

Hmm. Well, the way it's supposed to work is like this: * if you have "as is" downloading on, things should only be re-encoded if they are originally [in your library] in a format that can't be played back by your device * if you have manual bitrate/forced mode turned on, things will always be re-encoded to your chosen bitrate unless they already are that bitrate That said, you can easily see the difference between when things are being transcoded during download or not; two progress bars go by for each track that does so, and it takes extra time to transcode. When no transcoding is taking place, things transfer directly asis and go pretty quickly. I have not noticed a significant difference between things that are already encoded to a specific a3+ bitrate in my library and the same tracks once downloaded. There are differences during playback that are caused by the headphone amp, the unit's EQ settings, your headphones, &c. but otherwise the same 1st-generation encoding done by SS should be exactly the data on your disc, so there should be no further artifacting caused by encoding generations. I *have* noticed that the digital amp on the RH10 tends to make artifacting slightly more obvious than the analogue amp on the NH700. This might be because the RH10 appears to slightly "sweeten" the sound by positively high-shelving everything by a couple of dB [i have actually measured this]. It may seem odd, but for playback I actually prefer the way my NH700 sounds over the RH10. One way to rather unscientifically test this [this ain't no ABX] would be to play back the tracks in question through SS via USB .. compare the track from the library with the track on HiMD using SS, using the same playback device [your computer, sound card, and speakers or headphones]. You could also actually ABX the digital track by converting your library track to WAV and then uploading and doing the same with the track after downloading it to your player. Another possibility would be to compare the WAV converted track from the library with an analogue-copied version from your player [which would help determine whether it's the output of the player that causes the difference]. In summary: I doubt there's another generation of encoding taking place [everything I've seen argues very firmly against this]; it's more likely that the output of the player sounds sufficiently different from that of your computer that you notice the difference.

The answers on this seem to vary rather wildly from source to source. Having now done more reading on it, I'll agree with you [yay! I concede!]. Part of the problem with really answering this question is that the technology hasn't been around long enough to truly determine longevity, though. In 50 years, we'll both be able to find definitive answers maybe.

A line output uses almost no "power" itself [i.e. mW are low because the load is so high-impedance] but the voltage required for full line-out is higher than the headphone output [which, being low-impedance, relies on wattage over that load, not specifically just voltage across it], higher in fact than the single 1.2 or 1.5V supply allows for. The headphone output of the current series' digital amp barely puts out 1Vp-p .. It would require higher power consumption for it to reach "true" line level by amplifying/stepping up the battery voltage by one means or another to put out at least a full 1Vp-p; to reach the same levels as a normal CD player it would have to be about 4Vp-p or higher. So - while the line output itself doesn't use power in the sense of its high impedance load consuming current, reaching true line level would use more power just to get there [voltage-wise]. Did that make any sense? By no means am I actually an electronics engineer, so I could be out to lunch on this, but it makes sense to me that the limited power supply restricts how high even a high-impedance line output can actually get, amplitude-wise, since it depends on voltage [PSU to output amplifier] being high enough. Li-battery units [3.some volts/cell] would easily be capable of this, as would 2xAA cell units. One might note that the "true" line outputs disappeared from MD units back when they started using single AA or NiMH cells.

CD-RW, being a phase-change optical format, has longevity similar to DVD-RAM. Both are more costly than dye-based WORM formats, though.

Goodness. . . . hey, I'm just another guy. And speculation is really just speculation.

I seriously doubt this. All decoding is likely done with a programmable DSP at this stage, so all that fixing MP3 support requires is writing a decoding algorithm that works correctly. This shouldn't have any effect whatsoever on power consumption [it's doing the same job, and in fact, if the current incarnation is purposely crippled, that probably means a "fixed" version would be doing slightly -less- DSP during decoding, meaning it might use -less- power] or cost. Mind you, this is also speculation.

It appears that everything in your chain is simply connected in parallel [passive], rather than buffered in any way [active]. This is unusual; usually a/v switchers, even those in TV sets, are buffered at every input and separate outputs are buffered on their way out as well to prevent scenarios like this from happening.

Well, assuming that the Y adapter is either: a. in the chain before the point where you hook up your recorder, or b. in the chain beside the point where you hook up the recorder, then basically you're combining the stereo signal into mono before it hits the recorder. While the cabling may be set up in a way that makes things appear separate, any "crossing of wires" in the chain [without a buffer of some sort, i.e. buffering preamp as many AV switchers use] means that that combining of signals is propagated in parallel throughout the entire chain. I hope that makes sense, because I find it difficult to explain something that I find completely self-explanatory. That is assuming that either a. or b. is the case. And please, don't take that as an insult to you. After all, I'm the one having difficulty putting it into words.

What exactly is your question?

No kidding. The cheapest I can find them locally [coincidentally from the only place that sells them locally] is $12.99CAD each, over 4x what they are in Australia.