ZosoIV

I had a B10 for a while, and it was great. Battery life was amazing, and the little speaker on it didn't sound all that bad. The only thing I didn't like about it was the fact that the power saving features on the unit prevented me from quickly queuing back and forth within a track - there was a definite hesitation after pressing either button. I suppose that's the case with most post MZ-R900 units, not just the B10. Anyway, I'm pleased to see the B10 still on the market somewhere.

The fact that there are still some units floating around may suggest that demand for them dropped off longer ago than we'd like to admit - as opposed to a sign that they are still being produced. Considering how rare MD seems to be out in the real world (save for Japan), I'd be REALLY surprised if Sony or anybody else was still devoting time and manufacturing capacity to MD. We like MD, but most people out there could give a rat's behind about it, and long ago moved to flash and HDD. They probably banged out a bunch of RH1's and stockpiled them, rather than keeping a production line going for a product that even they have admitted is on its way out. As an aside, what is the state of MiniDisc in japan? Do you still see them on the streets a lot? Are units readily available? Or have the Japanese been smitten with solid-state and HDD offerings? I always thought of Japan as an MD paradise, a place where it was the norm, but I question if that's true circa 2008.

Honestly, I doubt there would be much difference between formats at the high bitrates audiophiles prefer. The RH1 does make a beautiful sounding MP3 player, though, if you use the LAME encoder to make your files.

Bump.

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I own an Onkyo 133 Hi-MD deck that I don't REALLY want to part with, even though I hardly use it. Needing a new integrated amp, I'm wondering how the matching pre-main amps they sell (such as the 275) perform. It would be cool to have an amp that integrates (not to mention, matches with) with my Hi-MD deck. I would probably use it more often if it didn't look so bad next to my other components and could be controlled from the main remote. They seem to go for $500 on eBay when available, but I'm wondering if Price Japan might be cheaper. Any impressions/experiences with these amps? How is the sound quality? Thanks for any info!

I always found 105kbps ("LP3") to be a bit too dull-sounding for my tastes, but otherwise, it's not bad when compared to a poorly-encoded MP3 at that bitrate. I'm not sure how LAME would sound in this range, using something like -V7 --vbr-new. Probably similar, actually.

Sorry, it's long gone - sold in Sept. '06, I think. Try eBay - Aiwas still pop up once in a while.

Grados for me.

In my experience, it's better to capture the audio au naturale and then process it later in software. You'll never be able to undo the effects of Dolby if you record your tapes to MD with it turned on, but you WILL be able to filter out hiss later on if/when you upload your MD's to a computer. I would think that represents the more "future-proof" solution.

Still available.

It's more a case of the software encoding the signal as LP2 to send an encrytpted version to your player (funny - you'd think they'd be able to do the same thing with uncompressed signals, but I digress). That encrypted version is then transcoded into SP on the player itself - so, what you're getting is an SP encoding but with less quality than LP2. In short, auditory cacca - better to use real-time encoding and SP.

I don't like LP2 or iTunes AAC at 128kbps - both sound inferior to CD. LP2 has too much pre-echo and sounds grainy, and AAC seems to have stereo positioning issues and ringing problems. SP (or Hi-SP on Hi-MD) are where it's at - actually, LAME is really great with the -V0 setting as well (~256kps VBR).

You'll always be able to get false teeth someday, but Hi-MD decks won't be around forever. Make the wise choice and buy my deck It's funny - I don't really want to get rid of this deck. I just can't justify keeping it - it's not like it's some MDS-JE480 that was picked up for $50 off eBay or something. Too expensive (and too nice) to let collect dust....

It's called a mistake: the board froze for whatever reason for several minutes when attempting to post. I think that was rather obvious, making such snarky, immature comments a bit redundant. Price is negotiable, of course.

I bought one of these decks last November on eBay, played with it a couple of times, and then put it in my closet. It has sat unused ever since, as I've moved away from MD/Hi-MD for home use. Rather than put it up on eBay, I figured a fellow MD enthusiast might appreciate making a place on his rack for it. It's quite a beautiful machine, especially if your other components are silver as well. Sound quality is amazing, even in Hi-SP mode, which is indistinguishable from PCM on this deck. I really can't think of any reason why somebody who still uses MD for home recording wouldn't be thrilled to have this on their audio rack. MSRP on this deck was $650. The deck itself, from what I can tell, is in perfect condition. There's one catch - the seller screwed me over by promising to send the remote later (claiming that he couldn't find it), and later never came. Thus, there's no remote - but if you have the matching Onkyo system, this won't be an issue. Actually, it shouldn't be an issue in general, as the unit is easy to control from the deck itself. This is, of course, a 100V device and will need to be powered accordingly. I am not including a power inverter, as I need mine for other things. Besides the unit itself, I'll throw in my last 5 blank MDs and and a few cables, along with a translated manual. Asking price: $400, which includes shipping and packaging. I'd prefer to sell to a US buyer if possible, as I've found shipping items overseas to be a hassle. PM me with any questions!

Sounds like you're well-stocked in terms of discs and units - and ready to enjoy MD for years to come. That's good, because I've noticed a steadily shrinking number of MD-related items on places like eBay. A few years back, a search for "minidisc" would bring up at least 700 hits; now, it's usually under 300, and a lot of that is for non-sequiturs like tape adapters and such. Hi-MD units seem even harder to come by, especially if you're looking for a specific model (like the NH1, which I'm sorry I got rid of a year ago). Most of what's up there now is overpriced junk - or crappy 400-series NetMD downloaders. Oddly enough, it's the oldest incarnations of MD that seem to be more common in auctions nowadays - I've never seen more MZ-R70's or JE510 decks available until now. It's as though the people who never really got into MiniDisc (i.e., someone who bought a unit in the late 90's, used it a few times, and threw it in a drawer) suddenly found all these older models in their closets and want to get rid of them before they're REALLY not worth anything. Moral of the story: take good care of your collection

Zip drives are not MO-based. They're a plain magnetic format that squeezed more data on a disk by placing a very sensitive read/write head only 1mm from a PET film disk and spinning it at very high speeds (3000rpm or so). In any case, I'd be leary of using zip or Hi-MD to store data, considering that hardware and media for both are getting increasingly harder to find. Plus, they're much more expensive per MB than optical media and have much slower transfer rates.

Wow; didn't these things just come out?

I too like the sound of PCM or LAME mp3's on the RH1, but I'm afraid to use it as a dedicated player - it's not like they can be purchased on the high street anymore, especially here in the US. Besides, I've found that no portable (RH1 or otherwise) bests my 1-bit Marantz amp and Grado cans, fed PCM from my MacBook's optical output. The sound is much more spacious and the noise floor completely absent.

Also, don't forget about SCMS: you're going to be limited to one first-generation copy over optical thanks to SCMS (serial copyright management system). If you recorded the first disk as a live recording or analog dub, the second deck will let you make one digital copy, but you won't be able to copy that copy to another disk over the TOSLINK cable. If the disk you're trying to copy was made digitally in the first place (i.e., over the optical cable), the deck will say "no copy" and won't let you proceed. Any copying beyond a first-gen digital dub must be done via analog connections. You probably won't notice much quality loss in a second-generation MD-to-MD dub, but you will after that. Just like a tape, there is generational loss due to the lossy ATRAC compression scheme, which, besides cutting away frequencies your ears couldn't hear anyway, adds random noise and error to the signal because bits are allocated to only the most important parts of the signal. This error is only amplified every time a signal goes through another compression cycle - in short, re-compression is an asymmetric process because the encoder doesn't know the input already was compressed to begin with.

If we want to be objective about comparing the H2 and the RH1, it seems to me that somebody needs to record something with the same mics on both units in 44.1/16 mode. Comparing 320kbps MP3 to 44.1/16 or ATRAC or 96/24PCM just adds another nuisance variable into the equation - something has to be held constant for a valid comparison. After quantitatively comparing and/or listening to the two 44.1kHz recordings side by side, we should then qualitatively compare both units at their best - LPCM mode for the RH1 and 96/24 LPCM for the H2. If the mic noise is a problem on the H2, it will be heard, just as if the 96/24 mode results in higher subjective sound quality compared to 44.1/16. Uploads, anyone?

I've had dropouts on certain discs, but always in the same place (even when recorded over). A few of my 1GB Hi-MD discs also have this problem. If it's a random thing, you might want to clean the player's lens with a cleaning disk or a cotton swab dipped in alcohol.

The RH1 was likely the final little "nod" from Sony to their MD devotees, as the RH1/M200 certainly were not released to mainstream attention or interest. At least that's how I look at it. By the time the RH1 was released in '06, the halycon days of MD in places like the US or Europe had long since past. Even my friends from Asian countries like Japan say MD is on its way out there as well. If it weren't for us devotees, there might not have been an RH1 to begin with

So much for their "ATRAC advanced lossless," huh? Seriously, though, FLAC is a great format and continues to be supported on more and more devices (and software programs). More good news from Sony.