Jammin72

The Sony SBM-1 was like that in this regard. You had the ability to change the configuration of the chip (well those with fine soldering skills) to up it to 24bit Capture. The SBM Used Noise shaping anyway so you got a larger chuck of data for it to play with. This did increase the resolution of the unit but the larger difference in my mind was the changes that Doug made to the Analog Stages of the unit.

If you want some monitoring cans for home that are fantastically musical with a nice warm low end that still has punch look at the Sony MDR-7506's. I prefer IEM's for truly portable use. But for working at home you can't beat the Sony's for the price. They also have a relatively high Sensitivity and Low Impedance which makes them quite easy to drive by portable units. Comfortable fit, solid construction, the closed ear design also gives you a fair amount of isolation, really letting you get absorbed. I use these for the Portables and for doing work on My DAW, they really let me know what I've gotten on "tape" after a recording. YMMV

One of you technical geniuses please figure out how to get the Hi-MD units to record 352 on the opitcal input!! PLease!! Still this is all good news. If Sony is able to provide thid and a valid lossless codec on portable devices for recording they will have something valuable on thier hands. It would be like a recorder encoding .flac directly.

By the time you do all of that you can get a Panasonic SV-3800 from e-Bay for about $200 bucks from a seller that has a good rating and Run optical into your Hi-MD... no configuration, no jumpers, no nada. Just Record and Play... That's what I would do personally! YMMV The DAT is actually a decent archival medium and if you can score a decent DAT deck for not a lot of money (I got a 3800 with 25 hours on it for $225) you can keep the deck till it croaks and use it for playback and other purposes. The analog output stage of that thing will make the Hi-MD sound pretty thin.

What's your primary use for it Rachel?

Oooooo.... I hope it goes into production!

Dex... Here's a link to Meitner's Patent Page.... You may find some of it quite interesting or be able to find out what in his approach makes the differece. We're convinced that he's holding out on Sony some of the code he's using! EMM Labs

I have to say that when we first started thinking about upsampling the general consensus around the shop was the same how do you get something that was never there? We did set up numerous listening tests to try to limit the effect of superior analog components being the key to the improvement in sound quality. Our Reference system consiting of Rowland Research Model 7's and vairous high end preamps both professional and consumer going into a custom constructed speaker set that utilizes all dyanaudio drives and custom crossovers designed by Doug Oade (His system acutally). We used the Sony SCD-XA9000ES, the Denon DVD-9000, and a couple of Philips and Sony lower end DVD Players as sources.His room has numberous wall treatments bracings etc... (On an aside if you get a chance to hear the SCD-XA9000ES and the STR-DA9000ES working together TAKE it! For a system below $5K (speakers not included) it does things playback systems 10 times the cost do. The only drawback is not having the juice to playback omni recordings of rock shows at concert levels) Whereas there wasn't a huge differnce in the instrumentation itslef the thing that changes is the actual space. You can hear the space between and around notes and placement of instumentation. The soundstage becomes immense. Since a mojority of the recordings that we listen two are 2 or 4 mic recordings of concerts what you gain is a sense of the room or space in which the music was created. The easiest way to describe the experience is that instead of listening to a fantastic recording of a concert suddenly you're there! Sony is a huge fan of fowarding technologies that allow them to control content, I agree I'm sure that a lot of the drive for the company was to try to create a format and then a market for something that isn't able to be copied by the masses. DSD gear is expensive and you have to pay through the teeth to get software to do the editing. Tascams new DSD recorder somewhat breaks the mold but is limited in functionality. I hear what you're saying here. At the same time there is something about SACD that just goes beyond anything else that I've heard as a source to date. DVD-Audio simply doesn't sound as good. Unfortunately since Sony is trying to control the format like they do with most of thier good ideas it has little chance of becoming anywhere close to mainstream. This and the fact that most people seem to perfer free to Great. I wish that I had the technical expertise to discuss this at a more code based level with you because I know you would find it intriguing, but I was human interface, not machine inteface at the shop!

This is an intersting thread... I haven't spent time doing comparisons between PCM and Hi-SP to truly comment on what I've heard. It does bring up an intersting conversation that brought up some intersting thoughts about PCM. A co-worker was speaking with Ed Meitner of EMM Labs (The guy who helped Sony with their DSD devleopment for SACD) and he mentioned that the PCM nasties that you hear in CD's isn't about the encoding method, it's really more in the playback of PCM that the distortions occur. He mentioned that you can encode PCM to 320kBs mp3 and get rid of some the aspects of "That CD Sound" that audiphiles have been complaining about since the inception of the product. The trick is to have a playback device that actually plays the mp3 directly. The only players I have convert the mp3 to PCM to pass out to the output stage so no gains and actually worse performance as you now have compression AND the nasties added by the PCM output circuits. I'm trying to figure out how to make this happen at home. For the EMM Labs gear CD's are actually upsampled to DSD and output using that codec... the result... Amazing!!! CD's sound like real music. Of course his preamp is $10,000 so I won't be getting one anytime soon but it does make my collection of DAT tapes suddenly seem much more like gems waiting to be polished.

For Transfer the MZ-NH900 I would reommend the Hi-SP mode, a better compression rate with a negligeable difference in Sound Quality. If you are transferring via the PC all the more reason! After a few minutes of listening on either mode Hi-SP or SP the brain will fill in the gaps and you 'll stop thinking about the makeup of the sounds you're hearing and begin to focus on the music! Hi-LP on the other hand....

This is another version of one of Oknyos shelf-sytems. It's not a Sony knock off they've been making mini-systems like this for some time. They do acutally sound pretty good for what they are. Great for a low level Bedroom system or for the office. I would't acutually consider this a full home unit but it gives me hope that Onkyo or someone else will make one!

There's no reason that they couldn't offer a firmware upgrade to the HiMD units for .mp3 compatibility. I wan't it! You think they would make us send them in... can you imagine people trying to hack code that allows you to re-write the operating insturctions on the Hi-MD units! If we're dreaming of upgrades... Let's see those two gig discs! Seamless .wav Sets. How about .flac support! Here Here to the backlit display For Goodness sakes give us an optical out! We know you can make combo jacks Sony give it to us! Also in response to the previous request for digital amps... MZ-NH900's and MZ-N1's already got 'em! As far as the 24 bit requests go... until the storage capacity goes way up it's kind of useless in my mind. I would love to see an input buffer that would allow you time to swap discs without loosing data.

The Benefit of the NiMH batteries is that they're always there, no trip to the store... Once you've invested then you don't have to have a dime for your batteries. Also ... c'mon folks there really is only one planet. Think of it as ritual or ceremony... part of the thing that you do before the show to summon the music. Really, life enjoys ritual, there is a difference. As for the Cigarettes... well cost is relative a guess. As for the battery life with your older unit... If you're happy with the results record in Hi-SP or format your disc in MD and run SP you'll get the same or better time you had before using standard discs

I don't use my PC as my music Library but I can't imagine using Sonic Stage for anything other than "uploading" your recordings. I don't even use it for that... Real Time Transfer is where it's at... don't give Sony a chance to trash your recordings... the uploaded files are *not* the same as the orginials. I only use Simple Burner to transfer to the HiMD and Sonic Stage ONLY to play back the files for real time transfer.

I really have to laugh at this... 2300 mAH NiMH batteries are cheap at Wal Mart these days... I can't imagine complaining about battery time when you can get 7 hours out of a single "AA" battery that over it's lifetime represents a coulpe of pennies per use. Try dragging in Lead Acid batteries to power Pre-Amps, DAT Recorders etc... You'll be quite pleased with your problem. Run the Gumstick and the "AA" and you'll have no problems. 2 GB Discs would be perfect!!! One Set per Disc with no "Flip" worries.