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Well, maybe I should have given it a different original subject line. For me the main topic here is not the Edirol R-1 as such but what the increasing appearance of afforable portable solid state recording devices that are designed to meet the needs of recordists means for the postion of Hi-MD in the afforable recording market. Sony used to cater to this market (cassette recorders like the WM-6, their portable DAT recorders, MD etc.) but as the person from Edirol says, these are now "legacy devices". Sony seems to have lost interest in being a leader in this segment. How long are people going to be prepared to mess with work arounds (a major topic on the Hi-MD forum) for Sony's copy protection / upload complexities when you can buy a similar or better recording device for about the same money, plug it into your computer (even a MAC!) using a USB2 cable, and drag and drop your audio recordings into an editor or do whatever you want with them?

Edirol have apparently told others that the unit will support greater than 2GB. I'd e-mail them for info.

Not sure why this got moved to the off topic forum. Maybe Sony execs aren't the only ones with their heads in the sand. I thought this device was highly relevant to the future of the Hi-MD format. My point was that MD isn't the only game in the low cost / high quality portable recording arena. There are solid state recorders, ones designed with recording as their primary purpose, starting to appear with features/quality/price that make them serious alternatives to Hi-MD, especially as they address the upload issue that is such a source of dissatisfaction with Sony. Who knows how well the Edirol device will work (on paper it looks good) but I'm sure it's not the last we'll see. The existing Marantz recorder can be had for $600 and I'm sure we will see more from Marantz in the future. I wouldn't be surprised if we see devices with similar specs to the Edirol from Marantz and other companies next year that will hit a street price of around $400. All those companies see that Sony have left a hole in the recording market you could drive a truck through. Listen to what the President of Edirol says: "Hard drive and memory-based portable audio players are hugely popular. In the case of recorders, however, very few quality lower-cost options exists leaving legacy media devices like cassette, DAT, or MD as your choices.” Ouch! Apple and others are killing them in the player market and now my bet is that other companies who cater to the needs of recordists are going to kill them in the recording market because Sony have botched and continue to botch the whole recording upload issue.

Good point but the price is falling fast. Sandisk 1GB CF card is $75 on buy.com at the moment and you get $15 coupon to spend at Ofoto into the bargain. Six months ago a 1GB CF card was at least $150. Another 6 months from now and I'm guessing the cost will be well below $50. Yes, you'll still want to offload onto another storage medium but the offloading is over USB2 ("At maximum resolution (24-bit/44.1kHz) the R-1 can transfer a 60 minute file (908 MB) to the computer in just three minutes") and there is no copy protection nonsense because it acts as a standard USB Mass Storage device

From the Press release: "Kim Nunney, President of Edirol Corporation North America comments, "Hard drive and memory-based portable audio players are hugely popular. In the case of recorders, however, very few quality lower-cost options exists leaving legacy media devices like cassette, DAT, or MD as your choices.” He continues, "The R-1 was designed to satisfy the needs of musicians, field recorders and videomakers. This user group needs portability beyond laptops with high quality sound, lengthy recording times and random access.”" http://www.edirol.com/press/html/2004/0927...2704_r1_pr.html

Message to Sony: competition at the affordable end of the quality portable recording market is getting hotter. Check it out: http://www.edirol.com/products/info/r1.html Supposed to be available in a couple of months with a price of $550 but maybe street price will be lower. ============================ Main Specifications Audio Input/Output Input Internal Microphone (stereo) Stereo Microphone (1/8" phone jack : plug-in powered compatible type) 1/8" Stereo Line Input Output 1/8" stereo phone jack, Headphones (1/8" stereo phone jack), S/PDIF 1/8" phone optical type (same port as Headphones) Recorder/Player 2 Tracks (1 stereo track) Recording data format WAV, MP3 CompactFlash card Up to 2 GB capacity Audio Effects 1. Easy EQ (11 presets) 2. For Speech 3. Voice Perform 4. Editable EQ (10 Band EQ : 32/64/125/250/500/1k/2k/4k/8k/16k Hz) 5. Noise Reducer 6. Hum Noise Cut 7. Reverb 8. Int-Mic Rec. (Mic Simulator Optimized for Built-in Mic) 9. Ext-Mic Rec. (Mic Simulator for External Mic) 10. Mastering 11. Center Cancel 12. Tuner 13. Metronome Signal Processing AD/DA conversion 24 bit / 44.1 kHz Power Supply AC adaptor (included) or Battery Rechargeable Ni-MH AA x 2 or Alkaline AA x 2. R-1 has no charge function. Battery life Playback: approximate 6 hours, Recording: approximate 2.5 hours USB USB 2.0 Storage device (WindowsXP/2000/Me, MacOS9.2 or MacOS X, OS standard driver) Display 20 x 2 character display Accessories CF Card 64 MB, AC Adaptor Roland PSB-6U type, Carrying Case, Owner's manual Dimensions 99.25 (W) x 134 (D) x 30.2 (H) mm / 3-15/16 (W) x 5-5/16 (D) x 1-3/16 (H) inches Weight 205 g / 8 oz (excluding CF and batteries) Options Headphones Roland RH-200/RH-50

According to the information on the Sonicsense site most manufacturers appear to have stopped making DAT recorders: http://www.sonicsense.com/datpage.htm

BTW Anyone looking for a very nice open source audio editor should check out Audacity. See http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Several other comments on compression that may be of interest to linguists and others: 1. ATRAC vs. PCM. Over the years this has been a hot topic for researchers and enthusiasts who record nature sounds (birds, etc.). Some people have been fairly negative about ATRAC (e.g. http://www.birds.cornell.edu/MacaulayLibra...ntOverview.html ); others think the critics of ATRAC have no idea what they are talking about (e.g. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/naturerecord...ts/message/5772 ). 2. Looking at some of the information on linguistics web pages I didn't see much about other issues but maybe I missed discussion of other technical issues. Sampling, bit depth and compression are just one set of issues. A high sample rate and PCM by itself guarantees nothing. You need to consider the mics, the cables, the connectors, the preamps, how the mics are used and so on. There is a whole system to be taken into consideration. Other factors may be much more significant than the compression issue in shaping the final representation of whatever it is you are recording.. 3. I haven't seen any mention of level control. If you are going to be really fussy about artifacts, I'd worry much more about whether the recording was made using AGC or not. It is convenient to use AGC for many types of recording but for many uses it should be avoided like the plague because: a) AGC compresses the dynamics. The AGC circuits always involve some type of delay so they are poor at handling rapid changes in sound volume. c) The AGC circuits adjust to anything the mic picks up, regardless of whether it is the sound you are focusing on recording or a background noise. 4. One advantage of PCM is if there is any type of editing. You don't want to be editing and saving and reediting and saving over and over again using lossy formats. 5. The bottom line is that any recording is a representation. Different types of system are appropriate for different types of uses. Some users will inevitably be more demanding than others but no matter what you use and how you use it, you are still using a tool to create a fixed representation of an event and that representation will never perfectly capture that event. 6. Researchers, particularly those involved in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis have written about some of these issues. Here are a couple of references: * Modaff, J. V., and Modaff, D. P. (2000) Technical notes on audio recording. Research on Language and Social Interaction. 33 (1), 101-118. * Ashmore, Malcolm and Reed, Darren (2000) Innocence and Nostalgia in Conversation Analysis: The Dynamic Relations of Tape and Transcript. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research [Online Journal], 1(3).

Just to add a few points to dex Otaku's very detailed post: Normal speech frequencies are in the mid-range i.e 250 Hz to 8kHz. You don't necessarily want low frequencies or high frequencies but it depends what you are doing. If you are recording speech for transcription the low or high frequncy stuff is just noise. If you are recording an interview for radio transmission those other frequncies might be ambience or atmosphere. Given the Nyquist issue, (see previous post) that means one should use a sampling frequency of at least 16kHz and probably 22.05kHz. I use the latter sampling frequency and it works fine. If you use Cooledit you'll see that Cooledit has a MP3 preset for voice recording: 22.05kHz sample rate, mono, 16 bit (ie a 32kbps MP3) with a frequency bandwidth limit of 8kHz. If you are a linguist and you want to avoid compression try using 22.05KHz, 16 bit PCM. I think most telephone systems limit frequency transmission to between 400Hz and 3.4kHz--the absolute most critical speech frequencies. So if you are recording a phone conversation I guess 8kHz might be adequate. (NB in most places it is illegal to do this without consent.) Phones aren't exactly hi-fi devices. They are engineered to maximize speech intelligibility while conserving transmission bandwidth (there are various codecs that are used for this as well...). Practically all digital recorders use at least 16 bit sampling. I would avoid 8 bit. Here's a link I found yesterday that provides a much more detailed discussion of these basics and other matters: http://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/ling538/.../AudioData.html

Linguini, Capn002, Kurisu and others: Happy to contribute something here. Over the years I've learned a lot from the Minidisc forums, both the new ones and the earlier ones. Most places sell the Marantz for around $700. You have to look around to find a price around $600 from an authorized dealer. I think you have a valid point that not everyone has this money. And flash cards are still relatively expensive although the rise of digital photography has the price halving every 12 months or so. When I was a graduate student I certainly didn't have this type of money to spend. MD is a good option that is more affordable. There still isn't much serious competition in the sub-$500 market. The Marantz is a breakthrough product in terms of cost but I don't see why one shouldn't be able to buy a decent solid state recorder at a cheaper price point. I'd still be a minidisc fan if it weren't for the ridiculous upload issue. Sony is Sony's own worse enemy. The Marantz is overkill for much of what I do--it features I don't use or need. I think there is a diverse market of people that have fairly straight forward recording needs (e.g. in government, the legal profession, medicine, academia, business, etc.) but want decent audio, reliability, easy of use, and need to rapidly upload to computer without any ridiculous and cumbersome restrictions and without breaking the bank. The earlier models Marantz sold cost over $1000. Most other pro recorders (whether based on solid state, MD, hard drives, etc.) still cost over $1000 and sometimes much more. DAT seems to be on the way out. I'm not very impressed by other cheap options. Some people get excited about jukeboxes (iRiver, Creative Nomad, etc.) but I think recording in those devices is something that engineers added on after the fact or as part of a crude "everything plus the kitchen sink" approach. Recording functions don't seem to be very well implemented and my guess is that the reliability is probably less than stellar. I think a good recorder really needs to come from a company that understands recording and is dedicated to building a device in which recording is a primary function. There's not much in the middle range between cheap portable recorders that aren't that good and high-end pro audio machines. Social scientists are probably worse than linguists when it comes to recording technology (and technique). Many appear to be quite happy recording interviews using cheap $50 tape recorders with internal mics that pick up the sound of the transport mechanism and which they insist on placing a less than optimal distance away from the speaker. It is a mystery to me why someone would put so much energy into a task to have their data recorded by a device that is difficult to use effectively and almost guaranteed to destroy at least 20% of their data and make the rest an unpleasant listening experience. Archiving. Yes, I think an advantage of MD is that you have a cheap original media that provides pretty good storage. I'm not sure how long data will last on an MD but I imagine it fairs pretty well if not very well compared to other media. No one is going to store stuff on flash media--you get the data and you offload it. CD and DVD media is cheap but I think one has to be careful to use good quality media (e.g. http://www.mam-a.com/products/gold/archive.html). For really long term storage another issue is how long the players for any of these media will be supported. At some point the data will have to be copied. A counterpoint to my earlier counterpoint on what to take to a rainforest: MD may have a storage advantage if one plans to be in a remote location for an extended period of time. If you can't offload the CF card onto a harddrive and create backups onto CD and DVD media then MD has a certain advantage. Lots of devices have been developed for digital photographers to offload flash memory cards though but that's another extra cost. A stack of 20, 50, 100 or however many MDs one needs may be a cheaper and safer way to go. One shouldn't overlook the professional MD recorders. Marantz used to make an MD model but I think that was recently discontinued. I don't know if they plan to come out with a Hi-MD recorder. HHB makes a pro minidisc recorder called the Portadisc. It costs and arm and a leg and I've heard that it eats batteries but it has a very good reputation and is extremely durable. Again it is unclear if HHB will develop a Hi-MD version. BTW the current portadisc is advertized as the "First and only MD portable to feature a USB (Universal Serial Bus) interface for transferring audio to and from Windows-based PCs and Macintosh computers." If I remember correctly, this still happens in real time but there is no weird Sony software and DRM nonsense. Battery life. I'm not into electronic gadgets that use weird batteries either. If your batteries die you want to be able to get a replacement that you can buy cheaply and find practically anywhere. A nice thing about many MD recorders and the PMD670 is that they will use Alkaline or NiMH AAs. The battery life on the PMD-670 is fairly good if you the latest rechargeable NiMH batteries (e.g. something rated 2300 mAh). I'm using 2100 mAh and I've never had a problem. I've seen people claim they can get 10 hours record time if they don't use CF microdrives and don't use phantom power for the mics, and I believe it. However, the PMD-670 does use eight AAs versus one in my Sharp SR-60. I'm curious about the battery life of the new Hi-MD recorders. The reports I saw were that if you were recording in PCM you weren't going to get anything like the amazing record times of the earlier generation of MD recorders although you'd still get respectable record times.

I'm a social scientist! How about a forum for users who are involved in tasks that involve the recording of human speech for analysis or some other purpose. There are also groups of users who record nature and environmental sounds but there are some well established and active forums elsewhere on the net for those users.

I didn't argue that linguists must use uncompressed recordings. I guess that depends on the linguist but that wasn't my reason for recommending the Marantz over the MD. I don't have an issue with compression. I'm not going to question the original poster's need. The PMD-670 will do PCM at various sample rates up to stereo 48KHz, as well as MP2 and MP3. I do qualitative research. I record interviews and transcribe them. I've used several MD models, both Sony and Sharp. MD can work very well. It's not a bad choice. I just think that in most cases someone that is doing professional work will be better served by a machine like the Marantz. On your other points: Weight and size. Yes the Marantz is larger and heavier, although you exaggerate a little. I also thought this would be a big issue for me before I got the Marantz, especially as I was used to using MD. In practice the machine doesn't seem that large and heavy. What I have found is that the design is extremely good and the increased size means there are no tiny little buttons that are difficult to use and the meter is huge and easy to see. When I was using a Sharp MD recorder I always took a check list of buttons I had to push to set the recorder up properly at the start of an interview. The Marantz remembers all the settings so it can be set up in advance. I get to the interview, put the Marantz in a suitable position, flick the power switch, flick the large red record button on the front and away I go. Very simple. It does the job with little effort so the user can concentrate on doing the interview. What would I want in the rainforest? Probably the Marantz. The rainforest is an extreme environment. The Marantz has been out for over a year. Professional users (reporters and others) have given the machine some pretty heavy field abuse. I've seen reports of people dropping it and completely submerging it in watery mud, using it in extreme temperatures, having it sprayed with fire retardant while covering forest fires, and it keeps on ticking. Mine has been absolutely rock solid. I can't say that about my MD recorders. I always felt I had to handle them carefully. And on at least two occasions I had discs fail on me. Price. Yes the Marantz is more expensive. I paid just under $600 for mine. You mentioned that you just bought a new HiMD NH1 which Minidisco lists for $380 so in your case the Marantz is only 1.5x more expensive not 2x or 3x. Your price comparison only works if you buy the absolute cheapest MD recorders available and it is still a little bit of an exaggeration. Of course there are other expenses and how you parse those is a significant factor. But also see comments on transcription costs below. For many applications the cost of the recorder, microphones, power, media, is all a bit of a red herring. In any case, my guess is that we'll see a smaller, lighter, simplified solid state recorder from Marantz in the next 12 months or so that will have a street price of $400. Ten years ago Sony was a big player in the cheaper end of the professional portable recording market. As a result of their various corporate anxieties I think they are abandoning that market to companies like Marantz. Reliability of CF cards. Solid state. No moving parts. They are not indestructible and they do fail but there's no contest here (Try this with your MD media: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3939333.stm ). CF cards have been about for a while and are widely used in by amateur and professional photographers. They have a well established track record. I've never had a CF card in the Marantz fail. I can't say the same for MD media (not to mention the dreaded Toc error). I'm not sure anyone makes DAT machines anymore. DAT's time has passed. Transcription. If you are doing a lot of transcription it is much easier and faster to do it using software (the software I use will sync up the audio with the transcription-you can't imagine how useful that is...). Also, if you are doing transcription, the cost of the recorder is trivial (which invalidates your price issue above). Transcription is time consuming and costly. On a single project we might budget $20K. You actually want to buy a recorder that will give you the best quality audio with a minimum of fuss. Saving a few dollars on this is a false economy. If you cut the transcription time down by just 5% you will rapidly recoup the cost of the recorder. I personally think the sound quality from MD is very good but the recordings I have from the Marantz are significantly better (even when using the internal mic). (Of course the quality in this case is partly a function of the way the recorder is used--what I'm saying is that for this type of application it is much easier to get a high quality recording using the Marantz.) While some demanding users do find the Marantz preamp wanting, you will get a much better preamp than anything you'll find in a consumer MD machine. In general, the electronics in in this machine are much better and it has a stack of very useful professional recording features you won't find on any consumer MD machine. You get good stuff for that that extra $220 (and the fact that a bunch of critical stuff doesn't have to be stuffed into a tiny case). Transfer to computer. Some people don't have an issue with real time transfer; many people do (witness the endless moaning about Sony's position on this issue on these forums...). Anyway, just for the record, the Marantz has no copy protection. You can hook a USB cable to the recorder and the CF card appears as an external hard drive or you can eject the card and pop it into a USB2 or Firewire reader for even faster transfer. "MD's are so sexy. (And they double as a toy!)". I won't argue with you on that one. The Marantz is a serious professional machine. It is designed to record interviews and meetings. It is targeted at professional users who need a serious tool that is well designed, reliable, easy to use and will provide excellent audio quality. It is also backed by a decent support. If your MD breaks, you've got to deal with Sony! Good luck. In some respects this is like comparing apples and oranges. These machines are targeted at different types of user. Most people on these forums are probably best served by MD. If you are recording for a professional application, like those discussed above, the Marantz is probably a better choice. That said there is some overlap and there are some professional recording applications in which consumer MD might work better than the Marantz. For example, if extreme portability is a critical issue, go with the MD recorder. I suspect for most linguists the Marantz is a better choice. See http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phonetics/FieldR...dingAdvice.html . Some user reviews: http://www.rwonline.com/reference-room/pro...tz_PMD670.shtml http://sldghamr.faithweb.com/PMD670.html http://www.micsupply.com/pmd670review_htm.html http://www.d-mpro.com/users/getdownload.as...?DownloadID=271 l

If you are doing professional work I wouldn't bother with MD. Get yourself a professional recorder. A Marantz PMD-670 doesn't cost that much more but it is packed with professional recording features you won't find on an MD recorder. And you'll be able to dump the contents directly to PC using a USB cable or CF card reader. Lots of pro electronics stores sell it but Saul Mineroff Elecronics generally have one of the best prices form an authorized dealer.