Artstar

F__k me that's a brilliant piece of kit. The only problem ... NiMH battery? For crying out loud!! I've got 2 NH1's (since Sony Australia's clearance pricing was too good to resist) but now that this is supposedly in the works, I'm lusting after the idea of recording at higher HiMD bitrates. The display is sweet for stealthiness but useless as my MD unit usually sits in a belt-clipped leather case with the input sockets facing up. But the NiMH battery is a real friggin' let down. Dammit.

I'm assuming you mean to say 4 pole and 3 pole instead of 3 and 2 because each ring of metal is a pole so ground is included in the count. It's highly doubtful that you will find one. The way I see it, you will need to cut and solder a new plug on there. What you need to make sure of, however, is because these things appear to be using some kind of balanced output to the headphones, you would need to ensure that you are running them in phase. I'm not up on the schematics of the DR480 so I'm assuming the balanced drive is in its basic implementation. Under those circumstances, you will want to ensure that you bring both -ve lines together into your ground connection and just feed the +ve lines to your tip and ring conductors for left and right accordingly. That will do away with the hollow sound you speak of (which is the result of running speakers out of phase with respect to each other). Good luck dude.

From one sarcastic post to the next... What is your problem dude? Is this the first time mummy's let you out to play on the internet?

They're pretty much the longest running units I'm aware of personally. I wish my NH1 was that good over those 26 hour long flights I take but then again, that's why I have 3 lithium ion gumsticks whenever I travel

Actually, on my setup it takes about 6 secs initially and then 2 secs thereafter. Why? Dual AMD Opteron 246's 4GB RAM RAID0 config SCSI array

Amen to that. Working here in Turin/Torino, I felt comfortable after 4 months of work here until some pickpocket in a pub earlier tonight thought he could pick at my jacket for the company mobile. Luckily, it's a unique ringtone and when I heard it, I dragged the scumbag into the toilets for a lesson in violence. I for one am glad to hear that MD escapes the ignorance of thieves - at least the majority of them anyway. GO THE MD!!

I agree, there are indeed many ways. Some are easier to justify than others though. I didn't say it was wrong, just not quite right. If I were to use a variety of appliances off my cigarette lighter socket or could simply not find/justify the cost of a suitable dedicated adapter, then I would also go for an inverter. But seriously, when I used my MZ-R50 in the company car, the last thing I intended to do was carry my inverter with me as well!! A simple little DC adapter in your pocket is convenient and cheaper if he isn't looking at using a wider variety of appliances.

You didn't read Richyhu's response I gather. Try reading it again. The initial charging figure isn't necessarily accurate until a little further into the charging process. If you are getting the 69 mins figure initially, well that's what it's estimated. Trust us mate, you've got more things to worry about than an extra 9 mins charging time. Relax. If it were broken, you'd know about it.

Skradgee, unfortunately that's not quite right. He does not need to go to the expense and bulk of an inverter. However, what I would be inclined to do is buy a power adapter which is REGULATED at 6V. This one could very well do the job but if I have a power supply which measures in at 9V without a load, I get paranoid. Daniel, find someone who sells a regulated 6V supply (800mA minimum, higher is fine when it comes to current) or otherwise buy the genuine Sony adapter. You will need the cradle though and as you already know, that will make it impossible to power and play at the same time. Unless someone has already started manufacturing a power supply that can plug straight into it, you're out of luck I'm afraid. Otherwise, if you only want to charge it while on the road, then by all means just buy the type of power adapter as I've recommended and you'll be just fine.

I just did a little fact finding on your mic and as I expected, it's a mono plug so it's no surprise you're only getting it on the one channel (left)! What you need to do is find yourself a 1/8" stereo (male) to 1/8" mono (female) adaptor. If there isn't one at your friendly electronics shop, you can just as easily make one. Buy the 2 components (plug and socket), wire it up so that you have the following connections: Male Female Sleeve Sleeve Ring and tip Tip Note the last two connections would simply be one wire bridging the ring and tip terminals in the stereo plug leading to the tip terminal of the female socket. Dead easy and it will work without fail. Best of all, you don't need to think about the virtual surround feature and it'll probably sound much better too. It's in my field to believe that the less you add to the audio chain, the better. I'm know my division here at the winter olympics feel the same way.

The best response of all.

My guess would be that if DRM has been removed, it should be uploadable whether it was recorded on my MZ-R50, MDS-JA30ES or MZ-NH1. Unfortunately, I'm many thousands of miles away from home to try this so I'll have to wait until next month to see for myself.

I've been using a 9V battery box with my binaural mics without issue. But then again, I record mainly loud rock/metal concerts so that's why levels aren't too big an issue for me. However, I have been finding a need to get a decent preamp for the quieter jazz/ambience gigs that I check out from time to time, just to lower the noise floor to something a little more useable at such low levels. Perhaps something with a selectable compression (dynamic, that is) would be the way to go too in such situations. The only way I see myself accomplishing this would be to design my own, however, as I have not seen any portable version of such a preamp. Ultimately, my point being it really depends on what you're recording. That will dictate whether or not you really need the wider dynamic range achieveable through the use of a preamp.

The compression process takes place on both the left and right channels, naturally, with the encoder's algorithm accounting for encoding the volume of the channels equally. Professional audio software (such as Soundforge, etc.) allow you to choose to normalise and/or dynamically compress L & R channels equally or otherwise separately. But as for that effect on an MD encode in Sonicstage, that's weird. I'm thousands of miles away from my desktop PC and I didn't bother to bring my spare USB cable for my NH1 to try SS3.4 so I can't check this out for myself for at least another month. I'll keep an eye on this thread in the meantime.

That's why I'm hanging onto my MDX-C8900 with a tight grip. Sure it's not HiMD but it's the last of the best MD car decks Sony ever produced for the Australian market complete with front, rear and subwoofer outputs. Of course, that's a moot point for me now that I'm set to install the 210 DSP unit I scored. Now I can fully utilise the DSP control of the deck.

All I can say is finally Sony made their lawyers step aside and let the engineers do what they do best. This renews my faith in Sony and I look forward to seeing what further develops in future. Hopefully they've taken this as a lesson learned and not backtrack with further advancements by imposing the initial DRM rubbish we had to live with initially. Now I'm truly happy I've got 2 NH1's! Thanks for listening Sony! Keep it up and you will be back to number 1 soon enough!

I read that Stringer also made an appearance at the CES but in accordance with the quote from PC User, I raise one of his comments to attention in which he found it unfair that Sony as a whole was being blamed for the "Rootkit" issue when he steadfastly states was an initiative within the Sony BMG group. Quite frankly, if Sony is part of it, they need to act that way and take responsibility. BUT, that's not my complaint nor the thrust of the point I'm about to make. Since Sony as a whole (i.e. their consumer electronics division as well!) was treated unfairly in Stringer's eyes, how does he explain the consumer frustration at the DRM in their HiMD units? Are we supposed to blame Sony BMG for that too instead of Sony as a whole? I would have liked to have been there to ask him that question - logically and diplomatically of course. If Sony BMG are to blame for that aspect of their consumer audio electronics, then perhaps Stringer needs to tell Sony BMG to back off and let the consumer electronics guys do what they USED to do best. But if this opening of ATRAC may also mean a slight relaxation on the DRM concept and allow all encoding formats to take place (so I can actually create an MD-SP dump of something onto a standard MD disc rather than being forced to MD-LP), then perhaps someone is listening and acting upon what's being heard. Nevertheless, in my continued support for the HiMD format, I see myself getting my hands on a professional HiMD deck whenever Sony's broadcast division decides to release such a beast. It may not be faster than realtime but at least it will still be digital and I won't have to battle with DRM if I need to dive back into masters I've created on my MZ-R50 or MDS-JA30ES. Sure I can continue to do that (going back into MD-SP archives) now with the MDS-JA30ES without issue but for only as long as optical blocks can still be obtained before they're discontinued. And when it is time to get a deck, it will have to be HiMD.

Separating the sounds should be simply a case of throwing the metronome in one channel and the actual keyboard material in another channel. Since you have a stereo recorder, you're halfway there! Now the one thing I'll assume here is that you are referring strictly to the Fantom model and not a Fantom-S or X series and whatnot. I've looked up the user manual for it and have noticed that you can specify which output the patches come from (1 to 4) but it doesn't mention anything about the Metronome's features other than those during the recording/playback. BUT, from I've read in the manual about the output assignment for the patches, you'll need to do the following (in theory of course!): 1) Go to your System Edit menu, select the General tab and change the Mix/Parallel setting to Parallel (don't forget to save the settings!) [ref: User manual pg 179] 2) Whether you use Patch Output Assignment or Tone Output Assignment is entirely up to you since I have no idea what sounds you are using for the recording. Nevertheless, what you would need to do is to direct your sounds out to channels 3 and 4. [ref: User manual pg 168] The reason why I've left 1 and 2 out of the picture is because I have a feeling (and this is purely assumption since there's nothing in the manual about how the metronome functions) that the metronome is probably mixed in with everything. If it's only directed to your keyboard's headphones output and NOT out of the MIX A or MIX B outputs, then the problem is already solved thanks to Roland. If that is the case, then just leave your Mix/Parallel setting to Mix, plug your headphones into the Roland's headphone output, then using a cable that has a 3.5mm (1/8") stereo plug on one end for the MD and a couple of 6.5mm (1/4") mono plugs on the other end. I would imagine that one of these is the solution but since I'm a drummer and have nothing to do with keyboards, I'm only as good as the user manual I got from the Roland site. Let me know how it goes though! I'm curious.

Or in short guys, go to http://www.slysoft.com This site is truly the epitomy of DVD/CD related software and removing/bypassing any and all known copy protection schemes out there (using the AnyDVD program of course). As an experiment, I had a Sony CD of Pete Murray (thanks to Minidisc Australia for the super cheap deal on my now 2nd/spare MZ-NH1!!) included in my NH1's bundle and I checked it. Lo and behold, it was copy protected with that crappy software. However, when I inserted it into my PC, I saw only the audio tracks. Upon further inspection with CloneCD, I saw the data track which had that damn software. Why wasn't I affected? 1) No autoplay (as we all know by now - I switched that feature off nearly 10 years ago ... never liked it). 2) AnyDVD bypassed the data track altogether after noticing it was an audio CD with a data track. Long and short of it, SlySoft rule and I get to use my CD's exactly how I like to and that's what's important as a paying customer.

I never had a Sony MD that worked reliably in my MDX-C8900 head unit. More often than not, I would have the discs not reading in the unit for a few times until maybe the 4th or 5th consecutive insertion, then it would play but occasionally, a track would glitch for a couple quarter notes here and there. Admittedly, I never tried the discs in any other MD head unit simply because I stand alone in my circle of acquaintances when it comes to choice of media Otherwise, my MZ-R50 and MZ-NH1 can play them happily. Nevertheless, the TDK's I've used (MD, MD-XG and XA Pro which I used exclusively for all live recordings) have all been absolutely FLAWLESS. :bigsmile: Two thumbs up to the TDK's, half a thumb up for the Sony's. Now then, time for TDK HiMD blanks. Until then, I'm buying me 50 HiMD discs because they may become a rare commodity since Sony decided to axe MD in Australia.

Just wanted to happily report that I ordered my 2nd (aka spare) NH1 (since buying my original NH1 September 2004 in Singapore for AUD$550!) on Sunday and it arrived today! Fast service guys. Love your work. Shame it's getting the chop here. Looks like I'll be going back to my old ways of importing from Japan, like I did with my MZ-R50, if another model should make its way out.

You got it in one as it was because of the transcoding that I had that problem. Copying them from CD into ATRAC3 132kbps and then transferring them to the NH1 on an "as-is" basis was what fixed it right up. Perfectly seamless and a slightly better sound than ATRAC3+ 64kbps. No more transcoding ... get it right the first time. Thanks dude!

I'll have to try feeding something in realtime from my CD player to test this, but has anyone else noticed that in dumping CD's to HiMD (ATRAC3+ 64kbps), the once seamless track transitions on the original CD's suffer a 1/4 sec break in playback on the HiMD units? Is this a known anomaly or am I just plain unlucky with my NH1? I used SonicStage 3.1 for the task of transferring my entire collection of Dream Theater CD's into one HiMD disc (good for those long plane flights!) and I've just been playing them back now as a muck-around only to find the transitions aren't seamless! It's more of an annoyance rather than the end of the world but it would be nice to get smooth transitions back. Other than that, I wish the damn thing didn't have such heavy compression on the output stage. I think this digital amplifier design is somewhat flawed (and annoying to listen to) at the higher volumes.

What about the DRM side of this unit? Does it still only allow a single upload of any self-made analogue recordings, whether entirely successful or not? If the answer to this is "no", then I'm DEFINITELY buying me one of these!!! That and I'll still patiently wait for a component deck with an S/PDIF out of either variety.

So long as the power is not being supplied on pin 3 (which is where the USB's +5V feed goes to), you'll be fine. Keep in mind as well that the USB only powers the unit but does not charge it. What you are achieving here is a feed into the system which will be at least enough to power it and if the charge controller finds the power from your external source is sufficient, it will run in parallel with your gumpack battery as though it were attempting to charge the battery. Run 4 x 1.2V if you like or 5 but either way, you'll be achieving the same objective.