1kyle

Whilst the 105 kbs is MUCH lower than I would care to try I think you've probably made it even worse by adding another level of transcoding from 192 kbs mp3 which was coded from whatever. A decent test would be to try this coded DIRECT from a WAV / uncompressed file. If you do this you'll probably find LP2 (ATRAC 132 kbs) a better bet and compatable with legacy gear. If you are using Hi MD then even at 352 which is almost indestinguishable from the original WAV sound you'll get at least 5 full CD's on a 1GB disc and if you drop down to the very acceptable 256 Kbs for Hi MD then you'll get over 7 hours on a 1GB disc which will should be better than your 192 kbs mp3 (depending on the source you used and the original encoding method of your mp3). If you are worried about expensive 1GB discs don't forget that all the Hi MD recorders / players can use Standard 60 (yes they still exist), 74 or 80 min discs which can currently be had really cheaply now, I've even seen packs of 10 in Supermarkets at around 5.99 GBP a pack. On the Internet you can source them cheaper so disc price shouldn't be an issue for your music. At Hi SP at 256 kbs 74 or 80 min disc will often get 2 CD's per disk. For high quality I only ever record 1 CD per Standard Disc as this suits me fine. For Portable listening on the move I use 1GB discs where even 1 disc should provide more than enough music for a days listening. I'd suggest if you really are wearing headphones for 7 hours a day you've got serious social problems in interacting or dealing with other people. Cheers -K

HD recorders will for the forseeable future suffer from the major problems of high current consumption and "ruggedability". Hard disks are precision devices that don't take kindly to the sort of "robust" use that a portable (as opposed to a Studio based) recording device typically gets especially when being used on some professional type assignments. OK a Marantz is built like a battleship so you pay the penality in Price (over 1000 USD), current (2 to 3 hours per battery pack) and weight as you have a lot of kit to carry around. You have the added problem of what to do with the recording after you get it back to the studio etc. If you are recording for TV, Radio, or even a music studio you will want to archive the recordings afterwards. Usually these will be stored on separate media and for this purpose a removable MD is still ideal as it will last indefinitly unlike its tape predecessor. The longevity of DVD's and CD's is still a matter of considerable debate currently so it's unlikely these (apart from DVD-RAM) would even be considered for long term archive. Solid state devices have a much brighter future but currently the high cost of even a modest amount of storage precludes these from becoming the norm yet and probably for a good few years yet. Your average young listener who finds 30 - 60 GB more than enough for their music needs will undoubtedly be perfectly satisfied with a HD device (particularly if it's only used as a playback device) but I can't see these making huge inroads into the professional portable recording arena whereas I can certainly see Solid state devices at some future time as they are much lighter, use less current, are virrtually indestructable and ARCHIVEABLE with removeable media. A possible but interesting possibility would be a Solid state recorder which could then archive directly in the recorder on to minidisc. This certainly would be a "New Generation" if such an animal ever appeared. Another possibility which would make a great deal of sense in a professional recorder using PCM would be to have 2 recording heads or 2 MD's which would then alleviate the problem of the relatively short time (90 Mins) of the single 1GB disc. Cheers -K

I really like the 352 kbs option with SS. Seems a real shame SB only gives Hi SP @ 256. (Any chance of say SB 2.1 with the new RH1 supplying that option). Has anybody done a decent ABX test with 352 compared to 256 staring with a WAV file to avoid multiple encodings. My "gut feel" is that especially for some classical music in particular Organ passages (J.S Bach / Buxtehude etc. or if you want to let your Sound system off the lead try the organ piece in the last movement of S. Saens Symphony nr 3 known as the Organ Symphony) is that the 352 sound is a tiny bit cleaner than the 256 but I certainly wouldn't complain at 256. I'd also have to listen hard to detect the difference with most music. Disk space is cheap enough these days. I've just purchased a new external 1TB disk (1000GB) for under 200 USD so storing large files on your computer shouldn't be the problem it used to be. I was using the NH1 with Line out into the amp for listening. I'd assume that the line out of the NH1 would be a better test than the Headphone out of the RH10 although that is OK especially when the volume hack has been applied. I'd certainly be interested if anybody could post some ABX test results. I'll have a go at this myself later after I've set up some test data. Anybody else interested and using Windows you can get some ABX software (Free) http://www.pcabx.com/product/index.htm You'll also need the Winabx program http://www.kikeg.arrakis.es/winabx/ I'd be really interested in seeing other peoples results from an ABX test. Have fun Cheers -K

I think this tends to prove the point. It's NO POINT adding a "Feature" if it doesn't do satisfactorily what it purports to do in the first place especially when reality sets in after the initial Sales Hype when a device is first launched. As your post suggests a full blown customisable decently designed equaliser is another issue entirely but on these type of devices we are not going to get that so it makes sense perhaps to remove the rather feable version SONY have on some of their devices deflecting user criticism and adverse publicity. I think I'd rather have a piece of kit that does 100% well the few basic functions that I need rather than a machine that comes equipped with nice sounding features but lets the user down in practice. Of course this also boils down to choice but that's my take on it. Cheers -K

I just posted the link as I thought the article was interesting. I never said whether I actually Agreed or Disagreed with it. The article seems to make the point that ANY compression scheme has flaws (obvious enough) but whether to the casual listener it's discernable is another matter. The article also makes the point that if the original SOURCE is hideous then nothing will rescue it and if people are used to listening to poorly encoded music in the first place then some CD makers have nothing to lose by maing CD's in the "Quality" that these listeners are used to. It certainly makes a valid point about the near impossibility of being able to listen to Live "Unamplified" music. It seems rather strange to me to have to go to a concert wearing Ear plugs. I really can't go to any more of these type gigs. At almost any concert you care to name the music is just TOO loud for me now. Even the Cinema which used to be a pleasant night out is getting too much of a painful Audio experience these days where I have real trouble with the spoken dialog but cringe and have to stick my fingers in my ears when the background music / gunfire / effects nearly blast you out of your seat into the street. Cheers -K

Hi POE it works perfectly with the 32 bit OS. The reason I was hoping the 64 bit os would work is that an app I run a LOT (Photoshop) can use 64 bit Windows when available and this app runs a lot better. If you've ever used the full blown Photoshop (not the "cut down" version Photoshop Elements) it's a real resource HOG. The problem appeared to be somewhere in the USB driver area. I found a really obscure post about this where the poster suggested setting the USB "Leagcy Mode Support" to ON from one of the BIOS Boot up options. Careful if you mess around here as setting wrong or incorrect options will severely effect system performance and in same cases you might not even be able to boot. Funnily enough this seemed to fix the problem without effecting any of the more modern USB devices so I'm running the 64 bit windows again. Hopefully Longhorn or whatever it's going to be called will work on INTEL dual 64 bit CPU's when it's released later this year. For once Microsoft seems to have actually got a decent multi-tasking OS waiting in the wings. I'm not a "M$ basher" just for the sake of it. Windows works for 100,000's of people and it's used in areas far exceeding it's original remit which was home computers. My main complaint was the spit they had with IBM when OS/2 was devised. A far far better OS but shades of the "Betamax vs VHS" issue here. Had IBM and Microsoft worked together as in their original agreements how different things might have been. I've messed around enough with Linux and think it's fabulous for servers etc. I'm running a SUSE 10.0 file and print server and Internet Gateway, but as a "Desktop OS" for the "Great unwashed" it's still got light years to go yet. Macs also are great but until comparatively recently expensive and difficult to get some common apps to run on, so like most people using typical "Desktop" type applications I really had no choice other than to use Windows. Cheers -K

Loads of companies IMO have over bloated "features" that most people rarely use in practice. Just look at the current crop of "Mobile Phones" which have really caught the "Feature-itus" bug in a big way. Do people really want to watch a movie or seriously surf the internet on those tiny screens, and just making a phone call which was the primary purpose of the device seems to be just an "after thought". Similarly for MD players being used as a play back device using those tiny bud phones is a full blown Equaliser necessary. Same with computer software. Even something simple like NERO which is great for burning CD's and DVD's has become such a piece of "Bloatware" (Release 7) which requires you to install Microsoft .NET etc that I'm sticking with Release 6.0 for as long as possible. Extra features are often added purely as a "Selling Point" to be pushed by ignorant salespeople in front of possibly some even more ignorant customers. Basically a decent screen or failing that a nice remote together with high quality recording and playback is what I expect from these type of devices. I really couldn't care too much about computer connectivity although SS 3.4 seems to be OK in that regard. A SIMPLE High Quality device that does what it's designed to do AS SIMPLY AS POSSIBLE is all I (and I expect a lot of others if they are really honest with themselves) want from the product. The screen of the RH10 is a beauty that would be nice on the RH1 but there might be issues with this screen that we don't know about yet such as it's longevity or power consumption and I can imagine that in discreet recording situations a bright screen like the RH10 might cause unwelcome or unwanted attention. We'll have to wait and see what the device is really like. Don't forget this is primarily a RECORDING medium so whilst a large screen is perfect for playback, it's not required for recording. As others have intimated recording level meters would be a useful FUNCTION (and I mean a Function not a FEATURE) to have on a recording device. Cheers -K

If you use NTFS you can set the default cluster size to 4K instead of 16 K or whatever --so this problem shouldn't occur again. With large disks which most USB drives are now the default cluster size can be as much as 32 K or even 64 Kso if you have even a 1 byte file it will still appear as a 32K or 64 K file on disk which is where your wasted space can come from --especially if you write and delete smallish files a lot. Also external disks are usually USB these days -- not really central to the slow loading time of SS. Incidentally the actual data transfer rate is often not the limiting factor. You'll find a bottle neck in the device's buffer size (cheaper disks have a fairly small buffer) so you'll get "Paging" as the O/S has to write the data somewhere when the Disk buffer (or cache) is full. The buffer is used since memory is faster than Disk as a storage area which can be written directly to disk using the Disk's owm controller rather than using the OS itself. In other words Windows thinks it's done the I/O so can go and do another task even though the disk write hasn't completed yet. Thsi makes the whole system much more efficient. The bigger the disk's internal buffer the less Windows has to stop what it's doing in order to service the disk write. SATA and disks which have their own controller cards are far better as they do their own processing --almost NONE of the computer's CPU is used in Reading / writing to the disk. Internal OS design including paging and Disk sub systems are beyond the scope of what the original poster intended I'm sure but there's plenty of decent info on the web for those interested. Cheers -K

So small a time as not to be significant. Less than any of your options above. Probably less than 1/2 sec and even tha's being generous. Running AMD 64 single CPU with 2GB RAM and SATA drives. Your main problem (assuming you have at least 512KB or better 1GB RAM) will be 99.9% for sure SLOOOOOOOW discs. Slow disks really do slow a machine down especially if you don't have a lot of spare RAM so the computer will have to write a lot of "Pages" to slow Disk paging space. For most people not doing a lot of CPU intensive work and SS is not particularly CPU bound the main bottleneck are DISKS but this is so rarely talked about even on the most "Geekish" of computer forums. Unless you are doing a lot of Video editing, Photoshop or other image processing work or editing really HUGE audio files (normal CD files even WAV don't count here as HUGE files) CPU usage on a home computer or even an office workstation will not be a problem --you probably on average are only using about 15% (and that's generous) of the CPU power available. Domestic machines are invariably "Highly I/O bound" which means it's the I/O subsytem, primarily the disks) which get the most usage and if there (as there usually is) a problem or bottleneck here you will really notice it. So Get the FASTEST disks you can afford, (you can always move them to a new computer when you buy a new machine) and don't be mislead about sooper dooper performance with RAID. RAID is primarily designed to protect against data loss if a disk fails although in some circumstances it *can* improve performance but you need to know EXACTLY what you are doing. ABOVE ALL if you must use the IDE connections on your mother board for your main disks(the standard ribbon connections with the 40 or 80 pin plugs) DON'T SHARE A CD/DVD WRITER on the same connector as a DISK. Better to have 2 disks on an IDE connector rather than a Disk and a CD/DVD device together. Just get some FAST disks. Fragmentation is not an issue any more especially if you are using NTFS. You can waste HOURS defragmenting a disk with almost ZERO improvment at the end of the execise. These type of tools were OK in the "Good old DOS days" but should be forgotten once and for all. Cheers -K

Running an AMD 64 bit cpu with the OEM 64 bit windows causes SS 3.4 to not work when using 1GB minidiscs. Here's a screenshot of the problem http://www.1kyle.com/ss34prob.jpg If I boot up the ordinary retail 32 bit version of Windows on this machine (Windows XP pro with service pack applied --SP1) works fine. Here's what happens with 32 bit windows http://www.1kyle.com/ss34ok.jpg Use the OEM supplied 64 bit version (should in theory be better on a 64 bit cpu) then CRASH CRASH or at least the application doesn't work. Funnily enough the 60/74/80 min discs in Hi-SP mode work 100% OK with SS3.4 and 64 bit windows it's just the 1GB discs that fail in 64 bit windows. Computers I'm beginning to really HATE them as what works perfectly one day doesn't seem work the next. Cheers -K

I'm always greatful to "The Early adopters" as they can "get the bugs" out of equipment before we "lesser mortals" get our grubby mits on it at a much cheaper price. However in this particular instance I'd caution them to "Hold their Horses" for a little while longer yet. There's going to be an almighty battle between the HD format (not Hard Disk BTW) and the Blu-Ray with no quarter given or prisoners taken. It's more or less Toshiba Vs Sony with Philips waiting in the wings to join the winning side. It wouldn't be so bad if the two formats weren't 100% incompatable. At least with DVD-R(W) and DVD+R(W) equipment reads and writes BOTH formats. DVD-RAM is an exception as it was primarily designed for long lasting backup and data archiving, however it does have the excellent advantage in that you can actually record a TV program AND PLAY BACK another program (from the same disc) at the same time --a very very nice facility if you've ever used a DVD-RAM recorder. Some Panasonic computer drives will also read / write DVD-RAM as well as the other formats so even here with a more specialized DVD format you can get a single device to handle the various different formats. With Blu Ray or HD only 1 winner will be there and if you back the wrong horse you'll have a load of unreadable media as it really ios War to the Death between SONY and TOSHIBA. This is one case where I'm quite happy to sit on the sidelines and with external hard disks becoming cheaper and cheaper a 1 TB disk (that's 1000 GB for our more "numerically challenged" members) is now available for around 235 USD amazingly) and with film content being available "On Demand" by Satellite TV or even download one could even argue that DVD is a medium whose time has passed even before it has reached maturity. Cheers -K

I recommend this little article to anybody interested in serious audio. It's not technical and simple explains what a lot of people feels is hapenning in the Music Biz today. http://www.audioholics.com/news/editorials...ngDownAudio.php Enjoy. Cheers -K

The bit about losing your library doesn't apply to an MD unit as the most you would lose if the device gets stolen or lost is 1 DISK, and if the MD unit gets broken then you probably still haven't even lost ONE disk (the disk will still in all probability be OK). My inherent disklike of Hard Disk units is based on these 2 factors primarily. First Hard disk units are relatively sensitive pieces of kit and need to be handled carefully. Unless you've hot something like a PRO TASCAM or MARANTZ unit costing over 1000 USD and probably more a much cheaper MD unit will survive a lot of knocks and bangs far better than a Hard Disk unit --certainly a Consumer grade Hard disk unit. Secondly Hard disks consume an inordant amount of power compared with MD units, certainly for recording purposes. The payback time might be "reasonable" but recording large volumes of data (PCM mode) with an Hard Disk unit will just EAT batteries. Hard Disks have a number of advantages such as larger capacity (of course) and much faster read / write times but they do have drawbacks when used in a small portable unit. As for carrying more than one unit around well if you are doing a PROFESSIONAL recording session as a journalist or a musician you'd almost certainly have some backup gear as equipment can AND DOES fail usually at the most inconvenient time. OK for a lot of individuals this could be "over the top" but I think I'd still rather rely on 2 MD recorders than a single Hard Disk device. (As a Photographer I wouldn't dream of going out on a paid assignment without at least ONE backup camera). Of course it boils down to what you prefer in the end and as this is a MD forum it's not unnatural for a lot of users to prefer MD (if one hates MD why are they on the Forum other than for the purpose of Trolling which thankfully this board doesn't seem to have a problem with). Whatever you use Enjoy. Cheers -K

Playing a SP disk (older legacy format @ 292) which was made digitally using the Synchro mode on my MD/CD deck combo (CP500MD) I notice the following. Loudest Old legacy RZ90 unit almost the same NH1, Hacked RH10. --Might be "psychological" but the NH1 seems to produce a very slightly higher output --digital amp maybe just don't know. N10 least output (I think it's only 3+3 mw and I'm not sure if it's hackable might be but I haven't done it). In Hi-MD mode I can't tell the difference between the NH1 and the RH10 (volume Hacked). It's possible that in Legacy mode the reason why the older unit sounds slightly louder is that it's playing in its "Native Mode" whereas some sort of processing is taking place in the Hi-MD units for playing legacy sounds. This might be pure B/S I just don't know, however repeated blind testing confirms the above results. Cheers -K

I'm not sure if this has been covered --sure it has but there appears to be a little confusion on this. However I've made a few HI-MD disks on the RH10 @ 352 kbps. These play back PERFECTLY on a NHF800 and the NH1. Whether there is any point in using the 352 codec on these units I don't know but the NH1 with a proper line out gives great results when played into a decent Hi-Fi system. Actually the NH1 is pretty good at 256 as well but given the capacity of the disks why not use the 352 even if the performance improvement is only marginal. On a 1GB disk you still get over 7 hours at 352 in any case and seems to be the most reasonable compromise in file size (vs PCM / WAV) and quality. The line out of the NH1 certainly is an improvement over using the Headphone outpit of the RH10 (even when volume hacked). That's what lets the RH10 down in my view. It doesn't have a proper line out so it's really designed for recording (of course) and listening on the move. Of course you can play it via USB through a computer and use the optical out of the computer's sound card into your Hi-Fi gear but I don't always want to have a computer around. I'm glad the new RH1 "appears" to have a proper line out. Cheers -K

Booting from a Hi-MD unit is another matter however First you'll have to ensure that your BIOS supports booting from USB devices Then you'll have to burn a suitable boot image otherwise your device won't load the OS. Creating a USB boot image is not always straight forward but in general once you've found the boot image part such as you can extract from Windows (Microsoft.img) then use something like Nero to create a Bootable CD (even though it's a USB drive) image with the boot image part being the microsoft.img or other boot image and the other parameters set as follows NO EMULATION Nr of Sectors 4 A bit of googling might help as creating USB bootable images is still a pretty much hit and miss affair depending on your motherboard and bios options. Copyimg / creating an ISO on your MD as DATA and then burning this to a "normal CD" will work however so if you are say at work and want to download a Linux distribution you can of course do this to your MD unit and then create the CD when you get home. Most workplaces don't normally have directly available CD burning facilities available to "Normal Users" i.e people like you and me but unless you are unfortunate enough to suffer having to use Windows NT (Windows "No Thanks" or Windows "Neanderthal") most USB devices will work on corporate / workplace machines without you needing to be in "Administrator Mode". Good luck Cheers -K

Just adding here -- Edit using SS or even simple Burner for adding track and disc info. (Cut and paste) --It's easier than adding this info just using the recorder. For splitting / merging tracks then you can do this on the actual recorder. Cheers -K .

Is there a Digital CD to MD facility on these units either at real time or in "High Speed Sync" mode probably 2X real time but might be 4X. If there is will the "Synchro mode" record in all the formats the equipment can record. I can't read Japanese so downloading the manual from the Internet doesn't help. I'm definitely interested in getting at least one of these Onkyo units especially if the total lack of silence from SONY on any HI MD decks or mini systems. Cheers -K

Compressing in a buffer doesn't actually have to be done "Lossy" or at least doesn't involve another "lossy" transcoding operation. The signal from the minidisc can be compressed again (losslessly) into loads of formats even ZIP / LZW etc if necessary as the machine won't PLAY this directly since it's just data held in a buffer. This will be de-compressed again just before playing into the EXACT copy of the signal going INTO the buffer whether or not the original signal was in PCM or any other codec. Hardware compression / decompression can be achieved very quickly. As for whether or not losseless formats are any point on a portable device is really a question of what you want the device FOR. Simply as a playback device you have a valid point but remember the MD is designed above all as a portable RECORDING device and the PCM mode here makes a considerable difference. Solid state players have a disadvantage on the whole due to the expensive nature of the solid state device (even a 2GB card still costs around 120 USD compared with 7 or so USD for a 1GB blank minidisc) and in the cheaper players at least is not ususally removable so when it's full no quick swapping in a new disc to continue recording. Hard disc players suffer from other problems mainly of high current consumption and lower "ruggedness". Hard discs are notoriously more fragile than MD's or Solid state devices and I'd hesitate to use these where knocks and bashes are the order of the day certainly for recording in a "Media Pack rat" frenzy. Whatever the "Dinosaur Technology" appearance some people associate with MD's there really AREN'T other comparable CHEAP and convenient recording systems around at the moment. OK I've looked at the very nice Marantz solid state (removable) pro recorder but you can't compare one of these at around 1600 USD with a small convenient portable MD recorder at around 170 USD. The MD will be around for a long time yet even if the new RH1 is the LAST unit to be made. (Hand held computers and organisers are still more cumbersome to use than "Pencil and Paper" notebooks in a lot of situations and in spite of decent SAT NAV gear reading a LARGE map is often easier to use than looking at some of the fiddly little screens on the cheaper SAT NAV equipment around). And Yes I WILL get the RH1. Cheers -K

For Kenwood why not use the Cable that converts the Changer switching unit on the Radio to an Aux in. Just plug the cable into Din socket on the back of the radio. It's as simple as that. You then just press source on the radio until you get the cable input. Plug your HI-MD unit into the minijack on the cable and you'll now find your Hi-MD unit plays through the radio. I've posted a picture and details of this cable on the Forum so do a search or search for recent posts by user 1kyle to find it. It's simple to fit. No drilling etc required just Plug 'n Go. I've found the link http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showt...4369&hl=kenwood Cheers -K

I really like Hi-Sp @ 352 (or even 256) provided it's recorded from an original WAV source. I still like the old SP as well as I use this for "legacy Gear". I tend to have 2 versions of a CD one at Hi-SP and one at SP. For listening I usually use 74 / 80 min discs and religously only ever have 1CD per MD even if it's a 45 min CD on a 74 or even 80 min disc as standard MD disks are cheap enough currently and it's really easy to keep your CD's / MD's in decent order. I use the 1GB discs exclusively for live recording or making "temporary" music play lists if I'm going on a LONG trip and don't want to take a few of the smaller capacity MD's. I've still got about around 800 spare 74 / 80 MD's so I won't run out any time at all and these store nicely in two racks near my main deck one labelled MD and one labelled Hi-MD. Since I get the VAT back (Photographic Business) and as these discs qualify as "Studio equipment" I can get a HUGE discount by buying in lots of 200 (standard MD's) which is what I tend to do. I won't be getting rid of my legacy gear any time soon. If an affordable Hi-MD deck had come out then that would have been a different matter. I'm looking at an Onkyo but for my listening requirements in my house I need 3 Decks for listening in different rooms (Photographic Working Studio, "Music Listening room" that has NO TV in it and the conservatory). 3 X Onkyo is not a cheap option considering the current decks I have all work EXCELLENTLY. I also usually HATE listening on computers in any case. After a few hours of using Photoshop etc. (I Am a professional photographer) I've had ENOUGH of computers after working so I'll relax well away from anything that even looks like a computer. I'm usually on the net when I'm making large photographic printouts as these can take AGES and passes the time while waiting for the images to appear. (Never mind A3 --I'm talking about poster size stuff A2, A1 and even A0 etc.) Bog standard legacy SP is not bad at all if recorded from a decent source. I have 2 decks that copy DIGITALLY CD's to MD's at 2X real time (High speed synchro mode). I wouldn't do any live recordings now using legacy gear as Hi-MD is perfect especially in PCM mode now that SS 3.4 allows transfers both ways. The manuals confirm that Digital copies are made (legacy gear) when using the high speed synchro mode and this can be verified by trying to make a 3rd gen digital copy when SCMS rears it's ugly head. Since I have the source making extra copies is actually not a problem anyway. It's a real shame SONY didn't (or hasn't yet) produced Hi-MD decks but so far nothing has made me even think of abandoning the MD format. I'll still be using it when even the world famous Kensington (London) Science Museum doesn't know what an MD is. Cheers -K

Onkyo ?? has a Hi-MD system out I'm actually thinking of getting one myself but you'll have to get it from Japan via Audiocubes and it won't be the cheapest piece of gear either. Cheers -K

Quote from the CMT CP500MD manual (Page 17 English version). .............. Recording a CD on an MD with High Speed - CD-MD High speed Syncro recording You can make a digital recording of a CD on an MD at twice the normal speed of CD to MD synchro recording. In Step 3 of Recording a CD on an MD press Syncro Rec repeatedly until HISPEED SYNC appears in the display in step 4 "x2" appears in the display. During high speed recording you cannot listen to the playback sound ............ seems pretty clear that digital recording is performed here. I'm also sure the MXD D4 CD / MD unit does it digitally as well although I haven't got the manual immediately to hand. Since CD's (especially at the time these units / decks were current) didn't have any copy protection etc. etc. there really wasn't any reason NOT to include a digital copy facility. Actually you can confirm that by trying to make a digital copy of the MD you've just made by playing in a deck with an optical out. You can't make a 3rd generation copy (SCMS) you have to do it via optical out to optical in on a computer and then the optical out on your sound card to a portable MD with an optical in. This always works for as many times as you need further copies. The sound card seems to strip off or ignores SCMS bits in the output stream. I'm not sure of the actual mechanism however but it works with my gear. Cheers

The NH1 has a line out if you can't get the new device or don't want to wait. The display is not very good however (1 line) but the remote is fine --probably the best remote in the entire series of MD portable gear since its inception way back in 1992. With the remote the limited display of the NH1 doesn't matter. The RH10 however has a "pretty clean" output even at full volume -- apply the volume hack if yours is a European model. I'd prefer a line out but the RH10 is fine as is. The display si just fabulous too. I'm certainly also interested in the new RH1 --especially if it is going to be the "Last" unit. Cheers -K

Probs with these types of players (MP3 Solid State and / or Hard Disc units). 1) If you lose it, break it or it gets stolen etc. then you've LOST your library --you'll have to get another one and re-compile / re-create your library all over again -- and if you haven't got a computer near you or don't have the music available on the computer -- Re-Ripping time again. 2) When the device is full you have to decide what you want to erase so you can add more music. 3) Creating decent playlists on these types of devices is always a bit fiddly --often you want specific playlists --you don't need to sequentially listen through hours of music. 4) with larger capacity devices just managing the library is not such a simple task as you might think. 5) Hard Disks are not particularly robust --these are relatively fragile pieces of gear which won't take anything like the same wear or tear as a solid state device or a minidsic recorder. Minidisc recorders have in particular these adavantages 1) Unlimited storage -- just take whatever complilations you want with you 2) If you lose / breeak the device or even if it gets stolen --not so likely as "the masses" haven't a clue what a MD player / recorder is anyway you've only lost the disk that's in it (one disk). 3) superb record facilities. Some Ipod thingy's have limited recording facilities but awkward to use and unless you are using something like the Marantz solid state recorder (at around 1500 USD) no PCM record mode either. 4) It's easy to manipulate music collections at a Disk level --much easier than organising 1000 tracks on a HD device. 5) Disks can be transferred between machines and devices -- AFAIK most HD / Solid state devices don't come with removable media so you are stuck with using that particular device. I suspect that even if you could use removable media you might run into all sorts of DRM issues when transferring solid state cards between devices. Incidentally even 1GB solid state media costs a lot more than a 1GB minidisk so if you want a music collection stored on 1GB removable solid state devices it will cost you A FORTUNE even today. People's mood changes and it's nice to be able to stick the approriate disk into the MD for playback. It's a real pain using a Hard Disk device for manipulating loads of different playlists. In the end use what you like best but remember your modes and tastes change over time and you might prefer the flexibilty of devices like the MD compared with Hard Disk or Solid State devices. Cheers -K