wombat

It seems to me that Sony has forgotten about their spirit and philosphy that enabled their domination in the 80's and (perhaps) much of the 90's. Being inflexible and not giving consumers what they want will ALWAYS send any corporation to its grave - there are numerous historic examples for them to study. Obviously, their product (HI-MD in this case) should AT LEAST match their competitors in features, ie full mp3 and wma support, color screen, and compatible interface with car-audio and docking station with good quality speakers and sub-woofer. In fact, if they want a product like the HI-MD to survive, they should exceed these basic requirments - ie, they should give us at least a reason to buy their stuff. Am I just pointing out the very fundamental basic here? I mean, they have even stopped producing acceptable earphones, like mdr-e484, 575, 747, 848, 868 etc (and no matching color) for their Hi-MD players. I hope they'll lift their game. The latest Hi-MD models and in fact the latest A3000 HD player certainly have not, in my eyes, improved their position. Equipment: MZ-NH1 Phones: Sony mdr-e888sp, mdr-e848lp, mdr-e747, mdr-e484

Hi there. I am new to the minidisc world. I recently bought a MZ-NH1, and like many others, was initially quite disappointed with the sound quality. especially at atrac3plus 64kbps. I then experimented with a few other earphones I have, and it became obvious that the problem was the supplied earphone (which is absolutely crappy and does not do justice to the MZ-NH1). I digged out an earphone that I bought like 15 years ago back in my high school days, MDR-E484 (top of the range at that time, and was left in my drawer unused all this time) and the sound comes out absolutely awesome: crystal clear sound, thumping bass....even at 64kbps I still found it perfectly acceptabe. Apparently the MDR-E484 has very high regards and is rated much superior to the current top model MDR-E888. So, do yourself a favour, and get a decent earphone for your Hi-MD unit. It also begs the question: one would expect quality of a company's products to improve over time; if the E484 is so good, why did they stop producing it.