NtN

I swear to you that this is not made up but i was talking to a friend of mine at school and he says: "Oh so guess what happened as i was listening to u2 ipod today" me: "wha?" "right channel.. gone" So that's 3/3 people I know whose broke - but his did last a fair'ish' 6months whereas me and the other guy only got just under 2months. He's going to get his repaired but really I don't want to get mine done because i didn't like them in teh first place that much and i've found the panasonic equivalents (secretly better) at only £18 ebay. I don't think it's a matter of us being unlucky .. but you guys being lucky. Also - I took so much care of these earphones .. as well as my friend - we're both pretty sad and are constantly obsessing over like placing our walkmans or woteva down gently and making sure it never gets scratched... ... actually we're really sad :S

I experienced similar problems and have no doubt it is to do with sonicstage. I have two compilation discs.. and i really wanted to move one album from one disc to another so instead of finding thd CD and reconverting it i thought i would just transfer it to my computer and then to the disc i wanted it on. LIttle did i know that SonicStage 2.3 would have a little panic attack about it and i ended up losing EVERYTHING on that disc. I also got the format msg error and i had no choice but to reformat the disc in Hi-MD mode - I have since upgraded to 3.0 but haven't tried transferring back to computer yet - I'm not sure i want to risk all those albums i spent so long converting! :S

ATRAC3 in my opinion at 132 is just good enough to keep artifacts quiet - however any lower than 132k for ATRAC3 and you WILL be able to hear artifacts - and anything below 132 on ATRAC3 for me sounds awful - 105 (only sometimes sounds alright) ATRAC3plus however is much better at lower bitrates as previous guy said - At 64k/sec in earphones there to me are so few artifacts its unbelievable - in fact i only use Hi-LP for my music now i mean - if you get a good set of earphones, good equalizer settings it will sound great - i mean like you'll think this is great quality - its only when you listen to the original that you notice the difference (only when you compare it) - the original will sound much more 'airy'. LP2 (132k/sec - ATRAC3) sounds perfect to me (although for nearly everyone else you could do better) - but vs. Hi-LP in terms of battery life and amount you can store on a disc. i choose Hi-LP just mainly because you can't hear where the audio has been stripped on this codec - you just can't.... P.s. varies with certain kidns of music - Jazz/Slow/RnB i can hear artifacts on Hi-Lp but all other music (Which is mainly what i listen to) you would find it hard to hear artifacts. Besides if you get the odd jazz album like i have just pump it up to LP2 and it will sound great again. Availible bitrates: ATRAC3: 66k (LP4), 105k, 132K (LP2) ATRAC3plus: 48k (so sony can say "45hours on one disc) - not v.good) 64k (Hi-LP), 256k (Hi-SP) Dumb on sony's behalf because obviously ATRAC3plus is 'more efficient' codec and is definitely an advancement yet they still want us to rely on old ATRAC3 to fill the gaps between 64 and 256 - of which they is really only one decent choice 132k - bleh

The only thing that i can say is stay away from those bloody MDR-EX71SL - they are great earphones - they are just not great enough to pay the ridiculous amount of money sony think they're worth - if you get these for a REALLY cheap price then you may as well try them out - under £20 = good. BUT STAY AWAY FROM THEM STILL (lol) - if you look at the huge amount of people whose earphones broke you will see that these are just not reliable. I was happily listening along about 3 days ago when the right channel just blew and stop working completely - i then went online found even more people who had the same problem (no fix) - and then I phoned up a friend because he's all knowledgable and he told me that another guy in our year had the same friggin problem!!! How unreliable must these headphones be if they break this easily! just stay away please! Not mentioned on the list are the Panasonic RPHJE50 In-Earphones - i managed to get it on ebay but they will not arrive probably for another 2 weeks - they are actually armed with better specs than the MDR-EX71SL and they're more rare (although they're like hugely popular in japan) - and they cost a bit less. Still just stay away from thsoe bloody sony's.. ugh... i feel so cheated... £29 gone - for what? two months of average headphones! blah

Do you ever plan to come out with more ATRAC3plus bitrates - rather than relying on the previous and old ATRAC3 to fill in the mid-bitrate ranges from 64-256 - i mean because ATRAC3plus is a huge advancement in my opinion - it just sounds so good for sizes like 64k/sec - but it is still a tad too low ... a bitrate like 96/ 128k would be great - but ATRAC3 at 132 is too big - and well you could do better quality wise. Why doesn't sonicstage support certain vbr mp3s... I have quite a few random mp3s that just don't work - i don't know whether it was the program i used to rip it but I still think that your mp3 decoder in Sonicstage is pretty poor - because there are so many mp3s that i'm forced to convert to wav, then reimport, then reconvert, then transfer... so much more complicated then convert and transfer. Too many times this has been asked: MP3 support 1st GEN HI-MD! PLEASE OH PLEASE! And to second someone else - just how well/bad has hi-md done - i mean ... i still haven't found anything about it's sales success - in fact loads of people don't know what a hi-md is.. which is kinda worrying.

You won't love them for long - mine broke 2 hours ago - AFTER ONLY 2 MONTHS OF USE - and by the sounds of loads of other people.. you'll be lucky if yours last you more htan 6 months. why? because the build quality on these things is so horrendous that even with moderate and careful, gentle use (i was treating these things SO CAREFULLY), the copper inside will corrode and come undone (something technical) - and you will notice a huge loss in volume (to the point where you can't hear) and then it will completely disappear. I thought that they were good earphones.. but for me they always lacked in the vocal areas. These earphones now in my opinion plain and simply suck. I spent a good £25 (wwhich for me is a lot) and now i can't even return the bloody things. I'm just so angry right now.. because I treated these stupid things so well - and i was relaxing on the couch... listening to my hi-md when the right channel just died. It came back .. (much lower volume) and then it died again. What gets me is that there are SO MANY people complaining about this - and who had the same problem as me - and yet nothing has been done. It is horrendous. Just go get the Panasonic RP-HJE50 - and return the ones you have now if you're not liking them because they will die.... trust me.... if you google search "MDR-EX71SL channel dead" or something like that you will get a worringly large amount of people who experienced this problem.. you can even see it on amazon reviews if you look at lowest rated reviews first. I was only slightly aware of how many people's earphones broke before buying them.. but i thought stupidly - 'hey.. it won't happen to me because well stuff like this never has and i take care of it so well' - i was wrong... there are other - better/similar price earphones out there.

Sony_man you've probably ended up getting the attention of quite a lot of audiophiles - although i'm no no no way near an expert on any of the topics i just know these things for a fact: 1. Type of Codec doesn't mean more or less bass. (someone already mentioned). 2. LP2 - 132k/sec ATRAC3 DOES IN NO WAY SOUND 'bad'! It sounds great in fact - yes this is just opinionated... but there is no way that you can say it is bad - no absolutely no way. 132k atrac3 sounds very good - and IN MINE AND MANY OTHERS opinion it sounds significantly crisper and fuller than mp3 at 128 (mp3 always sounded a tiny bit tinny to me - but not to the point that i would say mp3 was a rubbish codec). 3. Depends on not only the actual player but other factors. - Equalizer and Earphones mainly. The ones supplied with my NH900 were pretty poor, making everything sound muddy but i have to say the bass was very 'large'. The new headphones that i got to replace them MDR-EX71SLB - were so much clearer and the bass was noticeably weaker. AS long as you got a good set of earphones, good source material (encoded from) - then your bass should sound fine. Fine tune it with your EQ as well. I'm not really sure why i'm replying to this.. i guess i just get fed up with people bashing the lower bitrate codecs, putting people off MD just because they're audiophiles and really wish there was some way they could have everything in PCM without the drawbacks of size and battery life. UgH NOt all of us are like you.. yes and not all of us are like me. I can understand how someone would dislike Hi-LP (64k/sec ATRAC3plus) - but say that LP2 sounds bad is just beyond belief. It's all in your head!!!! LIstening tests will friggin prove this! BAAAAAA

www.bargaining4all.com Get them there - i got mine from there... it took about 2 weeks to arrive from China by post though but it's also cheap... i got mine for £11 incl. delivery Charging times - ummmm all i have to say is dont use the charging cradle... on my nh900 it just continues to charge and charge (longest i've seen is about 12hours)... and is probably damaging the battery in some way. The normal charging method by plugging the adapter directly into the NH900 and pressing the stop button for me took about 4hrs. Also do not be worried because your hi-md says 2bars left or something. I was listening for about four-5 hours (constant track changing, fidding etc.) and the battery went down to 2bars.. but it remained on 2 bars for the next 3-4 days in which i listened about 8 hours. This is on Hi-LP by the way.. and also take into account that i was changing discs, tracks, volume, fiddling around (cos i can't help it) - and that it was over a few days. - I still plan to do a test where i just leave it running once fully charged to find out how long exactly i can get out of it.. but i always want to listen to my hi-md so it just keeps getting put off

For effiency Hi-LP beats LP2 - I mean what do you expect? LP2 is more than double the bitrate of Hi-LP so it's a pretty strange question to ask as to which will sound better. The question really is does it sound so much better that you would cut down from 34 hours to a measly 14 hours (or whatever it is for LP2) and the answer for me would be no. I use Hi-LP all the time except for a few Jazz albums because ATRAC3plus doesn't handle well music where there is SO MUCH going not to mention the soft sounds of the music. etc. If you were however to do Hi-LP vs. LP2 in all aspects (quality is just as important as size) then Hi-LP would win. I'm just still extremely angry that Sony only gave us 64 and 256 (which is really just for audiophiles). If you get a decent set of earphones and turn OFF all that equalizer rubbish on your hi-md hi-lp sounds AMAZING. First time listening I was worried that i had clicked the wrong bitrate or something. The thing is with Hi-LP if you were to compare it to the original CD - you would clearly hear that the CD sounds more sharper, detailed and 'airy' . BUT if you were just to convert and listen... you would find it v. hard to pick out artifacts because they are virtually inaudible. This is why it is so good, because it sounds perfectly normal - MP3 at 128 fails in this area because you can sometimes clearly hear where data has been stripped and clearly hear artifacts. Now all we need is for Sony to give us ATRAC3plus 96k which would be the perfect replacement for that awkward 132k ATRAC3. Also we want a 128 and 192k ATRAC3plus to replace that awfully large 256k - I mean if 132K ATRAC3 sounds amazing... 192 ATRAC3plus would surely be enough for CD quality - 256k is simply overkill. Also 105k ATRAC3 seems to suck in my opinion - you can hear artifacts way more than Hi-LP. Even if 96k ATRAC3plus was 'released' i would still probably stick with my 64k because well it takes too long to reconvert everything and i'm so happy with it already that there would be no need to convert.

There was an article on minidisc.org (i think) that the stupid makers of sonicstage were going to get help from a proper software company in order to improve it because they are finally realising how much it sucks. It can perform it's function.. just not easily. Things that need to change are: 1. Library Management - i mean who the hell uses this... it wastes so much of our time. 2. Mp3 file support - yes it supports mp3s... but not VBR and mp3s which have not bee made to fit sonicstage's requirements... there is no point to this.. all it does is make me have to convert all to WAV and then rename every song... bloody annoyance. 3. Bulkyness... it takes way too long to load... there is just simply way too much going on.. most of it we don't even need OR WANT! 4. A new name (lol)... please i just hope they do come up with a new name for the program because the thought about using sonicstage makes me feel a bit queasy... ugh.. just saying it makes me feel a bit weird. Once the program is fixed and other uploading facilities are 'fine-tuned' made better etc. Then Hi-MD/NetMD will be amazing... but with so many drawbacks for the format as there currently are... without a revamp of it's software etc. it will still always kinda suck.

Thanks for the advice, esp. Nismo... I remembered that having rushed into buying this Hi-MD I wish i waited for the all companies to release their versions so I could get the best one. I mean a sleep timer on this NH900 would have been wicked because I nearly always listen to Hi-MD in bed cos I can't sleep. So I'll think you're right in advising me to wait for the next gen sony hdd player. I mean cos I can just give this to my unsuspecting brother who'll think it's really cool and i'll get me somethign even cooler. Therefore I wouldn't have wasted a lot of money cos well at my age.. my money is basically still the same as my brother's money. Thank you both.. guess i'll be twiddling my thumbs for the next year - but sometimes I do feel like i did get the better option.. it's weird.. sometimes i love it sometimes i want to burn it! :S

Thanks for the advice.. but i'm really looking for any estimates that anyone can give. I really can't afford to lose out by much over £30 IN TOTAL and so I need to aim for something like £180 - does anyone think this can be done ... because the actual unit is in very good condition.. although there are 2 !MINOR! scratches .. but everything else is in great condition. oh.. everytime I look at that Nw-HD3 .. i know it's for me..... just gotta have patience... i probably won't be selling for another month if i'm selling at all. And the only way i'm selling is if i don't go too much in the red. Thanks for any help again.

Since the introduction of Sony's NW-HD3 ive just been looking at my Hi-MD and feeling cheated. and thinking.. if only i had waiteD! Argh I would like to sell it now because i've had enough of converting, especially on my rubbish compie, changing disc, and just everything. How much would I get for a v.good condition MZNH900 + Five Hi-MD Blanks... I really would like to make something in the range of £150-£170 pounds - so that I make quite a chunk of my money back. Any advice/guide to selling etc. would be helpful... I'm thinking the 5 Blanks should boost the cost greatly Thanks for any help

Just like to say that the battery supplied with Hi-MD units is a 900Mah one... around that anyway... and i've recently seen although limited edition 1750Mah ones which means twice the playback length. Just another reason to buy a Hi-MD.... battery life on an ipod decreases the more you use it and it costs *too much* to replace it. You can easily replace your Hi-MD rechargeable battery for about £12 if you shop around on the internet. And you'll probably be getting better and much longer lasting one that you originally had.