Breepee2

Well well well, Sony seems to be getting the point, slowly but steadily. Maybe they were so scared when I sold all my MD gear a while ago and bought an MP3 player that they decided to try and win me back 3 must have's left on my list with points which Sony must get right before I buy MD again: 1) Atrac Lossless (or FLAC offcourse ) on the device itself. 2) Support for more operating systems, preferably by making some libs freely available and telling us how they work so that we can build our own application around them (I'd kill to have my MD-player show up in Rhythmbox ). 3) A Deck! HiFi without a deck is no HiFi! Yep, it's me, always finding something to whine about. I demand perfection, nothing less And Sony, you can do that, 80% of it is complete And this post contains a helluvalot smilies See how kind and gentle I really am

With BasicX I see the adbot, with Refault not. What's up?

I find keeping my Rio from falling on it's wheel a helluva lot easier than working with SS Cheers!

Fires are incidental, not common

Forums are no good reflection of the product. Most people will noyl come there when they got a problem. I you look here MD isn't rock solid either (while I've never ever had a glitch).

Karma =! Carbon. Carbon has no build quality problems (Karma neither btw), a wheel constructed like that just can't handle high falls. Treat it gentile and it's not going to break. Some people are just not that careful, then shit happens. It's your own fault, not Rio's.

I was aware of that before purchase. The wheel is actually quite sturdy. As long as you take a little care not to drop it on the wheel (or not at all, like I do) there's nothing going on. The unit feels pretty solid.

Besides the marketshare, a professional company just makes sure it's users are not locked into anything.

Well, I seriously doubt my dual Xeon 3.2GHz is the choking point here, both programs are the only ones that succeeded in locking up this machine, never seen that before. And only about 3GB took an hour to tranfer, it was even as MP3. Never used iTunes with a pod, but my Rio is just drag n drop.

WIth units with big drives you'll probably want to fill it *fast*. Sony is no good at this point, it will take hours to fill a 20GB Sony MP3 player through SS or Vaio tools. Also you'll want a device that navigates this big amount of data easily and at least Sony's HD1 was a real hassle. Decide first how much you need on the road and what else is important. I've just settled for a 5GB Rio Carbon, because of physical size, battery life, soound quality, ease of navigation and method of transferring music (no application needed). You probably have some different preferences so I suggest to have a look around. dapreview.com http://www6.head-fi.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=22 to name a few usefull sites. Also use google to find out more.

Of course I used the same and not the standard headphones. They're Sony MDR EX71's btw. I also hooked it up to my HiFi set. And about the bitrates: I've always been a fan of high quality (thus high bitrates). Old SP versus Lame 3.97b1 preset standard.

OK, I'll confess... I am weak... I've just folded under pressure... I've switched camps! As of today I'm an MP3-player user. Until a month ago I was still holding on to me Precioussss Sharp MDMT190, which, despite the realtime recording, was a solid unit with superb sound quality. The thing was that I didn't want to wait anymore to record in realtime. I was left with two options: HiMD and Sonicstage or an MP3-player After having toyed with NWHD1 I downright hated SS. Some can bare the pain, I really couldn't. Also: the crippled MP3 playback and the absence of both HiFi equipment and a lossless format (thereby rendering it useless for a durable archive) we're taken into account. I decided to slightly adjust my needs for a future protable music companion: instead of being an allround and all-in HiFi-compatible solution, the device could be an on-to-go buddy only intended for portably uses (away missions my inner Kirk would say). I'd keep the HiFi part of it separate. After much hesitation (MD is not put aside lightly) I purchased a Rio Carbon. I was said to feature one of the best audio qualities that can be had on an MP3 player and after my Sharp I really wouldn't go lower in the food chain. By the way, the NWHD1 sounded horrible and some other cheapass MP3-player I'd tried too, so all the more hesitation to switch away from my Sharp. Although it sounds way better than any MP3-player I've tried (including the horrible iPod), it does not sound better than good ol' Sharp. It's almost on par, but not quite. It's hard to describe, but it seems there some sort of 'veil'. Some can be changed through the EQ, but not all. On the 'download' side of things, the Carbon is heaven: just drop your MP3's thanks to USB Mass Storage support. On startup, the unit selfdatabases every music and you can browse by artist/album/genre/year. Navigation is allright, though the unit is slow at times and the gui sort of hangs for a moment. The Sharp felt snappier. Carbon can show more info because of the tags though. Overall: the ability to quickly and hassle-freely transfer music is well worth it. Of course, depending on it for HiFi uses is much less an option than with the Sharp: that just was perfect audio to me. The Rio is not. Good thing, I've a decent HiFi set to compensate, but still. It has a decent battery of 20hrs, but it can't be replaced and no AA can be attached. We'll see how that play's out. All things considered: I'm happy with my new Rio. It's a decent device that does what I wan't (for the most part). The swith in my paradigm allows me to use a wider variaty of devices. That a plus compared to MD, there's dozens of manufacturers making hunderds of devices: you're bound to at least tolerate one as a portable. Nothing is lost on the HiFi side of things, because of a PC with huge amounts of FLAC and a good soundcard (and a decent AMP and speakers of course). Add that MD is said to be dying... If Sony or preferably Sharp ever strikes back with a new line of compact MD units, a line of HiFi decks and car units, which support a lossless format and can be downloaded in an open fashion (so that, for example, it's compatible with Linux) I'll be back too. Until then, I'll keep insisting on some much-needed changes in the MD format and reap the benefits of alternate formats. I still consider things in previous paragraph stated as th ideal situation. Sony: You've got the winning cards right there in your hands! You've only got to deal them, damnit! I thank you all for enduring this rather lengthy message and may we continue to conduct healthy debate and not rest before Sony, or another smart company, does as we want!

Why are newbie's so lazy Sometimes it's almost demanded that an answer is given within 5 minutes flat on a silver platter and suger on top. Seek and thou shalt find.

Because it's demanded for mass storage compatible devices. The standard is FAT/FAT32. The Operating system writes and reads the filesystem itself, the unit (HiMD, external HDD, USBdrive) do nothing but facilitating lowlevel datatransport. That why mass storage devices can be formatted in any filesystem. But since Microsoft is one of the founders for that filesystem and Windows 98SE/ME were still its consumer OS'es, the devices had to be compatble with those OS'es, thus FAT/FAT32. Of course, since HiMD devices and MP3-players need at least reading capabilities (and some (like HiMD) write capabilities) software and logic has to be inserted in the device to operate the data-holder. Of course they don't add support for alternate filesystems because just about 0.0001% of the market has interest in that.

Since HiMD is a mass storage device it is technically allowed to use either FAT/FAT16 or FAT32. Perhaps only HiMD's inner working should be altered, but I don't think it's a big job to add FAT32 support, if it hasn't already but unused.