Azureal

goodsounds12, My apologies for misstating the quantity of your Hi-MD discs for sale. 17 disks for $275 is significantly more than 10 for the same price. For some reason I had the lower incorrect count in my brain and that's what I typed! I think your asking price is reasonable considering two are brand new and 15 lightly used. It just amazes me how much folks are asking and getting for these 1GB blanks these days. I saw one seller on eBay this past week asking like $235 for 5! This is the first time I had seen such an unbelievable price for so few discs. I recall purchasing five 1GB blanks a at local Sony retailer in 2004 when I purchased my first Hi-MD recorder, the MZ-NH1. I paid less than five dollars per disc back then! A couple of years later, I bought five more from an online retailer and paid around six dollars per disc. You are absolutely right about the need to have the 1GB disks for performing PCM recording. The 80 minute variety only holds like 26 minutes or something which is inadequate for any real live concert recording, etc. It's interesting that you note a perceivable difference in sound quality between the two disc types. I have never done a comparison so I can't really comment. I wonder, if this is indeed the case, it may be related to the way the data is stored because I know that the science for Hi-MD media data storage does differ in some manner from that of older MD media data storage when used in Hi-MD mode. I updated my previous post to reflect my mistaken comment about the quantity of discs you have for sale. Regards,

goodsound12, another difference I have noticed which matters to me is that the MZ-RH10 has no line level output capability. I always run my units into a headphone amp to drive a quality set of cans and require the line level. (and no, setting the headphone output to 23 or whatever is not a suitable substitute) I primarily use my RH10 for portable carry about and as a down-loader. I sure love that multi-line OLED display, it is awesome! I think your price is very reasonable, the difference with eBay is that if you reserve too high, buyers don't bite right away and the fervor can't build, your package posted there as you have posted here would sell easily and hopefully the guy or gal who looses out on the one for sale now will be all over it ... I have to say that the $275 for 10** Hi-MD 1GB blanks is pretty crazy and it's not you, others are also asking such high prices for them. I probably have a dozen of the 1GB discs myself but I prefer to use the 80 minute variety either for SP recording via optical or formatted as Hi-MD with Hi-SP and occasionally ATRAC3 132k LP. ** Correction: goodsound12 is offering 17 Hi-MD blanks for $275, this is a significantly larger number than I had previously and incorrectly noted .

trotter is right. I have one of each and they are identical except for the name, same buttons, I/O, even the firmware seems identical. The packaging is slightly different as the MZ-M200 includes a microphone. The RH1 was also available in silver (somehow I managed to acquire one of each type for a song three or four years ago). The black MZ-RH1 and the MZ-M200 are still new in their boxes unused except for initial testing! Check out the details in the MD Browser

I wish there was a "Cash Converters" store in my town ... It sounds like you got some great deals.

I was looking at that one last night and it has jumped a hundred dollars since then. The RH10 is a desirable unit, I don't think you'll have any trouble selling it.

You're awesome Christopher! Thanks for all you do to keep things up and running. During the outage, I was browsing more of the Sony Insider Blog and saw your posting about your CNET job. I went over there and enjoyed reading some of your articles. Best regards!

I was sad to not have access to the forums for so many days, I thought our little MD world had gotten even smaller!

Are you sure that isn't only for leopard spotted units?

They must not have made many of the black units. The only black one I have ever seen is in the MD Browser. It's a cool looking unit in black ...

Happy New Year to you PhilippeC and to all!

Very interesting research. I suspect the headers likely contain a length in bytes value for the audio portion of the file, Each header has a specific length as well. Some padding of header length or modification of audio length value in the header may be required to play the full track. A shorter file (3 seconds) would work since playback beyond the end versus playback into invalid data would occur. This is good stuff. I wish I had the time to look in to this further. I would be interested know if you could produce the same result on a different machine.

My pleasure, I wish I had figured out an alternative for you to easily grab all of your music. You can always record it via the line out in real-time. Also, welcome to the forums, do you, by chance, have any MD units? Just curious, they have the same great sound with cool media, most folks around here love them. :-) Happy New Year!

I believe Stephen is correct, the trans-coding of OMA to MP3 seems to only be possible from the HD1/5 if the machine which HiMdRenderer is executing upon has the installed SS which originally transferred the files to that device, or as I suspect any version of SS with a restored backup of the library data files. The encryption keys exist in a location which omg is aware of and the HiMdRenderer application piggybacks on that via some use of omg API code libraries to decode the encrypted files. If Marc were still around he could give us the details of the process, he had it all figured out. Caterpillar, I apologize for giving you false hope, Sony did everything they could to stop folks from making digital copies of music whether they were legitimate or not. One thing I did discover is that the NetMD driver in the downloads section is unrelated to the issue with respect to the HD units. That driver seems to be only required for access to MD devices. The HD series of players along with MD units in HiMD mode are seen natively by Windows 7 and do not need any additional driver at all. With the HD units, any stored music, ATRAC or ATRAC3plus is accessible via Windows mass storage device native drivers. HiMdRenderer is still worth a try, but if you are running it on a computer which was not used to originally transfer the files to th HD device, I do not think it will work. Caterpillar, you did one good thing for me in your query, a renewed interest in my HD units! I have them both out of mothballs and recharging! I had forgotten what nice little units they are. :-) The HD1 is particularly cool with its docking station. Best and Happy New Year! John

That's is normal operation. Any music ripped to ATRAC in SonicStage and transferred to the HD1/3/5 is really only copied and that copy can be left on the device to listen to or it can be deleted from within SS. You cannot take an HD unit and copy music back to another machine in ATRAC format. This was Sony's way of keeping users from sharing their entire library of music with their friends. At some point in older versions of SS there was some foolish mechanism where SS tracked the number of times a song had been transferred and would limit the number of times a file could be copied to various devices. If you "transferred" the song back to the computer it actually just changed the count of transfers and then proceeded to delete the track from the HD device. I think there is similar behavior on NetMD and HiMD devices, although newer versions of SS dropped the transfer count foolishness. If you want to get the music off of the HD5, there is an application in the downloads section called HiMDRenderer which will read the OMA files on the HD device and convert them into MP3 format copying them to your computer's hard drive. It takes a long time to trans-code a large library but the resulting MP3 files can actually sound pretty good, I used this application to salvage about 18GB of music a few years ago. Come to think of it, I do not think I have ever tested using one of my HD units with W7 64 bit. Stephen, do you remember if we added entries for these units to the inf file for the 64 bit driver? I can test it today and if they are not there, we can likely add them without too much trouble. The driver I speak of is also locate in the downloads section and has been tested for dozens of NetMD and HiMD devices and works great in Windows 7. It may not be necessary to have this driver installed in order to see the HD units as mass storage devices (should be a native W7 driver to allow this). Getting Windows to recognize your HD device as mass storage is a prerequisite for getting HiMDRenderer to work, it has to be able to access the raw files on the device in order to work.

You could use the one with the highest rated current output without any issues at all. Each unit will draw what it needs to charge or operate. The units with the lower current supplies just require less current to operate. I have all three of those units as well and I interchangeably use adapters all of the time without issue, with one exception, charging a battery in the NH1 will not work well or at all with the wrong adapter. Just my experience ...

gotcha

Nice work gortonandy! Stephen, can you add this to the thread on installing the 64bit drivers? I know I have seen a few users requesting W8 64bit information, it sounds this would be reallly helpful.

Any unit with ATRAC Type-R should be the latest version for SP recording. It looks like the JE530 or newer will do the trick. You can pick some of the lesser models for a song on eBay these days.

I agree with bluecrab, this machine is definitely worth trying to salvage!

Ari, It's nice to see your unit getting some bidding from multiple buyers! It is at a good price now, you have done well. :-)

That unit looks brand new!

Wow, that auction went for $350! I think you made a wise choice not to go higher than $250, I read about and then forgot the whole rubber band issue, that's is reall a hack. Hopefully whoever ended up with it is satisfied. The 810 has always seemed like such a cool unit to me, not only because of the radio tuner remote, but it is one of the last NetMD units made and it is Type-S ATRAC which I think really makes LP2 and LP4 usable CODECs, plus it has that nice metal front. Hang in there for a deal on the HiMD unit you really want at the right price, to be honest, I still record most stuff in SP via optical and listen to it on any of my units. Sometimes I go with HiSP on a HiMD formatted disk to fit a few albums on one disk, but I have always preferred SP over any other CODEC. LP2 sounds pretty good on a HiMD unit (which are all inherently Type-S DSPs) so you can squeeze something like 5 or ten hours on a single 80 minute disk. Regarding blanks, nothing too special about the 74 minute disks, I think they may actually be more common now that the 80 minute stock is being all bought up. The Memorex disks are ok but I prefer Sony or TDK blanks. I have bought so many in the past few years, I'll end up leaving them to my kids someday ... :-/ but I will not run out! Save your money and just concentrate on getting a stash of 74 0r 80 minute blanks, you can use them for your NetMD and HiMD units. The cost of HiMD blanks is crazy and if you have a few you will be fine, they hold so much ATRAC3plus encoded music you can put your entire collection of music on a half dozen disks! Any way, enjoy the NF810, how much did it cost you? I have followed few over the years and given up at around a hundred or so. BTW, my NH600 is the euro model, it came in a box and has the line input as well as the charging circuit, it is definitely a more capable unit than the "D" version but in reality for me, I just use it as a player so it does not matter.

This is up to $265 with three hours to go!

The RH1 is a really nice machine and you're right, it is probably the flagship unit in that sale but it does have some short comings. The fact that it can only run from a single LIP-4MW LION battery is an issue, no side car for an "AA" battery reduces its viability as a long term portable. Getting those batteries is becoming more of a challenge every year and eventually we won't be able to get them at all or they'll cost so much we won't want them. The nice thing is the unit can be powered from just about any USB power source, almost all I have found will run the unit but not all have the current capability to charge a battery. I have heard the RH1 referred to as a small deck which is how I use mine. I have three of them and only one has ever been out of the box, my silver Japanese model RH1, the remaining black RH1 and the MZ-M200 are untouched. These units have been reported by many to develop issues with the buttons and the lever for control of operation over a period of time. I have had no problems with my silver unit since I put it into service 5 years ago. The RH10 unit in that sale you list is a cool unit, I own one which I bought used, it uses the NiMH gumstick which seem to last longer (as in lifespan in years) in my opinion but also has an "AA" sidecar to power the unit with Rayo-vacs down the road. This unit has a beautiful multi-line display which is OLED, a technology which was reported to be on track to revolutionize portable electronics but never did. All the same the display is very cool, unfortunately many have reported that after years of use the display will eventually fade and become unusable. I do not use mine too often, mainly as a downloader but my display is still pretty bright and clear. I have an NH600 and an NH710, both are cool, they run off of a single "AA" battery which is really nice, but like the N707, they have a huge hump on the back for the battery which makes they a bit more bulky to tote around. Has that ever stopped me? No way man! I have used my NH600 while mowing my lawn or shoveling snow from my drive for the past 3 years and it is a great little unit, it is built pretty well, not as sturdy as the old days (think R900, R50, etc) but tough enough to be a good, usable little unit and I love that I can just throw a battery in it and be off. I also have a couple of NH900 units, I bought both of these used as well and one of them woks great to this day, the other developed some issue with the buttons and it cannot be controlled properly, as a matter of fact, the bad one begins recording nothing on multiple tracks the instant you close the door with a disk inserted! I have been meaning to talk to Jim and Stephen about this unit as I am sure it is repairable. The nice thing about the NH 900 is that you can tack on the "AA" side car and use it forever but it still uses the NiMH gumsticks, a lot like the RH10. That's my 20 cents worth, if you could get that auction for under $250, you would have a couple of nice units. The R700 is not worth discussing as far as that sale goes, it adds little value and all of the other stuff is just that, other stuff ... I see that auction going for a good price (low) as the seller did not really call out the RH1 or RH10 in too much detail, not too many folks are bidding on it. I plan to watch it and see how the sale ends tonight. Good luck Xircuits!

Hey Ari, Your listing looks great!