Hi all. I'm new to this forum. I've recently bought the MZ-NH-10 from AskDirect. Price was £159, good service and prompt delivery. I was none too happy to discover that the Eurpean model was capped though - reduced level in earphones output, no custom graphics, however, I could live without the extra languages in the menu though. I felt cheated. It was through this forum, that I found the hack to upgrade the unit. With all the functions now available (did someone mention France?), I've had a chance to give the unit some critical listening. I've only transferred about 3 mp3s to date and have noticed that they sound somewhat compressed and particularly clipped at the top end, compared to Atrac3 files. I've not heard that converting them to Atrac3 would improve the sound, but logic would dictate that you're compressing a compressed file, it should result in further sound loss. I've just bought the Audio-Technica ATH-CM7 earbuds to go with the HZ-NH and running them in. I'll try converting some mp3s and get back with the results.