ingoo

You mean Shigatsu-Baka Wire Service Although I speak Japanese (but I´m actually from Germany and also living in Germany right know) I didn´t pay attention to that at all! Yes Shigatsu-Baka indeed can be translated as April-Fool. Arrrrgh, how dumb of me

Just 5 minutes before I went to minidisc.org I thought about today being April 1st and that nobody has fooled me yet. But when reading the news, I completely forgot about it, it seemed to realistic in the first moment.

AHHH, you got me! I was fooled! But what´s a little frightening, is that this article maybe isn´t too far from reality. Who knows how long Sony will be supporting MD!?

It would be so nice if Sony made a car unit, but I don´t have a car But I would probably buy a home deck if it was of good quality, could connect to a PC and wouldn´t be 2000 Dollars!

Interesting, a lot of people here seem to have various backgrounds, I would´ve expectet more people with a single-ethnical background. About me, my mother is from Manitoba Canada and came to Germany to study when she was young. There she met my father who is German. I was born and grew up in Germany. I came to Japan to live here over a year ago, but I am going back to Germany in one month! I´ll miss the opportunities to shop MD equipment when I go back!

You should just be sure to use the word "minidiscs" or "minidisc blanks"! Tapes are those things with the tape in it...

Well I´m not quite sure, the speakers can handle 70W max, the manual states two things for the amp: 14W+14W and 26W+26W. Does this sound realistic? Since it´s in Japanese I´m not sure which one you are looking for. I think I can´t judge if the system sounds good for your ears (and I don´t listen to hip hop), you would have to hear for yourself. You can defineteley turn the bass up fairly well if you combine the 2-Step S. Bass and the normal Bass and Treble. For a small room it´ll sure be enough it think. The input on the back is just a regular line in. And yes, it has an optical input. Yes, the amp is built in. The price will very much depend on how and where you are going to get this system. In Japan at least it is sold for less than the ¥88,000 ($800) official retail price.

Thanks for your advice, today I found the solution for my problem. When I installed SS 3.3 earlier Spybot had denied the registry changes that SS applies (some annoying warnings from Spybot popped up, but I didn´t pay attention to them). So the possibilty to register with Gracenote was disabled through Spybot during the installation. So I deinstalled Spybot, installed SS3.3 again and it worked Well Sonicstage isn´t such a bad program after all.....when it works!

I like those big buttons too! Is there also a group button on the unit? The specs sound exactly the same as the EH1, or am I wrong? The EH1 seems to be a little thinner, but then the EH70 has the bigger buttons which seem to be very easy to use.

And the EH1 and NH1 both use Li-ion batteries, right? My digital camera also uses a Li-ion and can show me the exact ramaining minutes for battery life, so I assume that this function only works with Li-ions. But I can´t tell which units exactly have this feature!

I don´t think that depends on the remote, it depends on the battery. With Ni-MH batteries the remaining playback time won´t show up in any remote, with Li-ion batteries it will show up on the RM-MC40ELK as well as on the 35ELK when they are connected to my EH1. I believe that´s the same for all models from the first gen.

Well your computer or your HD can of course be robbed in the same way, so there´s no advantage here. I think a computer would even be much more attractive to the robber. When he´d see the MDs he ´d have no clue what they´re good for and leave them where they are! Same thing with MD portables! Nobody wants to rob a MD-Player, all they want is iPods. Leaving the whole backup thing aside, MDs are simply more durable because of their construction compared to CDs or HDs. Of course you can always put a MD in your toaster, flush them down the toilet etc. but we are talking about normal usage. Now that hurts

That wasn´t my argument! Actually I intended to say that you are in advantage with a HD player, because you have lot´s more music in less space. For music listening only (not recording), I think it just depends on if you like those little durable discs more than just a "virtual" music file. And the longer you use them, the more they even get a history. I still have my first ever recorded MD for example, which I remember very well, recorded with my very first MD recorder. Still plays perfect of course But indeed the first post was only asking about Sound Quality and the difference between a Sony Hi-MD player and all other MP3 Players. So if you think comparing ALL MP3 Players to a Sony Hi-MD player might be impossible, then just post your individual opinion or experience, but don´t expect that to be accepted as a common law by others.

So why do you post in these threads then? Just to tell us you don´t like these threads? And what other advantages except capacity do you think do the Flash/HDD players have over Hi-MD? So if someone doesn´t feel, he has to carry his whole music collection around with him all the time and doesn´t care about being "limited" to 300MB or 1 GB, I think Hi-MD can be a real alternative!

Thanks for your replies so far. The Connect shop does work. I disabled my firewall once and tried to register again, but still the same problem. I click Yes, but nothing happens at all. I don´t think a reinstall will solve the problem, but I´ll try that too. I´m connected to the Internet permanently through a LAN. I just plug the cable in my laptop, and it is connected to the internet. Anybody have a clue if the problem could be there?

After getting SonicStage 3.3 to work after installing it for the first time, I still have a problem with Gracenote. When I want to import a CD, it doesn´t download the track info. When I click on the "CD-Info" button, it tells me that SS uses CDDB Gracenote blablabla and aks me if I want to register (never had that with an older SS version). I click yes, but nothing happens. I click on CD-Info again after a while, but again nothing happens. Does anyone have a similiar problem or even a solution? Thanks!

I don´t quite get it. You are talking about recording a MD, which has a CD copied in PCM on it, to another MD recorder via the optical out? What kind of sense would that make? Only analogue recordings can be copied to another MD from the optical out or can be uploaded with Sonicstage. Or did you mean something else?

Well, as I said, I can´t turn the volume all the way up. I can imagine that other systems have a lot more bass though, I just wanted to say that this system doesn´t have no bass

I´m not sure if the speakers have the glass fibre woofers you are talking about, but the website speaks about a special bass reflex system called "Aero Acoustic Drive". The automatic translation of that part is this (from this website: http://www2.onkyo.com/jp/product/products....29?OpenDocument ): "New technology "AERO ACOUSTIC DRIVE" was adopted to limits which unite volume and the speed impression playback new technical "AERO ACOUSTIC DRIVE" cabinet structure low, limits which unite volume and the speed impression of evolving former bus reflex system rapidly playback was actualized low. Furthermore, the normality it is not cylindrical in the bus reflex duct inside the cabinet and adopting "the slit duct" of new development. Emission noise from the duct much it decreases not only, cylindrical bus reflex peculiar phenomenon such as color ration and diaphragm and the time lag of the aerial vibration due to the occurrence of the standing wave inside the duct was improved substantially." On the backside of the speakers there are slits, so is it that, what you are talking about? I can´t turn the volume up all the way where I live right now, but from what I can tell the bass sounds fine. On the FR-N9 you can set bass and treble in 10 steps (only with the remote) and additional to that it has a 2-step "S. Bass". So if you turn all that bass up all the way you can expect your neighbors knocking on your door very soon (but who cares, you can´t hear them knocking anyway! ), the bass on this system is impressive. Personally I prefer a rather flat sound though!

Wow, at least you have an optical output, I want that on my Onkyo Adding an optical out from the MD-player can´t be an issue of additional cost I think. Those few MD users in the world copying their analogue recorded MDs for personal use is nothing compared to the amount of music being copied through CD burners or P2P networks! So why be so strict???

Sure you can record phonographs with this, just connect any source to the line in. You can title MDs on the Onkyo itself, I just tried it. The best way probably is with the remote, it has cell phone like buttons for entering text, but you can also use the jog dial for that.

Tried it, no difference with a Hi-MD disc. I also looked, if there were any changeable settings to activate the optical output or so, but no...

I tried it with an analogue recorded standard 74min disc in MD mode (in the Onkyo system). If anything should work, then that, right? But my RH10 displayed "no input signal". You know there is normally a red light sent through the optical cable when the output is active? So if the FR-N9 is switched to the CD player I can see the red light (even if there is no CD inserted), but when I switch to MD the red light turns off. This I think is a pretty sure indication that the digital out is only meant to work for the CD player...

Well, I have no good news for the people who were hoping for a digital out from the MD-Player. I got an optical cable today and tried to connect my RH10 to the digital out...but there was no signal! If I switch the system to CD there is a signal though. So the digital out seems to only work for the CD player. Sorry that I have to report the bad news. So I can´t even copy analogue recordings with this. If the MD player of the FR-N9 would have a digital out, it wouldn´t make any sense that the other Onkyo Hi-MD decks don´t have one, right? It still is a very nice system, just that it is very computer independent and even external-MD-independent (if you want to put it in positive words ). Maybe it is some order from Sony not to equip MD-players with digital outs, for some stupid reasons ???

If I had a subwoofer I´d use it