igor

If you ask me, Sony should've tried that approach a long time ago. It looks like they have a great product there, they just don't know what to do with it.

I had no idea that Hi-MD could do uncompressed recording until it slipped out during a conversation I was having with the manager of a Sony Store a few months ago. This ought to be a major selling point for Hi-MD, but I found out about it almost by accident. I used a Korg D1600 portastudio once and was very unimpressed with the mic preamps, to say the least. You couldn't pass a clean signal (one that wasn't audibly clipping) to the machine even at unity gain. I don't think it was a defect with the machine, I think that they just used really crappy mic amps to cut costs. So I concur with what you say - if they can't put a mic preamp on the machine that's at least as good as the ones on affordable compact mixers (e.g. Mackie, etc.), then I'd prefer not to have them at all.

Thanks. These look really nice. They may not be full-size, but that might be a good thing in that they'll fit in places a full-size deck wouldn't (on top of a computer, etc.). They're pretty pricey, though! Are you sure the Sony one you pointed out (MDS-JE480) is a Hi-MD recorder and not just a normal MD deck?

I wasn't so much thinking that Sony itself would develop Linux software (I too find that scenario very unlikely, though it would be wonderful if they did). I was just wondering about the possibility of Sony providing the Linux open source developer community the technical information they would need to create such software (much in the same way that many Linux soundcard drivers were developed by volunteers in cooperation with the soundcard manufacturer rather than by the manufacturer itself). Would Sony be giving away too many trade secrets by providing this information to the open source community?

Actually, I guess I should've asked if any company had released a component stereo deck. I just assumed that Sony would've released one before their competitors! Have user reports about the Onkyo been positive? It's really a shame that Hi-MD couldn't have been ready for the public a year or two earlier. It addresses most of the shortcomings that were keeping people away from MD, and it seems like a really great format overall. It just seems to have come on the market at a time when there's too many competing formats. I'm not sure it's going to become a standard. Guess I'll wait and see where it goes before I take the plunge.

Has Hi-MD made it into any pro audio equipment yet (e.g. portable recorders w/ XLR, multitrack recorders like the ones Yamaha and Tascam used to make, rack mount full-size decks, etc.)? Have any pro audio companies annouced that they will be using Hi-MD in future products?

Does anyone know if Sony will be releasing a full-size Hi-MD deck for a component stereo system?

Can anyone comment on how realistic it might be to expect Hi-MD software to be developed for the Linux operating system? Would Sony allow such software to be created?