zahg

Yes I feel the Display/Menu is stiffer than the other buttons. I find all the small buttons fiddly. Also the FF/RW jogdial tends to get activated accidently (in either direction) too easily, e.g. putting it in your pocket, and, when the unit is lying flat on your desk, attempting to do a FF with the jogdial is almost impossible without picking it up and pushing it up from the bottom. -zahg

A vice would have been a better suggestion

I totally agree with you regarding remotes, I used to use them alot mostly cos I felt I should since it was a sexy addition to the the kit and so felt obliged to. But they are a royal pain in the ass, stiff wires coming out of both ends, clips that dont stay clipped, fiddly buttons and controls. Operating on a desk is really awful, they just dont stay still and I always have wires in the way of something else i use on the desk. Now a wireless/bluetooth remote would be wonderful?! -zahg

Chris G - I also added this a couple of posts down: "The sound quality is definitly better than my previous models, and the bass seems phatter =)"

Tunster I hadn't thought of the design of separating out playback and record functions and I can see the motives for my perceived shortcomings now, but of the three MD units owned previous to this i've never seen so many functions not available on the player itself. I've resolved that I will now have to use a remote to operate this device since I use an MD unit for recording radio broadcasts AND for playback/editing that recorded material. I never use titling so I dont know whether that side is better or worse. This reliance on a remote is the most damning for me, for years I have managed to do all I need without the use of a remote, occasionally I need to have an 'extension cable' and the remote serves that purpose very well. I still think the unit OLED could have been better utilised, why not show the bookmark icon if the track is bookmarked (it flashes then turns off when you set one), probably not a biggie to most people but for me this is a very easy way to manage and filter out tracks on discs. One of the many display options should show whether the track is a bookmarked one - just silly to me. Its getting harder to handle the increasing amount of material i can record on one disc, editing 2hrs 20mins takes work, and 8hours of material is very time consuming - the MD is better at editing than using a computer. I thought this was a semi pro device and assumed all features would have been self contained in the unit. The design of the device is like that of a desktop editing unit with the upward tilt of the display and all the buttons focused according to that view. I guess you can't have it all, depending on what you require. It is a beautiful unit which is probably the result of the various design principles. The sound quality is definitly better than my previous models, and the bass seems phatter =), love the flashing red LED and the unit has had people hynotised when I've casually put it on my desk. I will will continue using it and adapting to it, but i won't be selling my RH10 which I have increased respect for now - its much more practical unit for my needs. I will invest in a MC40ELK remote which may improve life with it. -zahg

Had my RH1 for a few days now and getting used to the controls which felt fiddly at first but still find the controls less accessible than my RH10. My main problem is with the fact that some features can only be accessed via the remote control - surely this is a fundamental design error. Remotes in my opinion are there to make life easier, and have never been necessary to control the equipment. My experience of remotes has always felt cumbersome, I usually end up disregarding remotes in favour of direct unit access (never found a comfortable and easy to access place to clip the damn thing on my person). The 'remote only' features that I'm referring to (that I use) are bookmarks - which you can actually set on the unit but there is no indication on the unit display to say the current track is bookmarked, and setting the PlayMode to play only bookmarked tracks can only be done on the remote - why the hell is this not part of the units menu system?? (By the way - possibly a fault on my unit but my bookmarks are not being saved. After ejecting and reinserting the disc all bookmarks are gone, anyone else experiencing this?) The other remote only feature I use reasonably often is the sound equalizer mode - again no indication on the unit to say what setting it is on, and something that can only be changed on the remote is retarded. Did they just run out of time to implement this on the unit menus?? Also miss the scroll wheel which would allow me to quickly goto track 137 of 180 on a Hi-MD disc, now I have to tap the forward key 136 times! (Is there an easier way?) Another gripe (and for me almost a feature which was a reason by itself to buy this unit) was the fact that display settings are remembered, i.e. displaying track remain time is a feature I like to have set on all the time but this was not possible before, anytime a disc is ejected (or a track deleted!) the display setting goes back to normal, but the RH1 was meant to remember my settings but this is not the case, settings are reset. At least I only have to press one button now to get to the right display setting. My actual reason for getting this unit was for the legacy MD support and being able to transfer old MD recordings to my PC, I have not actually tried this yet but I really hope it works! The RH1 is certainly not the near perfect product I had hoped for. =( -zahg

Just to let you know I have received my RH1 from ASK, cost was £204 inc delivery which was UPS, less than a day to arrive is pretty impressive. Having a play now - first impressions very slick looking thing, buttons/controls seem a bit fiddly tho.

Well the guy on the shop floor wasnt really sure but he said they had had two in on this order - so if you got one couple hours before me I would have the third one - anyway I'm pretty sure I've got one so not too worried unless it doesnt arrive by Tuesday. Thanks for the tipoff Tunster! I had been waiting to make a compilation album with tracks off old MDLP disks and wanted to use the RH1 to get the tracks off instead of re-recording in realtime (like I would normally do) but was a bit pee'ed off I would have to wait till end of July, so well chuffed! Anyone want to buy an Jap MZ-RH10 or a hardly used MZ-RH910? Theres a bit of confusion over prices I think, I rang the Sony Centre in Bristol a couple of weeks ago and they quoted me a RRP of £199 (they had no stock tho) and I've seen a couple of mentions from other people on this forum saying the price would be 200.

I've just ordered one online with ASKDirect then rang up to make sure i got one of the ones in stock, he said I had and it was already being processed. I asked how many more he had in and he said he *thinks* that was the last one since they only had a small order in (guy in the portable players department said they only had two in). -zahg

Thats a damn shame! I'm sure one day us Minidisc'ers will get what we want! Still a nice system but not worth me going into further debt if no MD digital out. -zahg

Wow I'm in love with that system, I NEED one now! One of the best things is the optical out, have you tried outputting music from Hi-MD and normal MD thru the optical out? Any restrictions/DRM crap get in the way? thanks -zahg

Hi, My NH900 which I bought three weeks ago had this problem also from the start. Worse for me was trying to get in to the menu (holding it for two seconds), it would jump straight to the MainPlay menu mode. It would take a few goes to actually get to the menu i wanted. Stop button sometimes forwarded a track but not often. I've just today dropped it in to get fixed. Annoying thing is on my one week old RH10, while holding down FF/RW to scan through a track - instead a bookmark would be made (ie holding play down). Doesnt happen that often so maybe i'll live with this quirk. -zahg

I only quickly tried out the line-out on my Freeview box (no optical out on my unit sadly) and the volume level was ridiculously low, didnt get round to playing with the settings to see if I could increase it. But since the mention of DVB above I have started looking in to getting my radio thru this method since the bitrates are alot better across the board. I didnt find *that much* information so any recommendations for equipment would be appreciated. It appears that DAB cannot sustain high bitrate and multiple channels - another technology thats just for the lo-fi masses! -zahg

Apparently from a 'respected journalist in the audio field', see the whats new entry dated 10/12: http://minidisc.org/part_Whats_new.html

No problem - its a really good site for news on new geek toys. The new MDs look nice enough but they look like they are aimed at the iPod community rather than the semi-pro community. Not regretting purchasing my MZ-RH10 anyway.