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I was happy too recording from microphones in Hi-SP ... until I started editing the recordings seriously - equalizing by +5dB@12kHz reveals rather nasty artefacts of ATRAC...

Sounds just like a sales pitch.

Wow! This is exciting info! Looks like Sony has slackened cryptographic madness in RH1 quite substantially, so this unit should be considered much safer for serious work.

That's a far-fetched claim by Sony marketeers. IMO FM is much higher quality (at least in ideal reception conditions). And often FM is indistinguishable from CD except for background hiss. BTW some reputable radiostations refuse to air anything lower than PCM 44/16 - that must be for a reason...

I feel your pain, yst. My unit also started to freak out with most every disc - new and old, blue and black. Unfortunately I cannot return it, because the problem isn't reproducible - uploads succeed every other time. And even if I could return it I probably wouldn't want to as Hi-MD is totally abandoned in my area, so the next best recording solution would cost me some $300-400 extra, which is not acceptable. In the meantime I found workaround for uploading problems. Do you know why uploads are more successful with smaller tracks? That's because the unit repositions optical pick-up frequently, i.e. it seeks every new track. This presumably lowers disc rotation speed and maybe adds some other "foolproofs". That's the first part of workaround. Then I noticed it reads better upside down. I even had a disc showing the infamous "Cannot record or play" error which uploaded just fine after flipping the unit over. Hope this'll be of help to you.

That might be the interference picked up from the air. To reduce external influence the wires should be bridged by something similar to a mic, may be a resistor

Are you sure it's the mic pre-amp which makes noise? Keep in mind, most mic cartridges rarely deliver SNR greater than 60 dB, which is probably some 20 dB less than that of Sony's built-in pre-amp

Hi! Could you please suggest on how to "initialize" the plug-in? I've copied it into the respective folder, but when trying to open a .oma (also tryed renaming it to .aa3) Sound Forge hangs for half-minute and then bails out with the "The file format plugin for the specified formatwas not properly initialized" message.

But the RH1 cannot be considered a mass product. How many of them have been (or even planned to be) shipped? I guess a couple of orders of magnitude less then the legacy MD decks with digital-out...

Remember, Hi-MD is a strategic piece of hardware (The only high quality recording means available for a democratic $200) Besides, Sony doesn't like the idea of masses gaining access to digital copying of pre-recorded MD's, which firmware can probably easily be hacked for would it be user-upgradeable. Control over MD's firmware is in the likeness of gun control...

Has anybody encountered faulty 1GB discs from Musician's Friend? I recently have had almost all of the discs from this vendor (the new blue ones) producing "ACCESS ERROR"'s while uploading - about 5-10 errors per disc! Yet to be honest, my older 1GB disc (black) also started to give these errors though less often, like 1 error in every other upload.

Yes, 192 kbps A3+ is great - 10 hours of very acceptable sound on one disc

Would be nice to be able to EQ during recording... I for one currently use mics which have a +5dB peak at the most loud frequencies, around 5 kHz. I guess equalizing before putting data to disc could effectively expand the dynamic range by 5 dB in this situation. I mean, really, because of this peak I have to set levels 5 dB lower, getting virtually 1 bit less resolution at bass and higher end

I'm sorry to upset you, you wrote so much about the single subject... But the point is - live recordings do not always sound very good in original. Sure I love to listen to a fresh capture on my way home, but I prefer to NR & to EQ it for more enjoyment. Just realize that people might be happy of legacy recordings upload capability because it becomes affordable for them to master their precious recordings at last. And may be DUPLICATE their recordings for friends or even for SALE! Yeah...

Well, you could choose some "playback" option in the vote, like "Cross-fade". I really should list all these features in that option, but the vote isn't editable