clorenzo

Omigod, I'm so happy, my pre-order is in! I've just got an RH10 and was thinking about getting another one, since I live in Germany but my band is in Spain (long story), so I thought I'd check here first for news of the new generation. I couldn't believe it when I saw the picture of that beauty! Great news about keeping the manual record level setting and being able to record at the highest ATRAC3+ bitrate, my only two complains about the RH10 so far. Watch this space for a review as soon as it arrives. Carlos

Well, all my music is currently on CD so I can use ATRAC3+ directly. The reason I wanted to go with MP3 is the VBR option, which makes a lot of sense to me (why send 128 kbps of zeros during a silence?) and should give better quality/size ratio than CBR compression. However, I must say that after further tests comparing MP3 VBR in my computer (so no eq issues) with ATRAC3+, I have concluded that I actually prefer ATRAC3+ 192 to MP3 VBR @ 100% quality (which sizewise is roughly equivalent to 200 kbps), so I'm not concerned about this problem anymore. If I ever get anything in MP3 only (which probably means that I don't care too much about quality anyway) I'll either use the eq or, if it's a mixed MD and don't want to bother with changing the eq setting back and forth, I'll do the conversions you suggest. This actually means that, at least the way I perceive it, ATRAC3+ is indeed better than MP3 at equivalent bit-rates and even with the advantage of VBR for MP3 (though the ATRAC3+@64 = MP3@128 claim is a blatant lie), so I wonder why they can't simply let the technlogy speak for itself instead of playing tricks that do no good to their reputation. I guess it's the old Sony schizophrenia at work again: great engineers, lousy marketeers. Oh well.

Sorry for the bandwidth guys, I hadn't come accross that thread. I didn't buy this thing primarily as an MP3 player (it's for recording my band's rehearsals and gigs) and I've managed to get a reasonable balance with the custom eq, but this is unacceptable, they shouldn't be allowed to put that MP3 sticker on the unit! Is there an e-mail address where I can write to Sony and give them a piece of my mind about this issue? Maybe if enough people complain they'll come out with a firmware update or something (I know I'm dreaming, but it's worth a shot, right?)

Ok, so I've just got my new RH10 and decide to do some comparisons between ATRAC and MP3. I take one of my favourite test tracks ("Fonkalishus" from the Bluesiana II album, Windham Hill Records, great, natural recording with lots of low level detail), encode it with ATRAC3+ @ 64 and 256, MP3-CBR @ 128 and MP3-VBR at different qualities (I use Creative Media Source where for VBR you specify a quality percentage, 50% giving approx. the same file size as CBR @ 128), download the lot on the RH10 together with a WAV file for reference, plug in my reference Beyerdynamic DT-880 headphones. I do a sort of blind test (set it to random, listen to part of the track, make notes, then look to see which one is it, go on to the next track, etc.) and on a first quick pass listening to just a few seconds and not thinking much I get this: VBR 40% - no treble, splashy CBR 128 - no treble, splashy VBR 100% - no treble but good WAV - perfect VBR 80% - no treble but good ATRAC3+ 64 - lots of artifacts, useless VBR 10% - no treble, some artifacts, splashy ATRAC3+ 256 - almost perfect, some very subtle artifacts VBR 60% - no treble, slightly splashy So, I think, "boy, that MP3 thing just throws away all the highs!", double-check in my computer with Windows Media Player, and nope, the highs are there, with more or less quality, but the quantity is practically the same as in the WAV file. What are they on about? Is this just to promote ATRAC over MP3? I mean, even with the very recessed treble, I prefer MP3 CBR 128 over ATRAC3+ 64 (which is a joke), and when you compare the "good" MP3 from Media Player it's just no contest, but I can see where in listening tests people may prefer the livelier presentation of ATRAC3+ 64 if the test was carried out through something like an RH10 or a similar software implementation of the decoder. That's naughty, Sony

This place is amazing! Thanks a million to the gurus, I just did the mod on my brand new RH10 and it worked a treat. The change in max power is quite noticeable, especially with high impedance 'phones (Beyer DT-880) which before sounded just faint and now are almost reasonable (with the vol. on max of course).

Hi all, I just bought a Sony MZ-RH10 recorder and wanted to share my excitement with this very active community, when I first browsed the forums I couldn't believe how alive and kicking MD still is! I was looking for a portable digital recorder that would do PCM and after looking into the usual flash card suspects (Edirol R-1, Marantz PMDs, M-audio Microtrack) I bumped into the Sony at a much more attractive price, found out about the new Hi-MD format, read good reviews, learnt about DRM being gone from the latest software... no brainer! I've just started getting acquainted with it, I've got a gig coming up on 11th March that I want to record and can't wait to give it the road test drive. So far all I can tell is that it's cute as hell, I love the blue screen and there's something reassuring about having physical discs that you swap in and out, I'm sure I'd have missed that with a flash recorder. Anyway, just wanted to say hi for now but I'll report back on my first gig-to-CD experience. See you around, Cabirio