jbdance

All the sources I've read regarding lithium-ion batteries say the battery life will be longer with partial discharges rather than full discharges, other things being equal. Lithium-ion and lithium-ion-polymer batteries do not have a "memory" effect. see also: http://www.buchmann.ca/chap2-page7.asp A single "complete" discharge will destroy a lithium-ion battery, but most/all devices incorporate circuits to prevent a discharge beyond the danger point.

Definitely, that's the first thing I tried to do- guess I should have mentioned why that didn't work. The problem with this particular model is that it only feeds pins 1,4 through to the actual battery case. They don't even have all four wires in the cable, just two- so I'd have to break open the solid molded USB female connector it has on the end of a short cable, to get to USB pins 2,3 and I figured that would be just as messy, and I'd probably break it trying to cut it open. Hopefully the other model USB power boxes have a better design.

To follow up on my RH1 external 4xAA battery pack story: I finally got my battery pack to work and charge the RH1. It turns out you need to have a 20 k-ohm resistor between pins 2 and 3 of the USB port for the RH1 to recognize it as a power source. Some commercial USB battery packs provide this, and they work. Some (like the one I got) leave pins 2,3 open, and therefore they do not work with the RH1, although they may work with some other USB devices. I hacked a USB extender cable to add the 20k resistor, at which point my pack started working. More details, measurements, and photos here: http://beale.best.vwh.net/measure/USB/index.html

Yes, the internal battery is lower voltage than the external USB port. USB power is supposed to be 5 Volts, and in fact the Sony power supply for this unit (Sony AC-S508U) is marked 5 volts. I measured mine, it provides 5.18 volts. So a different 5V external unit also ought to work, right?

My MZ-RH1 works and charges fine with the Sony supplied AC adaptor AC-S508U. However, it does NOT work with a $20 USB power supply (a 4-AA pack I just got from Ebay: "Mobiledriven USB Battery Extender AA MD9020-0010". http://www.mobiledriven.com/usbbaexaaba.html The pack has a green LED which comes on, and I checked with a voltmeter and it is providing +5.25 V which seems OK, so why doesn't this work? Has anyone else had success with this pack or other external AA USB packs with their RH1? Note: I know that the AA pack is providing power because it was able to spin up an external laptop hard drive that is USB powered, but the RH1 just pretends that it isn't there at all.

Without the remote connected, I measured very satisfactory performance from my RH1. Using my soundcard and attenuators into the mic input at max gain, RMAA reported -124.4 dBu http://beale.best.vwh.net/measure/audio/MZ...Mic_30_150Z.htm which I think is better than any other battery-powered mic preamp as small as the RH1 unit. Measurements aside, I'm very happy with the RH1 sound quality so far. Note- I never tried recording with the remote connected. I think my mics are the weakest link in the chain, at this point.

I could at some point, when I find time. But meanwhile, try this. That graph shows (approximately) a variation as follows: 40 Hz: +1 dB 300 Hz: 0 dB 2 kHz: -0.4 dB 10 kHz: 0 dB 20 kHz: +1 dB Ok, so what does that mean? You can find out. Set that equalization curve up in the audio editor of your choice. I use Vegas. "Audacity" can apparently load in EQ curves, although I don't know in what format. Try listening to your favorite music on your favorite headphones both with and without that level of EQ applied. Does it sound much different to you? ...really? I just did this experiment, using the track EQ in Sony Vegas 7 and listening to a variety of music, switching the specified EQ curve in and out. I concentrated and listened closely. I could hear no difference. I increased the 40 Hz boost and I did hear a difference around +6 dB. Your hearing may be different, but my point is the EQ curve as described is pretty close to negligible from my standpoint.

Sometimes when I connect my RH1 to my PC, Windows does not make the "USB device connected" tone. If I open and reinsert the MD, then it works. Annoying, but it will work. I have a library of old MDs too. The RH1 can upload them ok to the PC. Apparently for patent licensing reasons, SonicStage will not use the original ATRAC/292kbps codec which your "old-style" MDs are recorded in. That means the file is converted when it uploads, either to ATRAC3+/256k or PCM (uncompressed). Your uploaded file is stored in the SonicStage library as an .oma file, by default in a subdirectory under C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\SonicStage\Packages The .oma file has "copy protection" built in so you cannot open it with anything but Sonic Stage. You can do a second step in SS to "convert" the file to another .oma without protection, and that file gets written to C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\SonicStage\Packages\Optimized Files You can also specify SonicStage to auto-convert files to standard WAV after upload and put it in a separate directory. That's what I do. The wav file is then available right away for import, burning etc. with other software.

Here are my RMAA tests on the RH1 input with graphs. It looks pretty smooth to me. Line input: http://beale.best.vwh.net/measure/audio/So...RH1_line-in.htm Microphone input: http://beale.best.vwh.net/measure/audio/MZ...Mic_30_150Z.htm Of course a good soundcard can do better: http://beale.best.vwh.net/measure/audio/Mia24_96.htm but that card and the PC it fits into, does not fit in a pocket. ...Wait, I just realized you're talking about the RH1 OUTPUT! Sorry, I have not tested that. I only use the RH1 for recording, and digital upload to PC. (as an aside, I find that a 1 dB volume difference is not easy to hear)

Very interesting, thanks for that info. PCM ought to be fine for me, the reason I was trying to get the "original bits" is I suspected that something in the conversion from and back to Atrac/292k was causing me to get the "glitches" in between tracks. Basically I want to be able to make an exact copy of an existing Atrac/292k MD with the same track divisions, without hearing a click or pop noise in between tracks in the new copy. However, so far I cannot do it. It seems the only way to get a perfect copy is to join the entire disc into one long file, write that to the new disc, and then afterwards re-apply all the track divisions and re-title them, a time-intensive process I was hoping to avoid. Here's another question then: Is there a way to automatically extract track points and labels from one MD and apply them to another one, without scrolling to each track divide point on the player and re-entering each track name? Update: I did manage to write the disc out as a single WAV file, lay out the track marker times in Vegas (set 75 frames per sec) and author a gapless CD by manually entering the track times in Nero. It is kind of ironic if it's easier to generate the project as a CD than as a MiniDisc!

I've been using MiniDiscs for many years, but now I am learning a little bit more about the details. Let's see if I've got this right. The RH1 will record in Hi-SP, ATRAC3plus/256 kbps on a HiMD disc, but if you use a standard disc it will record with ATRAC/292 kbps in SP mode, or ATRAC3/132 or /66 kbps in LP2 or LP4 modes respectively (from RH1 user manual p. 81-82). Until I got the MZ-RH1 last month, all my MD recorders were "old-fashioned". They recorded in stereo SP mode, that is original ATRAC at 292 kbps. When I put one of my old minidiscs with a stereo SP (ATRAC/292 kbps) track into my RH1 and upload the track to my computer using SonicStage 3.4, and check the "Track Properties" -> File Info it reads ATRAC3plus/256 kbps. If that's true, then SonicStage must have converted the file, even though I had Tools/Options/Transfer/NetMD/Transfer Mode set to: Standard transfer mode: Transfers the file "as is" (no conversion). I'm worried that Sonic Stage 3.4 may not be able to handle original ATRAC/292 kbps at all. But if that is true, then why does p.82 of the RH1 user manual have a table listing this format? (p. 82) When transferring FROM the computer: ATRAC (stereo)/292 kbps Recording time: 80 minute standard disc: 1 hour and 20 minutes How exactly do I get Sonic Stage to transfer ATRAC/292 kbps files to my RH1? Has anyone done this? Is there some other software that is capable of writing ATRAC/292 kbps, if SonicStage is not?

I have a Sony MZ-RH1 with SonicStage 3.4.03.15140 and I also have the video editor Sony Vegas 7.0c The advertised features of Vegas 7 include ATRAC and ".oma" as a supported audio format. However, none of the .oma files that I have imported from my minidisc through SonicStage can be opened in Vegas. I just get "an unexpected error occurred... file xxx.oma could not be opened". Has anyone had any success working with .oma files directly on your computer? I know SonicStage can convert them to PCM WAV files, I tried that and it works ok, however I'd like to be able to use the original .oma files if possible. Any suggestions would be appreciated; thanks!

I selected convert to PCM, set the view to Albums / Playlists, and transferred the entire album. The whole thing plays back just fine on the computer from SonicStage, with no clicks between tracks. The problem is when I then transfer this to a new MD. When I play back the new MD it has an audible "click" glitch in between tracks, that the original MD did not have. I want to make a new MD that sounds exactly like my original MD, but it is not working. Has anyone done this successfully? I am thinking maybe Sony only tested MDs with track points in the silence in between songs, and they aren't even aware of this glitch. By the way I tried using the WAV files exported from SonicStage. When I assembled those separate files together in another program (Sony Vegas 7) they played smoothly on the computer with no glitch between tracks. The only problem is when I try to write a new MD and play that back in the MD player.

I have a library of old MDs. (SP-mode, stereo: the original MD format before LP, LP2, HiMD etc). These are used for dance rehearsals and they have rehearsal points (track markers) in the middle of the music, not just in the silence between songs. I want to upload these to the computer using my new MZ-RH1 HiMD unit, which I bought because I read it was supposed to be able to do this. In SonicStage under Tools-> Options-> Transfer -> NetMD/HiMD -> Transfer Mode Settings I have "Standard transfer mode: Transfers the file "as is" (no conversion). The track names appear on the screen, and the upload from MD to computer appears to go quickly and work properly (using SonicStage Version 3.4.03.15140 on WinXP SP2).However when I test it out by writing out all the files to a new blank MD, there is a problem. First, when writing the new MD, SonicStage says "one or more files cannot be written in their current bitrate. They will be converted and transferred. Please select a bit rate" (LP2 Stereo, LP4 Stereo, Stereo). I chose "Stereo" and wrote the new disc. (if the file came from MD with no conversion, why can it not be written back with no conversion?) At any rate, when I play the new MD back, the music is there, but there is a "pop" or "click" sound at each new track. These clicks were NOT present in the original. Am I doing something wrong, or does this software/hardware just not work the way I thought it did (losslessly transfer music to and from minidisc) ? thanks for any advice!