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MZ-RH1

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woofcyn

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Why is Sony not advertising the MZ-RH1 and stocking it at their flagship Sony store in NYC? Are they planning on phasing the product out (maybe they'll come out with a flash recorder)? Does it record in analog or digital format? How does it compare with other recorders for live music such as IRiver?

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I wonder about how Sony is marketing the RH1 myself. I had to buy RH1 from minidisco and my guitar center locally here in Boise was carrying mz-m10 and m100 at point and not re-stocking with any md unit. Kinda makes you wonder. Sony's priority seems as if not marketing minidisc as much as it was before now that they finally got it right this time. It records both digitally and analog and it works great live as advertised said although I have not try this for myself but other than people have said

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Sony may have gotten burned by over-producing previous versions of Minidisc. They have gotten a bit conservative. The Sony Reader, for example, was released for sale in September, but suppy is so short that it's back-ordered until December. And the Sony Reader is definitely something I'm interested in. Better to have just enough, rather than too few or too many.

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1)Why is Sony not advertising the MZ-RH1 and stocking it at their flagship Sony store in NYC?

2)Are they planning on phasing the product out (maybe they'll come out with a flash recorder)?

3Does it record in analog or digital format?

4)How does it compare with other recorders for live music such as IRiver?

I've numbered your questions.

1) Incompetence.

2) What Sony will do with its products is an eternal mystery. MD has more than a decade of development behind it, and Hi-MD has been around for two years; the RH1 has obviously been given a lot of thought, if not a lot of marketing. Sony does now have a flash player/recorder that is like the Iriver T30--Line-in only--with more storage (up to 4G) but with a proprietary connector for recording and, like the Iriver, no on-the-fly level control or track marks. It's promising, but in my opinion not ready for prime time.

http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=17736

3) Minidisc recording is digital: numbers on a disc. Sound you can hear is analog, and minidisc will record that. Analog recording went out with recording tape.

4) Which iRiver?

The RH1 records PCM, so it's better quality than the little flash recorders like IFP and T30, and even in compressed formats it just sounds much better--I tried them side-by-side.

The iRiver IHP-120 or H140 are, with Rockbox installed, catching up to minidisc's feature set: PCM recording, level control, track marks. [before Rockbox, there was no comparison, since recordings on the H1xx series had clicks, dropped samples, etc.] The iRivers are still line-in only while MD has a mic jack. (The iRivers do have a built-in mic that beautifully picks up the sound of the disc drive spinning up.)

The Iriver's clear advantages include far more onboard storage, optical out, and easy drag-and-drop once the recordings are made. Also, it's far more tweakable. However, they are heavier, you're stuck with a built-in rechargeable battery and it's a hard drive, so if you break it, there go your 20GB. I have both MD and the H120, and it might just be minidisc habit, but I still prefer the Hi-MD--it's more pocket-sized and the sound of the recordings seems clearer, though I haven't done a head-to-head comparison.

iRivers certainly do have lots of fans. But at least part of that is because through the years, Sony has been so utterly misguided with minidisc--buggy software, no uploading despite the USB connection on NetMD units--so that when Hi-MD finally arrived, minidisc already had turned off a lot of recordists.

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I'm not familiar with either the new Sony MD (since Sony will not stock it at the store) or the iRiver. However, musicians are using various iRiver models to record their live concerts. Some even have claimed that the recording quality on the`Iriver is just as good as my their old minidisc players but not necessarily the new RH1.

They told me the following advantages/disadvantages: after a gig on the Iriver, you have to upload it to a computer rather than swapping out discs. File transfer to the computer is at flash memory speed, an advantage over the minidisc. IRiver doesn't allow allow you to monitor recording levels on the fly like the MD, nor does it allow you to listen to the recording as you're making it (an undocumented feature).

IFP-895 is around $100 - it's one gig, which records about 4 hours, supposingly super clean and easy to dump into iTunes (I don't have iTunes, though. I'm using SonicStage for my Sony MP3 player). IFP-895 is really ugly, but does the job, supposingly.

IRiver hasa 4 gig one that records, but it's bigger, like a standard iPod size.

There is also the Iriver IFP 799. Or the low-cost IFP 790 with less memory, but it is discontinued and may have been replaced by the T30.

For me, the quality of the recording is the most most important feature. I haven't figured out whether the difference in price between iRiver and Sony is necessary/justified for my purposes. Now that I have the Sony MP3 player, I have gotten used to the convenience and will not be using the MD as my portable music player.

I think it's a problem if Sony is charging $330 for the player and refuses to stock it at their own store, even though the employees there have called them several times asking them to do so. It makes me wonder whether Sony is planning on replacing it with another unit or ultimately a flash recorder. Very few musicians are willing to fork out the money on a product they can not see, feel, and understand its features.

4) Which iRiver?

The RH1 records PCM, so it's better quality than the little flash recorders like IFP and T30, and even in compressed formats it just sounds much better--I tried them side-by-side.

The iRiver IHP-120 or H140 are, with Rockbox installed, catching up to minidisc's feature set: PCM recording, level control, track marks. [before Rockbox, there was no comparison, since recordings on the H1xx series had clicks, dropped samples, etc.] The iRivers are still line-in only while MD has a mic jack. (The iRivers do have a built-in mic that beautifully picks up the sound of the disc drive spinning up.)

The Iriver's clear advantages include far more onboard storage, optical out, and easy drag-and-drop once the recordings are made. Also, it's far more tweakable. However, they are heavier, you're stuck with a built-in rechargeable battery and it's a hard drive, so if you break it, there go your 20GB. I have both MD and the H120, and it might just be minidisc habit, but I still prefer the Hi-MD--it's more pocket-sized and the sound of the recordings seems clearer, though I haven't done a head-to-head comparison.

iRivers certainly do have lots of fans. But at least part of that is because through the years, Sony has been so utterly misguided with minidisc--buggy software, no uploading despite the USB connection on NetMD units--so that when Hi-MD finally arrived, minidisc already had turned off a lot of recordists.

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