Best of Both worlds

[1kyle]

Well for Play back I've gone and done it --not an IPOD however but a Sony NWS70FB.CE7

(That's the problem of working a Stone's throw from London's Tottenham Court Road - London's Electronic centre).

http://shop.sonystyle-europe.com/SonyStyle...&id=fall06*

Look for NWS705FB.CE7 under MP3 players -- . Cost 90 GBP from Gulltronics in Tottenham Ct Road.

Plays ATRAC as well , AAC (also useful), WMA and can do some recording so you can load music up from non PC / SS sources. Has FM radio as well.

For me this would be a bit like carrying 2 HI-MD's -- I've no problem loading up music in advance on to the device. 2GB is fine.

Playing Non DRM'ed AAC and WMA is also useful -- MD should have had this fearure as well.

Actually using SS this is quite a good way to copy say 2 HI-MD's to the device -- upload the 2MD's and then download to the player so this device keeps me the usefulness of the MD as a recorder and allows simple and easy playback -- and I LOVE the built in Noise cancelling system.

Cheers

-K

Edited January 9, 2007 by 1kyle

[Richard]

* Moved to Off-Topic Section

[tekdroid]

Congrats on your new purchase.

Personally, if I go with flash in the future it will be the Cowon U3 or equivalent (even tho I still think embedded non-replaceable batteries and flash make no sense whatsoever). Native OS drag-n-drop (meaning wide OS support), high mW power output, flac support (frankly, the only format that matters to me), etc etc.

You couldn't pay me to use SonicStage for any hardware BUT Hi-MD (a bit too tempting to ignore...)

[ozpeter]

So what sort of quality and control of level etc do you get from the recording cradle, or is that something you have to buy extra?

[1kyle]

So what sort of quality and control of level etc do you get from the recording cradle, or is that something you have to buy extra?

You don't actually need the recording cradle. What you do is to use a special (supplied extra but cheap) cable which has the device USB like attachment at one end and a stereo jack at the other end for pluggging into the AUDIO OUT (analog) of the device you are recording from.

Incidentally by using a "Double Female" plug connected to the stereo jack you can plug a Microphone into this and use the device as a speech (etc.) recording device. It's not as convenient as MD for recording but works at a pinch.

This device charges up quick enough from a computers USB port .

Incidentally if you have the older N1 HI-MD recorder that cradle works fine for charging this device The sockets are identical.

The recording level can be adjusted manually via volume. Codec is ATRAC3 / AAC / PCM. PCM gives you 4X the time you get with the RH1 so you can upload to PC, and create some MD's for distribution.

Using the little modiification I mentioned (the double Female connecting link amd a Microphone) this could be a very useful device in conjunction with the RH1.

I like this device as it's really neat and small -- however the standard phones aren't too good even though the noise cancellation works.

I still use Sennheiser PC150 noise cancelling phones even though these require an external battery.

Using AAC or ATRAC3+ at 256 this device sounds pretty similar to the RH1 - especially with sennheiser phones. Saves wear and tear on the RH1 when I just want playback (and can do the odd bit of recording too).

BTW I changed it for a 4GB model since the price was only 10GBP more. Weight and size were identical and I got one of the new Violet coloured one's -great stuff.

Remember I only got this as a cheap small, convenient portable listening device so I don't need all the fancy bells and whistles a lot of other stuff has.

4GB at 256 KBS ATRAC 3+ is approx 30 CD's at decent(ish) quality and as this device uses NATIVE USB2.0 it's really quick to rip CD's to change what I've got on the player. I'm not one who has any interest in carrying around an entire music collection. -- I just normally would pop in a CD (equivalent) and play it through.

I sometimes see people with IPODS spending more time SCROLLING through huge music lists trying to find specific tracks rather than actually LISTENING to the music. Seems like there is an optimum size to carry around after which selection and retrieval becomes a problem.

I don't mind the 50 hours with an internal battery either. That's certainly long enough -and if the battery does wear out it will be long after the device has been "Thrown away" or re-cycled. By just plugging into a computer USB port for 5 mins will charge an empty battery enough to give several hours play -- and 20 mins should completely charge the whole battery.

FM Radio is nice on this device as well.

Cheers

-K

Edited January 10, 2007 by 1kyle

[Sparda]

Sounds awesome, I didn't actually expect to hear that it sounds good, but I guess I better believe it. I would really buy one if only it wasn't so expensive here in Canada.