**NEW Music Player Suggestion**

[stargazer_tom1]

Hi guys,

Im after some suggestions for a new music player. My preferences are sound quality and ease of use as opposed to features like videos, games etc. I have yet to find a music player to sound better than my nh1 hi-md. I have tried various flash players (cowon s9, sony a818, sony a3000, sony a828, Samsung i8910). Im actually considering getting another hi-md (mz-rh1) as they are simple to use and play music so well which is what i really want, a good music player. I don

[sfbp]

(I'm starting to sound like a broken record).

I am pretty happy with the tiny ICD SX750 (2GB) and ICD SX950 (8GB). Each about 2 oz (BIG difference from the 13oz PCM-M10). Comes with software to convert CDs, and I have even converted my saved ATRAC files using Sound Forge (supplied). Drag and drop, no DRM, other than a polite warning that this is for personal use, when you copy files from a CD. It even records, with nice built in mikes (3), in PCM, MP3, and (its original purpose) high compression formats for dictation. The least compressed of these (128kbps) is just about perfect for portable listening. I'll let you do the math as to how many hours that gives you.

Sony has pretty much decided where it's going. Although this isn't marketed in such a way as to attack the MD market, it's clear they are making the improvements we have begged for (mostly unsuccessfully) for years, not to MD, but to the newer type of unit.

[stargazer_tom1]

Thanks for your response.

Had a look at the flash recorders you suggested. I should note that a recording function is not high on my list of priorities. I also had a look through the pcm series again and the pcm-m10 doesnt look that bad and is fairly well priced. It might be the path i go down and im guessing it should sound as good or better than my nh1?

(ps i know SQ is subjective so please do your best)

Thanks again!!

[sfbp]

Thanks for your response.

Had a look at the flash recorders you suggested. I should note that a recording function is not high on my list of priorities. I also had a look through the pcm series again and the pcm-m10 doesnt look that bad and is fairly well priced. It might be the path i go down and im guessing it should sound as good or better than my nh1?

(ps i know SQ is subjective so please do your best)

Thanks again!!

I am impressed with these for the transferred, compressed sound. The LPEC STHQ codec is wonderful for whatever you download to it. At least as good as most of the ATRAC codecs. You can also do straightforward line in to these, regardless of the fact that it only appears to sport a mike socket, it does double duty and can be switched to line in.

The PCM-M10 is a much heftier beast and I personally would not buy one as a player. I was tempted to get one as a recorder until I chanced on these little beauties. All (incl. PCM-M10) of them support playback of MP3. But the MP3 will always be inferior to ATRAC or LPEC, in my view. With the PCM-M10 you are stuck with MP3 and PCM (which is wildly inefficient in terms of usage as a portable player, and also for transfer speed).

[stargazer_tom1]

Thanks again sfbp. Do you think its worth buying a rh1 in this day and age or am i better to go down the flash recorder path? I always listen at high bitrates like hi-sp so maybe its not worth going with the above mentioned flash players. The pc-m10 is very hefty but at least it has an sd slot so i can store loads more stuff than the sx series voice recorders.

[sfbp]

HiSP is good enough? Then I think you will be happy with LPEC STHQ, as am I. I humbly suggest that for $120 on Amazon you could do worse than get your feet wet. This is a very solidly made piece of equipment.

(remember 6 or 7 years have passed since HiSP was introduced, and new codecs generally go on improving over their predecessors).

[stargazer_tom1]

The icd-sx950 looks good and is quite cheap. Way cheaper than the rh1 or m10. Do you know how good it sounds compared to high sp? I will prob use lame mp3 vbr maybe -1 setting?

I have an nwz-a828 which is pitiful compared to my nh1. This should sound better right?

Thanks

also is it gapless? im thinking of grabbing one cos of the price and i hope it sounds better than hi-md. Like i said im after a good sound quality device i want to spend my $300 on audio alone i dont want or need to pay for a colour screen and video etc playback (this is why the rh1 is tempting me $500 for a good quality music player).

cheers

[sfbp]

I think the sound is excellent. I have done several live recordings. By accident I switched the mike to the "directional" (mono) mike for the last one, and even that was good enough to splice onto the video to make a DVD. I made an MD recording at the same event, and the RH1 was better - but it was using my Soundpro mikes which have better specs (20Hz-20kHz) anyway.

OK, now you are seriously in the market I will give you the negatives:

1. The 950 is not available in English (yet, or perhaps ever, who knows?). I survived the Japanese menus (perhaps Chinese would be worse) easily because I can look at the English menus of the 750 which are in all cases except 1 identical in function. Richard (admin) here will tell you of his experiences ordering Japanese-only MD recorder and players. All the files and codec names (eg STHQ) stay in English (or whatever), and there is English software supplied or available free from Sony. The English software shows all the SETTINGS on the recorder in English so actually it's not necessary to read 1 word of Japanese as long as you don't mind tweaking the device by connecting it to the PC occasionally.

2. The Folder system is very nice but perhaps not quite as smooth as MD, though in some ways a lot more flexible. My biggest complaint has to do with track ordering. I have no idea if the PCM-M10 fixes this one either. If you drop a track onto the player (either using Digital Voice Editor 3, or simply drag and drop) the order of play within a folder is by title. However to be fair, the DVE3 does manage the metadata properly for you, allowing file name and title both to be stored on the device. This means that a proper title will pop up in the display, with the track number missing (ripped off and used to order). It even accepts arbitrarily formatted track numbers such as d01 - d99, which I discovered by messing around yesterday. What you put on using DVE will stay (and play) in the order you see on the screen of the PC.

3. The record button is perhaps too easy to push (this was designed as a voice recorder). As long as you don't have overwrite turned on, this isn't a problem but I find once in a while I end up with some track recorded by accident. No big deal, really, given the erase button, which many MD newbies seem to miss (and I agree with them), that probably got there from the MD business recorder line such as B10.

4. (I'm being really picky here) The microphone seems to "get my fingers on it" as I pick this out of a shirt pocket, avoiding the record and play buttons (however there's a nice HOLD just where you would expect it). In time, maybe the grease from my fingers will do bad things to the microphone.

As to gapless, that has more to do with the encoding end. There is no gap when you divide a piece of music on the recorder. However when I transferred a (divided) Hi-SP recording to it, after transcoding, a gap remained. But this may have been there all along due to the division caused by the transcoding.

Generally navigation is good. If you are stopped then holding down FF or RW will skip through track titles at a great rate. If you are playing then FF or RW will skip to next track if pressed and released, or along (like MD) in the current track if held down. I have no experience with the non-MD walkmans so cannot comment relative to your previous experiences.

The sound is great (I'm talking about STHQ, MP3 has the predictable high-frequency cutoff) and by looking at wave forms I have satisfied myself that it does better than HiSP for high frequencies. Certainly I can hear the words of songs better (it is styled "voice recorder"). For bass, it's easy enough to turn up the recorder's equivalent of mega-bass, which is more than satisfactory for portable listening. The bass-enhancing menu ("effect") on the device is completely in English (hooray!), and I predict many people will be happy with Bass 1 (out of 0, 1, 2). I've also done nice line-in recording successfully.

I have also played the ".msv" files on my stereo (using HTPC) and they sound fine. Direct comparison of the opening of Tosca (Puccini) which is a pretty severe test of any system revealed that HiSP and STHQ (transferred from the HiSP recording) sound about the same, with (as mentioned above) a little more bass in HiSP (without adjustment), and clearer human voice in STHQ. Both on speakers and headphones of the stereo.

The manual record level setting big buttons and display) is terrifically clear and easy to see with no Japanese whatever on the display. In fact when playing there is no Japanese visible either.

Hope this helps

Stephen

[THIS SUCKS]

I think the sound is excellent. I have done several live recordings. By accident I switched the mike to the "directional" (mono) mike for the last one, and even that was good enough to splice onto the video to make a DVD. I made an MD recording at the same event, and the RH1 was better - but it was using my Soundpro mikes which have better specs (20Hz-20kHz) anyway.

OK, now you are seriously in the market I will give you the negatives:

1. The 950 is not available in English (yet, or perhaps ever, who knows?). I survived the Japanese menus (perhaps Chinese would be worse) easily because I can look at the English menus of the 750 which are in all cases except 1 identical in function. Richard (admin) here will tell you of his experiences ordering Japanese-only MD recorder and players. All the files and codec names (eg STHQ) stay in English (or whatever), and there is English software supplied or available free from Sony. The English software shows all the SETTINGS on the recorder in English so actually it's not necessary to read 1 word of Japanese as long as you don't mind tweaking the device by connecting it to the PC occasionally.

i have a 2 sansa clip 8gb units. they play flac,ogg and all the other formats except apples. the sound quality is the pest i have heard on a portable player.

2. The Folder system is very nice but perhaps not quite as smooth as MD, though in some ways a lot more flexible. My biggest complaint has to do with track ordering. I have no idea if the PCM-M10 fixes this one either. If you drop a track onto the player (either using Digital Voice Editor 3, or simply drag and drop) the order of play within a folder is by title. However to be fair, the DVE3 does manage the metadata properly for you, allowing file name and title both to be stored on the device. This means that a proper title will pop up in the display, with the track number missing (ripped off and used to order). It even accepts arbitrarily formatted track numbers such as d01 - d99, which I discovered by messing around yesterday. What you put on using DVE will stay (and play) in the order you see on the screen of the PC.

3. The record button is perhaps too easy to push (this was designed as a voice recorder). As long as you don't have overwrite turned on, this isn't a problem but I find once in a while I end up with some track recorded by accident. No big deal, really, given the erase button, which many MD newbies seem to miss (and I agree with them), that probably got there from the MD business recorder line such as B10.

4. (I'm being really picky here) The microphone seems to "get my fingers on it" as I pick this out of a shirt pocket, avoiding the record and play buttons (however there's a nice HOLD just where you would expect it). In time, maybe the grease from my fingers will do bad things to the microphone.

As to gapless, that has more to do with the encoding end. There is no gap when you divide a piece of music on the recorder. However when I transferred a (divided) Hi-SP recording to it, after transcoding, a gap remained. But this may have been there all along due to the division caused by the transcoding.

Generally navigation is good. If you are stopped then holding down FF or RW will skip through track titles at a great rate. If you are playing then FF or RW will skip to next track if pressed and released, or along (like MD) in the current track if held down. I have no experience with the non-MD walkmans so cannot comment relative to your previous experiences.

The sound is great (I'm talking about STHQ, MP3 has the predictable high-frequency cutoff) and by looking at wave forms I have satisfied myself that it does better than HiSP for high frequencies. Certainly I can hear the words of songs better (it is styled "voice recorder"). For bass, it's easy enough to turn up the recorder's equivalent of mega-bass, which is more than satisfactory for portable listening. The bass-enhancing menu ("effect") on the device is completely in English (hooray!), and I predict many people will be happy with Bass 1 (out of 0, 1, 2). I've also done nice line-in recording successfully.

I have also played the ".msv" files on my stereo (using HTPC) and they sound fine. Direct comparison of the opening of Tosca (Puccini) which is a pretty severe test of any system revealed that HiSP and STHQ (transferred from the HiSP recording) sound about the same, with (as mentioned above) a little more bass in HiSP (without adjustment), and clearer human voice in STHQ. Both on speakers and headphones of the stereo.

The manual record level setting big buttons and display) is terrifically clear and easy to see with no Japanese whatever on the display. In fact when playing there is no Japanese visible either.

Hope this helps

Stephen