Why did Sony change from easy record set?

[Soundbox]

All very embarrssing. A friend came over with his I-Pod which had some great music on - and I wanted a couple of tracks for my MD. Well, I use my MZ-R50 as a rule for portable work, but having picked up a couple of newer machines I thought I would try one of those. Well, both machines refused to start a simple line in recording. My MZ-RH710 told me 'cannot set' when I tried to adjust the record level and the MZ-N510 told me 'no set'. Simple line in, SP recording and new MD. I had to use my MZ-R50 as per normal even though the battery was threatning to conk out.

With the MZ-R50, press end search, hold the record button and off it goes. Keep it pressed to enter manual record level set.

With the newer machines, they seemingly don't even have a record button - well, there is a button with 'rec' but all that does is enter a track mark in an unknown location when pressed. I held it down, pressed at the same time as 'play', had the disk paused, had the end search pressed - and other buton combos.

I am sure that by entering various menus, pressing various buttons and having a user manual to guide, it may start recording, but why did they get rid of the simple. bright red record button?

Please, put my mind at rest that the newer system is better in some way because at the moment it is making me feel rather let down.

Thankfully, the R50 worked as usual - perfectly. I hope that you will tell me that it is just me being a fool and not entering the correct sequence of button presses, but at the moment I am struggling to understand my Sony gadgets.

Cheers! Ian

[sfbp]

IIRC the inability to set manual volume is because you didn't put it in rec-pause mode. TM+play to start recording, pause, and bob's your uncle, sally's your aunt.

See page 27-28 (pp.34-35 for NF610) of the manual. Note that it always defaults to "Auto" you have to set "Manual" every time. The good news is, it seems to recall the last manual volume level e.g. "17".

There's a rather inscrutable comment about combining synch and manual which I do not understand. I tried it out and you CAN set the manual level even if synch is on. They seem to suggest that you should not.

HTH.

S

note: I have no clue about the RH710, I was only messing with the NF610 which is the same as the N510, I believe.

[Soundbox]

Thanks once again Stephen. A bit more info now. Concerning the N510, I spoke today to the previous owner and he never even knew it was a recorder (!) so after working the button combo a few more times it started fine and read 'line in' on the display. Bad contact possibly? Glad its working now though.

The RH710 just tells me 'cannot record' even with a fresh 80 minute disk so that one will be used for litening only.

Ian

[sfbp]

Good stuff (with the 510). The RH710(I finally found a manual, they weren't available here in NA, we only ever saw the DH710) is a 2nd-generation machine.

In common with all other second-generation recorders, the RH10 and RH910, you cannot record on normal MD disks in MD mode except by using Sonic Stage. So you should be able to record on a 1Gb disk, or on an absolutely blank 80m disk (in Hi-SP or Hi-LP).

In a way, Sony's doing you a favour because MD mode recordings cannot be uploaded, and use twice as much space for the same amount of data. A human might never know that second point because there's no Atrac3+ 128kbps - therefore there's about the same time for recording HiSP as LP2 on a given disk (you cannot record the MDLP modes except by transfer, even on the RH1, on a Hi-MD formatted disk).

You CAN download NetMD stuff to the 2nd-generation machines. No requirement to set the mode to MD first, either. Very strange. See page 58 of the manual - it's utterly unclear to me why one would EVER want to set the "disc mode" to MD rather than HiMD.

[Soundbox]

Thanks for that Stephen. Well, I have never fully understood SS (although I have uploaded Avrin's version onto my computer and experimented a little) and the various Hi-MD bitrates also are something that I need to brush up on (being raised on SP and mono only).

So Hi-SP will sound the same as normal SP but using half the space? How is that done? This has probably been discussed here before so if there is a link to a previous discussion that would help educate me. I have not made a Hi-MD recording as of yet as I was suspicious that they are worse sounding for some reason (the low data rates mentioned in the manual). If they are worth using I will make an effort to try them.

Thanks, Ian

PS. You mention the RH1. I hear that this is the only machine to be able to upload SP recordings to the computer, but the SP recording is not left in its raw state - it changed to some other standard. Does that impact on the audio quality in any way?

[sfbp]

Atrac3+ is simply a newer, better codec (Actually it's more than that, it's a better codec AND the HiMD format gets twice as much data on the disk using a different recording technique for the data). There are those, myself included, who prefer to use SP over HiSP for anything that gets edited (other than trimming) by a WAV editor. Somehow Sony got it right with SP - the conversion to 1411kHz cd quality is reckoned by most to be almost perfect. I don't think that's so true with Hi-SP. Take note when importing on RH1 to set the final import to be PCM rather than 256kbps, or you are saddled with a double transcoding every time you upload SP.

However if recording long programs is your intent, ANY of these modes will do (even HiLP or LP4), as long as they are not converted (transcoded to a different bit rate) in between. The problem with SP is that Sony (when they finally permitted upload) insisted on immediate conversion to <whatever>, rather than allowing us to store the resulting SP data in our PC's (some contractual obligation to Dolby, it is postulated).

However the #linux-minidisc project holds out the possibility of uploading SP which is playable in ffmpeg (the file format bears the suffice ".a3a"). We know it (the upload) can be done, just a matter of a bit of "glue" software that's not there yet.

Finally, let me rant on about the most confusing bit of the lot - most people who understand anything about this stuff figure they can't go wrong by uploading at maximum bitrate and then downconverting as needed. WRONG!

That works fine for SP and PCM recordings (as noted above I would never bother for any of the compressed formats because the result will be wasted space and probably the same or worse sound). But for importing CD's to WAV/PCM you should never ever trust Sonic Stage's ripper. It appears to do a reasonable, fast job, but when you try to downconvert to low bit rates (high compression) the result is horrid. There's no "quality setting" which exists when ripping to other formats such as AAL (atrac advanced lossless) and this is, methinks, deliberate by Sony, who didn't want provide an easy piracy route for those mastering new CD's. Consequently I get much better results (and the comments from others kind of confirm this, though no one has actually come right out and agreed with me) converting to AAL and thence to other bit rates, or direct to (say) LP2. The advantage to AAL is that you can go both ways - trivially to (say) LP2 and also back to CD without noticeable problems. I'm sure the other lossless formats have similar advantages, the only difference is it's 2 steps because you have to go FLAC->WAV and then WAV->LP2, I think. After all LP2 is more than adequate for any portable player, IMO at least.

If you rip with OTHER software (eg EAC) to WAV these problems don't exist.

Stephen

[Soundbox]

Thanks Stephen once again for the help. I will digest what you have said when I am sitting at home with everything laid out in front of me.

As an aside, in the past, when I copy CD>MD, I use the optical connection. This '*seems* to me to be a very direct connection - is this method better or worse than using SS to go from CD to MD?

Ian

[sfbp]

Qualified "I don't know". It should be fine but was never my interest (like you I wanted to go the other way always). I did some tests with my MXD-D400 which does it "direct". I had trouble telling the difference between X1 and X4 transfers. Looking at the circuitry it seems likely this is due to turning the clock up by a factor of 4 for the transfer (people have claimed that internal pathways are used, and I might be wrong, but I think they simply transfer using 176.4 kHz SPDIF), making at least THAT combo deck very desirable. (it also has optical out, the only one to do so). Same for the MDS-W1 although it predates MDLP.

I'm **less** sure that all transfers (on other combo units) at higher than x1 are perfect.

The optical out is of course dependent on the quality read off the disk by your standalone CD player. Sonic Stage is fine for ripping direct from CD to LP2 (and faster than combo decks, which generally can do max X2 on LP2) as it does a good job reading the CD in this case provided you turn up the quality to "High".

[NickyJay]

Thanks once again Stephen. A bit more info now. Concerning the N510, I spoke today to the previous owner and he never even knew it was a recorder (!) so after working the button combo a few more times it started fine and read 'line in' on the display. Bad contact possibly? Glad its working now though.

The RH710 just tells me 'cannot record' even with a fresh 80 minute disk so that one will be used for litening only.

Ian

It is possible to hack your RH-710 unit to enable SP recording. Proceed at your own risk though.

http://forums.sonyinsider.com/index.php?/topic/20680-recording-in-true-sp-mode-on-an-rh10-is-possible/