early minidisc adventures and questions

[tartan]

I'd had a Sharp ms721 for a few days (purchased it second hand) and also got a Sony ecmds70p mic for quality recording. With the Sharp model the mic can be connected to the recorder directly and there was no "sounds of the engine spinning the disc" when recording. This recorder was a dream come true exept for one thing, it chewed discs, meaning all recordings are lost if the disc got chewed. It was returned two days later saying there were problems with the recording function.

Recently a new mznh700 was purchased but it fell behind the Sharp in a few areas, there was engine sound when the player was recording meaning the ecmds70p had to be put well away from the player at the end of an extension cord so the recorder does not record itself. This blew all chances of "stealthy pocket recording" that the Sharp could do and doing things that was one button push on the Sharp is now fiddly business with Sony. It still beats the sharp that it does not chew discs (so far) and is being used to store non music material.

Now for the questions

If the MZNH700 has a lot of engine sound when recording, will the MZNH1 (which in its limited edition freebies pack, includes a free ECMDS70P stump mic) and notetakers with built in mics have this problem of the player recording itself too ???

What caused the Sharp MS721 to chew discs very frequently ??? (When purchased, it looked in near new condition, except for the remote)

[KJ_Palmer]

Sony MD recorders tend to be noisier in operation than Sharps due to some battery saving buffer reading/writing features. The MZ-NH1 will probably have a lower noise level than the NH700 when recording (perhaps an owner will confirm), as is usual with the higher-end, metallic models (eg. my N1 is quieter then my N707). But it's still likely to be noisier than the Sharp. I would have thought a short extension cord was a small price to pay...

Not sure what you mean by chewing the disc - do you mean physically like a tape gets chewed? Certainly a faulty machine - some older Sharps eventually developed TOC error problems which killed disks. Even then such a machine could be used for playback only. Perhaps you could check with the previous owner if bought on eBay etc....