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Recently I found myself in the possession of a Sony MZ-NHF800 Minidisc recorder and an ECM-ZS90 switchable mic and a very happy man I am with the hardware.
But the software absolutely sucks. Big time.
The software that comes bundled with the player is an early version of SonicStage, a library and transfer management tool; even updating it to the latest 4.0 version still causes massive headaches, to wit:
- software causes pc to go into endless ‘error recording’ loop when it freezes, using up all available cpu power so even leaving your pc or notebook on overnight doesn’t resolve the issue — you still have to ‘hard reset’ (hold in the power button until the pc slams shut) and try and recover whatever documents you lost because you didn’t save them. I can’t tell you how many times it has crashed my notebook, and it’s not because the notebook is underpowered I can assure you!
- the minidisc recorder itself needs the SonicStage software to transfer material. You can’t just use the recorder as an extra hard drive and dump your mp3s across to it – they won’t be found and won’t be played. Instead you need SonicStage to transfer the files across for you, one album or one track at a time
- the transfer process is tediously slow — it takes your mp3 or wav file and converts it to their highly-compressed format (ATRAC3plus). Forget the sales hype on the website, the transfer process is painfully slow believe me (and I’m not alone in finding this frustrating)
As I say, I love the hardware — the mic is fantastic and I just picked up a Sony lapel mic to go with it. The recording quality is superb and the unit itself is small, light and portable. The menu system is fiddly, but I can live with that, especially as the AGC (automatic gain control) seems to do the job of sorting out recording levels quite brilliantly.
Forget the hoo-haa about Sony’s root drm kit and how it superglues itself into your system (much as the hoo-haa is absolutely right and Sony were completely in the wrong to sneak it in); the hardware is really excellent and I’m very happy with it.
But I sure wish I could use some other software than SonicStage to transfer songs and podcasts across to it for listening to whilst walking the hounds of the Baskervilles at 5am. Anyone know of a workaround?
{ 3 comments }
any chance of quoting your experiences on a blog for radio reporters?
http://www.whatcaughtmyeye,blogspot.com . Maybe someone knows of an alternative – though I fear not.
Go for it, Johnathan!
Hello
Every Sony MiniDisc came with lots of upload restrictions, until recently. Have a look at the latest generation of Hi-MD: the MZ-RH1. Full upload and dowload of atrc, pcm & mp3 files, and it works for data storage, too.
you’ll find more at minidisc.org
wkr
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