Review: Well, where do I start.....as a long time fan of the format, I have just recieved my entry level Sony MZ-NH600 Blue Hi-MD Walkman, and have had 2 days to weigh it up..so here are my thoughts/observations
This device is not expensive..so the construction of it whilst plastic and a bit cheap, is good enough considering the price..I am sure it will prove robust enough. A 1GB recordable disc is NOT supplied with the unit, nor is an AC adapter, however, the unit takes its power from the USB port of the PC when connected, and will even work without a battery in it at all. When making microphone or anologue recordings (not using a PC) onto a 1GB disc, sony recommend the use of an AC adaptor as these discs use alot of power...the good news is that the AC adaptor supplied with any of the previous generation will work. Transfer of audio data to the computer from non Hi Md discs (ie recordings made on older machines) is NOT possible, but anything recorded in Hi Md mode seems to transfer o.k. Anything recorded on any previous MD device WILL play fine, and the software will automatically switch to the correct mode when using the PC, also standard 74 and 80 min discs are fine, but in Hi MD mode, they now hold twice as much, with no loss of quality. All the great MD features are there...single AA battery, and now up to 10 hours on an 80 min disc or a wopping 45 hours on a 1GB disc, I have managed to transfer a 12 hour audio book, and another 30 hour book...and I still have some room, ...on the storage front, I now think MD is plenty big enough. Anything recorded at these high Hi MD capacities will NOT play on an older machine though. Now I am about to say something amazing...the software actually seems quite...well er...good!!!! Sonic stage 2 with Simple Burner (a utility which allows direct transfer from the PC CD drive to MD without first storing the data on the computers hard drive). Copying a CD to MD is now pretty quick and easy. The software interface is Much improved, and I have sussed it out without once using the book, although Sony have still incorporated various copyright protection measures, which can be annoying...but hey, they are a record company. Now this bit really is cool...the device is USB powered AND it acts as an external storage device..ie you can just plug it in to any machine (I have only tried machines running XP) and drag and drop pretty well anything you want..even MP3 files, and whilst these wont play whilst they are in MP3, you can move them to your machine with Sonic Stage on it, and import them, convert them to ATRAC, and copy them back onto MD, the disc is capable of holding both music and data, and this means that you always have the ability to copy quite large files, transfer speed is slower than solid state memory though. These devices do certainly have some advantages over Solid state MP3 players and IPODs, if you already have MD, the problem is that it makes all your previous kit redundant, however if you are new to all this, then these Hi Mds seem cheaper in some respects more flexible. I think Hi Md will be around for a long time yet, and certainly beats the competition if you need to record other than digital (ie from tape, vynil, microphone etc).....and they said it was all over |
Audio HiFi
