Hardware: ten; Software; three That ain't it, SonyŽ. That ain't it,..
Written: Nov 30 '06 (Updated Mar 13 '07)
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Pros: Good battery life, awesome audio quality
Cons: Software, records mono in left channel only.
The Bottom Line: Highest quality audio available in digital recorders.
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| jckatz's Full Review: Sony MZ-M100 Personal MiniDisc Player |
I’ve meant to write this review for a long time but I couldn’t figure it out. On one hand we purchased 8 Sony Hi-MD Recorder Model number Mz-M100 for a very good reason. The Hi-MD provides awesome audio quality, superb battery life, and up to 34 hours of recording time (We get 7 hours on our setting which is fine since the batteries are only good for 8 hours).
NOT an MP3 Player
A lot of MP3 players other there also have recorders built in. I’ve used them and they are OK but not great. They are built to play Mp3’s and they have added the recording ability because they could but it wasn’t something that they worked long hours into the night to perfect. I will give credit to SonyŽ, the MiniDisc MZ-M100 and all other Hi-MD recorders are just that, RECORDERS first and foremost.
BUT…. It is a Sony. Remember that Sony is the same group of people that added Software to their Music CD that ended up breaking peoples’ computers.
Remember that it is Sony that was a year late on their Blue-Ray compatible Play Station III because they wanted to make sure the copy protection is tighter than Fort Knox. This is a company that let Microsoft get a 365 day head start so they can keep people from Making illegal copies for an additional week or two after the Playstation III is released. (I bet there is already a hack out there).
I am not ranting
I bring this up for a very important reason. The Mini-Disc is no exception to the rule that Sony loves Copy Protection. But here is the problem… Who are they copy protecting it from? If you take you Sony Mini-Disc recorder to a meeting and record your boss giving a presentation about the 5 year plan, why should that information be copy protected?
Here is how Sony handles copy protection. You can only use their hardware with their software. Got of favorite audio editing software? Too bad! Have a favorite file transfer software? Too bad! Have a favorite Drive to store you audio files? Too bad!!
Lets look at that first. My work computer does not have write permission on the C drive. The powers that be, want all our work to be done on the Network drives. This is wonderful because I can go anywhere and log onto any computer and access my Word Files, Excel Files, and Power Point presentations. But Sony will only let me transfer my audio files to my C drive.
The next problem I have is their transfer software… This is what a file transfer is called when I transfer it from the device to my computer
001-2006-03-23 14_48_17.WAV
Now if I wanted to I could rename EACH and ever file on my machine its called Untitled and then it would look like 001 newfilename.WAV. I would be so happy if I could just call the GROUP newfilename and it would then RENAME each file instead of defaulting to DATE TIME.
The moral of the story is if it wasn’t for copy protection I could use other software with more transfer settings. Setting that would let me rename all the files at once. And make my life of organizing GIGABYTES of data easier.
FILE SIZE
High Quality Audio means very big file sizes. A 2 minute long audio file is only 24 Megs. A 2 hour audio file easily finds itself into the Gigabyte rang. Sorry I convert my long files to MP3 quickly and delete them. But I don’t convert them using Sony’s software I can’t. I have to use a third party program to do it for me. Thank you Jet Audio Pro!
As I said, Software 3
HARDWARE 10
In my opinion or Epinion MZ-M100 hardware rules the roost. But I wouldn’t give it a ten. Maybe a 9.
A brief history of digital audio. People think MP3 audio is great, and MP3 audio is much better than past compressed audio but it is still compressed audio, and a person with good quality headphones and a good ear will notice the lost of audio information in an MP3 file, compared to CD and especially compared to a high end record player with a clean well kept record.
Sound travels to us in a wave. This wave is captured with microphones and transmitted as an electrical signal (electricity also travels in waves.) With records and tapes the electrical wave is than transferred into a physical WAVE, all this keeps the sound in the same format and gives you the most exact match possible. Digital information is SAMPLED, the more samples you take the closer to a WAVE you can get but in the end you always have a bunch of STRAIGHT lines.
The SONY MiniDisc can record in one of three sample rates:
PCM: 1.4 Mbps 1 Hour and 34 minutes on a 1 gigabyte disc
Hi-SP 245 kpbs 7 Hours and 55 minutes on a 1 gigabyte disc
Hi-Lp 64 kbps 34 Hours on a 1 gigabyte disc
HI-Sp and LP uses a Sony ATRAC3Plus compression method which is a proprietary “lossless” compression format that only SONY uses.
Author's Note This is also the same format that Blu-Ray disc use for their HD audio.
Making a Recording
SonyŽ created a great machine to make recordings, it comes with a super stereo microphone. On one occasion, I had the unit in my pocket and the microphone attached the my lapel, even thought I was 15 rows from the speaker the audio was perfect (minus some fabric sounds when I moved). This unit really is designed to capture music at a concert. There is also a mic in and a line in. WARNING: If you use line in the unit will create new tracks automatically if there is any silence. It does this because, if you are recording from a CD using line in, then instant tracking. Only problem is where I am there is one remove that is at line level, and in the real world people sometimes have pauses between sentences, this should not be a new track.
The good news is you can turn it off, the bad news is the default is ON, so you have to make the change EVERYTIME. And you can only make the change, when the unit is recording, but pauseda. It is just too much work to try to train people to do it, so we just suffer in that room.
Using the mic in things are much better. When recording at mic level the auto levels are just about perfect. If you hit the red record button a second time, it creates a new track. PERFECT!
Yet when you are using MIC IN the recording is only in MONO (left channel). This is something you have to fix in your external software, only after you convert it from SONY format.
Listening
The unit comes with cheap ear buds with a remote control, you can detach the ear buds and plug in your own headphones in the remote control. I like to listen while recording, this lets you make sure the levels are correct.
FUCTIONING
MEDIAGEEK reminded me of something very important in his review. The buttons on this unit are SMALL and to make matters worse the printing is black on black, making reading the controls nearly impossible. Since most people do RECORD and stop this isn’t a problem. And I now the unit very well, I have no problems, but a new user will have problems... READ THE MANUAL.
SEVEN LINE DISPLAY:
The unit has a great display. Very bright, easy to read, in record mode it shows levels (an important feature for recording when audio quality is important). It also displays hours remaining, groups, track number, pretty much everything you need fits on the 7 lines of data.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 499
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jckatz
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Member: Joe Katz
Location: chicago
Reviews written: 153
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