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Originally Posted by jessica_fae
 I had a Sharp MT77 in silver. This was a very cool player. Really small and light and it had an external AA battery holder option. I "loaded" all music via optical line-in recording. For those not used to minidisc, "loading" music was more like recording music onto tapes, real-time recording and using the buttons on the device to move tracks around or split them.
And I still have a Sony NH1 HiMD player/recorder. The 1GB minidiscs are really cool. And I was able to pick up 20 of them for 20gbp (1 british pound per disc) when I was living there 2 years ago. I tended to carry around 6 discs with me (one in the NH1 and 5 in my purse. That was 6GB of music for 6gbp. And with SonicStage it really wasn't that much different to using a DAP. In contrast to the pre-netMD players SonicStage was so convenient. I guess one has to experience what it is like to spend 90minutes loading a CD onto a minidisc: 1x recording and then maybe another 30minutes manually entering track names and artist names using the remote to enter one character at a time. It was just part of the ritual of buying new music. I still love my NH1. It sounds so good and still has something like 20hrs of battery life per charge and the 3line remote is still really nice. |
Ok, so I've had mine for probably 2 years or so. I've used it a lot and figured stuff out so I'll try to help as I can.
Incidentally, some weird voodoo shit happened last night and I think I broke mine(finally). The cable snagged on a door handle(smooth round ones), slid into the hole where the flat part toggles the lock, and got a little crushed. I thought it just ruined the headphones(my 2nd pair), but I tried another pair and now it just hisses in both pairs(good and possibly bad set of headphones) and my computer won't read it. So I might try disassembling it later to fix it.
To drag and drop files(yes, it limits names and only allows mp3s iirc, and quality is limited, but I don't care): Change the mode, make a recording, browse on any computer starting at the PRIVATE folder.
The full file path would be
\PRIVATE\MEIGROUP\SDPLAYER\LINE_REC
Then add folders/files as you wish. You can also try just adding that file path to the mp3 player, starting with PRIVATE, but I think you have to start with making a recording or it doesn't change the mode correctly.
You can delete music files from the mp3 player too which is pretty handy.
The backlight to my screen died after about 1.5yrs of use. Works at night and in dark places, barely visible during the day unless I cup my hand around it. Doesn't matter too much though since it has such a simple interface.
I also noticed a hiss after awhile(maybe a 1yr?). I can't remember, but I want to say that my 2nd pair headphones made it go away for awhile. The headphones are kinda fragile, and I don't think it's helped by the big connector which makes the wire bend a little more than it normally would. Anyway, like others have mentioned, the built in noise-canceling is great. It's perfect for the train. The one downside is I haven't been able to find any aftermarket headphones that are compatible. I thought about modifying a pair of noise canceling headphones to work with the unique jack on the mp3 player but that's about the same time I got a 2nd pair from Bic Camera. They'd already stopped selling the model but a salesman was nice enough to get one shipped from their distribution center and I picked it up about 2 weeks later. So if you live in Japan you can probably do this and not have to worry too much about the headphones falling apart and ruining the experience. Just in case though I'd pick up a couple pairs when you first buy it.
I picked up the accessory line-out when I bought it but I've never used it. I do kinda wish I'd bought the bluetooth version though. I think it was $20 more for 20hrs less battery life. I don't think I'd have noticed the hit to the battery life too much. Then maybe I'd have been able to use it with most newer car stereos, which would be nice. Not a big deal though. I think I really do get the 80-100hrs as advertised. Being in the military it's great since anytime I leave for exercises I don't have to worry about charging it for up to about 2 weeks of normal use. For normal use it's a nice feature just because if you leave it running all night and forget to charge it(like I do sometimes), it won't be dead.
I successfully repaired my first pair of headphones. I cut the wire in half, cut out the trouble spot(at first I could rub/twist the wire and it'd work normally, but without this I'd only hear through one ear), and soldered everything back together. It is more of a pain because of the extra wires for the noise canceling, but it wasn't too bad. The hardest part was getting the solder to stick to the wires. Another annoying thing about the headphones is that they don't fit well in other headphone jacks. If you hold it in it usually works fine, but it doesn't fully seat so if you let go it'll slip back out. I thought about cutting back the circular connector for the noise-cancelling that causes this but never got around to it. In the end I lost maybe 6" to 1ft of cable when I fixed the older pair. They'd still reach from my pants pocket to my ears but it was close(I'm 5'11"). I did kinda a hack job though so you could prolly keep the cable length closer to normal. You could also try repairing the messed up section, but that'd be a little more difficult than just removing it, imo.
I also had an iPod nano 4th gen for awhile but I barely used it because I preferred this so much more. The only thing I used the iPod nano for was to play movies on the go(or in the classroom or something).
I tried AppLocale with MOOCS, I think I got it to install but not work entirely. I didn't really care by that point though because I'd learned how to drag & drop. I used the standard program for about a week and wasn't too satisfied with it. Like all mp3 player programs it kinda blows. But it was particularly slow at transferring files because it'd convert them first(I believe to AAC).
Anyway, this is/was by far the best mp3 player I've used. It's simple and to the point and doesn't try to do anything besides play music well. The noise canceling is a nice bonus, especially for travelers, since you get the benefits of clunkier noise canceling systems without the drawbacks. While the headphones are fragile the player itself isn't. The screen got scratched up a little after about 6mo. so it lost its mirror finish, but other than that it's held up great. It's so light that dropping it won't really do any harm and the plastic case is pretty durable imo. The way the buttons were designed prevents dirt from entering since there aren't any cracks for it to get into.
Overall my recommendations: Buy a couple extra sets of headphones since you'll probably be using it for the long-term and the headphones fail first. Even though I like high-quality headphones, the standard ones are better imo when you're on-the-go or outside a lot, so it's useful to keep a good pair around.
Buy an extra usb cable. It looks proprietary to me and too often I've nearly lost mine. Then I'd be screwed when the battery ran out(although it'd still probably last another 6mo. of casual use :p )
I also like getting large sdhc cards. I'd recommend a 32gb one since they're pretty cheap now. That way you can put your music on it, put a bootable OS on it(so that if you're on the go you can keep all your basic utilities/files), and then you can use it in your camera too. That way your mp3 player can do more useful things than just be an mp3 player. I also put movies on mine too so that whenever I went somewhere I wouldn't have to bring a computer. I could just use someone else's and pull up my files.
Hopefully I can fix it soon. I'll try to post pics later of the disassembly since it seems like something was jarred loose.
