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Korg MR-1: Can this be used as a portable player?

post #1 of 245
5/23/09 at 1:56pm
Thread Starter 
I occasionally see mention of this minature recorder being used as a portable player. I've gone on the website to take a look at it & I can't see how you would transfer music files to it unless you recorded them yourself. Is this the extent of it's capabilities to be used as a portable player or am I missing something? I'm hoping I am as this looks to good to be true given the price!
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Gear mentioned in this thread:

Korg MR-1 Professional Mobile Recorder - Digital voice recorder - HDD 20 GB - MP3
post #2 of 245
5/23/09 at 8:29pm
I started a thread about these recorders a while back. The Korg looks really classy. If it would be good as a music player I have no idea...I never bought one. I can't imagine that would be restricted some how as to keep you from putting your own music on it...with everything it does. It might be a more difficult than normal DAPs for transfer but I'd be surprised if it was limited in this way.
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post #3 of 245
5/23/09 at 10:31pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Podtweaker View Post
I occasionally see mention of this minature recorder being used as a portable player. I've gone on the website to take a look at it & I can't see how you would transfer music files to it unless you recorded them yourself. Is this the extent of it's capabilities to be used as a portable player or am I missing something? I'm hoping I am as this looks to good to be true given the price!
yeah you are missing something alright. it has drag and drop usb functionality. reads wav, aiff, mp3, and dsdif. the current price is amazing as reduced from over 800 to under $300 only 20gb, but I think you could probably replace the drive if you really wanted. the only unknown is how long the battery life is while just playing files. recording in full high rez 1 bit DSD only lasts for a few hours, but I expect the play-time on regular rez would be considerably longer. the dac in it is superb. go on buy it I heard it recently and it really sounds amazing. paired with my lisa I think the sound would rival some home rigs for sure. i'm buying one in a few weeks
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post #4 of 245
5/24/09 at 2:28am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by qusp View Post
yeah you are missing something alright. it has drag and drop usb functionality. reads wav, aiff, mp3, and dsdif. the current price is amazing as reduced from over 800 to under $300 only 20gb, but I think you could probably replace the drive if you really wanted. the only unknown is how long the battery life is while just playing files. recording in full high rez 1 bit DSD only lasts for a few hours, but I expect the play-time on regular rez would be considerably longer. the dac in it is superb. go on buy it I heard it recently and it really sounds amazing. paired with my lisa I think the sound would rival some home rigs for sure. i'm buying one in a few weeks
Wow, so I could put my 24/88.2/96khz (or even my 24/192khz Linn or Acousence downloads on it,if I really wanted to be nutzoid!). I may be showing my age ,but "cool!". This is just getting too hard to resist! Thanks for peaking my interest in this w/ your mention of it over on the HiFiman thread. There were a few threads on the Korg over on the AA a few weeks back that I somehow just glossed over. You'll probably get yours before I get mine, but if I do go "out of my head, gotta get it this week!crazy" I'll let you know when I have this puppy! Thanks!
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post #5 of 245
5/24/09 at 7:54am
i read a review said battery life only 2 to 3 hours.
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post #6 of 245
5/24/09 at 8:54am
i have Korg mr-1. replaced HDD on Compact Flash 32gb. battery life 5.5 hours
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post #7 of 245
5/24/09 at 10:48am
which brand of compact flash did you use?


Quote:
Originally Posted by ziteck View Post
i have Korg mr-1. replaced HDD on Compact Flash 32gb. battery life 5.5 hours
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post #8 of 245
5/24/09 at 11:02am
i'm planning on running an external battery pack with it anyway. the sort you can use to p[ower laptops, so should extend battery life to around 10-12 hours. ziteck: how do you like it man?? welcome to head-fi by the way seems like your wallet is a gonner already so I wont apologize
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post #9 of 245
5/24/09 at 11:46am
Quote:
Originally Posted by faichiu View Post
which brand of compact flash did you use?
transcend cf32gb 133x
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post #10 of 245
5/25/09 at 4:15pm
Thread Starter 
Being the impatient audio nut that I am, I drove over to a local Guitar Center & bought the Korg MR-1. I got it yesterday so I have'nt had much time to play around w/ it yet. There is a discrepency in the users manual. On the page that mentions supported file systems only FAT32 is mentioned. I am running NTFS on Windows XP so rather then risk losing files by converting one of my external drives to FAT32 I went out & got a WD MyBook HD which is formatted as FAT32 & moved some folders on to it for transfer to the Audio folder on the MR-1 . Everything worked beautifully. Curiousity got the better of me though & I tried copying some folders directly from the drive that says it is using the NTFS file system. Guess what? It recognized them & transfered them!(I would have much rather spent the money on high-rez downloads!). As I type I'm listening to a 24bit/192khz recording of Beethoven's Emperor Concerto(Wildly good sounding, decent pianist,pretty sounding piano, lousy orchestra horn section. Are you kidding me? I hope the Royal Scottish National Orchestra has given a few of the horn players their walking papers(or at least ban them from further recordings). I don't know how much play time to expect from the battery so I also will be looking to get a portable external battery a/c power source. There's an interesting looking one called Xantrex from Northerntool.com that looks promising. Is my setup really portable in a put it in your pocket & go sense not really, but how compact it is does'nt mean squat to me compared to sound quality I'm getting! (Qusp : you're going to love this thing!)
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post #11 of 245
5/25/09 at 4:50pm
Wow, hi-rez off a portable? My iPod is going a little schizo and I assumed I'd just grab another when they roll out new models for Christmas. But if you can mod these with a CF card, get hi-rez and even record in DSD... this is at the top of my list.

What kind of internal battery does it use? It might also be possible to replace it with a higher capacity unit.

Also, the ability to record is huge. Back in the day, audiophiles used to spend a lot of time recording as well as listening. That's why almost all of the old reel-to-reel decks have recording heads. This is a tradition that deserves resurrection and something I'd like to try. I get the feeling you'll learn a lot more about audiophilia once you get on the other side of the recording.
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post #12 of 245
5/25/09 at 5:02pm
It says that the recorder's internal storage should be formatted as FAT32. You can have on your PC whatever filesystem you want; just don't format recorder's internal storage to fat32, as it doesn't have an appropriate drivers for it and will be unable to boot.
Quote:
Back in the day, audiophiles used to spend a lot of time recording as well as listening. That's why almost all of the old reel-to-reel decks have recording heads
That's because on these days the only way to copy music was to record it onto a new tape, either on dual-tape systems or using line-out and line-in.
Now you can just copy your files without any loss of quality, and recording mean is back to the original - to record an external sounds
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post #13 of 245
5/25/09 at 5:29pm
omg. quitar center is selling it $399..........

ebay is selling it $199

Korg MR-1 1Bit Pro Mobile Digital Recorder MR1 NEW - eBay (item 310143769641 end time May-31-09 09:56:06 PDT)


Quote:
Originally Posted by Podtweaker View Post
Being the impatient audio nut that I am, I drove over to a local Guitar Center & bought the Korg MR-1. I got it yesterday so I have'nt had much time to play around w/ it yet. There is a discrepency in the users manual. On the page that mentions supported file systems only FAT32 is mentioned. I am running NTFS on Windows XP so rather then risk losing files by converting one of my external drives to FAT32 I went out & got a WD MyBook HD which is formatted as FAT32 & moved some folders on to it for transfer to the Audio folder on the MR-1 . Everything worked beautifully. Curiousity got the better of me though & I tried copying some folders directly from the drive that says it is using the NTFS file system. Guess what? It recognized them & transfered them!(I would have much rather spent the money on high-rez downloads!). As I type I'm listening to a 24bit/192khz recording of Beethoven's Emperor Concerto(Wildly good sounding, decent pianist,pretty sounding piano, lousy orchestra horn section. Are you kidding me? I hope the Royal Scottish National Orchestra has given a few of the horn players their walking papers(or at least ban them from further recordings). I don't know how much play time to expect from the battery so I also will be looking to get a portable external battery a/c power source. There's an interesting looking one called Xantrex from Northerntool.com that looks promising. Is my setup really portable in a put it in your pocket & go sense not really, but how compact it is does'nt mean squat to me compared to sound quality I'm getting! (Qusp : you're going to love this thing!)
Reply
post #14 of 245
5/28/09 at 10:33am
which cf adapter did u use?
also, do you just copy files from the old hard disk to the CF and then get it work?
Thanks!

Quote:
Originally Posted by ziteck View Post
transcend cf32gb 133x
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post #15 of 245
5/28/09 at 5:40pm
cf adapter
Quote:
also, do you just copy files from the old hard disk to the CF and then get it work?
just replace cf and start
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Gear mentioned in this thread:

Korg MR-1 Professional Mobile Recorder - Digital voice recorder - HDD 20 GB - MP3
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