Korg MR-1: Can this be used as a portable player? - Page 3

Dear headfiers, thanks for good and informative discussion. Here are my contributions. I have been using the Korg Mr1 for three months now, recording from my good vinyl rig. My notes are based on the vinyl recording situation, not lacking battery in a live situation, problems with mic, or so on.

My general conclusion is that the Korg is better than any other recording device I have used so far, including a Studer Revox A77, various Sony DAT recorders and a Creative 24/96 sound card.

DSD does have some problems, perhaps a bit of harshness to the sound and a bit of (high frequency related) noise, but these are minor, compared to any other digital alternative I have heard. The DSD recordings bring me closer to the real sound. Broadly speaking, if MP3 gives me 30 percent and CD quality 50, hi-rez PCM gives 60 and DSD gives 70.

This judgement is highly subjective of course, but i think it fits well with the judgement of the market, considering SACD - it just wont die. The Korg Mr1 clearly overperforms for the price.

Usual audiophile logic seems to apply to the device. Better output cables make for better sound. Better input cables too. I use balanced cables and some connectors to minijacks that I bought on the net and modified. Sound would probably improve a bit with better power conditioning (haven't tried) and better damping (tried a bit, can't hear much impact). Like my portable DAT player, the Korg unit seems to be slightly more musical playing back on battery power, but this is a small difference, not sure.

My biggest trouble with the unit is the small hard disk, and advice regarding this is especially welcome. Going to 32 gb is ok, but why not more.

Uncle Eric: agree with your comments on recording as a neglected way to audiophilia.

Podtweaker: my general impression is, dsd is clearly better than the rest. Pcm improves upsampled, but it retains a boxy closed quality compared to dsd. Maybe, because i havent heard expensive pcm dacs (but so what, probably dsd would sound even more glorious, similarly optimized). Also agree with you on benefits amplifying portables like Zune.

Qusp: outboard dac - yes, the Korg Mr1 dac can probably be improved in many ways, but the outboard dac would need to be able to play dsd direct, like the Korg.

Like others on this thread I have no specific noise problems with the recorder.

^^ umm you missed my point, I said nothing about using an outboard dac with the MR-1 why would I need to do that?? the MR-1 doesnt have digital output, no matter whether you have a dac with DSD or not, you cant get DSD out of the korg. only analogue line-out, I was wondering how people compared the MR-1 plus portable amp to rigs utilizing a good quality portable outboard dac. a rig such as iriver h-120->optical->D10-Lisa III. that was my question. nice to know it does a good job of recording as well. i'm pissed though. I missed those ones for $199 they must've been snapped up by head-fiers because they've put the price up to $250 annoying because I just about pulled the trigger earlier this week, but thought sonce there was 10 of them and they didnt seem to be going anywhere, that they would still have one this week coming. oh well, $250 is still a good deal and i'll just have to live with it. buying one on wednesday.

general impressions of MR-1

Hi guys, great forum!

I'm a musician and was looking to buy a good portable player. I've used Sony cassette recorders in the past and was looking for something digital. After some research I settled on the MR-1 because of the reviews.

One outstanding one is here:
KORG MR-1 Tech Review

First thing you should do: UPGRADE the firmware.

Korg is actually offering a FREE battery pack (while supplies last), or you can get one for about $15. Personally, I don't want to wait 6-8 weeks (LOL) for the free one.

Various web-reviews I've seen often rag on the battery life (good point), the price (a moot point now that you can get it for under $250), and the included microphone. Common guys, get real! It clearly states that in the MR-1 docs that the included mic is ONLY for demonstration purposes. Further, any serious recordist is going use their own mic rig (costing 3-4x the price of the MR-1 itself).

Mics: Personally, I can't spend a ton of money on a mic, so I went the poor man's route and got the Sony ECMMS907. This is after reading many reviews of mics under $200. I know there are way better solutions out there, but I was looking for something easy, and compact.

Adaptors: Radioshack sells a little stereo adaptor that is sold as an "Aircraft Y-Adaptor Cable", and goes from a stereo input to out two male mono plugs. The cable is short and works great with the MR-1 if you're working with a 1/8" stereo mic plug.

One of the most impressive thing about the unit is the Auto-Level configuration settings, which are very flexible. I'm not exactly shure what the best settings are to use for the Auto-Level threshold, slope, etc, but if you want flexibility, the MR-1 offers it.

As far as a portable player, the charge time is a little over twice the play time, so that a big bummer. Personally, I would NOT use this as a player to run around with because 1) it's too big as compared to an ipod mini, and 2) the drive is not solid state, so if you drop it, you might kill it which would be a shame.

Anyone having it compare to main stream mp3 player, like sony, cowon, ipod ? thx

just opened the player up and this is the drive in there at the moment:

HITACHI 1.8" C4K60 20GB CE Hard Drive ZIF HTC426020G5CE on eBay, also, Zip Drives, Drives Storage, Computing (end time 22-Jun-09 03:16:03 BST)

this page details possible alternative drives:

www.span.com - IMhb20 - HTC426020G5CE00 08K1568 - MiniDrive MicroDrive 1.8" - Hitachi-HGST 1.8" Travelstar C4K60-Slim/ZIF HTC426020G5CE00 08K1568 ZIF-40 1.8" 4200rpm (20gb)

what is quite exciting is the "possibility"? of the mk1231 gal

in my innocence, I am at the very least, "hoping" that it will simply be a matter of swapping out the drive for another one.

I would imagine once swapped, it would be a case of connecting to usb and formating the drive to fat 32, or if possible formatting using the players inbuilt formatting tool.

I am hopeful though that all the system files etc will be located in a flash chip rather than on the hard drive and thus it should essentially be a simple swap.

As for the links I provided, I only used them to show the drive that is in there at the moment and also the span link to show the suggested alternatives they mention, rather than thinking of ordering from them places specifically.

I am more interested in (at the moment) finding either somewhere to purchase the external battery pack (shipping from b&h photo is $50 to the uk...I wish I noticed the battery pack when I made the order initially ) and discovering what the highest format doiwnloads from linnrecords will play natively on the korg.

As soon as I get into that and have secured extra battery power and am more familiar with high rez files etc the upgraded storage will be the natural step from there, but its looking *fingers crossed* extremely straight forward.

actually, that ebay link shows a photo of a different drive, but the details are the same re:

hitachi htc426020G5CEOO which appears to be the model number of the drive

which format did you choose to download when buying from linn records? I notice they have flac at 192khz.

Sorry for the naive questions, but did you choose the flac download and then simply convert that to wav or some other format? Also did you use the audiogate software to do the conversion?

Up until this point I have only been familiar with cd's ripping them into standard wav or mp3.

RE the battery pack, tbh it doesnt look available in the uk for some reason, ive searched korg's uk site and checked out their licensed distributors but I cant find it so it is looking more and more like I will have to try and go down the diy battery pack route myself.

I agree, larger storage space is crucial but it does look very promising at the moment, the connection from the hdd to the motherboard is just the standard zif ribbon so it doesnt even look like you may need some kind of adaptor unless of course you decide to go down the cf card route, but for my money hdd's at the present moment are more financially acceptable given the storage capacities available.

p.s. check out the thread you started on the computer audio forum, I have included a link there for a couple of free hi rez downloads which have been all I am listening to at the moment on the korg until I understand the linn record formats and what to do with them to play them on the korg.

p.p.s. podtweaker, I've just thought re battery pack. I know you have already found a solution, however, you should be able to still apply for a free battery pack from korg if you haven't already. If you don't have the form to apply, simply go to www.korg.com and look for the free battery pack offer print off the pdf fill it in and send it off and korg us will send you one gratis.

Cheers.

Pod tweaker, fantastic info, I really appreciate that.

As for the recording sacd, another superb idea, I will have a go of that from my sacd player and see what the results are like, I never thought of recording straight from sacd but thats the beauty of this player I guess.

Again, many many thanks for the info re hi rez flac conversion to wav.

p.s. just converted using flac front end, you sir are a gentleman, thanks for that info, I can now safely decide which format to spend my cash on over at linn records, many thanks.

well i'm finaly ordering mine tomorrow and i've got zif drives 20, 30, 60, 80, 120gb here, so i'll find one that works. its really encouraging that its a simple zif, but AFAIK there is zif 40 and zif 50. zif simply means zero insertion force, meaning it connects very easily, zif 40 is the one we want and that link seems to indicate we are sorted!!