[Pete7]

I just received a "legendary" MZR-50 mini-disc player that I bought from someone on Ebay. It's in real good condition. I mainly bought it out of curiosity and wanted to see how it would stack up against a hard drive player. I did some research and found that the Atrac1 v.4 that the player rips at is 292 kbsps. I've made a few recordings with it and the sound quality is pretty good. With the separate line out I'm kind of curious on whether the sound quality would technically be better with a portable amplifier than my NW-HD5 with recordings ripped at 352 kbsps. I've made a few recordings with the RZ-50 and tested them against the same songs on my NW-HD5 and the sound is different. The NW-HD5 has a built-in line out out of the headphone jack and the highs sound more pronounced, almost synthetic compared to the RZ-50. I'm looking for some opinions. For certain, RZ-50 sounds much better unamped than the NW-HD5.

 

[redshifter]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pete7 I just received a "legendary" MZR-50 mini-disc player that I bought from someone on Ebay. It's in real good condition. I mainly bought it out of curiosity and wanted to see how it would stack up against a hard drive player. I did some research and found that the Atrac1 v.4 that the player rips at is 292 kbsps. I've made a few recordings with it and the sound quality is pretty good. With the separate line out I'm kind of curious on whether the sound quality would technically be better with a portable amplifier than my NW-HD5 with recordings ripped at 352 kbsps. I've made a few recordings with the RZ-50 and tested them against the same songs on my NW-HD5 and the sound is different. The NW-HD5 has a built-in line out out of the headphone jack and the highs sound more pronounced, almost synthetic compared to the RZ-50. I'm looking for some opinions. For certain, RZ-50 sounds much better unamped than the NW-HD5.

are you talking about the mz-r50? i have the mzr50, and use it these days mostly for live recording. it does a nice job, and if you know how you can set the recording levels manually.

as an encoder and portable source, it has what i regard as the sony pro sound: dry, flat, and unadorned. it uses atrac 4 to encode, which is good, but atrac r is a better, more musical codec. that said, the r50 is in my mind a worthy collectable and a great portable source to use with an amp.

 

[Sebastianbf]

I don't know if your mzr50 sounds better than the nwhd5, but I think that the original SP codec is warmer in terms of sounds than the new atrac codecs. Maybe it's something like this:
sp -----> vinyl
new atrac codecs -----> CD

For my hears, the CDs sounds better than the vinyl in terms of clarity and fideliy but the vinyl sounds much more warmer than the cds... d' you know what i mean?

 

[Pete7]

After some more comparisons, using an amp with the "true" line out of the mini-disc player, the sound is "cleaner" than with the NW-HD5, since it doesn't have a true line out.