I’ve had my new MZ-NH1 Hi-MD recorder for a couple of months now, and while I’ve been able to record uncompressed CD-quality audio and upload it to my PC, I haven’t been able to edit it because it’s in Sony’s proprietary file format.
Finally, Sony has delivered the software to losslessly convert this format to plain old .wav files: WAV Converter. I haven’t tried it yet, but I hope to do so this week.
It only lets you convert files recorded through the line or microphone input, and only recordings made in Hi-MD mode, but that’s fine with me, since that’s what I want it for. There are far easier ways to pirate pre-recorded music anyway.
There are a bunch of mp3 players and jukeboxes that now have some sort of recording capability built in — the Archos line seems to be most popular for people who are serious about recording, due mostly to their decent price and reasonable quality. However, I went with Hi-MD because Sony MD’s have good microphone and line input preamps that have a wide range of sensitivity, the ability to precisely adjust recording levels, and low noise.
Except for professional-grade solid state field recorders costing $1000+, I don’t think that the memory card/hard drive portable audio recorder is yet a mature enough product to provide both high-quality recordings and a sturdy build quality.
That may change in the next few years, but as long as Sony continues to support Hi-MD, I will be recording away AND be able to have a robust minidisc backup of all those recordings, too.