Slow Upload Rate and Other Design Flaws

Before I purchased RH10 last week I searched the forums far and wide for some reviews of the 2nd generation HiMD. Most of what I found was forums filled with beautiful pictures and people drooling over how great the RH10 looks. Admittedly it does look great (until you scratch it; which is easily done), but as with all things looks only go so far. Since I couldn’t find anything helpful, and of the three reviews I found this product was praised, I decided to walk into a local store and pick up one of those puppies. When I got home and got over how beautiful this thing looks, reality hit me …HARD. This is NOT the dream machine that I was waiting for. First, for those of you with short attention span, let me give a quick overall impression and later I'll go into the details of what this unit lacks.
On the outside RH10 looks nice, but the button layout is not thought-out. The STOP button is right below the MENU button, with means that it is extremely easy to accidentally press the STOP button (even with long and thin fingers). What makes this worse is that the Menu button is tiny and (as I'll explain later) you will probably find yourself returning to the menu time and time again. Furthermore, if you're recording and you accidentally press the Stop button (and you will; sooner or later) it will take a considerable amount of time to resume recording since the unit will automatically start writing files to the disc and you'll have to readjust all the REC settings since the unit will return to factory default settings. Secondly the AA battery case mounts on the side of RH10, rather than at the bottom. This makes it awkward to hold the unit in your hand. Additionally the external battery case is held in place with a tiny screw that looks like it would take very little to break it (either accidentally or through wear and tear). Finally, as is common with all Sony MD's, you have to press two buttons simultaneously to start recording (most likely you'll be forced to use both hands for this).
On the inside (i.e. the playback and recording) you'll find that after you set up all the functions the way you like them, you'll have to redo everything each time you use the RH10 because about 90% of the settings will return to factory defaults once the unit shuts off or you change discs. Secondly, for MP3 playback, the info that is transferred is Artist, Album, Song. I would like to see Genre being transfered along which would eliminate the need for creating groups or even playlists. Finally, the battery life is just mediocre (especially when compared to some older MDs; and if you break that screw and won't be able to use external battery).

Now lets get into some details. I am primarily interested in recording, since I believe that if you want to have a player then any mp3 player is made just for that; it’ll cost you less and you won’t have to carry around extra discs. (Personally I am waiting for some more choices in the 60GB department; yes I have that much music – over 900 legally purchased CDs.) The first thing that bothered me about the RH10 was that I couldn’t transfer my older recordings made on my MZ-R50 and my MD-DR77 into my PC; but that was to be expected. So I popped in a 1GB disc and made some recordings to check out what this thing is capable of.
The best thing about the RH10’s recording capabilities is that you can actually adjust the recording level on-the-fly. This was why I purchased my Sharp MD a few months ago (that, and the ridiculously long battery life – coupled with AA battery I can record (and play back) over a month of lectures without recharging). But getting back to the RH10… After recording couple of 1-2 minute clips in various modes (Hi-LP, Hi-SP, and PCM) I hooked up the unit to my computer and was greeted by a warning that I can transfer the tracks from my MD to my PC only once. This is provided courtesy of Serial Copy Management System. I’m also assuming that if I had another computer at home, I wouldn’t be able to transfer the songs there either (after that initial transfer) but I don’t know that for sure. This copy protection only lets you copy from the original source (and you can't make further copy from the copies). I also noticed a counter that keeps track of how many times you transferred a song, play it, and so forth. Sony just doesn’t want to let up on their obsessive ideas about controlling what you can do at your own house with a device that you purchased for your hard-earned money. Not to mention that if I want to record my band’s rehearsal and give a copy of it to all my band-mates then why would Sony prevent me from doing it? ...especially if I'm making a recording from an analog source such as a microphone or a line input hooked up to my record or cassette player. Let’s face it, if someone wants to violate the copyright protection they’ll do it, and neither Sony nor Apple’s iPod, nor any other hopeless company will stop them. There were never this many problems with Xerox machines, Cassette Decks, VCRs (actually this one did face some opposition – from Sony), or even CD Burners, and they are all capable of copying material illegally. This obsessive mp3 copy-protection is more of an annoyance than deterrence. Ironically it is the consumer who uses the product legally that is annoyed and limited, while the ‘professionals’ keep copying, distributing, and cracking everything that can be cracked (or is worth cracking). But let me get back to the RH10.
You are all familiar with Sony’s marketing strategy that advertises a 100x transfer rate (of course that applies only to the lowest quality (48kbps) already-converted atrac3plus files, not including the transfer of title and any other information that goes along with it). And it applies only to a transfer from PC to MD. But I would be very happy with 1/10th of that; a 10x upload transfer is all that I wanted. So as the 23minutes of my recordings were transferring (mostly in Hi-SP mode – 256kbps) I waited, and waited, and waited. Finally, nearly 10 minutes later I was asked if I want to convert the imported collection to WAV. That was the fast part – about 1.5 minutes. Obviously I didn’t choose no 48kbps transfer, since I want to transfer the songs with minimal loss of quality. But even at the highest settings, a 2x upload rate is pretty pathetic in this day and age. I’m better off just transferring the songs from my MD-DR77 in real time and keeping nearly $300 in my pocket. Imagine if you make all PCM recordings; that’ll probably drop the rate to 1.5x or less. Furthermore, Sony actually warns in their manual that transferring long recordings from MD to PC can take "extremely long time". And if you’re wondering why I didn’t make any specific tests to get exact figures, that’s because this device is not worth my time; it is simply too slow. Whether the upload rate is 1.5x or 3x, it won’t change much. If you make a longer recording it will take hours to transfer.
Another thing that bothered me (as I mentioned earlier) is the fact that the only ID tag info recognized by RH10 when transferring mp3’s from your PC to MD is the Artist, Album, and Song Title. Genre is lost. Why? No reason, other than laziness on Sony’s part. Rather than creating playlists I could just choose a particular genre and go on my way; but I can’t. Oh well, it doesn’t really matter since this unit is going back to the store on Monday. Furthermore it seems that in order to transfer MP3s into the MD (using SonicStage of course) you have to go into each individual folder and select the songs, rather than choosing the main folder and have SonicStage transfer all the subfolders. I have over 60GB of music organized by iTunes so it makes it very annoying to have to open hundreds of folders and to choose from thousands of songs. Oh, and one last thing… no LCD display for a unit that is capable of storing hundreds of songs?!?!?! That’s not cost effective, that’s just stupid.

I guess I’ll keep waiting for that perfect MD. All I want is a USB2.0 (preferably a USB on-the-go) connection, faster upload rate, and preferably a longer battery life (or at least a Lithium battery). It could be achieved so easily and yet I feel that I'm in for a long wait. What will the 3rd generation bring to the table? ...yet another baby step. If Sony had some guts and actually did what their customers asked for then maybe the MD market in the US would finally start to grow. Just a thought. Think about it Sony, you have on your hands a product that has the potential of surpassing the popularity of walkman or discman (that they had in their time), but through the hesitant and slow development the train is passing you by with hard-drive based MP3 players/recorders. You've been on the MD market for over 12 years now and yet it hasn't cought on in countries other than Japan; maybe you're doing something wrong. Have some guts and give the people something that can be used by professionals and amateurs alike; music lovers and casual listeners; musicians and laymen. It can happen if you only try harder. And stop scaling down the units shipped to European and North-American continents. You're saving a couple of Yen, but annoying a whole lot of people.

Thank You for your time.