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Left: Aiwa AM-F80; Right: Aiwa AM-F75
If you were Jonesing for an MZ-R55, stop and think. Apart from being a bit smaller, what has the R55 ever done for you? Dedicated line out? Okay, but apart from that, what has it done for you? Phenomenal remote? Right, but apart from that and dedicated line out, what has the R55 done for you? Honestly we could go on and on and on; and sadly, the F80/75 get sort of lost in the mix.
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My first Cayin was the C5 amp. It did its job well, debuting unique branding, and sound. As far as performance goes, it was good, but not great and is a far cry from Cayin’s latest and greatest. The N6ii looks much better than the N6. And, while more difficult to use, its operating system is handsomer to the same degree.
Read moreThe X-T3 is a hardy camera whose quirky hardware interface - tangled with myriad UI inconsistencies - is glued to hella responsive AF and general operation. It’s a lovely machine whose whizz-pop internal computers chirp and chirp under a handsome fascia. It’s also known as a movie camera and bristles with necessary features. One of these is what has been rumoured to be a damn good microphone and headphone pre-amp and amps. I say rumoured because there’s not a lot of concrete information out there.
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Disclaimer: I bought this sucker from Yahoo! Auctions a couple of years ago. It is a pretty player/recorder whose straightforward physical UI is both to die for and to die from. You can find out all about it at Minidisc.org’s dedicated Aiwa AM-F70 page.
My first MD recorder, a Sharp MD-MT15, broke forty eight hours after I purchased it from Vetlanda’s ON/OFF. (If you like Sharp, get used to it.) Promptly I replaced it with a Sony MZ-R37, which at the time I despised for not being a different, more expensive recorder.
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This DR even comes in pink.
Disclaimer: This bad boy is from Amazon.jp. The MD-DR7 was Sharp’s first 1-Bit branded MD portable recorder. It was also the first mass-marketed portable audio product with a true balanced headphone output. Eat your heart out, Astell & Kern, HiFiman, and the like. The DR7 uses the same TRRS pinout as a modern Astell & Kern, but in 3,5mm rather than 2,5mm form. So, if you have a pair of AK-compatible balanced headphones, all you need is a step up (2,5mm - 3,5mm) adapter and you’re gold. The DR7 has a low noise floor, high DR, and for its time, a powerful headphone amp. If you’re interested, check out Minidisc.org’s page on it: Sharp MD-DR7.
From late 2002 until around 2004 headlines among the MD faithful were awash with an age-old war. The perennial battle between Sony and Sharp over ATRAC and dominance over the minidisc scene was in its final heat (as was the format). In a gambit to remain relevant, Sharp and Sony lead insane marketing campaigns which promised the world from their respective flagship MD products. If you were in the Sharp camp, Sony sounded bad. If you were in the Sony camp, Sharp sounded bad. But gosh, how wrong one camp was.
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Sony’s last-gen TOTL MD player is a beaut. Its magnesium, scored, matte, and slim case, is understated in the way only high-end products can be. It gets good battery life (through a crazy $$$ battery), boasts six equaliser settings - two of which are user definable along six frequency bands - and four stereo hacks that affect staging and placement. It hisses as little as a modern Hi-Res DAP, and carves an impressive stereo image. By any objective measure I have at my hands, it is the best-sounding unit out there, Hi-MD or no.
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What I love about the MZ-DH10P is that, regarding audio performance, it apes most Sony Hi-MD players/recorders. Benefits abound: low hiss, low THD, high SNR, DR and the rest. Sure, stereo separation falls rapidly under load, but which MD unit has ever provided anything much beyond 11bit (66dB) of separation? The DH10P has a good sound enhancement engine, and the music comes through loud and clear. Sadly, Sony baked in a huge bass boost, forestalling a truly neutral signal. Worse, and like the MZ-NH1, the DH10P is incapable of spitting a stable signal from its output without hoisting some a load of some sort. So, if you want the best sound possible from your 2,1 system when fed by a DH10P-linked line, you’ll have to plug in a load of some sort in parallel to keep down the nasties. Also, jitter is pretty high.
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In my latest YouTube video, I fawned all over Cowon’s Plenue D2 and I’m miffed. Miffed that, loaded or unloaded, the 2400$ SPM1000M shows a sizeable step back from Cowon’s little engine. And, in several categories (mainly loaded), the SPM1000M is worse than its older, bleeding-edge, sibling, the AK380. Sure, we’re splitting hairs- atoms even. Dynamic range differences between 110dB and 120, let alone 117dB and 121dB, are minuscule on a test bench, and positively homeopathic at the ear. And if you’re listening to music louder than 100dB, you’ll not be listening to anything for long. I doubt anyone even listens to sensitive earphones at iPhone maximum volumes. But if you do, note that matched to that output level, the SPM1000M certainly tests better than an iPhone SE, but apart from stereo crosstalk, not by leaps and bounds. And it hisses more.
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For three years I have both recommended and castigated Cowon’s original Plenue D. It has great battery life. It is small. It is robust. It plays loads of files. But its interface, abstruse from day one, got worse. And, through sensitive earphones, it hissed a lot more than most of the competition; in fact, it hissed more than some late-model Minidisk players and recorders. It held signal well under load, but lost quite a bit of stereo separation under loads both meagre and highly resistive. My mate, Ryuzoh, offered to mod mine. I can’t tell if it sounds better, and neither can he, but my unit is super unique. And it’s one I’ve kept because the plusses I mentioned above really bowled me over.
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Tsukuba, Japan