Daily Archives: January 6, 2006

2 posts
Audio Technology Minidisc

Sony MZ-EH930

This is the second-generation Hi-MD playback unit. Notice the similarities to last year’s MZ-E630 MDLP player. This unit has the HD amp as well as a connexion for an external battery pack. The internal battery is still the old NiMH one they’ve been using for the last few generations, but I’m not complaining as it’s interchangeable with all the old ones I have floating around.

As you can see, it’s only slightly larger than the discs themselves, but it’s still a bit thicker than the EH1.

I haven’t had a chance to compare battery life between the NH-14WM and the newer LIP-4WM, but the newer ones do appear to last a bit longer.

Like most MD players, this unit is meant to be used with a remote. As such, the button layout on the unit itself is somewhat sparse, and not quite as intuitive as the EH1.

Still, quite a nice unit, and one I was able to get very cheaply second-hand.

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Audio Technology

Rumors of Rio’s demise possibly premature.

A bit back I posted that Rio had gone belly-up. All assets had been sold to Sigmatel, and hope for anything developed by their team looked lost.

Looks like I jumped the gun.

Turns out, Sigmatel has kept Rio’s development team, along with everything they’d been working on when Rio closed up shop. According to a thread on Riovolution, the whole STMP3600 reference design that was planned for the Chroma is still alive and well, and will likely be used as the foundation for other players soon. That includes the best features of the Karma (gapless playback, wide format compatibility, parametric EQ), plus MSC compliance and several others.

How long before we see it in a consumer-level product is anyone’s guess. Austin Vaughan was at CES a few days back, and Ralph Fiennes (Rio’s primary Karma developer) gave an interview, in which we get this:

We got a product demonstation of Sigmatel’s reference design for a player that’s just like the Rio Avalon – an 8gb MicroDrive based player which has the same body style as the Rio Carbon but has a color screen and all the features of the Rio Karma.

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