Sony MZ-R900 Line-out Distortion
Tim Corcoran
March 2001
Basically, there is ruinous distortion present in line-out mode, where we connect
the headphone socket to line-in on an amplifier and select the LINE OUT menu
option to boost the output from headphone to line levels. Note, this is NOT a
recorder problem, rather an issue involving the playback amplifier stage.
Specifically, if you attempt to playback a loud high-frequency sound (such as
a strong female lead vocal) the output clips severely and I mean severely, it
makes your teeth grate at the sound... It seems to me that the
output boost they apply in LINE OUT mode is too much and overtaxes the
voltage levels available from a 1.2v battery (despite the obvious voltage multipliers
they must use internally). I have confirmed this exact problem in a second
imported unit. We'll see if it's fixed in the world/Euro/US models... I have not noticed
any problem with HEADPHONE output levels and the problem is present on
Minidiscs not originally recorded with the MZ-R900.
