June 1, 2002To whom it may concern:
I produce a variety of types of radio broadcasts, from actuals to interviews to radio theater. I am a long time Sony customer and own many pro- and consumer-grade Sony audio and video devices.
I was led to believe that this recorder would allow me to use an external microphone to record live audio onto MiniDisc digital media and later transfer it to my computer for editing via the USB interface.
The inability to do this severely diminishes the utility of the device, rendering it effectively an analog recorder for any live audio application. While I realize you may have legal concerns that led you to disable this capability, you are penalizing many faithful customers with endless legitimate uses to prevent the hypothetical acts of a narrow few.
Please remedy this by enabling audio recorded via the microphone input to be uploaded to a computer and saved as a standard audio file format.
Thank you for your consideration of this request, as well as for your contributions of many great products over many years.
Here's wishing for our continued mutual success!
Joe P
Boulder, Colorado
PS - My device has a "Rec" (Record) button next to which is a sticker that says "ATRAC3-MP3-WMA-WAV Compativility" [sic], and "USB Connection"...
PPS - and while we're at it, can you please make it work with the iMac?