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Fallen at the first fence?

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Sue W

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I'm the vice chairman of my local hospital radio station, and my husband thought it would be a good idea to get me a (second hand) Sony MZ-NF610 plus a Sony ECM-DS70P stereo microphone (and a stack of new Minidiscs!) as part of my Xmas present.... the aim being that I could then use it to record interviews and the like. He thought that as the NF610 is a "Net MD" with a convenient Mini-USB socket, I could edit the results on my laptop. After searching the manual (in PDF format, which is quicker!) I discovered the part where it says you can't transfer sounds that you've recorded yourself using a mike (i.e. interviews) from the MD to the PC... at least, not using the grotesquely unintuitive software supplied by Sony.

Is there another way to do it? Any help and or suggestions would be gratefully received... but preferably NOT including "sell it and buy something different"; this was an Xmas present from my Husband!

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Sigh. You cannot use the USB to upload anything with this model. You can play back through the headphone out and capture it in real time, but it's an analog signal) which may be fine for your interviews).

Most inmates in the asylum here end up buying multiple units :)

Aside from what I've said above:

1. Any HiMD unit will allow upload of HiMD recordings to Sonic Stage

2. Any Deck that has optical out (check the equipment browser) will allow you to play optically into your computer (you need a sound card with optical in but that's not such a big deal with a desktop - hard with a laptop but still possible).

3. The RH1 ($$$) will allow you to upload the recordings you already made in the legacy modes, as well. It won't recover downloads made onto NetMD, but that's life.

Hope this helps.

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Thanks! We spent the afternoon searching through this forum, and laboriously reached the same sad conclusion. On the other hand, my husband's desktop system already has a (cheapish) "Trust" soundcard with both optical input and output. So, it looks as if I'll be able to record my interviews, then transfer the data across and can edit it on his system. We're only a small Hospital Radio station (in Weston super Mare) but we have good links with the local theatre, and (it being a seaside resort with a plentiful supply of new customers "in season") we get some surprisingly well-known "acts". Probably my biggest interviews to date have been with Frank "It's the way I tell 'em!" Carson and local-boy "Acker" Bilk. Having my own means of recording, rather than using the society's own kit, means that I'm ready to go at a moment's notice. Probably just as well that my husband didn't know about the ridiculous DRM restrictions that prevent uploading via USB... he'd either have spent more than we can really aford... or wouldn't have bought it at all!

Whatever, many thanks for your advice!

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There's no optical OUT on any portable (that you can easily lay hands on), suggest you invest in a deck which probably is pretty cheap. Check the equipment browser here to see which have optical out. I scanned quickly and found half a dozen on Ebay UK.

Now you can record on the 610 (I have one, and you can listen to the radio if you are lucky - mine the radio has been bust from day 1), and "sneakernet" the disk from there to your deck, and play from deck into puter.

Sound like hard work? The alternative is Audacity + a lineout to linein cable. Not HiFi, but maybe you don't actually care. In which case ignore my previous paragraph.

BTW if you are using OPTICAL in, it simply doesn't matter HOW cheap the soundcard is. That's the magic. If you use (analogue) line in on a cheap card, you get what you pay for, possibly interference of all sorts and a cheap A to D converter.

I wish I had been a stranger on THAT shore.... memories of childhood.

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While your MD is not ideal for interviews, it's also not so bad. Many radio journalists were using minidiscs like yours.

The great thing about MD and interviews is that little track mark button. It makes silent, gapless marks. Someone says something good in the interview? Hit the track button and you can hop to the spot, go back a little bit, and find your perfect soundbite.

Or say you're playing back the interview and come to a good section? Track marks work there too. So if you've already put a track mark in after the perfect quote, you can put another one at the beginning of the quote during playback. You can also erase the marks if you don't like where you put them. And when you play back the MD, the track mark doesn't interrupt anything.

Getting a deck with optical out is probably more trouble and expense than it's worth for radio-broadcast quality. What's more crucial is the recording input to your computer. Many laptops have only a microphone jack, not the microphone and line-in jacks of larger computers. And many microphone jacks are, to use the technical term, horrible.

To record into your computer, get Audacity which free and easy to learn.

Test your mic jack. Get a male-to-male connector cord that has two ends that look like your headphone jack (miniplug, two circles.) One goes in your headphone jack, the other in your mic jack. Fire up Audacity, set the microphone as the input with the drop-down menu in Audacity. (You may need to diddle with your computer's soundcard--right-click on the little speaker icon on the bottom right, pull up the microphone volume.) Hit that big red Record button in Audacity. Play something from a minidisc--you'll see the waveform bouncing if it's coming through-- and see how the recording sounds afterward.

If it's staticky and awful, like my mic jack, you can get a USB gizmo called the Griffin iMic which makes a stereo mic input via USB. I got mine for $12 on Ebay, and even though it looks like an Apple accessory, it works fine with Windows. That will give you a clean input. You record the interviews with Audacity, edit them as you please and....you're on the air!

Edited by A440
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