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Minidisc as Album Source

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fringeaggressor

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I came back to minidisc.org for the first time in years as I was digging up my MZ-N10's box for listing on eBay, and thought, what the heck- somebody here may be interested in the following:

In December of 2004, an MZ-R30 was used as the recording device from off the soundboard for the following album:

http://www.amazon.com/Fez-Trashcan-Sinatras/dp/B0009VGBTO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1381777148&sr=8-1&keywords=trashcan+sinatras+fez

The original recording was in monaural; while I had brought patch cabling for multi-channel, the club's board operator only installed one plug.

At the time, the band figured that it would most likely be cut down into a series of website extras, in that the leveling from the recordings from both nights was quite poor. I acquired, and then educated myself in Ozone over the course of the next few months, and tweaked what eventually became the 21 tracks of the album individually through every adjustment made by the sound guy. In early February, the band had heard the now duplexed and adjusted recording, gave a few minor critiques, but were now interested in making it a true release.

In the less than three months of work, I estimate I put in a good hundred or so hours on the remastering, mostly based on my relative inexperience with the tools at the start.

By early March, the process was done (having generated a good 50+ GB in copy after copy), and moved to pressing. This point was rather interesting to me, not having been involved in such before, with the reproduction house unwilling to guarantee audio past 70 minutes or so. This left us with around a track and a half in danger of failing to produce correctly on the glass master.

Their suggestion- half speed burn. And so seven more hours were spent producing three masters to be forwarded to them for evaluation and production. Thankfully, the process went perfectly, and everyone was pleased.

While there are better and more specification intense hardware on the market to pull off such a production (as there was then), there will always be a part of me impressed as to the oft unrealized potency of the MD format.

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