sfbp

I well recall meeting our most famous classical radio personality whose show (like most of the CBC classical programs) got closed down Sept 1st in their pathetic attempt to attract (ha I almost wrote Atract) new audiences. No email in those days, so we ended up meeting and having dinner. What started it was that he played one of my favourite tracks and I thought it sounded a bit sort of dull (mind you this was off the air but I still thought I noticed). So I wrote and asked him if it was from CD or LP (there were both in those days) and he admitted that it was the CD version. Afterwards he went and compared the two and said there was a significant difference. I put off buying my first CD player for 2 more years after that....... I still find that chamber music where one of the instruments is a piano is easily the most demanding test of any sound for quality. This was a piece for 2 pianos.

You'll find one here. In addition you could look on Yahoo Japan. They are currently available from a single seller but the price is at least double the one above. In addition you would have to employ a Japanese agent (there are plenty around but will probably charge 15% commission). Another place to look is your local craigslist. Good luck, and welcome to MDCF!

Are these labels any good?

I have converted a fair number of cassette recordings to MD and thence CD's, conversion of recordings I own being my motivation for getting into MD to begin with. I note the following (about cassettes): 1. Many or most started out life as LP's. These ones invariably give themselves away by a click or three showing up in the sound wave. These tiny noises are the ones that cannot be eliminated from 99% of LP's. I delete the clicks since they are less than a millisecond in most cases. 2. Any cassette that wasn't made from an LP will have an underlying SQ that is terrific. All that is needed in many cases is to remove the hiss, which is easily achieved because almost every tape has silent lead-in which is a perfect place to pick the background from, with which to do the FFT hiss removal. You can experiment, but it's safe to remove quite large percentages of the background, like 80%. 3. There is no wow/flutter on a cassette that is in decent shape. LP's mostly have an unavoidable signature (like the noise you hear if your stylus gets to the middle without automatic lift, NOT including the click when the needle meets the incoming groove again). Speaking of old equipment, the biggest problem in some cassettes/machines is pitch (which should be adjustable, but perhaps the recording wasn't right if the cassette wasn't made commercially in the first place). There's no frequency lock on any cassette deck I have used. But MD is perfect if you have a way of calibrating it, unless you were unlucky and somehow the tape got stretched unevenly, because you can "fix" the pitch on many of the MD deck models.

No way - auctions were closing for around $15. The problem was shipping, you needed some American friend willing to help you. However I had a very quick look, and maybe these have all gone out to people trying to make a few dollars by reselling them. Price now in the region of $40. Good point. You should be able to find a remote on Ebay somewhere. There's a guide here. I'm wondering how you have all this music in Atrac3+ already (given that you don't have HiMD)? BTW here's a DH710. I know these are still pretty current as I actually found one in a local Sony store. This guy says he has 5 and is shipping by USPS (ie the mail). I might be inclined to go with one of these. I'm not quite sure why it isn't in the equipment browser here, but it really exists. I cannot find the manual and I don't remember if I saw a microphone input on the one I saw in-store. Maybe someone here knows..... added: I found the specs, and as seems from the other machines with D in the name, this is a "Downloader" so it has no line, optical or mic input, at least in the description I found. Sorry, seems like the NH600 is definitely better from that POV.

Yes, you would be better off without Vista. For example Simple Burner doesn't work on Vista. There are lots of NetMD DN430's available on ebay, brand new I think. Won't be cost effective outside the US as they insist on UPS for shipping. Maybe you can find a friend willing to buy one for you. Oops, I just reread, you are already into Atrac3+ and need HiMD. I don't think that these devices are likely to die on you. They are, for the most part, extremely solidly and conservatively engineered. People here will tell you the only parts known to wear out. With only a small amount of luck you will get something quite nice that will last for several years, not months.

Thank you for the concise and expert summary. Back to pushing bits for me..... Cheers

Disclaimer: I have not messed with this or any other "hack" except to go into service mode on an NH700 and un-rig the Eurovolume cap. I don't even know what is normally at 0114. I'm sure you (and others) do. As someone with a limited experience in software design, it occurs to me that the field in question is in some way bit encoded. Could it be that turning on the 80H bit corresponds to HiMD? I doubt this observation is useful because it sounds like, unlike the RH1, there is probably no menu structure in the earlier units, like the one you describe, to support the changing routinely. However the converse just occurred to me. I noticed that the R910 I recently acquired has the "same" head (well, it looks the same) as all the HiMD units, despite being MDLP/SP. Could it be that HiMD functionality is lurking in some late model NetMD's? Stephen

No, you cannot get a new one. But I wouldn't assume that to be a problem. I recently purchased 2 from different sources, while if I had been 2 weeks earlier I could have had my pick of 10 BNIB from a third source. I just didn't get my act together in time for those, as it required finding a way to purchase them from within the UK (which I eventually did). There's a different between "I don't really want" and "I really don't want". You wrote the first. It seems to me that as 99% of all models (not 99% of all minidiscs, but just counting the numbers of models ever available) are now discontinued, you are missing the huge variety of features and sizes and technologies that are available if you take the time to look. That's one of the reasons this forums exist, and most people here would be happy to help you. I have only one brand new unit. Interestingly it's the only one with a definable problem that developed during the time I owned it (not counting my original deck that died after 5 years of trustworthy service). Most of the second hand units you will get have been looked after rather well, IMO. Good hunting

You could probably pick up an NH700 for under $100 if you look in the right places. It has microphone input, will upload recordings unlimited times to PC via USB, and will play (but not unfortunately upload) all legacy MD's. It even accepts the readily available FM tuners that go with NF810 and the more expensive NHF800. In combination with the SP-BMC2 mics, for example, you would have a great setup for about $100 plus whatever you have to expend to get your hands on these. You certainly don't **need** the RH1, though it's very nice for live recordings as I of course agree.

The RH1 will also create disks in LP2 (and, shudder, LP4 though I am sure you shouldn't) which will play in most units made after 2000 even if not HiMD. Probably you may still want SonicStage, but someone was explaining just today how to run it under Parallels (I have no idea about Macs, so I am the wrong person to ask). SS will quickly put LP2 (and indeed any other format) onto whatever the destination recorder supports, even one of the super cheap ones.

I would get one of the currently available Energiser chargers with AA NiMH (mine say 2500mAh on each cell). Very inexpensive, and the charger works better than most of the MD units that have charger built in (odd, because some models have this facility and others do not, it seems to be somewhat random - eg the NH600 will not charge anything but the NH700 will). LiIon are much too fussy and probably the wrong voltage for your NE410. They basically need a computer control circuit to charge and discharge them properly.

I second the SP-BMC2. Very good value, currently on sale so even better value!!!!

Suggest you get an MDX-66XLP changer (look in the equipment browser) and pair it up with any Sony head unit in the car. I'm not sure about the input but since the input to the Sony from the changer is 2xRCA phono plug, you could probably rig something up quite easily to switch the source (3.5mm jack to dual RCA is a $5 cable). There are also kits to make either a PC or conceivably an MD portable look like a changer. The latter I am not sure about. If you don't buy a Sony head unit, then you will end up (as I did) buying an RF modulator. The ones Sony makes are quite good.

Be careful; I saw something I considered odd when I followed up on this chap several weeks back. Specifically he posted identical auctions which both mysteriously disappeared when they didn't get much. They were *so* similar and so unreasonably priced that I seriously questioned that he actually had 2 items. Could have just been inexperience with Ebay. But why 3 items together? Sounds odd to me.

About 100 std and 40 HiMD's.

Probably your keys are corrupted. Can be fixed by doing a system restore. If SS has *never* worked then there is some weird deal with the Connect Website (which doesn't exist any more) where supposedly the keys get (re-)validated. I'm not clear what Sony has done about this. Avrin seems to know the answer to this and related questions. Before you get totally tied up, try looking here first. It's not clear to me that this is related to 4.2 vs 4.3 at all. Except for when I had a similar problem because of something I did with System Restore (Sony actually warn you about this believe it or not!) - 4.3 works just fine with XP, and 2000 too.

But is there a Chocolate Frog in the Nook in Tesco? (Never having eaten a Quorn Toad myself)

It also happens to be the only utility I have ever caught any kind of trojan/virus from. So I have it but will only use to decode things that I cannot any other way, and it's only on a single machine. The clue to the suggestion in my previous post was the word "mono" in yours. Go on, try it...... Meanwhile I do agree with you that WinRar does compress ordinary (i.e. not dual-mono) wave files quite a bit better, somewhere between 30 and 40%. I hate the interface, which at least in my current version is poorly integrated with Windows (compared to WinZip). It also appears to be quite a bit slower - you don't get something for nothing. Maybe it's time to install the newest Winzip, I have it but am just very slow to change everyday tools. Cheers Stephen

I think I like one of his other articles better: this one about yorkshire pudding (Hands up, how many of you even know what it is?) Stamper was the name of one of the weaker-moraled personalities in "House of Cards" starring Ian Richardson, sort of appropriate don't you think?

Fair enough. But I have continued to sample "randomly selected" wave files from my (almost 100% classical) collection - and the average is only 10% reduction in size. The point about mono is that if both channels are exactly the same (ie dual stereo), it will compress more. I just observed this. Mono cannot be burned to CD at least for most current CD players to read (I still have a busted CD670 from Phillips that did) so you have to provide a stereo file to Nero. Sure enough, the files zip to about 50%. Granted I didn't actually NEED to have a WAV file that was 2x as big, but that is the default I think, for most tools, and indeed SonicStage itself. Which all tends to confirm my point. I just manufactured a mono wave file and it was exactly half the size of the dual stereo one. On (Winzip) compression, it went down by only about 9.8%. Whereas the stereo file was only a little bit bigger than the mono file uncompressed.

Ticked off? Wouldn't you expect a computer-generated sound to be more compressible? Avrin is just playing devil's advocate shoorley? :) Funnily enough I did just get a Winzip upgrade that promises to do better on jpegs, maybe it does better on sound too? added: I have a hunch this is something to do with the sound being in Mono. I just took some white noise (actually a background I used to subtract out from a particularly noisy recording) and it goes from 9.8M to 8.5. Ok, more like 10 or even 15% but nowhere near half. Real music seems to compress hardly at all)

Yep. Took wave files and they reduce to approx 40-50% of the original when coded to AAL. Of course this corresponds to 256 or 352 kbps - but I noticed there was little difference between those two at least. If you run LZH compression on a WAV file you get maybe 5% compression. Check? Maybe it's late in Moscow......

Sorry to disappoint you - it's all done with WAV files. I have SS set to always produce WAV on upload (saves a lotta accidents!) and when I need to play with them, there they are. The neatest thing I can do with CoolEdit (aside from FFT noise reduction which is a neat trick if you do it right), is to REMOVE the characteristic crackles from LP recordings. It always makes me laugh when I upload a recording from some cassette that I own, only to see the telltale signs of life as an LP that even the manufacturers didnt get rid of, that I suffering from audiophile OCD feel obliged to get rid of. (hint: when you delete 3 msec of sound, no ear will ever tell the difference, and most crackles are way smaller, well below 1msec)

Don't you do your SFE using a tool on the computer? It's as quick or quicker, and reversible too. Once I have got the recorded sound split into tracks I want, I upload with RH1, and then work on the wave files. Then I delete the oma from My Library, and reimport the .wav files. At this point they can be compressed for the purpose of saving space, to AAL. Some weird thing prevents wave files from being transcoded to AAL sometimes, but I haven't discovered what it is. The above sequence seems to work reliably. Alternatively, if I have major problems with the raw sound, I may upload it as one file, or via digi-opti-IO, so that whatever I do it's done consistently to the whole thing (eg removing a whine, or normalizing L/R balance). Then I split it up myself from CoolEdit (aka Audition) into individual wave files and import them into SS to do with as I wish. On another topic (that you touch on), I did record in MDCF my finding that creating groups on a HiMD disk after recording affects the ability to do editing operations such as creating track marks...... as long as you don't move things around, you can divide and combine to your heart's content.