A440

Markoneswift, you seem to think you have to record in realtime to MD. You don't. Sony made a program, SonicStage, music library software that worked more or less (actually quite a bit less) like iTunes for iPods, transferring music from computer to MD. Download it here: If you have 32-bit Windows, you're mostly ready. Install and open SonicStage, connect the NH700 (with an old MD, not Hi-MD, in it) and see if it's detected. Then you have to choose to transfer the music in one of the older MD formats, not the Hi-MD choices. If you have 64-bit Windows, you'll need this: SonicStage is kludgy and unintuitive, but once you install it and start getting error messages, folks here can help you. I hope you have some old-school MD blanks.

MS907 is not a great microphone. Its frequency response is very deficient in bass and superhigh treble. T he bass is more serious. There are two octaves of human hearing below 100 Hz. http://reviews.cnet....7-20037945.html The R70 will grab good sound, but you ned a good source.

To upload your old SP discs, yes, the MZ-RH1 or MZ-M200 (same unit with a microphone you don't need) are your only choices. I have a PCM-M10. It is magnificent--my absolute favorite electronic toy ever. I'm sorry Stephen's was defective, but I have been using mine nearly since it was first introduced and it's like a brick, microSD slot included. For once Sony did not do goofy proprietary stuff and just made a useful machine. It takes probably 10-15 seconds to start up (depending on how much you have recorded and left on the microSD and internal memory), And here's a trick: don't turn it off, just let it go to sleep (which uses hardly any battery power), and hitting the Record button will start it up again almost instantly. The battery life on the PCM-M10 borders on insanity--40+ hours with two AA batteries. I don't think the Olympus or Tascam approach that, although they may well match other features of the PCM-M10. Not ruling them out by any means because I've never used them. If you haven't already, search www.taperssection.com and its forum for the other two makes.

Whoa, wait a minute! There are lots of lossless mp3 players out there. A dinky little Sansa Fuze will play back .wav files and compressed lossless like FLAC. Those little doPi players from Apple play .wav and Apple Lossless. Cowon iAudio players play .wav and FLAC. I bet Sony even makes portable mp3 players that play .wav. Lossless is not a reason to get minidisc. Even if you think you need it in a portable.

I can't help you with finding a silver recorder. But regarding ripped CDs: Both mp3 and ATRAC are lossy formats. That means that when you convert music to them you lose part of the original. So if you convert to mp3 and then to ATRAC you are going to diminish sound quality. And there is no need to convert anyway because the MZ-RH1 will play mp3 files. If you are starting from the CD and ripping it directly, then PCM is lossless. You will get full CD quality. But you'll only get 90 minutes of music on a Hi-MD 1GB disc. If you want smaller files, then take your pick between mp3 or ATRAC--use Hi-SP or SP for good lossy sound quality--but mp3 files will play on a lot of other players, and ATRAC won't.

Stephen, you know I love ya, but au contraire. Bystanders, if this post is too long, skip to the surprise ending. Molly said she can't find AAA batteries but does have access to AA. You can find 16GB cards here in the discount-happy USA for $25-$30, on Amazon, Newegg and elsewhere. That is way better than $7 per GB for Hi-MD or $3-5 per GB for 80min MD. Molly can get 54 hours of 320 kbps mp3 on an 8GB card, and if you're worried about weight and bulk, well...that would be 8 Hi-MDs vs. one tiny microSD. (And yes, she could get the same on the 750 if she could find the 8GB model but...see below.) Maybe Molly has friends here who could send some microSDs. Hope so, because she could also get a much better price on the PCM-M10. The PCM-M10 weighs 6.6 ounces with batteries, not a pound. http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/cat-audio/cat-recorders/product-PCMM10%2FB/ She's recording drumming. Drumming is one of the most complex waveforms. Doing it in a super-compressed format would be just a shame for an irreplaceable field recording. I can see using the little recorder and high compression for oral histories--probably from jali, or griots--because those are just speech, but African drumming is incredibly intricate, and you really want to hear each individual part. Compression is going to blur those nuances. If I were going I'd stock up on microSDs and use .wav and the best mics I could afford to get clarity. Finally, I was looking around for a price for the 8GB model. Couldn't find it at Amazon or, frankly, anywhere. One page on the lovely disorganized Sony site said the SX750 was no longer being sold--after being dropped to a discount of $49.99! Should've got one!-- but that was the 2GB But then I found this baby: http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&productId=8198552921666322565#specifications Sony ICD-SX712D. Lists for $199 (half the list price of the PCM-M10). The model number is between the SX700 and the SX750, so I don't know if it's newer or older. It's also an AAA unit, and it lists its frequency response as 40-20000 Hz (not 20-20000 like the PCM-M10, so it loses an octave of bass from the fidelity on the djembe. ) But--IT HAS A MICROSD SLOT. So it can take extra cards. And it's little and affordable. If she can score some AAA's, maybe this would be Molly's choice.

Molly, the first thing you should do is download SonicStage 4.3 to your computer. Use Avrin's Ultimate Edition Earlier versions of SonicStage did only allow you to upload once, but later ones removed that limit and allow quick conversion to .wav, which will play anywhere. Unfortunately, the material you uploaded on earlier versions still has that one-upload limit--this will only apply to new uploads. It sounds like you were using Hi-MD if you were running into that limit. That's good. That means you don't need the MZ-RH1. You could get any Hi-MD unit, including the cheap MZ-NH600D--which does not do realtime recording, D is for downloader--to upload the rest of your Hi-MD recordings. Make sure the unit you get is not NetMD but Hi-MD. There aren't many choices, and they all have H in the model number. [Edit--except the MZM200, same as the MZ-RH1. Sony loves to confuse things.] As long as the format you recorded is Hi-SP, Hi-LP or PCM, you don't need the MZ-RH1. The RH1 is only necessary to upload SP, LP2 or LP4. I'm sorry to contradict the other poster, but let's not get into a sound quality argument over the greatness of minidisc. Unless you were using PCM--same as .wav--on a Hi-MD unit, your sound was being compressed upon recording. Hi-SP was 256 kbps. New digital recorders, like the PCM-M10 or the Edirol R-05, can do .wav or 320 kbps .mp3, and they have enough internal and removable memory to handle the bigger files. There is no way 256 kpbs is better than .wav, and if there is any difference between Hi-SP and 320 kbps .mp3 I would expect that only Martians and dogs can hear it. Wingfield Audio found that two AA batteries last 43 hours--yes, forty-three hours--in the PCM-M10. http://www.wingfieldaudio.com/sony-pcm-m10-review.html Stephen, your 750 model does not have removable media and is full at 2GB (or 8GB). The PCM-M10--like MD--does have removable media. Yes, microSD cards do eventually need a computer, but MDs eventually need either a player, which is now headed for obsolescence, or a computer. Molly could be out in the field and record mp3 for a long time--a very long time, like 100+ hours--with a 16GB card, not even touching the 4GB internal memory of the PCM-M10. She could then swap it out for another 100+ hours with a second card. Double those for 32GB cards. She and her husband could each use their own microSD cards for different groups of recordings. We all like our personal toys, but I'm really trying to be practical here.

Stephen....the OP can't keep uploading to a computer, and said so. So the 2GB limit of the recorder is going to be a problem. Removable media--microSD cards are really not so bad--is the solution. Also, if she's recording music, that 100Hz cutoff is way too high. I believe the PCM-M10's mics cut off around 80 Hz. But since she was recording with MD, she must already have mics, which make the whole internal mics question and stereo-separation difference irrelevant. The PCM-M10 also has its own dinky little speaker, just to do a quick check if you got the recording. I don't know what kind of battery life the 750 gets with its AAAs, but the PCM-M10 goes just short of forever on two AAs. Good metering too. Why try to make a dictation stick do the job of a music recorder?

For a new recorder get a Sony PCM-M10. You can find one in the US for about $200--more in Europe, unfortunately. It takes two AA batteries and records for something like 20 hours or more. It uses microSD cards but also has 4GB of storage by itself--that will hold a lot of music if you record mp3 at 320 kbps. If my math is right, one 16GB microSD card will hold more than 100 hours. And you can copy files directly to computer, no weird Sony formats. For your old discs, if they were not Hi-MD the only thing that will directly upload them is the MZ-RH1 which is at least $300 if you can find one. Otherwise you have to figure out if they were Hi-MD (formats Hi-SP, Hi-LP or PCM) or regular MD (SP, LP2, LP4). Hi-MD will upload to computer from a Hi-MD unit. The NH700 was a great unit. But they are all old and used now. Regular MD only uploads with the MZ-RH1, or needs to be recorded out of the headphone jack in realtime--maybe to your PCM-M10.

No need to use bass rolloff if you have line-in and a battery box. Put the unit at about 1/3 of the way up for volume and you will get a good recording.

I'm sorry, but the PCM-M10 is THE recorder. Someday a user will want to record music, or ambient sounds, or events unknown. And the PCM-M10 will be perfect for it. Its built-in mics are good for everything but bass. External mics or line-in are superb.

The Sony mics--non-counterfeit ones--are not that good a value. They are noisy and they lack bass response. You want a mic that captures 20-20,000 Hz. I use these itty-bitty stereo microphones, the size of a pencil eraser, clipped to the collar of a dark shirt. http://www.soundprofessionals.com/cgi-bin/gold/item/SP-BMC-2 And to prevent bass from overloading the MD mic preamplifier, as it will, I use this little battery box and run it through Line-in. http://www.soundprofessionals.com/cgi-bin/gold/item/SP-SPSB-8 Put the input volume at about 2/3 of the way up, and you'll get a good concert recording.

Writing decent software--full stop--should have been paramount for Sony. And thinking for users rather than its paranoid, DRM-loving record label would have helped quite a bit. I agree that Sony should have done Apple support early and comprehensively. But making the Mac 5% "paramount" over the Windows 88% would have been pretty silly from any commercial perspective, no matter how well-heeled the Mac users are. They're spending most of those $$ on Apple gizmos anyway.

The only real defense for Sony's Mac incompatibility is that comparatively few people--less than 5 percent of the market!--use the MAC OS. Really, I'm not making it up. http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10 And maybe Apple threw up programming or royalty roadblocks to keep its competitor Sony at a distance, and Sony decided that putting massive programming effort into reaching 5 percent of the market was a waste of time. We don't know what goes on in the corporate netherworld. But frankly, I think that's a lousy defense, because it was clear even in the heyday of minidisc that Apple was dominant in digital music, and digital music is what MD was supposed to be about. I'm on Windows, and to me iTunes is as bloated and domineering as Windows Media Player or SonicStage or Realplayer--they're all resource hogs and DRM annoyances and proprietary-format clowns, and iTunes even wants to take over my networking (Bonjour?). But Sony bizarrely refused to read the writing on the wall. Sony keeps making the same mistake again and again: weird proprietary stuff that baffles users and separates them from non-Sony consumers. Not just ATRAC and minidisc but...memory sticks? Betamax? How long did it take Sony to put basic, obvious mp3 support (which iPod had from the get-go) into MD? Sony must be looking at Apple's proprietary universe and scratching their heads, wondering how Apple gets away with it. It's because Apple makes things look easy, while Sony expects you to RTFM--which is barely translated from Japanese. SonicStage, for those who remember versions OpenMG Jukebox and SonicStage 1 and 2, was not ready for prime time. Sony did finally get it right, on the recording front, with the PCM-M10--you can put a microSD card in the memory stick slot!--and for all I know its mp3 players now have good sound. But even those of us who got years of enjoyment out of minidisc had to tolerate a long learning curve.

The level fluctuations are from AGC. Set the mic at SensLow, switch to Manual and do some tests--with your stereo up loud if you can't convene the band. Your mic itself is not overloading, and neither is the preamp, so all you have to do is set the input level to something where it doesn't peak.