A440

The Stop button (a square on the button) saves the data. The unit will also save the data automatically if it senses the battery is getting too low. If you are recording with the unit on Hold, then you have to take it off Hold and push the Stop button. If it's saving at random--and it's not battery related--then take it back under the warranty.

If you have a pair of mics with clips and you have permission to use them, they don't have to be on a shirt collar--that's for stealth. You could make any kind of mount you wanted, depending on how handy you are: on a pole, on something soft, etc. About 6 inches apart makes a very realistic stereo recording. Just put them up and out in open air, not in a place (the floor, or at waist height on a table, etc.) where the sound will be muffled by people in front of them.

Well, you could always lower that one peak manually with any sound-editing program. Or you could normalize (with an editing program, not a burning program) big sections around that peak. It's up to you if you want the absolute realism of an uncompressed recording or if you'd rather have a compressed recording. Personally, I like the full dynamics.

If you are recording while using AC power, it has been reported that you can get a hum. Try recording on battery power instead. And yes, keep it away from the other gizmos if possible.

It looks like you have a whole lot of things hooked up to the computer. Are all those external drives simultaneously in use? Can you disconnect them? None of them immediately look like devices that would be seizing the audio. What audio players do you have installed? Windows Media Player? Realplayer? Winamp? Some other jukebox program?

That's what "normalize" is for on your CD burning program. It brings the levels of very different tracks closer to one another.

With the price of preamps you're better off just getting a new Hi-MD with a mic input. If you can find one, the NH700 or NHF800 is a good recorder that takes a regular AA battery, and you can upload via USB.

I have Spybot running and had no problem installing 3.2 on top of 3.1 , which had been a clean install. But if you think that's the problem, why not turn off Spybot for the few minutes it takes to install 3.2? Much better than dealing with 2.0.

Either NH700 or NHF800 depending on where you live and what's available. They're basically the same unit, but the NHF800 has a remote with an FM radio. Sony tended to sell either one or the other in any given country. I have an NHF800 and although I've never had any use for the FM remote, with the RM-MC40ELK remote I added later, it's close to an ideal recording unit. The NH900 came with an outboard pack for an AA battery. Sony idiotically removed the AA battery version from the second-generation (RH) units. I can't tell from the equipment browser whether they still include the outboard AA battery pack. You can buy a second gumstick battery (NH-14WM is better than the supplied one) and a charger on Ebay if you can only find RH units, but I hope they also accept the outboard AA pack.

No idea what Unimodem is, though it could be your original soundcard. Look under Control Panel/System/Hardware/Device Manager and see if you can find some clues under Properties, like when it was installed, etc. The remaining items should have subfolders. Audio and Video Codecs tell your computer how to play back various kinds of files, like mp3s, .avis, wma., .mov, etc. I don't thik Legacy Video Capture is relevant here. Is there anything in a subfolder under Media Control Devices? What? OK, this is if you want to get truly geeky and is strictly at your own risk. If you have been using SonicStage and have built up a library, then go into SonicStage and use the Backup Tool to burn your library to CD or DVD. Should you have to go back to the restore point, you might need the burned backup to restore My Library . If Unimodem is your built-in soundcard, then leave it or: If you're feeling brave and you have WinXP, set a Restore point (Programs/Accessories/System Tools/System Restore) and then go into Control Panel/System/Hardware/Device Manager and Remove the Unimodem from your system. If it's not some plug-in device then it should detect it again on rebooting. If it was some plug-in device that you're not using, you didn't need it in the system.

Putting something on www.archive.org makes it public to the world, and the Creative Commons license gives away some of your rights. Make sure you want to do that before you use www.archive.org. Doing a Bittorrent is also a public thing. If you want to stay private, either use a gmail box or rent some web hosting space. EDIT: Hey, just found this site that lists free web space. http://www.freewebspace.net/

Under Settings/Control Panel/System/Device Manage or in Sounds and Audio Devices under Hardware, what other audio controllers are installed? Something else must be seizing the volume control. Do you need a lot of audio devices plugged in at once? You might be better off unplugging extra ones and perhaps even using Device Manager to Remove them from your system--they'll be detected again and reinstalled when you plug them back in. It's always a good idea to have the installation CDs on hand, of course. A good way to find the problem is to add the devices one by one. As long as they're all in there, it's difficult to isolate what's going wrong.

Syrius is right as usual. I guess I never imported anything into SonicStage that I wasn't going to transfer, or hadn't previously uploaded. But now that I've tried it, yes, "importing" a file into SonicStage just makes a bookmark to the original .mp3 file, until you want to get it onto the MD. Not that any sane person would want to make SS their primary music player.

Try their website, they might even have an updated driver. http://www.emu.com/support/welcome.asp?centric=764

Audacity does have a Mac version. http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/ It doesn't have all the bells and whistles of a paid program, but for straightforward recording (from the MD) and editing (.wav, .mp3, I don't know about Real) and adding effects, it's quite good. Its only quirk is extremely minor: it saves everything in its own format, .aup, so instead of Save (once you've edited) you have to tell it Export to .wav in its drop-down menu. Personally, I can live with that.

Get a new one. Repairs aren't worth it.

Yes, that's the situation with 1st-generation Hi-MD. You could delete the .oma copies and have it re-convert your mp3s next time you wanted to transfer them--just make sure you've unchecked the option that deletes the source file too. You'd want to keep the original files anyway: the .oma file is a compressed version of an already compressed file, so you're losing quality. But it may be different with 2d-generation Hi-MD because that includes native mp3 playback, so presumably it wouldn't need the .oma copies. Can someone with a 2d-gen Hi-MD and a lot of mp3s take a look in Packages and see what's there?

There's no guarantee you can salvage anything. But if you know anyone with a Hi-MD or NetMD unit who has SonicStage on their computer, please try letting SonicStage read the disc. Sonic Stage was once able to read a disc for me that the MD unit itself said CANNOT RECORD OR PLAY. SonicStage will show you tracks, titles and times, and it will control playback (which will still come out of the headphone jack, not the computer). If your tracks are still there you could have SonicStage play them back and record them out of the headphone jack.

.flac compression does not diminish quality. Your recipients can always turn it back into .wav for CD burning. http://flac.sourceforge.net/index.html

If you can send from the mixer through the EMU to the PC, then how about sending the MD output through an input on the mixer? And what were you recording from the EMU with? Can you go back to using that? Generally, I like to put as few devices in a chain as possible. But if you had a chain that was working, I don't see why it shouldn't work with the MD as the source.

You could compress with .flac to get the size of those files down and still be lossless, or you could use high-bitrate Mp3 or .ogg and get them under 10 MB. Do rehearsal tapes really need the final degree of high fidelity?

OK, it's got to be either a simple connection problem or the computer not picking up the soundcard input. Let's do an experiment. Disconnect the Emu and connect the MD from headphone-out to whatever input you have on your computer: Mic-in (it has to have one) or Line-in (it may have one). Tell the Windows mixer (under Sounds and Audio devices) to make that the default for recording. See if you can get that through Audacity. See how the quality is, and if that's good enough. If the computer has decent connections, it might be all you need. ----------- If it's staticky, etc., then it's back to the Emu. I wish I were at all familiar with the Emu. I'm not sure I understand this mono-to-mono thing you mention. You're plugging the minijack into headphone jack (which you've switched to line output), not the mic jack, right? The adapter you mention: what is it? Does it take the two channels from the stereo miniplug and separate them as right and left channels? And then you're plugging the right and left 1/4" into the Emu? And the Emu has been set as default not only for playback but for recording? Also, about the Emu. Is it completely replacing your computer's built-in soundcard? Have you been able to use it for playback? ----------- Alternately, what is the mixer you are referring to? Is it a separate outboard mixer? Have you been able to get sound from it into the computer? Can you send the output of the MD into the mixer and into the computer?

The easiest thing is to just get a free mailbox with big storage space. Google's Gmail gives you 2 GB, and if you don't know anyone who can give you a Gmail invite you can easily got a Yahoo box with 1 GB. There may be an upload limit on the length of files--I think it's 10 MB with Yahoo. So you might have to cut the music files into 10MB chunks, or use compression. It also takes a while to upload each music file, so be patient. On the other hand, it's free. Another possibility is www.myspace.com, which also offers places to post songs--probably compressed ones rather than .wav files.

It depends how the concert is being amplified. If it's a stereo mix, you'll only get one channel from recording the stack. Most concerts are more or less mono, however. It also depends if the stack is giving you the instrumental balance you want. Is some sound also coming from the amps on stage? Last, right up next to the stack may just be too loud: not only for your MD, but for your ears. I'm a big fan of the soundboard spot, especially with omnis. But as greenmachine says, experiment. In clubs, and even in some outdoor shows, moving just a short distance in any direction can make the mix suddenly clearer. Close your eyes and trust your ears.

The MD is recognized as a USB drive through Explorer, so you know the USB connection is working. Unfortunately, that's not enough for SonicStage to deal with the music on the MD. If you get 3.2 working with the Open MG module, and it recognizes your MD unit--it will read the names/numbers of tracks recorded on the disc--then leave it alone. If you get the module and SonicStage installed and it still doesn't recognize the MD, the MDAC repair often solves that problem. Another question: are you installing SonicStage into its default directory, not a custom location? I think SonicStage is so poorly written that it can only find its components in the default directories.