A440

In SonicStage, try : Tools/Options/My Library/Play and uncheck the box under Playback Settings that says "Continue with the next album." I haven't tried it with MD playback, but it's worth a shot.

TSP should update its website. Sony recorders have been able to adjust levels while recording at least since the N9** series. All Hi-MDs let you change the level while recording. That doesn't mean it's a good idea--better to set it and forget it--but you can definitely do it.

The cheap Chinese "stereo lapel microphone for minidisc" (pictured with an MD recorder) that's always on Ebay will do a fine job with your voice.

What was Pandit Jasraj's accompaniment? If it was just tamboura or some other quiet instrument, rather than percussion, then AGC probably didn't give you any sudden shifts. I don't understand how it would sound "weird" with the correct manual level: that is, peaking slightly below the right-hand dash. If you were constantly fiddling with levels, that would make it sound weird. The trick is to find one with enough headroom, and just leave it unless you see it peaking, in which case you have to turn it down. That way the machine won't be trying to compensate and neither will you. Even if the level is below the left-hand dash, you're still recording.

Look in the menu under OPTION and change AVLS to AVLS OFF. You'll get more volume. I have an NHF-800 and use Shure E3s. They are more than loud enough.

With seats behind the soundboard, you're in a well-nigh ideal spot. There are two kinds of overload. One is the mic preamp in the MD unit, which is what the attenuator guards against. The other is the mic itself overloading, which is what the battery box helps prevent: by providing more power to the mic, it allows the mic to handle more volume. Usually the mic preamp overloads well before the mic. However, if the music is just too loud, the mic will overload. I was just at a concert tonight that was way too loud, particularly the bass. I had it at 20/30 with the RS attenuator, and when the bass dropped out it sounded great. But when the bass was pumping, which was most of the show, the bass came out distorted, suggesting mic overload rather that the MD preamp overload. (It's not the total-wipeout preamp overload, but just a thud rather than a tone in the bass--you can still hear the rest of the music.) If it's a place that really blasts the music, here's what I suggest. Bring both your new mics and your old Sony mic, along with a pair of earbuds. Record the opening act with mic and attenuator at 18/30. Run to the gents' between sets and listen back. If it's distorting--not just bass-heavy but distorted, and you'll hear the difference--then record the headline act with your Sony mic as you have before. But if the attenuator is enough--and most of the time, it is--then record the headliner with your new mics, clipped to your shirt collar or your eyeglassses or your shoulders. The stereo separation will be worlds better than your old Sony.

About the chatting: If you feel like experimenting, Cool Edit probably has filters that you can define widely or narrowly as you wish. Are your chatters a monotone? Maybe you could find the frequency of their voices and narrowly filter that frequency. I have no idea how it would sound, but I would be curious. Men's voices are probably between about 150-300 hz. Women, an octave higher, 300-800 Hz, unless you've got a shrieker or an opera singer next to you, perhaps 1000 Hz. Make sure you save a copy of your original file, but then try a narrow filter in Cool Edit and see if you can nab just the talkers. If they're in the same frequency range as the vocals, though, you're out of luck.

Pasa-- No preocupe Ud. demasiado. When you upload a recording, SonicStage titles it with the date and time. So you can see what you have already uploaded, since you have to open SonicStage and look at the titles (which are usually "untitled" with a live recording) before trying to transfer. If you see 2005-21-07 23:38 or something like that, then you have already uploaded the track.

Sounds like you're already doing what that recording needs: changing the EQ to improve it. Try some tweaking in the midrange, too, where most of the music is. People chatting is not removable: if you applied a filter to the frequencies of their voices (which you could do) you would also be removing the music at those same frequencies. Where were your mics placed to sound like it was "in a box"? Were they low on your body, where people around you muffled the sound? Mic placement makes a lot of difference. Also, I hope you were using either battery box to line-in or attenuator to mic-in--not both at once.

When my next Radio Shack wears out--usually one channel goes first--I'll mail it to you, GM, and you can do the surgery.

I like the idea of a high-sensitivity mic because if you do want to try recording something really quiet then you have the option. You can always switch to low-sens on the recorder and turn down the volume if need be. If you're recording opera, high-sensitivity mics and the low-sensitivity setting should probably be ideal going directly into mic-in, as long as you leave plenty of headroom for the shrieky parts.

Another good splitter is CDwave at www.cdwave.com . Rip to .wav, open the .wav with CDwave and you can see the whole waveform and a close-up. Once you insert the splits, it automatically saves them as separate tracks. Very intuitive.

I record live rock all the time at 19/30 or 20/30, so if you want to be extra-safe at 16/30 go ahead. You can hear some loud rock not only in some of the Gallery recordings but in a Yahoo mailbox (mail.yahoo.com) I opened before the Gallery was working. The box is livefrommd and the password is 1minidisc1 . There's some blasting stuff in there. Your method is the best available for a NetMD, and since you have Cool Edit you can easily tweak the bass for playback. If you're recording in LP2 you can get improved sound with SP, but you'll have to change discs before the set is over, which loses the Manual Volume settings. I also use Low Sens under Mic Sens in REC SET. You can set that once and it will be the default until you change it. The best advice for a good live recording is to find a sweet spot in the room. That's usually not up close to the stage, but nearer to the soundboard. If there's an opening band, bring along some earbuds and do some levels testing. Listen back during intermission.

It certainly looks impressive. You never know until you listen, of course. Other considerations: The listing doesn't show the dimensions, but it appears larger than the Altoids-tin Cmoys. Judging by the size of the battery snap, it's up to an inch longer and an inch wider, probably thicker too. That may not matter to you, but it is a consideration. The enclosure is plastic. Chu Moy suggests metal, or at least some kind of foil, for RF shielding. http://www.headwize.com/projects/showproj....e=cmoy2_prj.htm

Some random thoughts: Do you have a lot of other things running simultaneously on your computer? Press Ctrl/Alt/Del (just once) and shut down any programs you don't need. Unplug from the internet, turn off antivirus and firewall (don't forget to turn them back on), etc. SonicStage needs the processor power. Are you uploading through a USB port, not a USB hub? Unplug other USBs and go directly into a USB port. Has SonicStage tagged the track as uploaded? Titled it with a time/date stamp? If it has then you can't upload it again. For this disc, you'll need to use the TotalRecorder method. http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=6330 Is it a long PCM track? That's a lot of data. If it hasn't been tagged as uploaded by SonicStage, you might try breaking it into smaller tracks--push the Track button during playback at a suitable spot, like applause--and see if those are more digestible.

When Edison introduced his gramophone, some listeners throught it was so lifelike they couldn't tell the difference between a live singer and an Edison recording. That was a scratchy, limited mono recording played back through a horn. Our ears and brains make a lot of adjustments when listening to recorded sound. You've probably gotten used to the sound of your ECM 717, which has been cutting off the bottom 2- 1/2 octaves of the music. The new mics are capturing a lot more of the actual sound--unless they are seriously malfunctioning, they're not bass-heavy, they're accurate. Though obviously these little mics aren't studio perfect, what they're picking up shouldn't be much different from what your stereo is putting out. If you have them down in a corner of the room, or on a hard reflective surface, you'll get peculiar sound, but if you have them where your ears are, they should pick up like your ears. Give them a chance at a live show. Concert mixes are often even more bass-heavy. But as long as you don't overload your recording, you can lower the bass on playback if it's obtrusive. The general idea for concerts is to pick up the actual sound in the room and tweak it later if necessary. But when I'm listening to unaltered concert recordings afterward on headphones, there's often a wonderful you-are-there feeling. Also, are you playing back through your computer's soundcard? Listen out of the headphone jack and see if there's any difference. You're recording and playing back through your soundcard, which may be adding some unpleasant coloration, including possibly bass boost because it expects to be playing through small computer speakers that need it. Check your Audio settings (in Control Panel) and see if there are EQualization choices for the soundcard, and find the most neutral ones.

Tracks that have been uploaded will be time-stamped by SonicStage. You can look at the display as you play them or look at what's on the disc when connected to SonicStage. Probably only the first track got marked. For uploading, you need to click open the folder and highlight all the individual tracks. SonicStage is hapless with lots of group functions. Just skip the track that's already marked as uploaded--don't delete it. The question is whether the whole track uploaded in the first place. It's possible that a glitch in the disc interrupted the track and stopped the upload. It's also possible that the .wav converter simply choked for a second on the complete track. Look in My Library for the track you uploaded. (It's probably "Untitled" but you might be able to find it more easily by using Date Imported, which is Sony's pathetic substitute for the intuitively obvious function of uploading groups.) See if the version in My Library plays through. If it does, try Convert to .wav again--once the track is uploaded, you can convert the uploaded tracks again and again. Or download HiMDRenderer and convert it with that. http://forums.minidisc.org/downloads/details.php?file=3 If it's not all there, then use the realtime TotalRecorder method, detailed here. http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=6330 Even if you have to use that, it's still better than a basic tape recorder.

I don't know about software to pick up the track marks while recording. However, there is a program called CDWave http://www.milosoftware.com/cdwave/ that will detect silences (you can select length) between tracks and split the one long .wav file for you, or allow you to insert your own splits. It's not the ideal solution you're looking for, and it's obviously not going to automatically split gapless CDs (though looking at the waveform gives you a pretty good idea of how to find the different songs), but it's not bad.

I bought a handmade one from some college student on Ebay, and it adds zero noise and works great. Obviously look at the feedback, find someone who's been doing it for a while and use common sense. Many of the people who make them are pretty fanatical about quality. Just for example, look at this one: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...eName=WDVW&rd=1 If you don't want to use Ebay, here's one that another minidisc user recommended: http://www.freewebtown.com/jaypolaski/cmoy/ (With that one, I'd suggest spending the extra $10 on a volume control knob, but obviously you can use the volume control on the MD unit or remote control if you prefer.) I like the idea of something built by one electronics geek rather than a factory in China. If there's ever any problem, you have a real person to deal with.

I have the Grado SR 125 and they are magnificently clear and punchy, my favorite headphones ever. (Someday I'll upgrade to better Grados.) A little Cmoy headphone amp helps them, but even plugged straight into the MD they sound excellent. There are two down sides to the Grados. If you wear glasses (like I do), the earcups press on the glasses frames and can get uncomfortable. Also, they leak sound to the room around you, so if you're trying not to disturb someone they're not the best choice. Sennheiser excels in comfort--I don't know about the leakage factor. DT 770m is Beyerdynamic, not Sennheiser. I wasn't that impressed with the Beyers I tried when headphone shopping--bass was inflated and not clear, and they were generally muddy. But I don't know if the ones I tried included that model. They look even heftier than the Grados and might have the same earcup problem. They are closed, though, so the sound stays in. Take a look at this page at www.headphone.com http://www.headphone.com/products/headphones/all-headphones/ They sell the Beyers, but they're obviously not too fond of them.

It's probably the NVidia--there are known conflicts between some NVIdia drivers and SonicStage. Look at this thread: http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showt...10268&hl=Nvidia It has the right version to use and a place to download it.

It sounds like SonicStage, and perhaps Windows, is not recognizing your CD drive. Given how dumb SonicStage is, if you have a CD drive that's not drive E:, it's conceivable that SonicStage can't locate it--I don't know, mine is the conventional E: Have you been able to use other programs (Windows Media Player, Realplayer, etc.) to write CDs? When you click on My Computer, does it show a CD drive? Note that drive letter. Then open SonicStage, go into Tools/Options/Creating a CD and specify that drive letter.

He was using SCMS loosely. The tracks can be uploaded once to one computer. Then they are tagged on the disc as having been uploaded. But the tracks in the computer can be converted to .wav and copied ad infinitum. The tracks on the disc can also still be played back. And, if anything goes wrong, they can played back via USB with SonicStage and recorded digitally in realtime using Dex Otaku's TotalRecorder method. The whole rigamarole is user-unfriendly and stupid on Sony's part. Home-recorded files should simply be unencrypted drag-and-drop. But it's not SCMS.

Find Audio Codecs, too, under Control Panel/Settings/System/Device Manager and see if ffdshow is listed there. Also, in Add/Remove Programs, if you have anything called a codec pack installed, try uninstalling it. Your media players may have to download a new codec next time it's needed, but it's a very minor one-time inconvenience. Some codec packs contain outdated or just plain bad codecs that can interfere with SonicStage.

Reinstall SS 3.1 first (after doing the registry cleanup from the FAQ) and then run the MDAC. It might also work in reverse order, but since people have been using it after SonicStage is problematic, you might as well go that way.