A440

It looks like they're pretty expensive: just put "parabolic microphone" into Google or Froogle. You could try the Bionic Ear--either the whole system or (since you already have a mic) the Booster reflector, which is sold separately. The system's mic is probably mono. http://www.spymall.com/catalog/surveillance-sound.htm But look at this do-it-yourself link--they used the top of a wok! http://www.solorb.com/elect/misc/bige/

Can't answer all of your questions, but most of your noise is likely coming from the MD's own preamp. An outboard preamp through Line-in, bypassing the mic preamp, should provide a great improvement even with your current mics.

The capsules in virtually everyone's cheapest binaurals have the same specs as the Panasonic WM-61 or WM-60AT. I don't know how flat the response is.

The Behringer is a mono cardioid mic. It's made for picking up a single instrument in a studio. It can be connected to the MD, but what are you planning to use it for with the MD?

You would have manual volume control available either through mic-in or line-in. The question is how loud your music is going to be. Are your mics themselves high-sensitivity or low-sensitivity? CS has two options on those mics. You've also switched in your questions between Cardioids and Bis. I have used the low-sensitivity version of the LC Low-Cost Cardioids directly into mic-in at a loud show (see the Gallery under my albums, Power Serj) with no problems. Because of the limited bass response of those mics the possibility of overloading is lessened. The Bis have more bass. You'll just have to experiment with the battery box, but if the music is superloud you may overload anyway.

No, the low-cost CS are the only ones I have for music. (I have the SP-SPSM-16 one-point cardioid that came with my recorder, but that's only useful for speech.) So I'm not condemning all cardioids, but I would suggest anyone buying them look closely at specs. Even Core Sound is weaselly about its specs for the mics I have. It claims 40Hz, then backtracks and says there's a bass rolloff below 100 Hz. Greenmachine's links suggest that the bass problem isn't only on the cheaper cardioids. But I wish someone with higher-grade cardioids would post some recordings in the gallery. I don't understand that distance limit in the SP FAQ. I have heard arena-sized sound systems that are clear and loud well past 75 feet and that drown out most of the audience noise. Any decent sound engineer will use the reflected sound to make the music sound bigger and better. And even with my little binaurals, I have sometimes gotten recordings that sound clearer played back than they did at the time. A lot of the taperssection folks are concentrated on jam-band recording, and for some reason those audiences are real chatterboxes. Perhaps that explains their (unsubstantiated) preference for cardioids, although the real fanatical tapers put the mics up on poles above the crowd anyway. Meanwhile, one person's "crisper" is another one's lack of bass. People who haven't heard good bass response may not know what they're missing.

That graph is very informative, greenmachine. It's nice to have the equivalences set out so clearly. Kurisu should make it a sticky. Two things are getting a little jumbled here. If what's going into the mic isn't going to make the preamp overload--i.e., not a lot of bass, or a mic with a frequency response that starts at 100 Hz, or a mic with a (deservedly disdained) bass roll-off--then skip the attenuator and use the appropriate level. But if there is a lot of bass, you can take manual volume down to 10 or below and you'll still get clipping. I know this from experience. And if I remember a post by Dex Otaku correctly, the manual volume control is applied after the signal goes through the preamp, when it's too late.

You can hear some of my recordings in the Gallery and judge for yourself. I have gotten a tiny bit of overloading at some of the most brutally loud shows. That would be the mic overloading, since the RS prevents the preamp from overloading. (Generally, MD overload problems are from the mic preamp, not the mic itself.) But most of the simply loud shows I have recorded have had no problem with overloading. There are also recordings, from me and others, in the mail.yahoo.com box livefrommd with the password 1minidisc1 , including a loud rock one. Crowd noise is a problem. If your ears hear it, the mics pick it up. You just have to get away from the talkers, the "WHOO!"-ers, the clappers, the sing-alongers, etc. But as I've written elsewhere, using cardioids in the hope of limiting crowd noise introduces a whole new set of problems--limited bass, flattened audio perspective, wrenching changes if you turn--that, for me, outweigh the crowd noise. Cardioids are still going to pick up the crowd within the mic's pickup pattern--in front of you and to the sides. It's a concert, not a recording studio. The mics don't seem particularly weighted toward the bass--they just pick up what's there. If you can move around, you can try to find a spot in the room where the bass isn't quite as heavy. As long as the bass doesn't overload the MD, then you can always use EQ (bass and treble controls, Sound settings) to decrease the bass when you play back. I don't understand the fashion for extremely bass-y mixes for live bands--even a bluegrass band I saw the other day!--but you can't fault a mic for good fidelity.

Also, you can automate the process somewhat with WinNMD. http://winnmd.net/

Out in the real world, I don't ever really expect to be 30cm from the source. So here's the basic question: Why does anyone use cardioids for live audience recording? As I see/hear it, the lack of bass response, the flat soundstage and the necessity to stay immobile outweigh the slight muffling of noise from behind, especially when I can clip omnis to my shirt so my body blocks some noise. Cardioid fans, I know you're out there--what am I missing?

That sounds like the Minigear mics were badly grounded, and maybe it's just a matter of the way that particular pair was (mis)wired. You might get in touch with them, tell them about the problem and see if they have a replacement pair.

Fishstyc-- Thank you! I think you may mean DirectShow. In my Winamp I have DirectShow as an input plugin (and DirectSound as an output). I enabled .oma by going to Options/Preferences/Plugins-Input and highlighting NullsoftDirectShow, clicked Configure and added ;OMA to the list of extensions. It works! Funny thing is, sometimes the Winamp skin changes. But I don't care--not having to look at SonicStage (or wait for it to load and cover my desktop) is a pleasure.

Welcome to the restricted world of Digital Rights Management. You think it's your music? Sony doesn't. You're trying to do exactly what SonicStage is designed to prevent--and about the only thing it does well. Your HD5 is supposed to be the endpoint for your music library. It's not a way to convey your music from computer to computer. Your simplest solution is to take the CDs to the office and rip them again. I don't know if SimpleBurner works with the HD5, but if it does you can put the CD tracks onto your player directly, without making copies on the computer. They'll sound better too, because you haven't converted them to MP3 in between. Or burn the MP3s to a CD-R and transfer those with the SonicStage at the office.

Mac users, rejoice. http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=11172

Speaking for myself, I have no interest in the RH710--no mic jack. To be consistent with past Sony numbering, it should have been the RH510. Caveat emptor.

You can probably get a new MD with mic jack for slightly more than the cost of a preamp. Any Hi-MD except NH-600, RH-710 or DH10, check the browser on the homepage. Outboard preamps can be as large as the MD unit itself

Thanks for the spectrum graphs. It could be positioning--it's not my Grado SR 125 headphones--but all the samples I've listened to on that site have similar problems with bass. The B-52's one is similarly awful, and I know they have serious bass live. I've rarely been at an arena concert, from any kind of seat, where the midrange is accentuated like that. Usually you get muffled vocals if you're in a bad seat, not extra-clear ones. If I were running Avril Lavigne's PA, I would not make it easier to hear how out of tune she is. I assumed it was the bass rolloff, since they said that was used, but hey--maybe the mics are just lousy.

You can't use the new Hi-MD (1GB) discs in an older player. You can use 74-minute and 80-minute discs but you have to format them as MD (not Hi-MD) in REC SET and, as above, you have to record to them in SP.

Try the MDAC Repair Tool. http://forums.minidisc.org/downloads/details.php?file=8

Well, thanks. Short answer: get a first-generation Hi-MD, NH700, NHF800 or NH900. If Sharp made a Hi-MD, it would probably eliminate the biggest pain about Sony MD recorders, which is that you can't make Manual Volume the default for recording. You always have to pause the unit and go through menus. But there are no Sharp Hi-MD recorders, and since Sharp seems to have stopped making MD recorders completely, I'm not betting there ever will be. For me, Hi-MD makes NetMD and pre-NetMD obsolete. The ability to upload recordings and the capacity to make PCM recordings (even though I mostly use Hi-SP) is a huge advance in minidisc recording. For you, even NetMD would be an advance: that lets you download CDs onto MDs faster than realtime. I bought a first-generation Hi-MD (NH) and see no reason to get the second (RH). The only change is (low-quality) mp3 playback, for which Sony removed the feature of being able to record via mic-in or line-in using old MD formats--the ones that would play on your Sharp. You can still, with SonicStage, make discs of downloaded material (from CDs, for instance), that would play on your Sharp at SP. I haven't tried all the Hi-MDs. I'm happy with my NHF800 because it takes a regular AA battery (not a rechargeable gumstick, even though you could buy an extra and recharge it or use an outboard battery pack in other models). If you can find that or an NH700 (same thing minus the FM radio that I never use), grab it. For live recording, I indulged myself and got the RM-MC40ELK, which has a backlighted display and is 80 percent of ideal for stealth recording. (It would be perfect if it could access REC SET menus and had a Record button--you still have to do that on the unit in Pause.) Next choice is the NH-900, which has a gumstick battery and an outboard AA battery pack (bulkier), but also has some other good features like line-out. Look at the Browser on the www.minidisc.org homepage to compare features. As a copyist, you might like to play with pitch control, not available in 2d generation models. The NH1 is pretty and thin but has too many Sony-only parts: its battery and its USB connector are both Sony-only, and to recharge it you have to have the cradle. You also have to use the remote for some functions, something else to carry around, break or lose. If they're not available, then RH910 or, if you want what looks like a very nice display on the unit, RH10. Since I do stealth recording, I'd rather have the display on the remote. I have owned so far: MZ-R900, metal case, pre-NetMD, and to my eye the best looking MD ever--except that the battery latch kept coming open in my pocket and needed to be taped shut. But with no fast transfer to MD via NetMD, it's not for you. MZ-R700, a workhorse, nice big jog wheel. But also not NetMD. MZ-N707. NetMD. actually my first MD and thus I'm quite fond of it. Lacked a Mic Sensitivity switch--always on High--which caused me to find the RS Headphone Volume Control attentuator method. Also can't change manual record level without pausing, another reason the attenuator was useful. You can find NetMD's on eBay, and if all you want to do is download music onto MD and make recordings that stay on the MD, you can search them out. You might want to get N910 because I think that allows you to change the recording volume as you record. Or look at Sharp's NetMD's if you want to make live recordings that stay on the MD. (The only way to get them onto a computer is what you've been doing with CDs: realtime.)

Your Sharp MD-MT821 is a six-year-old unit, and you're stuck recording to it in real time. Later MDs are NetMD or Hi-MD, both of which allow quick transfer of CD tracks to MD. In your situation, you might well be better off copying the CD's to the PC and having the PC play back with gaps between tracks that will be long enough for Sync Rec. Or if you're planning to transfer a lot of CDs, you could get a NetMD or Hi-MD unit and very easily transfer them (with tracks already titled) using SimpleBurner.

And by the way, if what you're trying to to is pack a bunch of CD's onto a minidisc, then you can use SimpleBurner, the Sony program that actually works. Start it, connect the MD via USB, put in a CD and push the transfer arrow. Hi-LP will put about a dozen albums on an 80-minute disc.

The upper one in the photos is the 40ELK. And I like mine too. If it had the REC-SET menus and a record button it would be perfect. As it is, the ability to check that it's recording, make track marks (P-mode) and monitor levels in the dark is a definite quality-of-life improvement.

Let's see your friends record PCM-quality live music on their iPods. Sony is the only maker of Hi-MD, which records in PCM and uploads. Previous MDs recorded compressed sound only and did not upload. The NH1 has the thinnest, most elegant design and a metal case. As far as functionality goes, well...it only has its own unusual rechargeable battery and no way to attach outboard batteries. To me, that's too much to sacrifice for design. The second generation trades native MP3 playback (with crippled frequency response, apparently) and slightly lower cost for the more useful features on last year's Hi-MD's (NH*) like line-out or direct recording to old MD modes. Not a good trade as I see it. The RH10 has a pretty display, but for the money I like my NHF-800 plus the RM-MC40ELK lighted remote--more useful for live recording. If you can find one, and you care about line out, get a NH-900. It has line-out for playback and an outboard battery pack along with its rechargeable gumstick battery. Or get an NH-700 or NHF-800 (depending on where you are), which runs a good long time on one easily replaceable AA battery--the slight bulge is no big deal, though there's no line out. The headphone jack is perfectly good, though, if all you can find are 2d generation (RH) units. Line-out provides an output without any EQ or effects, which you can also achieve by (duh) turning off EQ and effects for the headphone output. Since I don't have one, I can't tell you if line out is louder, but headphone out runs fine through my car stereo (via cassette adapter). Recording capability is the same--excellent--from unit to unit. Headphone playback is different, with digital amps in the higher-priced models, and display is different. Hi-MD does work as a data drive, but you'll probably be frustrated using Hi-MD that way, since it's only USB 1.1 and quite slow. Get a little 256MB USB flash drive on sale somewhere unless you often need 1GB of portability. Most of your other needs are served by any Hi-MD with a mic-in jack. Believe it or not, the mix albums are the most problematic. At some point in the process you will have to re-title every track. SonicStage can't handle a folder full of recordings as an album--you have to regroup them once they're on the computer, and possibly retitle them to keep them in order. When you do make mix albums, you may be better off burning them to CD and then using SimpleBurner to put them onto MD; with that method, you have to retitle them on the MD. And while you can use MD to transfer data as a data drive, you won't be able fill an MD with music and let someone else upload it. SonicStage won't allow that.

If you're getting that message as you upload, try again with the files once they're in My Library. (You can convert to .wav as many times as you want--the restriction is only on the transfer from MD to PC.) Sometimes SonicStage is just ornery, and the second conversion works fine. Otherwise try downloading .wav converter from Sony and run it separately. http://sonyelectronics.sonystyle.com/walkmanmc/wav.html