A440

For Hi-MD, there are only two or three downloaders (players for MDs or music downloaded from PC) : the DH10, which is expensive because it's also a camera, and the NH600 and NH600D. The NH600D only downloads from the PC; the NH600 downloads from the PC and also does line-in recording. There are older players, but they don't handle Hi-MD formats. By the way, if you do have MP3s on your computer, SonicStage will convert them to ATRAC for minidisc use. There's a slight quality loss, but unless you're starting with low-rate mp3s it's tolerable.

Could be a bad disc, unfortunately. Try hooking up the USB and opening SonicStage and see if you can play the disc back with SonicStage's player, which saved one unplayable disc I had. If you can, then either have SonicStage play back the disc and use TotalRecorder to record it in realtime, or try uploading the tracks.

Here's the thread on how to record from MD to computer. All you need is a basic stereo miniplug to stereo miniplug connector (both ends are the same as the plug on your headphones.) http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=7070

This is getting way more complicated than the original question. Matheis has Nero, which allows you to keep the separate .wav tracks but burn them to CD without a gap. That's all you need--and you can find individual songs without wearing out the fast-foward button.

How you'll do this depends on which MD unit you have: Hi-MD or previous generation MD. With Hi-MD, you upload the recording through SonicStage and have it convert to .wav and continue as you would with a tune ripped from a CD. With NetMD or earlier generation MD, you aren't uploading, you are recording in real time. You can do this with an optical out if you have an old MD deck, but for your purposes you don't need the pure digital connection, so if you don't have an MD deck with optical out don't worry about it. You can simply connect your headphone jack out to your soundcard in (telling Sonar to find that input as ozpeter explained). Either way, optical out or headphone out, you simply use Sonar like a tape recorder, making a .wav recording in realtime.

I just got a RM-MC40ELK to use with my MZ-NHF800 and I'm extremely happy I did. You still have to set Manual Volume on the unit, but you can do that, leave it on Pause and Hold and put it in a pocket before walking in. (I did an overnight test; it will stay on Pause for at least 8 hours.) Then you can un-Pause it with the remote, keep an eye on recording levels (LCD), change Rec Volume if necessary and add track marks (P-Mode) without anyone paying much attention. The backlight only goes on when you push a button, but that's the only time you need it. You can do all the same things with the OLED display on the RH10, but the remote is a lot less obvious.

If you're happy with the battery box results then indeed, there's no need for a preamp. My own experience with battery box alone has usually been that the results are too quiet, but if you're getting all the sounds you want, no need to introduce anything else into the equation.

If you can record the whole experience without overloading--that is, if you can get both the VRROOOOOOOOMM of the race car and the announcements onto the disc--then you can always do some judicious volume boosting on selected passages. Any audio editor will allow you to select portions of the recording to be amplified. The key is in the initial recording. You have to leave enough headroom so that the loudest sounds don't overload; you also have to pick up the quieter sounds. I'd suggest a battery box and preamp into Line-In--the battery box will expand the dynamic range of the mics, and the preamp will keep your reording from being too quiet. You can change levels manually during the event, but if both the quieter sounds and the loudest ones come through, you're better off editing/amplfying certain passages afterward.

You can hear a lot of recordings in the Gallery (link at top of page). "Muffled" suggests you aren't getting enough high end through your mic. High end adds crispness and clarity. You need a different mic. The crucial link to a good recording is the mics. They don't have to be hugely expensive, but they do need a full-range frequency response (20-20,000 Hz). Both commercial suppliers (like www.soundprofessionals.com , www.microphonemadness.com , www.reactivesounds.com and www.core-sound.com ) and the hobbyists who sell on Ebay generally build their more affordable mics around the same basic Panasonic capsule, which you can recognize by the specs. Frequency Response 20-20,000 Hz Lowest note to highest note. The bottom note on a piano is 27 Hz, the top is 4186 Hz, but each octave is a doubling of frequency--that is, up to 20,000 Hz is only two more octaves. That upper register is full of overtones that color and clarify the sounds you hear. Signal To Noise Ratio 58dB How much noise the mic itself adds. The higher the number the better: more signal, less noise. Open Circuit Sensitivity -42dB The quietest sound the mic will pick up. A more sensitive mic--not always a good thing--will have a higher number (note the numbers are negative). -35dB is more sensitive than this. Maximum Input Sound Level 105dB How loud the sound can get before the mic can't take it any more. At this level you'd want earplugs, too. A battery box can help prevent the mic from overloading at higher levels, but most often this is sufficient. The preamp overloads before the mic. Dynamic Range 81dB Difference between loudest and quietest sounds the mic will transmit. A battery box also expands dynamic range. If you buy from a recognized company, the mic capsules may be better matched (they vary) and the housings may be better built, but you can also seek out a bargain if necessary. Ultra-cheap? Look on Ebay for "stereo lapel microphone for minidisc." It's a one-point omni that sounds pretty good if you can leave it in one place and not jostle the housing. But one-points don't give as enveloping a stereo image as your ears. Just a few inches of separation provides all kind of information that your brain decodes as a stereo image, which is why a pair of mics that you can separate is better. Omnis are omnidirectional, hearing like your ears. Cardioids are directional, not picking up sound behind you. They're both good in different situations, but cheaper cardioids have less bass response and can sound tinny. If you're recording something that sounds good to your ears, get omnis. Even cheap ones like my Sound Professionals BMC-2's are wonderful. For pure electronic perfection, get a good pair of mics and a preamp/battery box combination and run them through line-in. The preamp in the MD unit--a Mic-In jack means there's a preamp behind it--is good but not ideal, and this method bypasses it. For a good-value practical and portable solution, get a good pair of mics and, for loud music, an attenuator (Maplins Headphone Volume Control, see the end of the pinned thread on Radio Shack Volume Attenuator) and run through Mic-In set to Low Sensitivity (via Rec-Set). The attenuator prevents bass from overloading the preamp, which is sensitive to bass. Bass roll-off, as far as I'm concerned, is unnecessary or actively detrimental. It eliminates a lot of bottom end from your recordings in order to keep the preamp from overloading. But once those sounds are gone, they're gone. If you do have a bass-heavy recording, as long as it's not overloaded, you can always lower the bass later with equalization on a sound-editing program like Audacity, which is hosted on this site under Downloads, or through any playback with bass and treble or equalizer controls. Even the best microphone is only as good as what goes into it. If the music is far away, you have to get closer. If you're in a club or out on the street, it's not going to sound like a recording studio. Decent mics will hear what your ears do--it's up to you to put them in a place where what they hear sounds best.

Could programs running in the background be using resources that SonicStage wants? Adobe, Quicktime, Realplayer, and all kinds of other things load at startup unless you make sure they don't. Go to Start-Run-msconfig and look in the Startup tab. You can Google the gibberish names and see what they are, and anything that doesn't look essential--Hewlett Packard printer drivers, qttask.exe, etc.--should be unchecked. Also, ffdshow codecs can sometimes be a problem.

My $.02: People come to this site for info, far more than graphics. I'm on broadband, too, but it's a good idea to remember how many people are on 56K and how much more quickly they can get text if a bunch of images don't have to load. Given how confusing MD can be, what new visitors need is FAQ and straightforward information right up front. What the existing minidisc.org front page needs is to have some of the ancient stuff purged and the current stuff reorganized, more than it needs to be all chopped up with scrolling necessary to read past the first line of anything. One thing I don't like about the current setup is that while Gallery and Downloads are at the top of the page, they're so subtle they look like ad links or something--they don't look that prominent. The site should tell new visitors right up front that it has both the information they need and the software they can download to get the best MD experience.

Here's another one. http://webpages.charter.net/tidmarsh/binmic/ You can get the Panasonic mic capsules from www.digikey.com .

Or get the Sound Professionals BMC-2 with clips and the attenuator. Search eBay for soundpro99, they sometimes sell them cheaply there.

That's exactly what it does. You never need to turn it any lower. (You might want to tape it in that position, as Deadwing has suggested.) You'll also want to turn your manual volume level to something in the low 20s.

From the specs, it looks like those are made out of the same Panasonic capsules as other basic binaurals, so that's promising. Clips look a little shiny if you're planning to do stealth, but you could always paint them black. Nice price, too.

They should be thrilled with those recordings. Whatever room they were playing in sounds pretty ideal, too--every instrument comes through the mix, and nothing is echoing. I'm glad it worked out so well. From the way this sounds, I'm guessing that those Core Sound low-sens binaurals are probably attenuated enough so that bass won't be a problem even at louder shows, but I look forward to your next experiment.

Sharp hasn't made Hi-MD's yet, and there's no indication whether they will. Hi-MD is such an improvement in recording quality and uploading capability that good as NetMD recording was, Hi-MD is the better choice. For the clearest recording of quietest sounds, option 2 beats option 1. And it really depends on your budget. Places like www.soundprofessionals.com , www.microphonemadness.com, www.reactivesounds.com and www.core-sound.com have a variety of microphones and preamps, of various sizes, shapes and prices. For you the crucial spec is S/N ratio or Signal/Noise ratio, which measures how much noise the mic or preamp adds. The higher it is--the more signal, the less noise--the better it is. You also want to look at the frequency range of the microphones--20-20000 Hz is optimum. If you want a nice enveloping ambient recording, then get omni or binaural (used synonymously) mics that record all around you--not a one-point stereo mic but two separate mics on one lead. If you want directional mics, then get cardioids, but inexpensive cardioids skimp on frequency response and you have to be much more careful about where you place and point them; they also pick up more wind noise if that's a factor. I'd say get the best binaurals you can afford, and a preamp like the Reactive Sounds Boost Box or one of the Sound Professionals preamps.

Might I suggest that when you post a live recording to the Gallery, you put some recording notes: type of microphone, how it was placed, settings, and whatever else you think is relevant. That way, the examples can help visitors compare equipment and recording strategies. And by the way, new visitors, the Gallery link to hear MD recordings (and see geeky pix) is at the very top of this page.

To digitize your vinyl collection, record directly into your PC with a program like Audacity. Buy an external soundcard or a Griffin iMic (about $40) if your PC doesn't have a line-in connection. MD excels, however, at live music recording. And once you have recorded a band, what do you plan to do with it? If you just want to listen to it on minidisc, then NetMD is fine. But the only way to copy a NetMD disc from your portable unit is to record it out of the headphone jack in real time. If you want to upload a live recording to your computer so you can burn CDs, etc., then you need Hi-MD. Hi-MD also has high-quality recording, uncompressed CD-quality PCM, while NetMD's best recording is SP, which is good but still compressed. $7 for 1GB of storage isn't bad. How much did you pay per GB on your iPod? And it doesn't even record....

Note that you can't upload the recordings from your old minidiscs. Only recordings made in the new Hi-MD formats --PCM, Hi-SP and Hi-LP--can be uploaded.

Since you can play back transferred music, your playback head and headphone jack are obviously working. The question seems to be whether the sound is getting into the minidisc from your mic. Are you sure the mic works? Do you have the mic plugged into the Red mic jack (not the white Line-in jack). Are the level meters moving when you record? Does it Data Save and System Writing to Disc when you press Stop (it takes a while)? Does it show that there are tracks recorded when you push Play? Since you know the USB works, connect it to SonicStage and see if SonicStage can play back the recording through your computer. If your mic is working and connected correctly, it could be a bad mic jack and should definitely go back to Sony.

Michael is right about that situation, but if you have old MDs to play back and are used to transferring things with SonicStage, it's not a major thing. Get a NH600 if you can find one and a NH600D (which doesn't have line-in recording) if you can't find the NH600. You can pick up the NH600D for under $90 on Ebay, new in the box, if you're a little patient. I have a NHF800 that I use for live recording, and a NH600D that I use for everything else (including uploading the live recordings I make). Like you, I decided it's silly to wear out the expensive recorder when all you need is a player.

I've read good things about those Soundman mics, though I forget where. You should do a Google search. Those postage and import duties--ouch! That does seem extortionate. I just searched Ebay from the USA and found a few things. This guy's design has some of the same problems I mentioned--sorry, deadwing, I forgot about the attenuator fixing the plug-in problem--but you could also contact him and ask for a custom job. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...5774203374&rd=1 Here's someone selling Sound Professionals' in-ear binaurals, which of course you could take out of your ears too... http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...ssPageName=WD1V This guy regularly sells basic binaurals that look pretty solid. You'll have to contact him about shipping from Canada, and get some way to clip them to your clothes for stealth miking. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...ssPageName=WD1V

You're in the right place, here's the manual. http://www.minidisc.org/manuals/sony/sony_mznf810_manual.pdf The record slider doesn't light up. You should see a little REC on the LCD, level bars moving and the time indicator changing. Stop saves the data. For music, make sure you're recording in LP2 or SP (in the Menu under Rec Set). You can set levels by pressing Rec and Pause at the same time, then un-Pause to record.

Try hooking it up to SonicStage via USB and see if that detects anything. But you may be out of luck.