A440

Take that 1GB disc to Explosions in the Sky and record the set in PCM! Should come out extremely well. And then you can use Marcnet's software to upload and CD it. If you can't find a retailer that has the big discs, Circuit City online sells the 1GB discs for usual $6.99 plus tax--free shipping over $25--and got them to me in 3 days.

Hi-MD does record .wav and with Marcnet's Hi-MDRenderer that file can be digitally copied into your computer. Sony is also supposed to come out with its own .wav converter this fall. http://www.marcnetsystem.co.uk/ Get a good preamp, as described above. Also, look at mic specs on S/N ratio, and find the highest number you can, to give you the lowest self-noise for quiet sounds. Crickets , you say? Try this: http://www.reactivesounds.com/soundpack.php and select "open country" under Sound Effects. and this thread: http://forums.minidisc.org/viewtopic.php?t...ghlight=cricket

Your link leads to a mic pre-amp, and you are still going to need a mic to plug into it. Together they will actually give you a better recording than a mic jack will, because the large, powered outboard pre-amp via line-in should give you a slightly cleaner signal than the little built-in pre-amp that powers a mic jack. If you're not concerned with stealth or convenience, then the preamp will definitely give you better quality. You've linked to a Microphone Madness preamp, which (surprisingly) is the same price as it is at the www.microphonemadness.com website. You can also compare preamps at http://www.soundprofessionals.com/cgi-bin/...tegory/540/mics The choice you need to make is this: Do you want to carry around the MD unit and an extra box, or do you want to do without the extra box and get a MD unit with a mic jack? Used ones on Ebay from the previous Sony vintage, like the MZ-N707, will probably run you about the same price as the preamp, though of course you have to be careful getting used gizmos. And by the way, if the music is extremely loud, just try plugging the mic directly into line-in and see if it provides enough of a signal that way.

http://www.soundprofessionals.com/cgi-bin/.../SONY-MZ-NHF800 $259, free shipping, no tax (except maybe in NJ) and a free microphone

J&R Music on Park Row (across from City Hall) in Manhattan has the NHF900 in stock, currently $270. Website is www.jandr.com B&H Photo on 9th Ave. and 34th Street had them for $250 but shows out of stock now, you might also check them in a few days. www.bhphoto.com

In a word, yes. The crucial element is that the disc be formatted for Hi-MD. I've done the HiMDRender transfer from a standard disc formatted as Hi-SP.

Chiming in on #3: Good old free Audacity http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ should probably be all you need to edit your files. In fact, if your computer has a good mic jack, a decent soundcard and some space on your hard drive, you could skip the MD and record directly into the computer with Audacity, which would eliminate the need to transfer from the MD. For all the bells and whistles, Adobe Audition (formerly CoolEdit) is very good and very expensive. The Griffin iMic would give you a mic input (and and line input and mic and line outputs) via USB if your mic jack is staticky. http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/imic/ As for a CD burning program--grouping tracks as an album, normalizing volume (so there's not a huge variation between tracks) and burning them onto CD--Nero is excellent. But the program that came with your CD burner may also be all you need.

Fretwork, what software are you talking about?

Does that remote have a track mark button that works with Hi-MD?

The MZ-G750 is essentially the MZ-R700 with the addition of a radio in the remote control (assuming it comes with the original remote). I've been using an MZ-R700 for frequent live recording for more than a year now and it's been utterly reliable. Controls are well-placed for one-handed operation, too. It uses a regular AA battery, which is very convenient. It doesn't have a mic-sensitivity switch, so for loud music you'll need either the Radio Shack Headphone Volume Control (attenuator) or a battery box. And it's not NetMD--neither is the Sharp--so the only way to get mp3s into it is to record from an output in real time. You CAN do Sync recording from a CD, so that you can let a CD roll and it will place track marks during silences. It's also better than the Rxx Sonys because it will record in LP2 and LP4, doubling and quadrupling your time per disc; music fidelity suffers, but lectures shouldn't be a problem. So it's ideal for your lecture recordings. But it's not good for making minidiscs of your computer's MP3s (that requires realtime recording or a NetMD unit like the MZ-N707) and you won't ever be able to digitally upload your lecture or music recordings (that's realtime too for anything except Hi-MD). Also, you'll be getting a used machine. You have to use your common sense about the person who's selling it to you, and if possible get some kind of guarantee. But there are a lot of older MDs around that people bought or were given and never were intrigued enough to use, so if you find one like the R700 I got, or a MZ-N707, you're in luck.

I'm a pragmatist about this. Find a good spot, position the mics as much like your ears as possible, hit Record and hope for the best. Probably 95 percent of the concerts I go to aren't supposed to be recorded, so my priority is stealth. If I get a good, undistorted recording, I'm happy with it, and some of them are miraculously clear. If I don't, well, I wasn't supposed to be recording in the first place, was I? I haven't had the luxury of setting something up in advance or out in the open, though I love Dex's idea of using a wrapped CD as an acoustic baffle--simple and brilliant. A pole to lift the mics overhead would be great, but it would also get me thrown out of the gigs. Usually I clip a pair of binaurals to the collar tabs of a dark shirt and try to find the sweet spot in the room. That makes me the acoustic baffle, I guess. I've tried the baseball cap and glasses methods, but I turn my head a lot more often than I turn my torso. If I'm in a club audience where people nearby are yapping or whooping I just try to move elsewhere. Occasionally I've been lucky enough to be in a balcony where I can attach the mics to a railing in front of me and leave them stationary, which is ideal. It never hurts to carry a little roll of tape in case I get lucky. The mics I use most often are a pair of older Sound Professionals Basic Binaurals that are mounted on clips so that they point outwards, left and right (parallel to the stage). There's good stereo imaging on the recordings, and I do nearly all of my listening through headphones rather than speakers, so binaural sound is best for me. Trial and error (lots of error) has shown me that the most important thing about mic placement is the room acoustic. If I'm in a good spot, then the mics are very forgiving no matter how they're oriented. If I'm in a bad spot where the bass is swallowing the vocals, then textbook-perfect mic angles aren't going to help much. It's important to listen in the room with your ears and not your eyes, because the perfect viewing spot is unlikely to offer the best mix too. And as mentioned at the beginning of this thread, a few feet can make a huge difference.

You can download smaller versions of Magix from the website (look at e-versions), and pay to have them changed from demos to unlimited versions, though a lot of functionality seems to be left out. But even before you chase down Magix, you really should try Audacity. It has all kinds of effects, is easy to use (though you'll want to change some of the default Preferences) and does a great job on recording and editing. And it's free. Here's the link again. http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Starting a separate topic here to remind people that Marcnet has done us all a great service, and it takes about 20 seconds to send him some $$ via Paypal. The high-speed upload that everyone has been wishing for since the dawn of minidisc is now a reality, thanks to Marcnet (and no thanks to Sony). Everybody who's grateful should put their money where their mouth is. Skip that next latte and give Marc an incentive to perfect HiMDRender. Obviously he's just one guy spending who knows how much time to make this thing work. He's not getting paid like the Sony engineers who put all the obstacles in our way. Let's make it worth his while. The donation button is at http://www.marcnetsystem.co.uk It is a SECURE donation via Paypal. EDIT: HEY! More that 1000 people have now read this message and it looks like about one out of 100 makes a donation. How pathetic is that? He's done constant updates AND provided tech support to everyone here who asks a question, and his program is now working glitch-free. If everyone now using the program sent just $5 it would make a big difference. Anyone who doesn't--well, now that Sony has begrudgingly given us the slow, annoying, deliberately crippled Wav converter, we need Marc even more.

That SP attenuator is exactly the same thing as the Radio Shack Headphone Volume Control (under my signature), probably imported from the same factory in China. If your mic is turning out to be too sensitive, then get one and use it with the volume control turned all the way UP for all but the loudest recordings.

Mad props to Marcnet now that I've had time to try HiMDRender. Leland, I've seen a lot of bad feedback about etronics claiming things are in stock when they're not. But since the physical store is in NYC, maybe I'll drop by and see if the 1G discs are actually there. Meanwhile, even the stated 7.99 list price for the 1GB discs is highway robbery when I can get 80 min discs for $1.60 each in NYC. Yes, I'm sure I'll succumb eventually. But I'm staying grumpy for a while.

If you're recording music in a good-sounding room without a lot of distracting noise--like a classical performance--you should get omnidirectional or binaural mics that basically pick up what your ears do. You don't need directional mics (cardioids), which are more expensive. Make sure you get mics with the full frequency range of your recorder and your ears, 20-20,000 Hz. That rules out of a lot of Sony mics. Get a pair of stereo mics, not a mono mic, and you'll get a fuller sound if you can get mics that you can separate about the width of your ears rather than a one-point stereo mic (or a T mic). You need to decide whether you want small mics for stealth or convenience or larger ones for fidelity, though even the itty-bitty ones are quite good. Look at www.soundprofessionals.com, www.microphonemadness.com and www.reactivesounds.com and see what your budget can afford. Even the basic binaurals will sound good.

Raising the mics is a very good idea. If you ever go to a jam-band show and look at the tapers section, they've all got the mics on long poles over their heads precisely to escape crowd noise. There's endless discussion on mic placement at www.taperssection.com

Don't know if this happened to anyone else, but after I installed SS 2.1 my computer would display a folder called "Common" on startup. System resources also started getting a little strained. After a little investigation, I found that SS slipped itself into Windows to run in the background on every startup. This is unnecessary. How to fix it: Start-Run--type in: msconfig Open the Startup tap and uncheck OMGstartup. (While you're in there, see if there's anything else running in Startup that's unnecessary.) Sonic Stage still runs as usual when you click on it.

Marcnet, why don't you put a Paypal donation button on your website so that everyone who uses your program can show a little gratitude? And everyone who uses this program should kick in something, even if it's only a dollar or two.

You have to set it to record in stereo. File----Preferences---Audio I/O ---change the default from 1 channel (mono) to 2 (stereo).

Forget what I said about being satisfied with Hi-SP, too. Recording a loud show with high sensitivity, standard AGC and my RS Headphone Volume Control isn't even as good as LP2. The drums got a horrible phased whooshing sound. Someone on these boards speculated that Hi-SP is actually Realplayer encoding, and maybe they're right. So, for the vaunted Hi-MD so far: no discs available that are big enough to use PCM (not even from sonystyle now) and if we do want music that can be quickly uploaded as promised (but not yet delivered), there's worse encoding than for standard MD modes. Gotta hand it to Sony for a complete bait-and-switch. Maybe someone should file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission.

Easy as in instant? No. You have to record in realtime. Read back through this thread. There is a Linux version of Audacity for recording and editing. http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ Doesn't have all the bells and whistles of Soundforge, but works quite well for basic tasks.

Mic sensitivity is like a toggle switch (via the software) that's then applied through your whole recording. Just two predetermined settings, high or low. In the two Sony models I've used that have it, the MZ-R900 and the MZ-NHF-800, it still doesn't prevent loud bass notes from distorting, so its utility is limited. Manual recording level lets you set your own level for each recording and as you've found, it's a lot more flexible. Get a decent mic and you should have some first-rate recordings.

BTW, the Sonystyle site no longer lists the discs as available. And yes, Sony is now packaging all the old discs as Hi-MD Compatible. Kind of reminds you of "digital-ready" headphones, doesn't it?

BlackFly doesn't need a Xitel, he has the iMic, which has a line-out jack. Just connect line-out to the MZ-N707's line-in.