A440

Kedara: It may be that having SonicStage convert to .wav after recording is overtaxing SonicStage's capabilities. You might try un-checking that, uploading, and converting in a separate step. But if it's still not uploading, you have an alternative since you say you can play the tracks through your computer. Get Total Recorder. Standard Edition, $17.95. http://www.highcriteria.com/ This will record whatever is playing through your soundcard. Go into Settings for whatever level of fidelity you want, from .wav on down. Open Total Recorder. Open SonicStage, hit the Record button on Total Recorder and play back through SonicStage, and you'll get a digital realtime re-recording of what's on the disc. Make sure you turn off other sounds on your computer (mail opening, popups, etc.) while you record. Total Recorder makes your computer believe it's the soundcard by installing its own driver. If you have problems afterward playing back sound files, go into Control Panel/Settings/Sounds and Audio Devices and make your regular soundcard driver the default instead of the Total Recorder driver. I had that happen on one computer, but not others. Tracks that play on the unit but not through SonicStage? Don't go through speakers. With a male-to-male cord, connect headphone out on the minidisc to line-in (or, if no line-in, mic-in) on your computer and record with Audacity, which is free. http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

A journalist I know was using a red-and-black MZ-N707, the coolest-looking MD until the RH1, for interviews. He showed me how it could make track marks and said it sounded better than cassettes. I asked him how it was for recording concerts, and...

Minidisc is deeply confusing, but the arrival of Hi-MD simplified the many choices. Only Hi-MD units will upload your recordings to your computer for editing, burning to CD, etc. With older, MD units, you had to re-record your recordings out of the headphone jack in realtime. The only Hi-MD brand is Sony. All Sharp/Aiwa/Panasonic units are older MD and do not upload. And there are only three Hi-MD models I'd consider. One is the MZ-NH700. Takes an AA battery, is a little fatter and uglier than the MZ-RH1, and makes you reset to Manual Volume for each new recording (the MZ-RH1 holds the setting). The AA battery is an advantage. Another is the MZ-NHF800. It is exactly the same as the NH700 but has an FM radio in the remote. And then there's the RH1. Sleek, elegant, even smaller than you think it's going to be. The rechargeable battery keeps it thin, though I actually prefer the AA in the NH700 because you can always find another one if you need it. The hurdle is availability. Sony isn't making them any more. So look around when you get to Japan--or check on Ebay--and grab one when you can. As for mics, I use these Sound Professionals BMC-2: http://www.soundprofessionals.com/cgi-bin/gold/item/SP-BMC-2 They're the size of a pencil eraser on thin wires and clip easily to a shirt collar. The higher they are, closer to your ears, the better they will pick up what you are hearing. You're also going to need a battery module for loud music to record through Line-in and avoid distortion. Like this one: http://www.microphonemadness.com/products/mmcbmminminc.htm Sound Professionals also has an equivalent. Don't worry about the whirring noise at a concert. Your mics are separate from the unit and the band is about 100 times louder than anything the machine is doing. If you're recording a string quartet, well, maybe you'd pick up some machine noise. Moving around is another thing. When you record a concert, you are the microphone stand. Recording engineers tend to keep the microphones in one place when recording. You can't expect any microphone or minidisc to compensate for changes in position. The mic records what it hears. Minor motions aren't going to make any difference with omnidirectional microphones. But room acoustics do change depending on where you are, and if you move from back to front you'll hear the difference in the recording. (It can be kind of a cool effect.) Also, if you (or people around you) are talking, grunting from mosh-pit impact, bumping directly into the mic, etc., it's going to be on the recording. When I record a stand-up concert I tend to stay in one place, though if there are screamers or loud talkers near me I move. The machine is pretty shockproof, but it's not a hockey puck. Mine stays in a pocket while I record and I've never had a skip while walking around a stand-up event. But knock it around enough and you could probably screw it up. Just don't be too crazy. Also, MD records the music but does not save it until you push the Stop button, and then it needs to write for about 10-30 seconds. You shouldn't be shaking or otherwise shocking the unit when it writes. But it's made for portable recording and will do the job well if you treat it sensibly.

You could do better with a a mic that picks up some bass. The upper registers are nice and clear, but there's no oomph on the bottom, and we know it would be there. If you had separate mics rather than the one-point mic, you'd also get some more spatial depth. What settings did you use? Mic into Mic-in? Low Sensitivity? Manual or Automatic Volume? Those squealing girls have got to go....

You could upload to the Gallery here, link on the upper right. I always use EAC as a ripper...but sure enough, it's got a recorder too! Nice to know. Search for "R30" and "preamp" (or, I don't know, "loud") in these forums and see if you can find some posts about it. I remember reading somewhere that the R30 could handle loud music a lot better than later models, but I couldn't say exactly where. Line-in expects a stronger signal than Mic-in, where there's already a preamp. Electronics guys often expect you to need a preamp for the Line-in of the minidisc, and maybe you would with something at normal volume. All I can tell you is that I've recorded loud music with mic(usually Sound Professionals BMC-2)-->battery box-->Line-in with the MZ-R700, MZ-N707, MZ-NH700, MZ-NHF800, MZ-NH900 and MZ-RH1 and it's loud and clear. I've also recorded speech close up and it's a bit quiet but it comes through. It's always possible that the R30 is in some way quirky and would need a preamp, but hey, a battery module will also have that 30-day guarantee. A preamp would be useful if you are recording something quiet: speech, ambient sounds, quiet unamplified music. But with loud music, what you need is something to hold back the signal from the mics, not to amplify it. Hence the battery module, which provides power to the mics (extending their dynamic range) and, as far as I can tell, raises their signal just enough so that live music blasts its way into the Line-in jack. I have tried recording loud music with an external preamp and all I've gotten is distortion. Any amplification is too much. Bass distortion usually happens in the preamp built in at the mic jack. Bass roll-off (or the lack of bass in your ECM-719) helps prevent that. But there's no preamp at Line-in to distort, so bass roll-off seems unnecessary unless you know the room is exceptionally bass-heavy. If the music sounds right in the room, to your ears, then you want to capture that sound unaltered. My philosophy is to get the sound as accurately as possible and then, if you want to adjust the EQ, do it in playback. Mic-->Line-in at a level that doesn't overload gets the full sound. With my BMC-2 mics, the usual level is at Manual Volume between 15/30 and 20/30 (I don't know if the R30 is numerical like the later models, or a bar graph, but about 2/3 of the way up should do it). Different mics, with different sensitivity, will have a different optimum level, but as long as it's not pinned when the music gets loudest, you should be fine.

You won't need a mic preamp with loud music through Line-in. Battery box will do the job. Guaranteed. I've never had an R30 but according to what I've read, its built-in mic preamp was better at handling loud music than later MDs. Hard to give you any definitive answer on the mics. If I were you I would go to http://www.soundprofessionals.com or http://www.microphonemadness.com and order two pairs of mics along with the battery module: one omni, one cardioid. Treat them gently for part of the 30-day guarantee and then send back a pair. For the cost of shipping you could make the definitive test. The ECM-719 is cardioid/directional, which is probably cutting down on the drums behind it, and may be a good thing in a small room. If you like the mix you're getting you might want to get a cardioid. But lower-priced cardioids are going to have about the same bass response as what you're getting. Q: Do you like what the mic picks up better than what you hear when you're in the room? Is the actual sound of the band rehearsing all boomy and bass-heavy? Because a more accurate mic might actually give you a recording that's less useful for analyzing a rehearsal. Do you want more bass? A decent low-priced omni mic pair, or more expensive cardioids, will give you more bottom end and a little more clarity on top. The omni mics through Line-in and battery module will sound like what you hear in the room, if you like it. A cardioid will limit but, as you've found, not eliminate the sound of the drums from behind it, because they're also echoing off the walls that the mic is facing. The only way to upload your R30 recordings is from a MZ-RH1. Or you could record them in realtime out of the headphone jack.

The first-generation Hi-MDs, the NH units, would record in the MD formats. MZ-NH700, MZ-NHF800, MZ-NH900, MZ-NH1. For line-in only, MZ-NH600. (MZ-NH600D was a downloader only, though you could download MDLP tracks via SimpleBurner.) Except for the RH1, the other RH units do not record in MD formats. NH units are not going to be easy to find. Secondhand MD units might be the way to go. Look for wear around the buttons in a sharp photograph .

Yeah, the mic pole is strictly for that jam-band world. I record nearly everything with mics clipped to a collar, and I think they come out pretty good although I'm not the tallest person in the room. Hope yours improve--that would suggest that mic placement is the big factor.

My first guess would definitely be the acoustics. Lean down to the level where the bag is and listen to the sound there. I would guess it's not much clearer that what the mics are picking up. The mics really need to be up and out in open air, not at a level where every body in the building is blocking the sound that gets to them. Is there any way to get them higher? The ideal with binaural mics is to place them where a pair of ears would be. Even if you draped a jacket over the back of the chair and clipped them to the jacket, it would be better than what you're doing--that would be like having the mics on the ears of a person a head shorter than yourself. If you can pile a bunch of your equipment or something on the seat and raise them even higher, that's better. The super-dedicated concert tapers mount their mics on a pole so they're 8 to 10 feet overhead: above conversations and not blocked by anything.

OK, but where is the camera bag? On the floor? My guess is that something is muffling the sound on its way to the mics. Once, back in the cassette days, I made a Walkman recording with the unit (built-in mic) under my seat at a theater. It went FOOM FOOM FOOM FOOM with a kind of distant memory of the guitar and vocal up above. You need to put your ears where your mics are and see how it sounds there. But if it sounds good with your ears and bad with your mics, then obviously the mics themselves are the problem. If you're in the US, you might also give Sound Professionals a call and ask them directly. They're very responsive to customers.

I use BMC-2 all the time, which judging by the specifications are made with the same basic capsules. Where are you placing the mics? And are you running them through a battery box or an attenuator?

The place to look for comparisons like this is http://www.head-fi.org . Do note that their motto is "Sorry about your wallet."

4.3 is the only version that's supposed to be Vista compatible. But other people have had this problem, with no resolution here from us amateurs. You should raise the question with Sony. http://esupport.sony.com/ This page includes a link to a Windows Vista Device Driver. I don't know if it's part of 4.3, or if Sony expects you to somehow discover by telepathy that you need it. http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/news-item.pl?news_id=176

Most of the equipment browser entries are from the original time period, written in the rush of enthusiasm for a new gadget and unchanged since then. The R50 is, by all accounts, built like a tank, has excellent recording (given that it only does a compressed format) and sounds good. I've never had one myself. But all it does is record in one format, SP--80 minutes on an 80 minute disc. It has no computer connection. You can't change levels while recording (you have to go into Pause). It doesn't upload. Any unit you find now is going to be old. It is not a good idea as your first or only MD. The RH1 has more capabilities than any other MD unit, including excellent uncompressed recording and some small conveniences like setting the default to Manual Recording. If you're new to MD, you don't need the most startling RH1 capability for us longtime users: the ability to upload tracks from old MDs, which used to be stuck on the disc unless you wanted to re-record them in realtime. The RH1 is smaller andn thinner than the R50, and like any other sophisticated piece of electronic equipment, you don't want to be dropping it on hard floors. "Technologically" there is no question that it does everything the R50 did and far more. Do you want a Model T that will putter along sturdily at its own speed? Or do you want a sleek new Jaguar?

That mic should be ideal for standup. You can't really add bass if it hasn't been recorded in the first place. But if you like the way it sounds, that's the important thing.

@madeofsteel Let's leave SonicStage out of it. If SonicStage automatically opens when you connect the unit then just close it. SonicStage is for music and you're dealing with data. It would be thrilling if your whole problem is that SonicStage just doesn't deal with data. So just close SonicStage. You want to look at the disc with Windows Explorer in My Computer, which should show the unit as one more USB hard drive. Data files should just drag-and-drop--IF--a very big if--the unit can read the disc at all. I think you're saying that it can't, but I'm not sure. From what you've described so far, it seems that the disc itself is messed up since everything else works. Since you are depending on your unit to read the disc, and the unit can't read the disc, unless Windows can read the disc your only remaining option is to send it to Sony and pay them to recover the data. @BIG.. People have had trouble with USB hubs in the past, and when troubleshooting it's best to make as few roundabout connections as possible. The only way to find out if your USB hub will give you trouble is to try it, but I would guess--only a guess--that drag-and-drop via Windows Explorer is a lot less complicated than a SonicStage upload.

You can start here. http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/news-item...amp;mdl=MZNH900 I see there's a Windows Vista driver--I wonder if that component is different from 4.3? There are also a lot of disclaimers that anything will necessarily work with Vista, though they do claim that your NH900 should be able to use 4.3 The .Wav Conversion Tool referred to is a very old program that used to be separate from SonicStage before it was built into one of the 3.x versions. If you can get SonicStage working you should be able to convert to .wav. You're going to have to escalate through a few levels of service technicians. Do it when you have time to answer the same questions five times to various people in faraway call centers.

One more thing on Rich's link is that the drivers are separate. Did you install them too? I doubt that it was the problem, but you never know. What I suspect is that there is one of Vista's paranoid security features stopping some component of SonicStage. Have you tried calling (or online chatting) with Sony Customer Support? They are extremely slow and redunant, and will ask you about five times what operating system you are using, but it's conceivable someone there might have a clue.

I'm glad the battery gives that mic enough power for line-in. That's good to know. The ECM-719 only picks up 100-15,000 Hz, not the 20-20,000 Hz that your ears can hear and your unit can record. What that means is that it doesn't pick up a lot of bass, and bass is what drives the mic jack into distortion. Sony probably made that mic to work with minidisc (among other things), helping to get around the problem with distortion from bass. So it might also give you little or not distortion going into mic-in--you'd have to try it and see. BUT you're going to get a recording with hardly any bass. It's missing most of the bottom two octaves of a piano. The bottom note of a piano (low A) is 27.5 Hz, the next A is 55 Hz, the next is 110 Hz (then 220 and then...A 440). Whether you'd like that mic depends on what you're recording. Human voice (speech), violin, flute, etc., will be just fine. However, if you want to record a rock band or a jazz trio, it's going to sound tinny. But for what that mic is good for, you got a real bargain at £9. EDIT: Oh, wait a minute--you're not saying you got the ECM-719 for £9, but that you used a cheaper mic you got from Ebay. If you're going to be paying £43 for a mic, I think you can do better for a music mic. Get Greenmachine's binaural mics and battery box. http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=14388

I trust you're not using a Sony computer, which would have other Sony Corporation software installed.....I only ask because I once sleepwalked through the uninstallation FAQ and deleted vital stuff from my Sony laptop, had to restore, etc. But you seem more alert than that. Meanwhile, at least you know now that you have a good System Restore Point. If you're willing to monkey around a little bit more, I would try one of the full 4.3 installers from Rich's link instead of the online one. My theory is that the online installer incorrectly thinks you have something you need already installed, so it doesn't send it to you. And then the installation doesn't work. Whereas the full installer will put in everything. I'm sure it's little consolation, but Vista broke a lot of programs, not just SonicStage. Microsoft has recently had to extend the life of XP because so many people are having so much trouble with Vista. What you're experiencing is probably the unfortunate synergy of Microsoft's rush to market Vista and the clumsiness of SonicStage. SonicStage in Vista is like trying to build a luxury penthouse on a house of cards.

The RM-MC40ELK is very useful at live shows just for stealth. You can leave the unit paused on Manual Volume in your pocket--it doesn't use up much battery life at all--and un-pause with the RM-MC40ELK and get a glimpse of the recording levels. If you're overloading, you can dial down the recording level on the remote. And you can make track marks during applause between songs. If there is noise there--maybe there is, maybe not--I don't hear it over applause. I wouldn't use the remote control during a mic-in, quiet, classical recording. Some people who have them say they don't add noise, some do--mine (an Ebay special, apparently "fell off a truck" in Hong Kong) sometimes seems to be adding noise or a little burst of static when lit up or adjusted during a show. But it also often seems pretty quiet.

OK, let me get this straight. SonicStage will connect to the player, recognize a disc and transfer music to it--but not this disc? Windows Explorer will not recognize the player as a USB drive when you connect it with a working disc in it. Right so far? Or have I misunderstood? I hope you are connecting directly to the computer and not to a USB hub. If you are trying to use a USB hub, that may be a problem. Connect the MD directly to a USB port. What happens when you connect the unit with a working disc in it? Does Windows show something is connected but can't find the driver? Does Windows not react at all?

Which SonicStage did you install? SonicStage is for music and recordings, not data. To use the unit as a data drive, it needs Windows drivers that should already be in Windows itself. Newer versions of SonicStage may update those drivers--I really don't know. Does Windows recognize the unit as a disc drive when you have a different disc in it? If it does--and it probably does since you can use SonicStage to transfer music to other discs--then again, we're back to a problem with the disc itself. And if the computer connected to the unit can't read it, you're going to have to depend on Sony.

It's not you. It's minidisc recording. The mic preamp in the unit can't handle loud amplified sounds or even moderate bass, causing overload and distortion. You need to lower the signal going in, and there are two ways to do it: The cheap way: The Radio Shack Headphone Volume Control, as pictured in my avatar, about $7. Turn its volume control all the way UP and run Mic-->Headphone Volume Control-->Mic-in (red jack) The more expensive, cleaner-sounding way: A battery module. I use this one: http://www.microphonemadness.com/products/mmcbmminminc.htm But there are other choices at Microphone Madness and at www.soundprofessionals.com With that, you run Mic-->Battery Module-->Line-in (the white jack). Line-in is for amplified sources, and the strong signal from loud music plus the power from the battery module is strong enough for Line-in. Either way, it's best to use Manual Volume setting. With the disc in the unit, push Record and Pause (display blinks). Menu (hold it down until Edit/Display/etc. appears), click up to Rec Settings, go to Rec Volume, switch from Auto to Manual. For typical loud music, turn the wheel to the level of 20/30. Un-Pause (display stops blinking, time starts counting) to start recording. You have to do that every time you Stop recording or insert a new disc. Unfortunately, the NH700 does not hold the Manual Volume setting from recording to recording. You'd think you could just plug in the mic and go. But life with Sony is always a little complicated....

Did you make a backup using the Backup Tool? That's what Restore is looking for. You also need to be online when you Restore because SonicStage checks for something online.