A440

No denying the feature set looks amazing. But look at the photo on page 5 of the downloadable manual. http://www.maycom.nl/Documents/ManualHandHeld.pdf That looks a lot longer than 3 AAA batteries to me. You can hold it in your hand, but you definitely can't cover it in your hand or tuck it into a pocket.

http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=7070 Make believe your MD is a cassette recorder and your computer (with recording software like Audacity) is another cassette recorder. You have to connect them, start recording on the computer and start playback on the MD.

The handheld recorder looks very promising--even includes track marks--but it is big. If you look at the downloadable manual you'll see where the AAA batteries fit in, and it looks like the whole unit is the length of five or six AAA batteries end to end--like a TV remote control, as they say, anda big one. Less stealthy than MD. Also, there's the price: 500 euros!

MZ-R70 is very very old-school. You will onlyl be able to get recordings off it by recording them in realtime from the headphone jack. Hi-MD units have H in the model number, like MZ-NH700. The only units worth getting are the MZ-NH700, the MZ-NHF800 (same thing with FM radio in the remote) or, at about 1 1/2 times the price, MZ-RH1 .

Have you tried a different cord? They're standard--you don't need a Sony cord, just USB to mini-USB.

You need a NetMD unit, one with a USB port. You need to connect the USB AND a miniplug to miniplug cord from headphone out to your computer's line-in. And you will be recording in real time. The MD Recorder function does not upload MD recordings as computer files. It tells SonicStage to play back the songs one at a time, starts a recording program and opens a new file for each song. Just like WinNMD. The only way to upload audio files from regular MD faster than real time recording is with the MZ-RH1.

That Aiwa seems to be a mystery, even on the Browser page at http://www.minidisc.org , which has all the models. http://www.minidisc.org/equipment_browser.html See what kind of price you can find on Hi-MD, because if you continue to use MD you can get a lot more music on a disc. Old units risk being worn out, unless you're lucky enough to find one that someone stuck in a drawer for five years. By the way, the Sansa battery is replaceable. It's not an iPod... http://www.mobileplanet.com/p.aspx?i=145304

If it's important to you to play your old MDs, then definitely go with NH600, NH600D (which is a player only) or NH700. I have an NH600D (for player and uploading), NHF800, NH700 (bought as backup for NHF800, which finally did some iffy things after two years of solid use) and RH1 (to upload all my old MD recordings). And for a portable mp3 player, I use a.....Sansa E260. It's flash, not hard drive. It's 4GB plus a microSD slot--so you could switch out microSD cards as if they were MDs, and you can get an 8GB version, which also has a microSD slot. Navigation is easy if you have good mp3 tags. Sound quality is better than an iPod Nano (I played the same files on them through the same headphones). It's fast drag and drop, or you can use Witless Media Player to synchronize. Its voice recorder is not so hot, but it does have one. For a player only, it's a lot more convenient than MD will ever be.

Try it and see, but it should be pretty good. AT has a strong reputation to protect. The Pro24 is a stereo mic, and it's cardioid--directional--so point it at your players and make sure they're not sitting too far apart. Try various mic placements: closer to or further from the musicians. The best spot will vary with the room. The frequency response is 100-17,000. 100 is somewhere around the G about 2 octaves from the bottom A of a piano (which is 27.5 Hz--next A is 55 Hz, then 110, doubling with each octave). Should be fine for the banjo, may be a bit thin for the guitar. Again, try it--depending on how the musicians play, it could sound fine.

Not so fast. Desktops, which have plenty of room for a sound card, often have both line-in (stereo) and mic-in (which might be stereo or mono). Laptops often have no line-in and a mic-in that might be mono. How to check? Get Audacity, install it, change its settings from the default mono to recording in stereo. Plug your stereo mic into the mic plug and then (gently) tap each element. If you see a different response on each channel, congratulations, you've got a stereo mic jack. But that mic jack might have a cheesy preamp behind it. You need to play with the input levels on Audacity and play back your recordings to see if you're getting a good signal--good level, no static or distortion--through mic-in. I had a Toshiba once with a hopeless mic input, and the quality of your mic jack will vary by both brand and your individual luck. What you really want is line-in, and your laptop may not have it. None of my recent laptops have had line-in. A Sony laptop had a stereo mic-in; a HP/Compaq laptop had mono mic-in. However, there is a solution. The Griffin iMic provides a stereo mic or stereo line-in connection (both included, but you can only use one at a time) via USB. You can find them for $35 or under. Try eBay or Amazon if your local gadget purveyor doesn't have it. http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/imic/

Uninstall 1.5 and clean out the registry again according to the FAQ. Turn off antivirus, firewall, security, etc. software and try the CD from the ISO. It's your best chance.

MZ-R909 doesn't take an AA battery in the unit itself--only in an outboard pod. The unit holds (and recharges) a gumstick battery. So in use, it doesn't look quite as cool with the pod attached. MZ-R700 runs on a AA in the unit. Line out, as accessed through the menus, just turns up the volume to maximum and removes any EQ settings you might have added for headphone playback

My recommendation for a starter unit is the MZ-NH700. It's the basic workhorse Hi-MD unit, you can get it new from minidiscaccess, and you can upload recordings you make to your computer. http://www.minidiscaccess.com/item.html?PRID=1553219 Here's the fuller story, which may help if you want to buy an older and cheaper unit. It's hard to know whether Sony intentionally made minidisc hard to understand or whether its leaders just have devious minds. There were three generations of minidisc unit, followed by three generations of Hi-MD. The very oldest minidisc units were made as replacements for cassette recorders. They recorded in realtime at one speed (SP--74 minutes per 74-minute disc, 80 minutes per 80-minute disc) and had no computer connectivity. Those are the one-digit and two-digit MZ units. like MZ-1 and MZ-R50. Those old units were sturdy. But if you find them now they will be used, and you should look very carefully at their condition before buying one. Get a sharp photograph and look for wear around the buttons. If paint is worn off all around the buttons, the unit has had a lot of use. 74 minutes started to seem short. Enter MDLP, which can double and quadruple the amount of time on a disc: LP2 (148 minutes on a 74 minute disc, etc.) and LP4 (296 minutes on a 74-minute disc, but at very noticeably reduced recording quality). Those are the MZ-Rxxx units. I had an MZ-R700 that was excellent. Again, those units are old--check condition before buying. Next came the D'oh! realization that since MD files are digital recordings, you could send them over as files from the computer. Welcome to NetMD, Sony's version of iPod-like portable music. You could rip CDs or convert mp3 files digitally to the NetMD via USB cord. My MZ-N707 was still going when I sold it. By the way, MD players do not play mp3. They play their own compressed format, ATRAC. You could NOT get files digitally off an MD--not your own recordings, not downloaded songs, nothing. This confused people who saw the USB connection, and left many hating minidisc to this day. However, if you think of it as a cassette recorder, cassettes didn't upload either. Next: Hi-MD. USB connectivity, of course. Higher-capacity disc: 1 GB--not compatible with the old MD units. (But Hi-MD will play and record on the old 74-minute and 80-minute discs.) New formats: PCM (CD-quality sound, 94 minutes per 1 GB disc),l Hi-SP (nearly 8 hours per 1GB disc, 160 minutes per 80-minute disc) and Hi-LP (34 hours per 1 GB disc, 10 hours and 10 minutes per 80-minute disc, lesser quality of course). First generation Hi-MD (MZ-NH1 and MZ-NHxxx) recorded in PCM, Hi-SP, Hi-LP, SP, LP2 and LP4--but did not upload the old formats, only the new ones. Second-generation Hi-MD (MZ-RH910 and MZ-RH10) did not record in the old format, but they did play mp3s without conversion. Unfortunately, the mp3 playback sounded bad. There were some dog Hi-MD units--MZ-RH900, MZ-RH10--that developed problems with their buttons not working right. The newest and probably last Hi-MD unit, the MZ-RH1, gets nearly everything right. It records in new and old formats. It uploads new and old formats (the only unit that does). It plays back mp3 without crippling the sound. And it's not ugly like the other Hi-MD units. But it's expensive. So the question is: are you going to want to upload your recordings? Or can you live with them stuck on the disc where, if you want them on your computer, you have to record in real time out of the headphone jack? If you can really live with something that is almost exactly like a cassette recorder, I'd still suggest an MDLP unit rather than the first generation so you can get more recording on each disc. My picks are MZ-R700 and MZ-N707, but other people like others. The MZ-R900 has a big following. And diehards like guitarfxr like the old one-speed MD units. At http://www.minidisc.org there is a Browser tab with information on all the models. Check carefully when you see a unit for sale. Some (like MZ-N505, MZ-RH710) don't have a microphone input, only a line input--for recording from a stereo or other amplified/powered source, not a microphone. A few models--usually with D for Downloader in the model name--don't record in realtime at all, and are just made to download from the computer. The MZ-NH600 has a line input, while the confusing MZ-NH600D only has a USB input and does not do realtime recording. Careful with Ebay sellers: some deliberately confuse those two models. And as guitarfxr said, MZ-Exx are players--some download, but the oldest ones were made to play MDs recorded elsewhere.

I don't think any SonicStage update will help you on the library problem. Do you have Group on when recording? Then you should be able to title the group with SonicStage or on the unit itself (under Edit). That way, at least you will upload separate groups/folders into SonicStage. If you're not using group, you're going to get a bunch of Untitled, but you can use Date Imported (click on the header) and it will sort by when you uploaded the files. The best SonicStage versions are 3.4 and 4.2. Version 4.3 is for MS Vista. Here's a link to a copy of the 3.4 disc that came with the RH1--it's a big file, over 200 MB, so unless you have broadband don't bother with it. http://s15.quicksharing.com/v/8783199/SS3.4RH1.iso.html You'll need Nero or some other program to burn the ISO to a CD. Then just insert the CD and follow instructions to install. It should over-write or delete the SonicStage program files that are already on your computer. Your recordings are in a different folder--probably called Packages--than your SonicStage programs. So it's unlikely that upgrading the program will trash them. But with 3.0 your recordings are encypted, so you have to be careful with them. And SonicStage is such an iffy thing that you should always use the Backup Tool (under Tools of course) to copy your recordings before you upgrade. If you use the Backup Tool, you probably won't need it. If you dont.... ------------- On another note: Does anyone know which version added File Conversion Tool, which un-encypts .oma files, to SonicStage? I use 4.2 now, and that has it, but I don't remember if any of the 3.x versions had it. After using the File Conversion Tool, you can just copy (with Windows Explorer) recordings from the SonicStage library and play them on any computer with SonicStage and the .oma codecs. If it's not in 3.4, that would be a very good reason to upgrade to 4.2.

Looks like the H2 is your alternative. With a 4GB card no juggling would be necessary. Hi-MD discs are only 1GB. Just looking at the H2 page, I have only a few reservations. I really wish it had a track mark button like MD units. It's one of MD's best features. And two AA batteries for four hours of recording time (probably less). So you're not juggling cards, but if you're at an all-day recording situation like a festival, you're juggling batteries. For stealth, I'd still want to use an external mic with it. I wouldn't want to be at a concert holding the unit in my hand. The specs page says it takes a "powered" microphone. I don't know if that means no plug-in power at the mic jack--if so, you'd need a battery module. When you get yours, guitarfxr, please give us all a full report.

Just to be clear, I don't mean sending the console mix to Mic-in. What I'm saying is that if you use the mic to get the sound of the music in the room and plug that into a channel of the console, and then run from the console Line-in to the Hi-MD, you might get a combination of instruments and live room sound. But unless the console has outputs for two different mixes, I don't think the band will want to add the room sound to their own mix. I still think mic-battery box--Hi-MD is the simplest and best way to do it.

You do not need to go into the REC SETTINGS menu with Pause to set volume while recording. That is a one-time setting before you start recording, where you change REC VOLUME to Manual from Automatic (the default). You can't change that while recording. But once you are in Manual, you can raise or lower the level with the >> and

I don't understand this. All the mic sellers say the battery box adds dynamic range to the mics by providing more power than the plug-in voltage at the mic-in jack. I have recorded jazz through line-in/battery box and there is a lot of nuance there. In many cases, you just have to use Line-in--there is no choice because the mic preamp overloads. I once recorded a Norah Jones concert--not exactly heavy metal--while carefully watching the levels, and every time her quiet, tasteful, subdued drummer used the bass drum there was distortion. BobT, are you talking about line-in from the band's mixer vs. mic-in from a mic? You're comparing different inputs--no wonder you get different results. Also, there's a perceptual thing going on. One person's "noise" is another person's "warmth." This remains a big part of the analog-vs.-digital battle among audiophiles. The human ear tries to make sense of the noise and hears depth. So a little preamp noise might indeed make the mic recording seem warmer.

If you're recording through Line-in there is no way to change this. There is no reason "why" except that Sony persists in building them that way. But there are two ways around your laborious copy and paste. You can remove track marks on the unit itself. Start playback, put it in PAUSE, and then skip through the recording with >> and Many eons ago, SonicStage would not upload tracks that had been rejoined like that, and you can find discussions of that bug in old posts here. But that bug was fixed in one of the 3.x versions, defintely by 3.4 . I regularly upload tracks that have been joined. Try it with a non-crucial recording, or one you've already edited, and see. Another way is to use the Combine function in SonicStage after the tracks have been uploaded. It's under Edit. Just highlight the tracks in the order you want to combine them--usually top to bottom. (If you highlight the same tracks bottom to top it will put them together backwards, that is 5-4-3-2-1 instead of 1-2-3-4-5, and they can't be un-combined, though you could just upload them again.) Try to free up system resources when you do this--no browsers, email, etc.--and go have a cup of coffee because Combine is slow. But it works. And then you can convert the combined track to .wav (SonicStage) or .mp3 (Hi-MD Renderer).

I constantly use the NH700 and it definitely has on the fly level setting. To get started, you have to go into Manual via Rec/Pause, Menu, Rec Settings, Rec Volume, Manual. Un-pause to start recording. Then you have on-the-fly settings while recording. If you leave it in the default Automatic, then you don't have control. I can't imagine they would remove that from the RH910 when they had it even in the last models of MD recorder.

Back to your original question. When you plug a mic into mic-in it sends 1.5 volts of "plug-in power" to the mic, which needs a little bit of power to run. When you use a battery box, it sends whatever its voltage is--usually 9V--which opens up the mic's dynamic range and lets it handle louder sounds. The power goes to the mic, not to the mic input. A mic turns sound into an electronic signal, so the louder the sound, the stronger the signal. When you use mic-->battery box-->line-in, you're getting power from the battery box to run the mic and a strong signal (loud sound) to register on the MD.

When I got my first pair of Shure E3 phones, I wore them in very hot situations and suddenly one side just stopped working. I sent them back to Shure, under warranty, and got a phone call from Shure's head engineer! Shure had sent a replacement pair of phones--which meant I now had an extra case and full set of earplugs--but he hadn't been able to duplicate my problem with the phones I had returned. After a while, we decided that the phones had gotten wet inside my ear and hadn't dried out before I decided to return them. He was very curious about how I used them--a real engineer, very practical. I couldn't believe that a honcho at Shure was taking that time for one complaint. I haven't had the problem with the replacement E3 or with E4, but it is a possibility. I assume it's also a possibility with all other IEMs.

The problem is that ALL of the MD units use compressed sound. SP is good but still compressed. For sound quality you are better off with a PCM recording uploaded from a Hi-MD than you are with SP via optical out. And as above, only the very first portables have optical out--after those, you need an MD deck.

The recording quality should be exactly the same in the Hi-MD modes of the RH910 and the NH1. The differences are in features. Also, the NH1 does realtime recording in old MD modes, but you'd need the MZ-RH1 to upload those recordings, so that probably doesn't matter to you. Check the Browser tab at http:/www.minidisc.org for details on both units. The RH910 does have on-the-fly level adjustment, doesn't it? I think every Hi-MD does, as did all the later MDs. If the RM-MC40ELK came with the NH1, it should also work with the RH910. It's a very useful remote because it lights up and shows record level. But if you light it or change level while recording quiet music, you'll get a little burst of static. I usually check it during applause.

What exactly was bad about the console recording? Did it not have everything you want to hear? In a small room, some bands may not send the guitars or drums through the console, only voice and keyboard. The MD can only record what you put into it. You could try adding your mic to the console mix if the band approves--it would be an interesting experiment. However, if the band sounds good in the room, it would be less complicated to simply use a mic and battery box directly into the MD. You don't need a preamp to record music. A preamp is for very quiet sounds. All you need is a battery module to give the mic a little extra power: http://www.microphonemadness.com/products/mmcbmminminc.htm