A440

Formatting the HDD and reinstalling the OS will make probably make SonicStage think it's a different computer. I wouldn't expect to be able to upload those songs from that disc afterward.

On the unit: while playing back, hit Pause and go back (<<) and you will see Mark xx. Push the Track button, mark goes away. After uploading: SonicStage has a Combine function under Edit. Highlight tracks in the order you want them--usually top to bottom--and Combine. Don't highlight them in reverse or they will be combined wrong, and there is no Undo. You'd have to delete them from My Library and upload again. Just out of curiosity, how did you record the CD? Mic--Line-in with mics next to loudspeakers? When Line-in detects a silence of 2 seconds or more it inserts a track mark. It's a "feature" that can't be turned off. Try recording at a higher level. Unless you are recording at too low a level, this shouldn't be a problem at a concert because there's a lot more ambient noise and the unit won't detect silence.

King G-- I have an Iriver IFP-795 and I read that updating the firmware lowers the top quality of mp3 to 96 kbps. So I have kept the original firmware, which offers higher bitrates, but that means I also have to use Iriver Music Manager rather than drag-and-drop. Still easier than SonicStage, but slightly annoying. I always thought the 800 series was basically the same device in a different housing. Is the firmware situation the same? Also, I've seen a lot of putdowns of the Zoom H4. But if that Zoom H2 has good mic preamps and is only $200 when it arrives next month.....look out! http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/H2/

Every Hi-MD recorder will make good quality recordings that you can transfer to a PC. Hi-MD recorders have an H in the model number. Other minidisc units are not Hi-MD--they do not transfer to computer. Cheapest is the MZ-NH700, which also has the advantage of taking a regular AA battery. http://www.minidiscaccess.com/generic76.html Fanciest, and also able to upload to Apple computers, is the MZ-RH1, widely available for around $300. Don't bother with other Hi-MD models unless you can find a super bargain, and ask here first before you buy. The MZ-NH600 and MZ-RH710 do not have microphone inputs, only line inputs that need an amplified source. THe MZ-NH600D and MZ-DH10P have no realtime input at all. Don't buy them bundled with a Sony mic, which will be noisy. Despite what photos show, you cannot just plug a T-shaped mic into the unit and have it sit directly on the unit because it will pick up the noise of the motor and vibration from the unit. You need a mic on a cord that you can separate from the unit. Your choice of microphone will be crucial. The Hi-MD unit will give you just about as good a recording as your mic can deliver. If you are recording very quiet sounds you need a mic with specifications that show high sensitivity and a high S/N (signal-to-noise) ratio. The best way to record very quiet sounds is with a mic and a separate preamp going into Line-in. But the built-in preamp at the Mic-in jack of a Hi-MD unit is surprisingly good. For very quiet sounds you may also want to look into the Edirol R09. That is a flash recorder that does not have moving parts, so the recorder itself will be quieter than a minidisc unit. It also has built-in stereo microphones. Have lots and lots of money? Take a look here for some high-end mics and other info. http://www.sonicstudios.com/tips.htm Note that they are a bit confused about minidisc and haven't discovered the MZ-RH1 yet. Contrary to what you will see about the MD units they mention, the MZ-RH1 does hold the manual level setting.

The MZ-R55 was introduced in 1998. You would be unlikely to find a new one now. And if you did, you would not be able to upload recordings to your computer--only record them from the headphone jack, as raintheory said. Hi-MD recorders--the best for your purposes are MZ-NH700 or MZ-RH1--will allow you to upload to a PC (both units) or a Mac (MZ-RH1 only). The upload is done through Sony software that is free but adds an extra step. However, if you just want a recorder to put in front of a subject and get a high-quality interview recording that you can drag-and-drop into the computer, you might prefer a high-quality digital recorder with built-in mics: the Edirol R09. The difference is price. You can find the MZ-NH700 for under $200. It's a great little recorder. http://www.minidiscaccess.com/generic76.html The MZ-RH1 is around $300 at many places. The Edirol is around $400. You would need to get mics for the Hi-MD Recorders, but for voice recording you can find a good mic for under $50. Don't get the Hi-MD bundles with the Sony mic. You can get a better mic for the price difference at places like http://www.soundprofessionals.com . For ultra-cheap digital interview recordings--as backup for my MD on something important--I have also used an Iriver T30 (the red one is 1GB, the gray one is only 512 MB), which you can find for under $100. It has a built-in mic, records to good-quality mp3 (after you go through various menus), and it uses drag-and-drop (with a firmware upgrade to UMS). It is not the CD-quality recording you would get with Hi-MD or Edirol, and you need to put it close to your subject, but it would do the job. As Guitarfxr said, lots of things are called digital voice recorders. Most of them are very low quality to be used for dictation, not for broadcast. At the very least you want it to record .mp3 at a bitrate of 192 kbps or above. If they don't tell you what the bitrate is, and a little sticklike thing promises to store 30 hours of recording, you're probably getting low quality. If you only ever intend to record voice, and you have a recent iPod, you can also get an iPod accessory that will record voice onto it. http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage...oduct_Id=158384 http://www.xtrememac.com/audio/earphones_r...romemo_nano_2g/ They have limitations, so you should look at reviews. http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collectio...dges_belk.shtml

Meanwhile, back in the realm of ambient recording, I just stumbled across this page with lots of samples. http://www.sonicstudios.com/mp3.htm#rollingthunder

What King Ghidora is saying is that he has generally had little or no problem synching up his MD and video recordings and that he believes something is malfunctioning. "Usually I don't see tracks out of sync more than a frame or two over the course of a full 1 hour DV tape. That usually comes from a bad spot in a tape and it's easy to fix. " "There very well could be a problem with either your MD or your camera."

I don't think Group is the problem you are having. When you record through Line-in a track mark is inserted automatically after 2 seconds of silence. Unfortuneately, there is no way to disable this. As Sparky 191 says, you can combine all the tracks after uploading to My Library with the Combine function under Edit in SonicStage. Make sure you highlight the tracks in the order you want them (usually top to bottom), because there is no Undo. Group function starts a new Group (folder) each time you start recording. I find this very useful, since one disc holds more than one concert, but you can disable it through the REC SET menus and just record the whole disc as one group. But that won't stop the automatic track marking with Line-in.

Can't help you on the sync issue. Maybe a video expert can. Line-in recording creates a new track mark after 2 seconds of silence. There's no way around it. Are you using SonicStage or Mac Transfer? I don't know the Mac software, but SonicStage has a Combine function under Edit. Highlight (in the order you want--don't do it from bottom to top or you'll regret it, since there is no Undo), hit Combine and go out and do some errands while it slowly puts the files back together.

The web installer should delete the files after installing. But you could also uninstall again and try one of the full installers from Downloads, or (huge download, 244 MB) this copy of the RH1 disc of SonicStage 3.4 http://s15.quicksharing.com/v/8783199/SS3.4RH1.iso.html You need to install with Administrator privileges. And really, you need to find out what's going on with your Windows XP. How about a registry checker, like http://www.ccleaner.com/ If anything is in the slightest bit off about Windows XP, SonicStage gets touchy.

Unfortunately, encryption is also involved. There was a lot of work done on this but it wound up as a dead end. http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=6509

A while back I recorded some birdsong to test the MD preamp--I think it's still in my album in the Gallery. It was recorded on a country road in upstate New York where the houses are on multi-acre lots. You'd be amazed how the sound of one car half a mile away can be picked up by a microphone on a quiet night. But I was recording with omnidirectional mics. Zendog, in case you're not familiar with the terminology, there are degrees of directionality. A cardioid pattern is heart-shaped (imagine the microphone at the bottom point of the heart) Hypercardioid is narrower; shotgun is narrower still. For birdsong, a shotgun mic like the Rode Video Mic KG mentions would be very helpful. By the way, when you make those recordings you are going to have to get them into the Mac by recording them again out of the headphone jack in realtime. http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=7070

The sounds you want, like frogs and birdsong, are among the most difficult to record because they are quiet, and the recordings you get will also include noise from the microphone--it is impossible to build a noiseless microphone--and also from the microphone preamp. You want to look for a mic with high sensitivity and a high S/N (signal-to-noise) ratio. You probably also want a directional mic, called cardioid. There's also an occasional contributor to these forums who runs his own fantastic website of ambient recordings. http://www.quietamerican.org/ Since you're going to be mixing those sounds with other things, you have a little leeway, but when recording birdsong, for instance, you'll also be recording any cars in the vicinity, barking dogs, TVs a block away, etc. You will also get the whir of the MD unit itself, unless you put the mic on a nice long extension cord and point it directionally away from the unit. Since there are websites for everything, I suggest you hook up with these folks: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/naturerecordists/ And do some Google searches on things like "low-noise microphone" "recording ambient sounds" etc.

Manual gain is necessary because Automatic Gain Control circuits are designed to even out speech recordings and often freak out with loud music. Manual gain isn't so much a guarantee of a good recording as protection against a bad one. Equipment with manual levels also trusts the user more, which tends to be a sign of better equipment. With the video camera, you have the same questions: How good is the mic? How good is the DAC? Is the recording compressed or uncompressed? Other people on this board know a lot about video equipment, so maybe they will comment on that. A bootleg is never going to sound like a studio album because you're not recording it in an ultra-quiet studio with microphones chosen for each instrument/voice and individual tracks equalized to make each part sound best. A recording isn't going to magically fix the mix. The best you can get is a recording of what you heard. Current CDs are 16-bit, like minidisc. Fancy CDs, like SACD, are 20-bit. Recording studios use 24-bit or better, and then down-sample it when the CD is mastered. But they're not recording a PA system in an auditorium full of noisy people through one pair of mics. You can go crazy thinking about numbers, specifications, sampling rates, etc. And up to a certain point, like using PCM instead of compressed formats--though I generally rely on Hi-SP so I don't have to change discs during a concert--that can be good. But eventually it's a game of diminishing returns. You can spend hundreds or thousands of dollars more for fancier equipment to get a marginally better recording of something that wasn't designed for recording, but for live enjoyment. (Even in one of those posts on taperssecion, someone does grudgingly admit that 16-bit is good enough for concerts.) I like carrying one little recorder and a pair of mics, and I'm very impressed with the quality of the recordings I can get with that setup. Listen to some of the things people have posted in the Gallery. On the technical level, the recordings I get are not as high-resolution as they would be if I had a pair of Schoeps microphones, a 10-foot-high mic stand with shock mounts to perch them above the audience, a 24-bit DAC and a high-speed laptop or a bit bucket with an optical input. Still, their recording and mine both have that drunken guy going "WHOOOOOOOOOOOO!" over the last notes of every song, though he's a little louder on mine. Take a look at taperssection if you want to be carrying all that stuff to a concert, and if you are willing to take out a large bank loan for equipment. Search "external DAC" or "bit bucket." Someday I would love to do a blind test between a minidisc PCM recording and a super-duper 24-bit external DAC/optical setup using the same mics, and see if any of them could tell the difference. Maybe they can. "The best bootlegs' is a judgment call. Some people like soundboard recordings if they can persuade the sound guy to let them plug in--though then you have to be sure all the instruments are going through the soundboard, and the lead guitarist isn't just using her amplifier onstage and bypassing the soundboard, or the soundboard mix doesn't have the vocals WAY UP FRONT. Some people think soundboard recordings sound way too flat and sterile, and try to sync in the sound of the music in the room--like Grateful Dead "matrix" live recordings. Me, I prefer recording what was in the room (or field) if the sound is good. Also, the best bootlegs are the ones you get to make. And if you show up with a suitcase full of equipment at a concert where they don't want you to record, you won't be recording at all. Whereas with the MZ-RH1 in your pocket...

What other recorder were you looking at? As I said, I think flash recorders will eventually replace MD once they figure out the right set of features. Another feature I didn't mention: batteries. My one complaint about the MZ-RH1 is that is has an internal rechargeable battery. That lasts a while, but eventually it needs to be swapped out, and you need to have another little gumstick battery charged. (Or carry an external battery pack with 4 AAs.) I prefer my NH700, which takes a regular AA battery--it's a lot easier to find another AA. Some flash units have built-in rechargeables that you can't swap out--when the battery dies, you're done for the night. That's a dealbreaker for me. New units are appearing all the time, and for all I know there may be one that was introduced last week I'm not aware of. Check out its features, its controls and its user reviews. Gee, here's another one due later this month: http://www.soundman.de/englisch/dr2.html Dorky looking but has potential: 2GB (but not expandable, so you'd have to keep emptying the recordings into your computer. With MD, you can do that and reuse the discs, or you can just store on the discs themselves). Depends on how usable the controls are, however. Watch out for "mp3 recorders." A recorder that records ONLY mp3 will not be as good as a current MD unit, which records higher-fidelity PCM, and which has a processor that's made to handle a lot more information per second. There are a lot of little mp3 recorders around that are basically made for speech/interviews/dictation, not music. The heart of any recorder is its DAC--digital-analog converter--which turns the mic signal into numbers (and does the reverse for playback), and those vary in quality. Hi-MD has a good one. Yes, your recording is going to depend above all on your mics and on where they are placed. You need decent mics. They are not vastly expensive (though you can get super quality if you are willing to pay for it) but you can't take the mic that came with your computer to a concert and get a good recording out of it. My basic stealth mics are the Sound Professionals BMC-2, or if you're in Europe there are Greenmachine's little mics (see Affordable Mics thread under Liver Recording) , and both are well under $100. You need to have your mics where the music sounds good. You could have the best recorder in the universe and if you don't get a a good signal to record, you'll get a hi-fi reproduction of garbage. The best mic placement might not be where you can see best, and it's definitely not next to someone who's having a conversation throughout the show. When you get into recording, you quickly learn to judge a space with your ears as much as your eyes. You mentioned setting treble and bass, which would alter the signal going into the recorder. Little portable recorders don't have that option, and for a good reason. Generally it's better to get the most accurate recording possible going into the recorder. Then you can play with various settings on playback, but you still have the original sound. A really great photographer might use colored filters or special lighting to set up a shot, and studio engineers do use recording consoles to tweak sounds as they are being recorded, but for a live show--where you can't monitor what you're getting--I think it's better to keep things simple. People here are, obviously, fond of minidiscs. But the battle over the best live recorder also rages elsewhere. If you're rich and have a lot of tolerance for bickering, take a look at http://www.taperssection.com . Note that a lot of them go to a concert with backpacks full of recording equipment--recorder, Digital-Analog-Converters, external power packs, etc.--rather than a little pocketsized gizmo and a couple of mics. They like to use the recorders themselves as "bit buckets," collecting the digital signal from a fancier external processor rather than having the recorder do the work, as I do in stealth situations. Here's what they're saying about the Microtrack, which seems to have improved firmware since last I checked: http://taperssection.com/index.php?PHPSESS...p;topic=82810.0 Oh, and one more thing: People are generally satisfied with whatever recorder they get. They may whine about features or glitches, they may wish for more battery life or different button placement or 24-bit instead of 16 bit. But they learn the workarounds for whatever they use--as we minidisc users have learned to deal with SonicStage rather than drag-and-drop. (It doesn't hurt that Sony has gradually improved SonicStage.) A lot of people are getting first-rate, hi-fi recordings from tiny equipment.

Depends on your price range, your needs and your patience. Right now, Hi-MD is still my favorite little hi-fi recorder for price, fidelity, convenience and reliability. My workhorse concert recorder is a NH700; for superstealth I use the MZ-RH1, though I'm stlil coddling it. How much fidelity do you want? Minidisc is 16-bit, and sounds good to me--look in Gallery to hear examples--but you can find higher-resolution 24-bit recorders if you're playing the music for your dog. In the last year or so there have been some 24-bit flash recorders appearing like the Edirol R09 and the Zoom H4--mixed reviews--and the M-Audio Microtrack, getting mixed to bad reviews. I think that in the near future, a flash recorder will be the optimum bootlegging device. But the ones appearing so far include cumbersome things like built-in mics. They also have fewer of the on-unit editing possibilities of minidisc--track marking in particular. DAT is bulkier and tied to actual tape, which sooner or later wears out--it's growing obsolescent. MP3 is a format, not a recording medium--you can record mp3 files to hard drive, flash, or whatever kind of storage your recorder uses. But .mp3 is a compressed format--it discards information to shrink the size of files--so what you want for best fidelity is a .wav or .pcm recorder: CD quality. Hi-MD records PCM, and one of its compressed formats--Hi-SP--gives good fidelity. In a year, Hi-MD might not be the best choice, because sooner or later someone is going to make a flash recorder that has: at least 4 GB of storage (rather than the 1GB of a Hi-MD disc) and a slot for additional/removable flash storage controls that make sense when you're unable to look at the unit good mic preamps (as MD does for the size) track marking level control that does not interrupt recording (Hi-MD has this--some flash recorders, amazingly, do not) drag-and-drop transfer to computer (which MD does not have--we're still stuck with SonicStage or Mac Transfer) a remote that shows recording level (the RM-MC40ELK) a remote with a button that starts the recording (which MD does not have) and probably some other features I can't think of at the moment. Iriver made the H120 and H140, a little fatter than an old iPod, with hard drives that hold 20GB or 40GB and line and optical inputs and outputs. (Yes, optical out--a digital output--as well as easy drag-and-drop.) But iRiver marketed it as a player and included poor recording software so live recordings came out with regular clicking noises. It took a few years for the open-source geeks of Rockbox to come up with software that, actually, approximates MD capabilities, including track marking--by then, iRiver had stopped making H120/H140, though used and refurbished ones are around. I don't religiously update my Rockbox, but the last time I did a long line-in recording--an album in realtime-- there were little bursts of static about every 5-10 minutes (I didn't time them), so it seems there are still glitches. I have confidence that the flawless flash recorder will arrive. But not yet. If you need it now, get the MZ-RH1.

Something serious may be going on if you can't make Windows work normally. Press CTRL-ALT-DELETE to look at Task Manager and see (under Processes) if some program is gobbling up processing speed. There will be a long list of Processes--don't worry about that--but if something is taking 70 or 80 or 90 percent of your processing, you should know about it. Do a virus check. If you don't have antivirus, try http://housecall.trendmicro.com/ It will take a while--do it overnight--but it will find problems if there are any. Also install Spybot S&D http://www.download.com/Spybot-Search-Dest...tml?tag=lst-0-1 and run it every week or so. One thing that interferes with SonicStage loading is skinning software, like Windowblinds or other programs that customize your desktop. If you have something that's changing your basic desktop GUI--graphical user interface--then turn it off.

Nah, you'll be hooked. Especially if you're doing line-in recording. Mic recording is a little trickier, in the same ways it is on other handheld units, but once you get the hang of it you'll be happy with that too. Part of the transfer rate limitation is the speed of reading the minidisc itself. For casual recording, like a rehearsal or a jam session, you'll find that the quality of Hi-SP is quite good, equivalent to a high-bitrate .mp3 (better than iTunes). And those files are pretty small--nearly 8 hours per 1GB. The only other recorder in the same price range as first-generation MD is the iRiver H120 (20 GB). Transfer is easier--true drag-and-drop, and USB 2.0--but recording has glitches.

Sony put on "copy protection" that prevents purchased DVD titles from being played, tries to stonewall by saying it's a player firmware problem, then backs down. Read about it here. http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/1...55&from=rss Great way to build customer loyalty.

There's no RH700. There's the NH700, which is a great little recorder. And there is the RH710, which does not have a mic input, but does have a line input (from a mixer, etc.). Transfer time is USB 1.1 and depends on the processing speed of your computer. At most it would be 1/3 the length of the recording--up to half an hour for a 1GB disc, but likely 15-20 minutes and probably even less than that. It's not instant, but it's not awful. You need to transfer through SonicStage (or the Mac Transfer software), which is the only way to get the files off the disc in usable form. You can't just drag and drop because while you can copy the files, those files are encrypted, and they need SonicStage to unencrypt them. Once you have uploaded them, you can run the File Conversion Tool to remove the encryption. SonicStage can then convert the files to .wav, which preserves their full quality and can be played back by most players (unlike Sony's own .oma files). Any converter will then convert .wav to .mp3--there's no DRM on the .wav files. Alternately, Hi-MD Renderer, which you can find in Downloads here, will convert files into various formats--.mp3 and others--once they have been uploaded into My Library. So yes, you can get your .mp3s. There are no limits on repeated uploads in later versions of SonicStage. Sony lifted that restriction. Just don't install the software that comes with the unit--get 3.4 or 4.2 from Downloads here.

Try posting on http://www.atraclife.com

Just because you can copy the files doesn't mean your computer can read them. The files are encrypted and you need the original discs. This is all part of Sony's bizarre paranoia about music copying, but it's a fact of life. It doesn't matter how the recordings were made. If the files were recorded by an old MD player--which, as OMG files, they probably were--the only way to upload them is by putting the disc into a MZ-RH1 and transferring to the computer through SonicStage. Otherwise, play them back in realtime and record them out of the headphone jack, as explained here: http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=7070 Conceivably, if you have a MZ-RH1 unit, you could try copying (through Windows drag-and-drop) the omg files from your hard drive onto a disc and try to upload them through SonicStage. But I have no idea if that would work. Newer recordings made with Hi-MD units can be uploaded more easily. But drag-and-drop from MD to PC is still not within the Sony universe.

Hold down the Menu button. You will see Menu [Rec Settings] Use the jog lever (on right) to go from Rec Settings to Option to Edit. Push in the lever and you'll have choices for Edit--go to Erase. You can take it from there.

On Method 2, don't combine all of them at once. You could, but it will take forever and I don't like to give SonicStage too many things to do in one command. Combine, oh, 20 at a time if they're short. So do 1-20, then (1-20) plus 21-40, etc. Just to repeat raintheory, make sure you are highlighting them in order. If you don't, you can't un-combine them easily.

How is that going to fit into my pocket?