A440

Take a look at http://www.soundprofessionals.com and http://www.microphonemadness.com . Both offer mics with better bass response and lower noise than the Sonys, competitively priced. Think about how you are going to use the mics. Are you going to use it handheld, or with a stand, which you would have to do with the MS907? Clip it on, like the DS70P? Or are you going to be going to concerts where you might not want it to be seen? My main recording mics are the plain, small, basic Sound Professionals BMC-2 . They are smaller than your pinky fingernail and have thin wires that are very concealable. They also get surprisingly hi-fi sound. Listen to some of the recordings in the Gallery (Live Recordings) on the upper left. For music, you'd be best off going mic-->battery box-->Line-in. I use this Microphone Madness battery module: http://www.microphonemadness.com/products/mmcbmminminc.htm For nature sounds, you would just plug the mic into Mic-in. Depending on how quiet the sounds are, you may get microphone noise or preamp noise. The way around that is to get a preamp and go mic-preamp--Line-in.

Either attenuator through Mic-in or battery box through Line-in. Not both. You would never use an attenuator plus a battery box. The attenuator cuts the signal into Mic-in so the preamp doesn't overload. And because it also lessens the power going to the mic, it can also introduce a small amount of noise or make the mic distort sooner at a super-loud show. It's just the easy, cheap solution to the problem of recording louder sounds through Mic-in. Going through Line-in, there is no preamp to overload and a stronger signal is needed, so an attenuator would be worse than useless. A preamp into line-in would only be useful for recording very quiet sounds. Anything as loud as a concert needs only the battery box. Bass roll-off is unnecessary through Line-in. You'll get a high-fidelity recording without it, and if for some reason you think there's too much bass, you can always use EQ afterward. But you can't restore bass if you don't record it.

Hey, what music library program loads slowly, ties up system resources like crazy, has peculiar quirks (like not getting new CDDB information if you take out one CD and insert another one) and defaults to imposing its own proprietary DRM? Right: iTunes. I've been using it lately to import albums to my mp3 player, and I have to say, Apple sure has its fans hypnotized. Unless you have iTunes "helper" load on Startup--no thanks--it is just as slow to open as SonicStage is, and just as sure as SonicStage that it should grab all your filetypes and open itself every time you bring a CD anywhere near the computer. Every other running program, small or large, slows down. If you open iTunes without your mp3 player (default Import To: drive) already attached, it defaults back to its own directory to import music, which you then have to change back. Yes, SonicStage is uglier. But beyond the eye candy, iTunes is about as clunky as SonicStage, IMHO.

Highlight a file (or files) and "Save in .wav format" under Tools should become available. File conversion tool doesn't convert to .wav. But if you un-check Add Copy Protection it should remove the copy protection and give you .oma files that are portable.

Are you sure it was a bot and not some customer support person for whom English is a second language, making pennies per hour to answer the mostly unsophisticated questions that come through? That's the impression I always get from Sony Support. But about your problem: Could it be something simple, like you have the write-protect tab of the disc open or partially open? Could other apps--like security or firewall--be interfering with SonicStage?

Just do your conversions separately. Upload everything first. Then highlight it all and convert. Is that really so horrible? SonicStage's developers were stupid to offer an option for uploading and converting together--if they hadn't, and you still had to do it separately as in the old versions, no one would particularly care. I'm not saying SonicStage is great--it's adequate at best. But the important thing is getting the uploads off the disc, and that seems to be reliable in recent versions.

Yes, minidisc is now in the digital player era. All units beginning MZ-N, MZ-NH and MZ-RH use the program SonicStage--Sony's answer to iTunes, sort of--to make a library and transfer music. There's also a second program, Simple Burner, for transfer of CDs to minidisc: it checks track names (with CDDB) and then transfers to MD. MZ-NH and MZ-RH are Hi-MD units. They use a 1 GB disc, although they will also play all of your older discs. Your R37, and all the MD units before the Hi-MD, used 74-minute or 80-minute discs. By the time the MZ-N** units came along, Sony had figured out a way to multiply the time on the old discs by 2 (LP2) or 4 (LP4), until an 80-minute disc could hold 320 minutes of low-quality sound. The 1GB discs will hold 90 minutes of CD-quality recording, 7 hours and 55 minutes of very good compressed recording (Hi-SP) or nearly 32 hours of passable recording (Hi-LP). An 80-minute disc holds slightly less than 1/3 as much. The lowest-priced Hi-MD unit is the NH600D, made in 2004--essentially an Ipod-like player that downloads (that's the D) music from your computer. On Ebay, you could probably find one for under $100. The fanciest is the new MZ-RH1, which is really geared for portable recording but also has excellent playback. However, if all you want is a player, minidisc is pretty big and bulky these days. I love MD for recording, but for a personal music player, I use an iRiver T30, the red one, which holds 1GB and can do straight drag-and-drop of music files. That is, instead of transferring through SonicStage, it works like a USB drive and you can just drag a folder of mp3s onto it--or use iTunes to "import" a CD onto it directly. The Creative Zen Nano Plus is also 1GB with similar features, though I haven't tried one. Both are under $70.

You shouldn't have to suffer through realtime with a Hi-MD. Most of the problems people have reported with 4.0 have to do with .mp3 titling. Uploading seems to be smooth, as it has been pretty much since 3.2 As long as your current SonicStage is working, you can probably just install 4.0 on top of it. But since you have the disc that came with the unit, you could also uninstall SonicStage through Add or Remove Programs before putting in 4.0.

So you can play back the new PCM tracks but not upload them? And the old tracks upload? As you've suggested, that sounds like something is going wrong during recording. This seems to be something you should be hassling Sony about. Let Sony replace your M100 to see if it's a hardware problem.

That's a regular MD, so your USB connection is basically one-way: PC to unit, not the other direction. Here's what you need to do: http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=7070

SonicStage 4.0 is better than 2.0 in every way. Use Settings/Control Panel/Add or Remove Programs/SonicStage to uninstall the 2.0 program. Then, if you are on broadband, go to the link for your country to install SonicStage 4.0 from Sony. http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=9586 If you have a slower connection, download this offline installer (it will take a while) and run it. http://forums.minidisc.org/downloads/details.php?file=21 That will install SonicStage 4.0. If you still have trouble, post another question here.

What MD unit do you have, max26?

When you upload the tracks to SonicStage you can also combine them once they're on the computer. Just highlight them in the order you want to combine them and, under Edit, Combine the tracks. Note: There is no Undo command. So don't highlight them in reverse order, as I once did, or you'll have a messed-up track. (Though you could always upload again from the disc.) SonicStage will also Divide tracks if you want to do that, also under Edit.

I use Duracell alkalines and have been able to record a full disc in Hi-SP (7 hours and 55 minutes) without the battery running out. I don't know how long it will run in Hi-LP, but probably overnight. Hi-LP gives you noticeably lower recording quality, however. But it's not going to be easy to get a good recording unless the geese are really loud. The problem is that because you have to boost the relatively quiet sound of the geese, you are also boosting any noise introduced by the microphone and any noise introduced by the mic preamp--which is pretty quiet until it really has to boost the signal, as it does in this situation. You'll also record cars going by, the sound of your home furnace going on and off, and all the other noises that you usually ignore. But give it a try--maybe you have really squawky geese. You'll want to plug the mic into the red mic jack and choose High Sensitivity under Recording Settings. You could leave on AGC--auto gain control--or use Manual Volume at high gain, like 25/30 or even 30/30.

The NH700 is made for stereo recording and playback: two channels with different information, going into two ears (your headphones) or two speakers. The mic and line jacks are stereo jacks; they expect a plug with two circles around it (like your stereo headphone plug) supplying two channels of information. The difference between the left and right channels is what gives you the three-dimensional illusion of stereo. Mono is one channel. Some mics, like voice or instrument mics, are mono mics: they only deliver one channel. If you have a computer mic, it might be a mono mic--just one band around the plug. Your computer's mic jack may be either a mono jack or a stereo jack. Back in the days when minidiscs held less, there was a setting on some units to record in mono, which used half as much disc space. Now Sony has decided that with greater disc space, mono is unncessary. You can still feed the same signal through both channels and get a mono recording. When you play it back through stereo headphones, it will sound like the recording is right in the middle of your head instead of spread across a stereo panorama. But there's no longer a setting in the NH700 for mono recording or playback.

Because SonicStage has been around for so long, in so many different version, there's a lot of old and outdated information floating around. First of all, you should be using SonicStage 3.4 or 4.0. Nothing earlier. 3.4 probably came with your RH1. Every track you have uploaded into My Library can be converted to .wav (under Tools). Once it's a .wav file, all encryption is gone. You can burn to CD, convert to any other format, send it back to an MD, whatever you want. Only downside: you'll have to re-create the title information. You can also now save tracks unencrypted in .oma with the File Conversion Tool. Look at the third option in this thread: http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=16088 I have only tried this on a few tracks and they work, but I have such a longstanding distrust of Sony that I still convert to .wav. There is no check-in limit on 3.4 or 4.0. You can upload from a disc as many times as you want. There should also be no check-out limit from My Library. Put the songs on as many discs as you want. Even if Sony doesn't want you re-uploading tracks you have sent to MD via NetMD--I haven't tried this, but I'll take your word for it--you can always download again from your computer. I don't think so, but with check-out limits removed, it's irrelevant. Back up by converting to .wav or using the File Conversion Tool. Always. I think you'd probably have to do this in realtime. My guess is that the re-recorded MD wouldn't read as a Net-MD since that's not how it was made. You can also do this with Hi-MD Renderer, controlling the unit via USB with SonicStage and recording playback through your soundcard. Hi-MD Renderer (homemade software by the hard-working Marcnet) is free in Downloads, and has its own software forum. How would you burn the NetMD to a CD? After using the File Conversion Tool and removing copy protection, supposedly not. Try a few files and see.

Windows XP (and Macs, too) will recognize the unit as a hard drive. Windows 98 needs a driver, and I'm not sure about Windows 2000. However, it's simply a storage drive. All music files for playback or uploading have to go through SonicStage. For spoken word, here's a podcast recorded on minidisc by MDCF member milomind. http://www.destructomundo.com/

These are very odd results. You should indeed get improved quality. And you shouldn't be getting a low level with the mic plugged in to mic-in unless you have it very far away from you. First question: are you plugging into the red Mic-in jack, and not the white Line-in jack? Are you getting "Microphone Recording" on the display? The ATR25 mic has a sensitivity of -50dB, which is less than the one I usually use, the Sound Professionals BMC-2. It is also directional, so it needs to be pointed right at you. Both of those factors could lead to quieter recordings, I suppose. And the hiss you're getting is probably the AGC boosting the level a lot to get it up to audibility because it's getting a quiet signal. Recording music, it's usually better to use Manual volume to stop the AGC from making audible changes during the recording. But I'm guessing something is malfunctioning. Could be the mic, could be the unit. I mean, here's someone who used the ATR25 to record lighting a fire. http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/samplesViewSingle.php?id=12809 There's also an ATR25 sample (recorded into a video camera) from this page, a link originally posted here by King Ghidora http://www.pana3ccduser.com/showthread.php?t=4667 Try another mic, even your mono mic, into the mic jack with the mic seting on High Sensitivity. It should sound more or less as it did on your R700 with similar settings. If it doesn't, something may be wrong with the mic jack on that unit. Or if you're getting a good level with the mono mic, then it's the ATR25.

I'm sure you understand that I don't mean to say the quality is anything like bad. It's the opposite problem: The quality is so good that tiny defects that were masked by the cassette recorder could be revealed by the MD. But if your mic sounded good enough with your voice on a cassette, it should sound even better on MD. You can reveal the MD's defects by trying to record extremely quiet sounds--distant birdcalls, that sort of thing. Recording your own voice, close to the mic in a quiet room, you should be very pleased.

Digital should give you higher quality than your cassette--especially if you were getting tape hiss from re-recording on cassettes. However, digital will also give you a nice clear recording of nuisances like noise from your microphone and noise from the preamp--which are usually at a low enough level not to be a problem. Look in the Gallery (Live Recordings) and download some things to hear what MD recording sounds like. SonicStage is not really sound editing software. It will upload and download tracks to the unit and combine or divide tracks, but that's about it. It intends to be more like music player/library software--like iTunes or Winamp--than a sound editor. (Not that anyone not under compulsion would make it their main music player.) SonicStage, Simple Burner (for transferring CDs to MD) and their Mac equivalents are all that's supplied with the unit. For EQ, other effects and serious editing, Audacity or a paid recording program is necessary. Personally, I have Audacity and the pro-quality Adobe Audition, and I use Audacity all the time because it has all the functions I need.

I got mine from Minidisco as well. With free shipping that's a good deal.

Sorry to say this, but the RH910 is only compatible with PCs. Macs will read it as a hard drive but cannot do any music importing or uploading. It's in the hardware, not the software. MZ-M10 (looks like the RH910 but is Mac-compatible), MZ-M100 and MZ-RH1 are the Mac-compatible units. Fuller discussion here: http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=10493

Don't open SonicStage. Attach the unit to your computer with a USB cord. Explore My Computer. It should be there.

Barry, have you tried the MDAC Repair Tool from Downloads?

It's a different procedure, but the results are similar. On minidisc you can make Track marks, which are silent and gapless. You can also delete the track marks with a button on the unit. And you can delete tracks through the edit menu on the unit or with the unit connected to the PC and SonicStage. You would play back your track up to the point where you made a mistake and push the Track button to put a track mark before it--which would make your error a new track. Then you could delete the error track and start recording from the end. Or you could leave the error track, start a new take, and delete the error track later. Or to put it another way. You are recording Track 01. You goof. At the end of the usuable part of Track 01 you put a track mark. Then you have Track 01 and Track 02. You can delete Track 02, and when you start recording again you'd begin with Track 02. Or, when you start recording again you would automatically begin with Track 03, and you could delete Track 02 later. Each track gets uploaded separately, but can then be Combined with SonicStage (under Edit). Or you can remove track marks on the player before uploading. This is assuming you know when you've made the mistake. But you can also record patches later and insert them in any order.