King Ghidora

If you happen to find a Basic M2 for $20 I'll double the price if you buy it for me. I'll probably turn around and sell it for a few hundred though. They do turn up cheap at times because people don't realize the demand for them.

My JVC equipment sounded fine. In fact the sound quality of their cassette decks was probably the main reason I bought their equipment to begin with. It was a step above all the competition in that area back at that time. The problem was that things just kept breaking down. I went through 3 receivers in 4 years including twice sending different receivers back to the factory for repairs. It took several months to get those back btw. I also had 3 CD changers quit within a month of their warranty expiring and a cassette deck quit within days of the warranty period end. My second cassette deck was a dual auto reverse deck. The heads went out completely on one deck and would only work in one direction on the other. I also had 2 VCR's quit after about a year each and that was when they were quite expensive. I bought a Sony CD changer which has been working flawlessly for about 10 years now. And I bought a Sony VCR that still works many years later. I also bought a Kenwood amp and a Harmon Kardon preamp / tuner which both work perfectly today. The Kenwood is probably over 20 years old now (I bought it used). Kenwood was much higher quality back at that time. That amp is still highly sought after because it produces power on a scale that is rarely matched today. It's 480 wpc when pushing 4 ohm speakers if that tells you anything. I know that Kenwood doesn't produce the same quality of equipment they did at one time but back in the late 1980's they were considered to produce very high quality audio equipment. It was considered to be audiophile level equipment back then. I wish they did still produce equipment of that quality but they don't. I still do use the JVC cassette deck though it only plays one direction on one of it's dual decks. I also have one of the receivers that will power up and operate the cassette deck with a remote. I only turn it on to control that cassette deck with a remote. It will not produce any sound at all though. In fact the lights barely even work. Of course I rarely use a cassette deck at all these days but it's there if I ever decide to play one of my old tapes. Heck I still have an 8 track player that works with a few tapes to go with it. I don't use it very often either. It's up in the attic with my turntable.

The reason for the downturn of JVC probably has more to do with them making stuff that just doesn't last. I had so much JVC stuff go bad on me it's ridiculous. I liked their stereo equipment at one time because they allowed remote control of such things as equalizers and tape decks when others didn't. So I bought several of their products and every one of them failed either during the warranty period or slightly after it. Kenwood on the other hand make very high quality equipment at one time. From what I understand it isn't what it used to be but I have a Kenwood amp that is about 25 years old and it still works perfectly. It was from the era when amps weighed 60 pounds or more because of the massive heat sinks they put in. It just isn't easy to dissipate the heat from a 480 watts per channel amp I guess. Still even with all the heat an amp like that produces it still works perfectly. It just seems strange that a company that has made excellent quality equipment is buying out a company known for making stuff that doesn't last.

Most likely the mic isn't getting enough power through the cable extension. The longer the cable the more resistance you'll have plus any connector you have will cause more resistance. If your mic needs every bit of the plug in power your MD provides to work correctly any added resistance will cause the power to drop enough so that your mic won't work correctly. It could be that you're getting a lot of interference with the extended cable too. 1/8th inch cables are bad to pick up interference from almost any electomagnetic source which shows up as noise. Those cables don't have enough shielding as a general rule to keep this from happening. Things like cell phones and light dimmers can create a lot of EM interference. So can computers. You might solve the problem with a better quality cable. You should be able to test to see if this is the problem by getting away from any possible source of interference and checking whether you still get noise.

You can't build a mic that zooms in on a subject like a camera lens will. You can build a mic that changes from a wide pickup area to a narrow pickup area while you push a button that says "zoom" on it. My Panasonic PV-GS250 video camera has what it calls a zoom mic feature on it. It will not bring a far away sound any closer. It will possibly reject ambient noise a little better but a shotgun mic will accomplish the same thing without the extra "zoom" feature. Anyone calling a mic a zoom mic is spinning the heck out of reality. It's purely a marketing idea. If you have a shotgun mic then you have the best mic you can have for picking up a subject with as little ambient noise as possible. You can add a parabolic dish to make your mic be more sensitive to sound much like cupping your hand around your ear will do. But most definitely you can't really zoom in with a microphone. It just can't be done with the technology that exists today. Either buy a shotgun mic or a parabolic mic. Some parabolic dishes are pretty small actually. Not all of them are 18 inch monsters like the one in the link I posted. Some are as small as a few inches. You can actually add a parabolic dish to almost any mic and get decent results. Using a Chinese cooking wok is a common way of adding a parabolic dish to a mic. Essentially they just work by reflecting sound back to a point (similar to how a satellite dish works) so your mic gets a louder sound to record. You could probably use a satellite dish if you wanted to add it to a mic. They would be the right shape and you would have an idea where to put the mic by looking at where the feed horn of the dish would be.

You could set up one of these parabolic dish type mics or much more simply, you could use a shotgun and just ignore the ambient noise. You'll get ambient noise with the parabolic too btw. But you will be able to isolate the speaker better. You hear these types of mics on football games (American football) all the time. When you hear a quarterback calling signals it's because they have a parabolic pointed at him. But it's likely to be overkill for what you're trying to do. I'd get a good shotgun like a Rode VideoMic and use it with a stand so you could aim it perfectly and leave it set.

Not all Bose have that pre-amp.

I totally agree that conventional speakers will provide a much better sound stage than anything Bose makes. That reflected sound stuff is just bound to have problems. But even in a perfect situation they still don't sound that good IMO. I agree that it takes a large driver to really make lots of air move. I have 15 inch Cerwin Vega's myself and I have a set of test tones that show that my speakers easily produce sounds all the way down to 20 hz. The sound drops off at 25 hz really but that's probably more a function of human ears not being able to recognize sound waves at 20 hz as sound. The air is moving but your ear drum doesn't send the signal to your brain saying this is sound. But there are problems using 15 inch and above drivers too. 12 inch woofers will often give a better punch in the 150-200 hz range where much of the sound of rock music is located. The larger woofers just aren't able to effectively move air at those levels just like they can't make treble sounds. It's usually a trade off between the two sound ranges when you go with either a 12 inch or a 15 or bigger. There just aren't any perfect speakers that I've ever heard. I prefer big cones too but they have their weaknesses just like small cones do. Still there's just nothing like that couch bouncing bass a 15 inch cone driven by about 500 watts per channel can deliver. I have a Kenwood Basic M2 amp pushing the CV's as my front speakers. They will make the walls rattle and make the neighbors really ticked off and I live in the country.

Bose really just doesn't compare to quality equipment. There are hills and valleys in their response curve that are just awful. Then there's the real problem. The way Bose designs their speakers the idea is that you are supposed to get reflected sound so it's a more realistic sound and stereo imaging is correct even if you aren't sitting in the sweet spot between the speakers. The upshot of this is that speaker placement becomes an absolute nightmare. If the two front speakers aren't placed in nearly identical locations (both 2 feet from both walls in a corner for example or both two feet from a flat wall) there is absolutely no way to get sound that is even remotely similar from both speakers at the same time. Never mind that you really have a hard time just getting one speaker set where it sounds decent. When you try to get both to sound decent and sound alike you find yourself thinking about that guy who rolls his rock to the top of the hill and then it rolls back down and you start over again. It just can't be done. The one exception to this is their car stereo setups. When their engineers get to custom design a speaker system for a fixed space like that they can generally do a decent job of it but other systems still sound better. In some situations Bose can sound fairly decent with some of their models. But most of their models don't sound good at all. There's no detail and they have a muddy sound because nothing is really distinct. Bose is really only good at one thing which is advertising. They are still attempting to cash in on the reputation they gained back in the 1970's when their 901's became popular. Those were decent speakers but they were very expensive at the time. They were not great speakers though espceically not for the money. I've heard much better speakers which cost less money from companies like Infinity, Sony and Cerwin Vega so you see I'm not talking about audiophile level stuff. There are audiophile level speakers that are just a million times better than anything Bose makes but speakers like that generally cost a lot of money. But I've seen some Infinity speakers that weren't super expensive that were just amazing in their sound quality. Not all Sony's are great but some are. Most CV's are not great but their top of the line stuff is actually very good. Bose can't compete with even moderate level speakers from any of those companies though. It's been a long time since I've swapped speakers or even listened in a listening room because I have excellent speakers now and I don't feel the need to look for something better. But I hear Bose stuff that my brother in law buys and I just shake my head and wonder why. The bottom line is - Bose sucks.

All can say to that is I can hear a huge difference between LP2 and LP4. I think LP4 sounds terrible to be honest.

LP4 is never going to sound good no matter where it gets encoded. My NetMD was used exclusively for listening to music I encoded on a PC and downloaded to the MD. I don't know if LP4 sounds better if encoded on a PC as compared to recording via an optical line in but I do know that it sounds completely bad when encoded to LP4 on a PC and downloaded to a MD. My guess is that it won't be any different encoding LP2 using the computer or the MD itself. Yes the MD has an optical input but the USB cable delivers digital data to the MD so there's no loss of quality there.

I could definitely use that case.

Actually you can't start a recording using the remote to the NHF800 or any other HIMD I believe. You can control much of the recording process but you can't start the process.

I wouldn't count too much on CD's for storage media. I have had about 200 of them go bad on me after just about 3 years of shelf life. They can't be read at all now. It ticked me off so bad that I got out of the computer industry completely. I could no longer recommend CDR's for much of anything important and that left nothing else really. DVD's are said to be better as far as life expectancy but they said CDR's would last 100 years too. In fact I called Verbatim, which all of my bad discs were, and they still claim that they should last 50 years even as I told them that I had 200 bad ones. They insisted I did something wrong. Funny though none of the older CDR's I have went bad and I haven't had any go bad since. The only thing that changed was the brand of CDR I used. Trust me it was the discs that went bad. Don't trust optical media of ANY kind to last forever and that includes MD. The plastic oxidizes and it's all she wrote. Go look in a dump at what old plastic looks like. It breaks down after a few years. That's what will happen to all optical media at some point. Magnetic tape is a much more stable storage medium. I have cassettes that I recorded back in the 1970's that still work perfectly. I even have some 8 tracks that came from the late 60's that still work (yes I still have an 8 track player that works too ). Magnetic tape is a proven storage medium. I store all my important work on minidv tapes now since I'm in the video business. I expect those to last quite a while. I sell DVD's to my customers but I will always have a backup for them if they need one.

I bought about 30 regular MD's a few years back and recorded about half of them with music I listened to. Then I bought a used HIMD with another 30 discs or so inc. 6 HIMD. I have filled one HIMD about 3/4 with stuff I recorded with just enough quality that it wouldn't be noticeably bad hooked up to the stereo in my car or truck. I use the other HIMD's for recording events for my video business and I use some of the regular MD's to record telephone conversations etc. that I want to keep a copy of. I still don't come anywhere near using all of the blanks that I have. Not by a long shot.

I got a Rode VideoMic from Jack's Music Factory. They're selling them for $119 which is $30 cheaper than the usual $149 price. It's a great deal on a great mic though it's a mono mic generally meant to be used with a video camera.

Possibly it was a problem with interference affecting the 3.5mm cables. Many of them have no shielding at all and even on a short run you can pick up noise. Possibly a cell phone operating nearby could have caused the problem. The phone wouldn't need to be during a call to cause problems. Those cell phones communicate with the towers even when there isn't any phone call in progress. I get intereference in almost every electrical system I have because of cell phones and I live in an area where I can barely pick up a signal from a tower. The RCA cable would have some shielding but not a lot. I'm just guessing here of course but try turning on your cell phone right next to yoru cable and see if you pick up noise at that point.

It sure sounds like a grounding issue somewhere. Check where your cable connects to the camera. Jiggle it around to see if you can introduce the noise by changing the position of the connector. I've heard of other people having problems with hum in their recordings using certain mics where it was pretty obvious that it was a grounding issue. The fact that it happens sometimes and not others would indicate that a connection just isn't seating right. It almost has to be a grounding issue. Are you using the mic that you built? Maybe a connection didn't get soldered just right. If all else fails you might try to use this ground loop isolater from Radio Shack. I'm guessing there are others that are designed with miniplugs if you want to look around. But I'd think you can probably track it down since it works sometimes and doesn't at other times.

If your mic has a balanced output then you can't just rig up a connection to make it work. You'll need something to convert the signal to an unbalanced signal. Not all XLR cables on mics mean it is a balanced output mic. Some mics use XLR cables for stereo sound. If your mic is a stereo mic then it can't be balanced if the XLR cable only has 3 pins. It would take 5 pins for a balanced signal stereo mic. If your mic is balanced probably the best way to convert to an unbalanced signal is to use a mixer that accepts balanced and unbalanced signals and has an unbalanced output. Sign makes a mixer that will do that. It's the Sign Video XLR-PRO which accepts both balanced and unbalanced mics and has an unbalanced output. The cheaper XLR Jr (on the same web page) will also work but it only accepts one input. If your mic is unbalanced then you can use an adapter to connect it to your MD. There are adapters available especially for stereo mics that use XLR cables. I got two adapters of this kind with my Nady CM-2S mic which is a stereo mic that uses XLR cables.

Sorry to hear about your problem. It would almost have to be a battery problem to get the short operation deal. If it were a problem with the MD itself it most likely wouldn't work at all. Have you tried different batteries in your AA add on? It just sounds very much like a battery problem in that it would work for an hour then the battery go dead.

If coop2332 isn't interested in that N505 I might be. I have one myself and I might get it just to have the spare parts. I still like to listen to music on mine because of the bass settings. I think the old system works better than the EQ on the HIMD stuff. Plus with a battery box I can use it as another recorder to stick in someone's pocket with a lav attached to it when I'm recording video events for my business. I'll wait to see if coop2332 wants it first.

Mics are very particular about what sort of enviorment they perform best in. One mic will do better recording one type of music or sound in a certain location while another mic will record another type of music or sound in another type of location. People generally want to get a stereo mic for recording live music to a MD since all MD's record in stereo. There are different types of stereo mics to choose from as well. A single point stereo mic is sometimes the easiest to deal with but again it isn't perfect for all situations by any means. Matched pairs of mics are often used to record stereo music also. Then there's diaphragm size and general mic construction to consider not to mention price. Where I'm going with all this info is that there is no such thing as a perfect mic for every situation. All of the factors I listed can affect your choice. If you only want to buy one good mic that will work well in a lot of situations with your MD then there are some mics that people generally consider to be decent. When I wanted a single mic to record to my MD I chose a single point stereo condensor mic with a M/S configuration and I paid about $100 for it. I thought that mic was a versatile mic and I still do. It is a Sony ECM-MS907. This has been a very popular mic over the years but IMO that mic has been surpassed by other mics in it's price range since I bought mine several years ago. Since that time I have bought another single point stereo mic because I still think they are good all around mics to the money. I bought a Nady CM-2S this time. It has a better low range than the Sony. It has an XY configuration which has different strengths from my Sony so essentially it compliments a mic I already have by doing slightly different jobs better. I paid $119 for that mic and I think it is an excellent mic. If you have more money to spend you might want to get an Audio-Technica AT822 which is considered to be an excellent mic. It runs about $250 though so the price is considerably higher than the Nady or the Sony (which can be bought for around $75 now). I didn't mean to confuse you. It's just that mics come in a wide variety of designs and the quality varies considerably. Knowing how much money you wish to spend and exactly how you're going to use the mic will help you pick the best mic for you. For example recording percussion instruments usually is done best with a mono mic but I would choose a stereo mic for the ensembles you mention. Then again a mic that is well suited for reflective surfaces like the concrete rooms isn't going to do as well on a stage setting. One takes a directional mic to work best but the other can be done well with an omni. You can either go with an all around good mic that does some things very well and other things fairly well or you can try to pick the perfect mic for your situation. You need to decide what you want most from a mic then we can help you better.

A "clip" is a holder for a mic. A shock mount isolates the mic from any vibration noise etc. but it too technically has a clip as a part of the design. It's just a term that I guess isn't as common as some other terms. The clip part of the mount needs to be longer to deal with a longer mic well. It will keep the mic from bouncing around a lot. Some designs of shock mounts can allow the mic to bounce too which can introduce noise. I'm sure you'll figure out a good way to deal with that possibility since you're building your own mount. Here's a website where they use the term "clip" quite a bit if you're interested. Sorry for the confusion. The headphone mount sounds like a good idea. If the over the head part of the headphones isn't too thick it's possible to hide it under your hair or a hat or whatever. These are common stealth recording techniques.

FWIW Nathan I have heard of people mounting mics to a hat too. It doesn't look quite as strange as wearing sunglasses in a dark concert setting. Some people mount the mics to an over the head headphone mount. People like the headphones that put the headphone speakers into your ears sideways because the speakers can essentially be replaced with mics and it's hard to tell the difference. Of course it looks a little strange to be wearing headphones at a concert too. Also the kind of headphones that mount directly to your ear can be used to mount the mics. If your hair is long enough to cover your ears it's really hard to see the mics with that setup. The only problem you might have with the Nady is that it is kinda long to mount to a camera. You can get some bouncing if you don't have a good clip holding it up. Also it is a very sensitive mic and it can pick up quite a bit of reflected sound because of this. Using an inline volume control or an attenuator will solve most of that problem. It's a decent mic but all mics have their shortcomings. I'd just make sure you got in some practice moving your camera around with the mic mounted to make sure you aren't getting a lot of noise with the clip you're using. I connected my camera to my home stereo and tried out my clip so I could hear what caused noise and what didn't.

The way I understand TR and the way it's explained is that it picks up the signal from the USB connection coming from a HIMD machine. Because the signal comes through the USB cable instead of the sound card the circuitry of the sound card is bypassed. Yes essentially the HIMD recorder is acting like a sound card in that it inputs sound into the computer but according to the conventional wisdom it sends in a better quality signal than going through a sound card. The iMic pretty much does the same job in that it also sends an audio signal into the computer bypassing the regular sound card of the computer. And yes it is considered to be far better quality than the normal sound cards that come with laptops. I don't know if you're aware of this but it's possible to hook speakers up to a USB connection and use software to process audio information and play audio through that USB connection. Basically the iMic or any other USB audio input device just reverses that process or that's what I have been led to believe. At any rate the result is the same as using TR with a HIMD recorder. The circuitry of the sound card of a computer gets bypassed and the audio signal is fed to your favorite audio program. BTW this will only work this way if the sound controlling software for your computer has a wav input as one of the selections. Just as you would select mic input or line in input in the volume control or you mute a mic or a line in a seperate device will have to appear in your properties section or whatever section your software uses to control such things. Not all software allows for wav inputs. Setups are different too and sometimes the wav listing is called something else. I wish I could remember where this was all explained where I saw it originally. Maybe I'm not making it clear. I just know that TR allows you to bypass the sound card with an audio input in computers that have an audio control program that allows for it.