marcoleavitt

Hey Patti, You really don't want to use an electret or condenser microphone to record explosions. I would suggest a dynamic mic, and possibly an attenuator between the mic and the minidisc. The reason for this is because your sound source could be overloading the diaphragm of the mic itself, overdriving the element in the mic, or overdriving the preamp in the minidisc, or all three. A good dynamic mic should run you about $100 to $150. Expect to pay about $50 for the attenuator. One option is to use an XLR adapter that has passive faders, which are basically a variable attenuator.

Just downloaded the Hi-MD Music Transfer program from Sony (I'm on a Mac OS 10.5.2), and when I transferred over my files from my Hi MD recorder they came over in six blocks, rather than as individual tracks (more than 30 in all). I believe these were the points where I actually hit the stop button during recording. The rest of the tracks were created by hitting pause. This is a big problem because I used this recorder on a movie shoot, and the track listings were written on the slate so I need the individual files to correspond to those numbers. I can see the individual tracks listed in the program window with a single note icon on the far left. The points where larger files end are indicated by a symbol that looks like a sheet of music. Is there anyway to copy over the individual tracks and have them retain their numbers? I may give up on Hi-MD over this.

Can someone tell me whether the one time transfer limit is still in place with this upgrade? That's about the only thing keeping me from making the jump to HiMD.

I've worked as a sound technician on a couple of indie films (pretty low budget stuff), and feel that minidisc technology is an ideal format. The problem with hard disc and flash recorders is that there is no way to archive the original recordings. You have to transfer the file and make a copy on CDR, usually two as a backup. CDRs are famously unreliable, and there's a lot at stake. It is cumbersome and a little scary to have to move files around like that. It's one of the advantages of DAT that you can keep the original recording, although the media is somewhat fragile. HiMD shows the most potential, but Sony will have to overcome the pretty fierce skeptiscm and resentment their behavior has instilled in the location sound collection community so far. A professional unit would need to do away with the awkward menus and provide unrestricted downloads for analog and digital recordings without the use of Sony's proprietary software. Nobody is going to be willing to pay professional prices and then have their recordings held hostage in any way by Sony. Inexpensive professional hard disc and flash recorders are already available, so Sony has no negotiating power at all. They can either offer a better, more functional product or the format is dead in the professional world. The format will also have to support at least 48K recording and possibly higher bit rates. Multitracking and time code support would really seal the deal. For our projects I've found minidisc fantastically convenient, energy efficient, and robust. Sony's got a real winner in this technology, but they've got to quit screwing around.

Well, according to the article (see my link), Apple has said that they won't do anything to prevent Windows operating systems from working on their machines.

I was just reading David Pogue's column in the New York Times -- http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/16/technolo...OGUE-EMAIL.html -- and he mentions that after the switch, Apple computers will be able to run the Microsoft operating system. Does this mean that finally, finally, I'll be able to run SonicStage? What would that entail? Would I have to leave my machine as PC only (which wouldn't make much sense) or could I have dual operating systems on my Mac?

I'm glad to hear it worked out for you. I'm happy to have been wrong about this, actually.

When I first saw the Sony site my first reaction was to stomp around the room and curse. But then I thought it seemed like the same sort of restrictions they placed on the optical out of my minidisc home deck which allows me to transfer files just fine. In that case, an AD converter is considered an analog input. Wouldn't they use the same reasoning here?

The Sony site specifies that only files made through mic or line analog inputs can be converted. What about files made using an AD converter through the optical inputs? Since they orginated from an analog source, shouldn't they be unrestricted as well?

Minidisc does seems to be very time stable, and I agree that drift probably wouldn't be the big problem. But if you were trying to sync, say a guitar, with a faint vocal in the background with a recording of the vocals with a faint guitar in the background, it seems like the overlapping signals would tend to either cancel each other out, or cause unwanted echos or flanging, unless they were really precisely synced up with other. Still, I've known people to make nice recordings with the humblest of equipment, so who knows.

No way is this going to work, at least not for the application you want to use it for. Okay, I haven't tried it, but I just can't see how you can sync up two or more recorders without the waveforms being slightly out of phase with each other -- the flanging effect you said you were worried about. The only way I can think of to do this, is if you can keep all of the sounds completely isolated, but you would need a professional studio for that, which you obviously don't have access to or you wouldn't be asking a question like this. I guess you could give everybody headphones and record the guitar and bass direct, but the mics for the vocals and the drums are going to pick up each other. Maybe you could record the vocals and drums to one minidisc so they will already be in snyc with each other and the bass and guitar to the other, but you'll need a good mixer for everybody to hear what's going on. You also need some kind of slate sound at the beginning of the song to help you sync later. Since the guitar and bass aren't miced, I don't know how you could pull that off. Doesn't sound like much fun with everybody wired up like that and playing in silence. Also, every guitarist I've ever known would rather die than record direct. I believe Tascam recently introduced a four-track Mp3 recorder that costs less than two minidisc recorders by the way.

Will this real-time USB transfer work on a Mac?

Maybe it's just wishful thinking, but I'm not sure that Sony's statement means that we won't be able to create unrestricted WAV files from recordings made via optical input. It sounds a lot like the restrictions that were imposed on the original minidisc. When you use an AD converter like the Denecke AD20, you're still starting from an analog source, namely, a microphone. The AD20 records an SCMS signal of 00. The recordings I've made this way don't have copy restrictions. I think what Sony may be talking about here are recordings made from a digital source, like the optical outputs of a CD player. I hope I'm right, because if I can't use a quality AD converter I will have no interest in HiMD.

I just bought this deck too. Why is it so big? What's in there that needs so much space? It's heavy too. UPS listed the shipping at 22 lbs. Not a problem I guess. I'm more curious than anything.