Patchouli

Before I go by the Sony store and smash thousands of dollars of equipment, what can you do to erase these stupid discs? The computer that made them has long since been retired, the drive reformatted many moons ago. There is no way to check them in. HOW DARE THEY try to control us in this fashion? It's only one box of discs. $15 or so. But I might have to mangle someone over this. I'm going to Super Crazy Glue them to 550 Madison's front door (Sony's HQ) if I cannot blank them. There must be some service mode trick to get the damn thing to ignore the protect bit?????? Can I blank them in some other manufacturer's unit? I'll carry them to a store and "test" a floor model to erase them, if possible. I guess I won't glue them. It won't anger anyone but the poor building super who has to get some guy to remove them. Sony doesn't care. Sony has never cared about it's users. Sony employees will laugh about it. I should beat them. I should beat them all.

Someone in a recent thread posted "this is about the most useless forum I have seen" and I'm beginning to agree with him. Maybe MD is dead. If all you wanted was a music player, it is tits up. All I want is a cheap field recorder. And it looks like HiMD will fix all the stupid stuff we have to do now. Sony owes me money, damnit. I'll take it out in blood one day. -------- Searching Live Recording for the word "calibrate" returns zero hits. So does "mastering" WTF? Are you people just setting your input levels to your computer sound cards on the fly? With dynamic content? You suck. :rasp: Set it and leave it. It's not adjustable. There is only one optimal position. The fact that "calibrate" doesn't come up really upsets me. Dump a pink (or white) noise .wav to MD in the best quality possible at around -6 or -8dB. You can use many freeware sound utilities to generate signals like this. Set your MD output to be line level (or at least just flat tone and near max volume) and play it back while in record mode on whatever app you use. Set the recording mixer to get out what you put in. If your MD is putting out 600mV, dont you think you'd want to record that? 400mV and you're leaving stuff behind (increasing noise floor), and 800mV and you're making up stuff that isn't there (increasing distortion). Do NOT use recording levels to adjust for low recordings. Do this in software, it's much cleaner than the analog gain stage of your sound card to work in the digital world. Bah. CALIBRATE CALIBRATE CALIBRATE CALIBRATE CALIBRATE (now it will show up at least once.)

Answering my own damn questions... Anyone know of a more active MD taping community board? Basically "stealthy" and "windproof" are mutually exclusive. There are some commercial wind suppressors that are very small (MicroCat) but it looks like you have a Troll Doll's head sticking off your mics. Not very inconspicuous, damn sure aren't stealthy. (or cheap!) If you want to see a nice mic/wind rundown, try: http://www.homerecording.com/bbs/showthrea...2363#post394703 I'm going to try constructing micro-zeppelins. I can't believe this hasn't been run into before, every taper has this issue. So why do no searches of the Live Recordings threads come up with anything? Someone has to have done some.

Great, let's oversimply every issue to the point where one quick, simple phrase explains the entire world - "mostly harmless" Picking on my own unit, the N707 and IC302. 5mW + 5mW ? bullcrap. Many of Sonys units use a Toshiba TA2131FL amplifier IC and this is a crappy chip. But it's cheap and consumes very little power. Here's the datasheet: http://www.semicon.toshiba.co.jp/docget.js...ctype=datasheet Look at page 17. Prior to distortion city there isn't much room. Looking at both the amp dataheet and the service manual for the N707, you are not going to get more than 600mV from it, anyway. That it's maximum swing. (This is noted in the service manual too, the red "0.6" annotations at the output pins of IC302.) Very worried about 1.2mW output? That's about all there is in a clean signal range; I don't care that it's rated "5mW + 5mW" or not, or that the chip is rated to 8mW. This is why you don't listen to it full blast - it's not that it's too loud, it's that it's too distorted and painful to tolerate. While you might be able to squeeze a bit more push by changing the Rg / Rfb resistors it's delicate surgery and will only help sensitive low-ohm sets. Basically, you must use an external amp. The N707 is terminated with a 4K7 which is standard. The next stage is expected to be some amp with at least a 47K input impedance. It presents a high impedance load which is much easier for the MD to drive than headphones. You want *any* MD to sound it's best? Use an external amp. All the hacking in the world can't create a good clean output without changing that amplifier IC.

Hi again, Stealthy I can do. Windproof I cannot. Opencell foam balls just turn compression distortion into ghost moaning, and denser material clips the highs and gives that hey-this-is-muffled effect. What to do? Do you just forego taping outdoors on 20+ MPH days? Or is it going to require something 3" thick and forget about both stealth and 10kHz up? side question: What do activtity tapers do? skateboarding, MTB downhilling, etc? Where you have to shock mount and be wind isolated, and they have to be pretty small just because of the situation. (maybe not stealthy, but...) Thanks.

In one stupid move, I severed my 61As from the shells. It was that thin, braided meshy stuff from a set of cheap Sony earbuds. Taking some generic 24 gauge 2-conductor microphone cable, I replaced both leads and stuck a tip on it and thought I was back in business... wrong. There were no highs anymore. Severely attenuated treble. I thought at first it was a bad soldering job. (even though both channels sounded the same.) Going back to the ripped earbud cable fixed it. Albeit they are a bit shorter, the wires tore exactly in the middle... thanks Murphy. So take note: When you build that mic that everyone else is raving about, and you think it's not so hot - it could just be the wire you used.