dex Otaku

Before I forget about this completely, I'll try and actually answer the question in a way that is relevant as well.. For voice recordings, I tend to RMS normalise to pretty high levels. Sound Forge's defaults are a reasonable average in industry terms. The following presets are there: * Normalise RMS to -10dB [speech] * Normalise RMS to -16dB [music] * Normalise RMS to -6dB [very loud!] There's another one there, too: *Normalise RMS to -20dB [dex] Heh.

Some of us are more 'purists' than others. I think I tend to ride the fence on this; it depends on the nature of the recording. With most recordings that I want to maintain a "natural" sounding dynamic range with, I use RMS normalisation at -20dBfs. This maintains a lot of headroom over the average level of the recording, and matches the fashion with which most classical CDs are produced [-20 to -18dBfs, which is 0VU on AES/EBU equipment's meters if I'm not mistaken]. To point something out that most people don't ever realise - the volume control on any stereo system is an attenuator. It subtracts from the signal going into the amplifier. If you turn it 'down' all the way, you're subtracting 100% of the signal. If you turn it up all the way, you're subtracting nothing. In reality, your amplifier is always amplifying at the same level, it's just what's going into it that's altered [otherwise the volume control would have to have massive heat sinks on it and would likely cause fires in most living rooms]. The thing to remember is that if you're using the volume control, you're subtracting from the signal, and you're reducing the dynamic range of the content along with it. The amp's self-noise is actually a constant - hiss that gets louder as you 'turn up' the volume means that your amp has cheap, noisy op-amps in it that are generating that noise. The amp itself isn't the source [of that in particular.] It's difficult to say there's any kind of standards with music or stereo systems, but to me listening to a natural-sounding recording means you can have 0dB attenuation [the volume all the way 'up'] and the 'normal' passages will be at a comfortable level. Quiet passages will actually be quiet, and loud passages will be as loud as your amplification and speakers can handle. I have actually mastered recordings [meant to be played on the system they were mastered on] this way in the past. Pop music isn't meant to be that way, nor are radio broadcasts, voice recordings in general, &c. The only recordings that come close to having a potentially natural dynamic range are film soundtracks. Sound for film is heavily standardised [and has been, within certain limits, since the 1950s or so, before THX was ever even a thought in anyone's head] to maintain the same volume level for dialogue regardless of what venue the film is being played in. Later other standards were set to ensure that a certain amount of amplifier/speaker SPL headroom was always available for sound effects and music. This is not to say that every theatre followed the standards loosely let alone strictly, but at the least the standard for dialogue [at around 72dB actual SPL] has been around and loosely maintained for a long time. The same does not exist for music, as playback systems vary wildly in terms of capability, as do listening environments. Going by today's trends, one would think that mastering engineers expect that nearly 100% of music is going to listened to within 20m of a construction site or aeroport nearly 100% of the time. Note that I don't advocate reaching for a natural dynamic range with most listening material. Whatever is appropriate for the material in question is what's appropriate for it, and that ends up being a matter of opinion as well as fitting things within the limitations of its carrier system [like compressing music for playback on FM radio]. Wow. 6dB of headroom is almost nothing, actually. I usually record with at least 15-20dB headroom, i.e. levels averaging [not peaking] one or two segments -below- the first dot on HiMD's meters [which is the -12dBfs mark, and for all intents and purposes, MD and HiMD's 0VU mark]. Sounds reasonable, though I personally prefer not to hard limit anything if I can avoid it. Two words: listening fatigue. On highly dynamic and very short passages, sure, but otherwise all it leads to is stress to your ears [and your equipment]. It's called bit-pushing and has been the trend in mastering since the late 1990s. Basically, they reduce the dynamic range of the recording to almost zero using dynamic compression and limiting, which has the benefit of raising the average volume of the recording so that when played on cheap equipment it sounds loud and 'clear'. The gist in competition is to make things sound as loud as possible, most specifically to make it sound louder than whatever other band's record. The end result is that CDs are apparently much louder, have virtually no dynamic range, are full of readily measurable distortion, and cause severe listening fatigue after only brief periods of exposure. Severe compression and bit-pushing also make sound more difficult to compress with lossy codecs without audible distortion or artifacting, incidentally. If you want to make pop records, sure. If you want to make listenable recordings that don't cause people's ears to bleed and amplifiers to overheat, then no. I don't advise bit-pushing. It just sounds like crap to me. Most of the recordings I've purchased in the past 8 years have left me wondering what the studio engineers' and the musicians' actual "vision" of the recording was before the mastering engineers took it and mutilated it so severely that it became unrecognisable - but hey, it's radio-ready, and it sounds loud on the average underpowered transistor radio, car stereo, boombox, portable player, computer, home stereo... you get the picture. I, personally, don't like having to cut the band around 4-8kHz by as much as 15dB to make modern CDs listenable without causing me physical pain.

What kould improve it? 1 - listen to their customers 2 - listen to their customers 3 - listen to their customers 4 - offer other audio formats; especially important is at least one lossless-packing format 5 - at the very least, offer content at higher bitrates for those who can use it [even if I had money, there's no way in hell I'd pay to buy LP2-encoded music. Not a chance.] 6 - package deals on entire discographies such as iTunes offers 7 - use DRM on high-quality [i.e. bitrate] content; drop it completely on lower-quality [i.e. LP2-like bitrates] content 8 - use *reasonable* tiered pricing based on quality; if they made LP2-like content $0.30USD per song, they'd sell a hell of a lot more 9 - work at establishing a consortium between companies and researchers [like MPEG] to ratify a base standard for DRM that is codec-independent, that everyone can use, and don't dare charge liscensing fees to use it or any codecs. More content providers means more content available; that combined with a common standard for DRM and no liscensing fees for it [both for manufacturers and content encoders] means proliferation of hardware devices that support it; proliferation of devices that support it leads to ubiquity; ubiquity means more money going to everyone. Making the process more difficult with highly restrictive and complicated implementations, as well as charging money to use it, does NOT attract either content providers, manufacturers, OR customers - it drives them away. It may be fine for Sony to market their own system, but then that means that Sony customers can only listen to Sony music on Sony devices. They aren't the only manufacturer, publisher, or distributor on earth, for god's sake. I can think of more, too.

Commonly, yes, it's .flac

For starter use, if you don't need to record either extremely quiet or extremely loud sounds, the built-in preamp is sufficient. If you're looking to record things like bird sounds, an external preamp [with a lower noisefloor] would serve you well. If you're looking to record very loud sounds, there are three methods I'd recommend trying. First, and cheapest, is to use an attenuator between the mic and the mic preamp. Second is to use a battbox and go line-in with it. Third is to use an external preamp with higher bias voltage for the mics [if they need it] and higher headroom. I have spent the last year recording with a NH700 and SP-TFB-2s, and the only real difficulties I've encountered were as above - when recording birdsong, the noisefloor of the preamp becomes very obvious, and when recording things like artillery fire the built-in preamp gets overloaded. In both cases, my preferred solution would be an external mic preamp with higher bias voltage, more headroom than the built-in, and a lower noisefloor. Rephrased: A decent external preamp is the most versatile solution, covering basically all the options, but also the most expensive. A battbox won't really help for quiet sounds, but will increase the maximum transducible SPL of the mic - which will likely overload the mic preamp, which can be avoided by going line-in [which will mean a quiet signal with all but very loud material]. A passive attenuator [like the radioshack headphone volume control] between the mic and preamp is the least expensive solution for loud material but won't help for anything else. Hope that made some sense.

In a humourous and perhaps bold move on my part, I'm going to disagree with myself. It would help if I drew graphs for this, but I'm not going to because I'm lazy. My recent thoughts: Sensitivity is like a floating point. Dynamic range is perhaps fixed or slightly variable. SNR is as well. The floating point moves, and the dynamic range and SNR move with it. Hence my thinking that what I said above about it making sense that an increase in sensitivity means a corresponding increase in DR and SNR is bollocks. Just thought I'd throw that in here.

Odd, considering the fact that any properly-designed pocket preamp acts exactly as a battbox does when its gain is turned down. Gerry's toutings about the Reactive Sounds unit, with variable gain rather than fixed with variable attenuation, are accurate IMO. A proper preamp should have variable gain at the input [also acting as actual impedance-matching] rather than attenuation at its output. Such preamps are exactly what you're talking about looking for. BTW, I experience the same bass distortion with really loud sounds with the SP-TFB-2s. Also, perhaps more interestingly, I find that headphone listening is fine with flat EQ, while speaker listening pretty much -always- requires a low shelf [i usually end up using a -10dB 1st-order filter @ 144Hz].

BTW, the boom op I learned from wore cycling gloves [leather with lightly-padded palm] to reduce the handling noise problem. In the past I had used mittens, myself [i had no shockmount, so I needed padding - and it was august, and it was hot].

Once you convert to WAV you can do as you wish with your tracks. WAV itself is not DRM'd.

When copying my vinyl I go straight to the computer in 24/88.2. I have yet to use my HiMD [after nearly a year] for copying -any- audio from an analogue line source for other than test purposes. I always do it on the puter, then send it to HiMD. I prefer to edit in the highest resolution format I have available. My FLACdrop also uses the --lax option to encode 24-bit audio; the end result is that you can usually get roughly an entire CD's length of 24-bit audio onto a single CD-R [though I use DVD-R for almost everything now].

And I want to pop in one disc and make uncompressed or lossless 24/96 recordings that are a minimum of 5 hours long, or even quad or hex recordings. Heartily agreed. I have enough problems with MD labels, though I tend to think of the media itself as being the perfect size for handling. I'm aware of this. My point about contrast ratio/exposure latitude was regarding motion film specifically. Still digis have surpassed film already in the vast majority of applications, there's no question in my mind about that. In any case, even 35 year-old TV cameras have more dynamic range [contrast ratio and s/n] than film. Long-exposure photography used to be my passion. Digital didn't kill that [living on less than $10k/year did], but it annoys me that basically no commonly available cameras have the signal processing to handle long exposures, even through image stacking. Doing so would also suck power at an unbelievable rate. My choice my long-exp photography is still a completely mechanical camera where you don't have to worry about the curtain's being open killing your battery. Unfortunately, when most of my equipment got stolen several years ago, I lost that option.

You guys rock. I didn't even try googling, you know.

I use FLAC on a daily basis. I use it so often, in fact, that I have made a "droplet" on my desktop for the encoder with my preferred settings [which I find more convenient than using a frontend]. And yes, I *listen* to FLAC files on a daily basis, not just use it for archival. Try out Foobar2000 .. I use it for MP3, WAV, FLAC, APE, MPC, OGG, AC3, and DTS, all on a regular basis. [Daily for all but MPC, OGG, and AC3, which I use less often than any of the others.] The only disadvantage I find with lossless-packed formats [like Monkey's Audio/APE, FLAC, and Shorten] is that they have the be converted back to PCM for editing.

I'm conducting a workshop this summer on "ad hoc sound for film" using HiMD as the recording medium. As the idea is to keep things under the strictest possible budget [preferably close to zero] I'll be needing a DIY shockmount to use on a fishpole-type boom. If anyone can come up with a simple design made from household or office items [coat hangers and rubber bands are perfectly acceptable materials] I'd be eternally grateful. The trick to it is that it must be able to accomodate fairly heavy microphones, maintain a firm enough grip, and be able to expand in order to accept mics of different diameters. Hence the thought about rubber bands. The shockmounts I've used in the past were all made specifically for the mics that were being used. I need something cheap and versatile. Why am I not doing this myself? I will be, actually. I'm just not entirely confident in my mechanical abilities. Ideas like this don't come naturally to me, so if you happen to be mechanically inclined and maybe have access to a couple of mics of varying weight and diameter.. yeah. Patents pending.

While the majority of photogs I know now use digicams, I would dispute that the film industry is lead by digital at this point. There are many practical disadvantages to shooting in most of the available HD formats; the top one I've heard from people in the film industry being the fact that there's zero overscan while shooting. This was pointed out to me last autumn while I was on the set as a sound observer with Leon Johnson and during the filming of Tamara [a horror movie] - they were shooting in flat 35mm [i.e. non-anamorphic] and the Leon pointed out to me on our monitor that they still shot the full 35mm motion frame despite the actual framed shot being only a portion of it. Even though the aspect of the preview was "safetied" at 16:9, the full frame was viewable on everyone's monitor - meaning for instance that if the mic was about to sink into the shot, the recordist could alert the boom op to the fact over their com system and avoid wasting the entire shot [and the actors' performance, and everyone's time and money]; with HD it would simply waste the shot, as you wouldn't see the mic until it was already in frame. The same would happen for people wandering into the sides, objects rolling or blowing in, &c. Most of the people I've spoken to dislike shooting video of any form for these among other reasons. The camera op and cinematographer emphasised to me that film is still used because of its contrast ratio ["gentler" than video in any form with less exposure latitude], the fact that the chemical process has been refined so far that limited lighting can still give good footage, the fact that the resolution of the film still exceeds almost all HD formats, and the fact that it's [currently] far cheaper in most places to shoot 35mm and digitise it for post than shooting in HD in the first place. This is not to mention the fact that the equipment itself for film costs only a fraction what HD equipment does. That will change as HD formats become more widespread, though. For most still photography [i have been a photographer for about 13 years] I would agree, but I'll repeat what I said in another thread here yesterday - let's see you do 10 minute exposures with CMOS or CCD cameras. I've found that, by and large, attempting to do night photography [what was my passion for a long time] with digicams, even $10k ones, gives pretty shoddy results compared to film. Admittedly, this is a very specialised use, relegating colour transparency or neg to the same class as b/w has been in for years already. I use cartridge DVD-RAM for my backups. Note that what I said in the previous post was re: dye-based WORM formats, which DVD-RAM is not one of [it's a phase-change medium, like CD-RW]. Interesting that you point this out - as no computer DVD-RAM drives that I'm aware of or have used were capable of it [including mine]. [DVD-RAM video recorders are known for their timeshifting capabilities, however.] DVD-RAM [backing you, here], incidentally, has notably more longevity than CD-R and RW or DVD-/+R and RW. Certainly not, but that's not to say there's no demand for wind-up radios. This is kind of a specious comparison to what I ended up saying about tape, anyway. Tape is simple and the playback method is direct, well-standardised and documented, and relatively easily reproduced with manufacturing techniques that are 60 years old. Let's see someone dig up a DVD-RAM drive in 100 years. It's not likely to happen, is it. A more direct analogy would have been digital broadcast vs. analogue FM or AM radio. Analogue radio uses relatively simple circuits for modulation and demodulation of simple signals; digital requires knowledge of the data format and the presence of its codecs as well as high-precision analogue circuitry. DAB as it stands now is only beginning to penetrate markets outside of Europe, and is largely doing so using encoding formats that are already over 10 years old. You appear to have missed my point entirely. It's not that it's the only feasible medium, it's that the cost-effectiveness taking into account signal degredation over time, the ability to play back the medium, and the medium's longevity itself is very high. It's true that DVD-RAM [to continue with that example] has a minimum expected lifetime of 30 years, whereas polymer-backed magnetic particle tape will suffer print-through and likely start shedding particles in the same period of time - but in 30 years, you will still be able to copy the tape again, even with its degredation. Optical media will be completely different in 30 years, whereas you will still be able to take a 1/4" analogue tape and play it back; archival is about more than just the content, it's also about maintaining the equipment to retrieve it. Again, let's see you pull out a working DVD-RAM drive in 100 [or even 20, for that matter] years that will interface with any of the equipment existing at that time. It likely won't happen - the cost of manufacturing the drives to retrieve ancient information will be exorbitant at best. My point was: an analogue tape machine is cheap, simple, and effective. I believe that the future of portables lies in solid-state media and eventually nonmechanical optical [holographic] and beyond that organic/molecular storage. But then, that's what I think. I think MD will stick around for a while in certain uses [it's heavily embedded in the broadcast industry, for instance, which is pretty much the only reason it survived in North America] but consumer use will give way primarily to solid state in the not so distant future. HiMD itself takes 30 year-old recording technology [the 16-bit LPCM front and back ends] and applies it to an already compromised medium [HiMD could have been higher-density from the start if they'd invested more time and money in refining the manufacturing process needed for DWDD discs] whose capacity is, really, not all that much to shout about these days. It is, however, a great step up from MD [which really was state of the art in 1992] and in terms of portable recording gear that uses a physical medium [that isn't solid-state] has literally no competition from any other part of the industry. MD itself is already dead in my eyes. Sony appear to have deprecated it, and the other leading manufacturers are offering next to nothing new in terms of equipment. Sharp for instance have stopped introducing new models [according to Sharp, at least], which is as much an omen for the format as Sony's lack of any new consumer models [they are still making gear intended for use by broadcasters and legal transcribers, from what I can tell]. Onkyo appears to be one of the only manufacturers still introducing new products for the format. I don't see the media disappearing soon, but the equipment is basically at the end of its manufacturing lifetime, and makers are moving on [including pro makers, like HHB and Tascam]. The flirtation the home/portable multitrack makers [like Yamaha] had with MD died off long ago, as well, in favour of hard disc recorders [and even 8mm tape]. No. There's a reason why Samsung is being touted as "the new Sony." Sorry for the confrontational tone. I'm enjoying the debate, really, not just arguing to be an arse.

Neat that your stereo has a USB input.

No. NetMD only supports playback through its line or headphone output of MD / MDLP audio already recorded on your discs, and SonicStage basically just acts as a glorified controller for it. i.e. press play on a track in SS's transfer window and it will play through the NetMD. There is no actual audio output from the computer through your NetMD. i.e. you can't use it as a sound card.

Converting directly to mp3 is the best reason for sticking with HiMDRenderer. I don't do this often, but I keep it around for those rare occasions. marcnet's program is top-notch.

aluminum resonates like a bell, though it does work in a pinch. Hard plastic or other acoustically reflective but largely nonresonant materials [like hardwood, heh] work better. If you're looking for a parabolic mic, make sure the element is unidirectional / cardioid. Paraboles made with omnis are basically asking for trouble with leakage.

HiMD was released worldwide last July/August, with some units out in June. That's less than one year.

Yes. Especially considering the fact that you can more HiSP tracks on a HiMD-formatted MD80 than you can LP2 tracks on an MDLP mode disc, with much higher quality. No. My opinion of the ATRAC/3/plus rates, in order of preference: 1. PCM, for obvious reasons [i rarely use it, though, for portable listening] 2. ATRAC SP, which has no support via USB 3. HiSP, which I use extensively and have no real qualms with the quality of [at least with 1st-gen compressed material] 4. LP2, which is okay for some things, but I generally consider SS and SB's LP2 encoding to be absolute crap 5. HiLP 64kbps, which is fine for voice recordings but I wouldn't use for anything else. It's simply not good enough for my ears and taste. Your mileage may vary. Many people are actually happy using HiLP, though I can't actually understand how.

Crazy. This thing takes longer to do a full charge than the built-in of the RH10 supposedly does?

Cassette tape is still the leading media in developing nations, from what I understand. It is cheap, durable, and arguably outlasts formats like CD-R [and any other dye-based optical WORM format]. Tape will never die. 1/4" open-reel is still the prevalent standard for archival usage. The reason? It's simple, it's mechanica, and it's analogue. You know that any company with tech knowhow will be able to design a machine that plays standard tapes any time in the future; the mechanics, playback mechanism and electronics required can be made using relatively simple techniques and the simplest solid state or even vacuum-tube technology. There are no competing data formats to worry about [only equalisation standards which are well established and documented], no competing encoding formats are a requirement [though noise reduction and/or compansion are options which are also doable with simple analogue circuits], &c. Even LPs if taken care of have the potential to outlive almost all currently-existing storage media. Their simple mechanical nature ensures thus.

It's sad, but it reflects the absolute domination of corporate interest in US society/culture.

I've been a photographer for a number of years as well, and have noted to people asking me about digicams how the pro models with fewer Mp will usually do a far better job than whatever consumer camera they're looking at. I tend to think of consumer digicams as the equivalent of those $25 plastic 35mm jobs you still find at department stores. People are frequently annoyed by my pointing out than my now-ancient Elan II can shoot 2.5fps with accurate exposure and focus where their 2 or 4Mp digital takes 6 seconds to take and store a single shot, and doesn't even support a raw/uncompressed storage mode. I personally find digis very frustrating, having been used to the whole "press the button and the photo is taken that instant" mentality of film. I still use film for important things, but the lower cost ratio has me shooting with borrowed digitals most of the time for things like simple documentary work and anything that ends up on the web. My own "specialty" was long-exposure night photography, which digitals simply won't do. [Try and get a CCD camera to take a 10 minute exposure. Oh? You mean, there's no 'bulb' mode? Oh? You mean, 'bulb' mode isn't even possible with CCD or hybrid sensors? Shame.] I didn't really say anything about how good older analogue stuff was, but okay. It's probably because they were mastered by people who cared about more than having a fast turnaround, or having their CD play louder on the cheapest possible hifi set imaginable than their competition's does. I have no issues with analogue mastering. I have even seen all-digital studios that keep Dolby SR analogue equipment around to run their mix through before it hits the digital master, to give that "analogue sound" [i.e. light saturation]. Sort of ironic that you say this, since most of the better classical recordings are pretty much straight from the mics to the recorder, with no engineering involved at all. Bit-pushing is the current trend, which basically raises the overall volume of tracks by pushing them into [mostly inaudible] distortion. It also destroys whatever dynamic range the recording may have once had. On the other hand, it makes your $15 boombox or sh*tty car stereo sound that much louder, and doesn't even need to be compressed [in the dynamic range sense, not the data reduction sense] for playback on the radio, which is the bottom line for many producers. They seem to ignore things like listening fatigue, which bothers me. I dislike the fact that listening to an entire Radiohead album from beginning to end is like going to a concert without earplugs - you end up partially deaf and with a headache, unable to listen to anything else for a while after. Despite being fragile, vinyl had/has its merits. I have a small collection of about 40 albums that I only listen to now in order to transcribe them to CD or HiMD. I think the real benefit of vinyl was its tactile quality. You had this big flat object that you could watch spinning, and huge magnificent cover art. It gave people a sense of connectedness to the music that I honestly think all modern formats lack. Music purchased online technically doesn't even have a physical carrier; there's no tangible cover art, and no object to put in your hands that says, "this is mine, I bought this music." The next generation of music lovers won't even know what they're missing. My most recent revisitings in terms of listening? Boomtown Rats' "The Fine Art of Surfacing" [1978] and Talking Heads' "Fear of Music" [1980], both copied from my vinyl collection.