dex Otaku

If you need a spare or backup unit, I'd recommend the NH700. It's less expensive, has all the same recording features, and the only playback feature it lacks is the virtual acoustics thing which is useless anyway. Other than all-metal [NH1] or part-metal [NH900] case, and digital amp, and the NH1's time/date-stamping feature, there's not much real difference between these units. I've had my NH700 since the week they came out in Canada, and it has seen .. well, it's been dropped a few times, &c. I have had no problems with it despite this. The build quality is excellent despite being all plastic. It also uses totally standard AA batteries that you can find anywhere for cheap [one of the main reasons I bought it in the first place]. I see that Minidisc Canada no longer lists it as available, but there are retailers out there still selling this model. Note that in the US, the NHF-800 is the nearest equivalent [the only difference being the 800's radio tuner remote]. If you're really bent on the choice between the NH1 and NH900, I'd go with the NH900 for one reason and one reason only: the ability to use standard AA batteries as well as its rechargables.

Thanks, skyther. BTW, I know people here who use their MDLP portables exclusively with LP2 [hardware encoded via optical copy] - because they like how it subtly alters the stereo image. The first time someone told me that, I almost choked on my drink - but there it is.

There are at least a few thousand audio engineers who would dispute this, from experience in practise, not theorising. Not that they'd dispute physics, just that they'd dispute which works better. True, but the bitstream going over AES/EBU, SPDIF coax or optical does not contain this kind of error correction. CD's error correction is part of reading the stream from the disc. What comes out the digital pipe does not work the same way. More info? Look up SPDIF on wikipedia.

Sony are neither deaf nor stupid. Suggestive reasons why? Sonicstage v3.x - contains suggested changes [from myself] which were posted here and sent to Sony's Canadian tech support people with the byline "Please forward this to your software engineers." Maybe I'm having delusions of grandeur, but [for example] they basically took my suggestion about autonaming uploaded tracks to the date and time of either timestamp from the recording unit or of upload. The thread is still kicking around here somewhere. Other suggested changes have made their way into there as well. My bet is that if every one of us emailed Sony's tech support with a request to "please fix the defective MP3 support of gen2 units" and reasons detailing the problem, they'll probably take notice. In any case, it doesn't matter that much to me. My RH10 is on its way, apparently, and I will be happy using it for its main purpose: recording. The only time I will likely be using for listening to MP3s is when I want to fast-dump tracks onto the unit to walk somewhere - a situation in which even an 8kHz 24dB/oct high-shelf wouldn't bother me that much. For tracks I actually want to 'keep' on HiMDs, I'll continue using Simple Burner and HiSP.

As someone who does almost everything with his right hand [nerve damage to the left; I type using a dvorak right-hand keyboard] I think I can put my opinion in here with good reason: I have an NH700, and I use it quite regularly for recording, and I use it exclusively with my right hand without difficulty. I dislike the tiny-ness of the buttons et al, but otherwise find the controls just fine to use. All Sony models that lack switches or the sliding record button [i.e. all models since about what, 1999?] are this way. I also find this lack-of-feature quite annoying. I'd like to see a return to actual switches on the units for things like AGC et al, myself. Sonicstage 3.x has this built-in. As with basically all hardware that includes software, my rule is: set the disc that came in the package aside, and download the newest version. HiMD was conceived this way, and there are many reference sources out there that can give this information [basically DRM-related issues] before you purchase your equipment. Don't take this too personally, but IMO if one doesn't learn about what they're buying before they do so, I would go so far as to say they basically have no right whatsoever to complain about it. On the other hand, Sony are now infamous for their rather marginally truthful [if not outright false] advertising. Magneto-optical media are not known for their speediness. There are limits to how fast MO and DWDD/MO discs can be written to or read from, and those limits are further strained by making equipment not only portable but with the requirement of low-power consumption. MO media is quite durable and relatively [especially compared to various flash formats] inexpensive, though. It's a trade-off, to be sure. Compared to having to dump tapes by analogue means, though, this is a huge step up. If you've been recording long enough to remember how long things used to take, it seems well worth the trouble considering the price of the equipment and media [and the quality of what you can do with them]. The included battery with basically all Sony portables is and should be considered no more than a courtesy. What you purchased was not a complete recording rig, and no one would try to pretend it was such. If you want high-capacity batteries, go buy them from your local electronics retailer. Consider that for less than $300 you have purchased a portable recording device that will consistently, for the life of the unit, outperform equipment that cost in excess of a few thousand dollars only ten years ago. If what you wanted was something faster and simpler, there are a variety of flash-based recorders out there that also do an excellent job. Most of them cost more than your NH700, though.

Coax or optical for short cable runs are fine. Both use nearly the same standards to talk to other devices as the AES/EBU interface [digital over balanced cables, usually XLR line cables]. Coax is considered superiour because plastic fibre can cause jitter in the bitstream, which can't happen with an electrical cable. Fibre, when bent or looped, causes minute refractions and reflections both inside the material carrying the light and from light reflecting off the walls of the fibre itself [which, at worst, causes something close to standing-wave interference patterns]. Given sufficient bends, the signal can be degraded sufficiently to cause unrecoverable errors. In practise, this is almost never experienced. Another thing to keep in mind about "digital is digital": MD and HiMD recorders, to my knowledge, resample their input to 44.1kHz [and have been doing so for years]. Nominally this is to convert 32kHz or 48kHz streams to MD's 44.1kHz.. however, in order to maintain time accuracy, even 44.1kHz streams are resampled; all streams, regardless of sampling rate, are reclocked. This means that recording with the optical in is -never- bit accurate, probably even if using PCM mode with HiMD. Some have said this accounts for MD's "better sound" than even the source a recording came from. Again, in practise, the chance that anyone will notice any effect from this is close enough to nil to be nil itself.

lame and other encoders sometimes use [especially with <160kbps CBR rates and VBR] an ATH filter that basically drops everything above 15kHz. If you do a spectrogram of a song encoded this way, you'll see the high end wisp in and out as sounds exceed the ATH [absolute threshold of hearing] above 15kHz .. This shouldn't affect things in the way the RH10 is, though.

Note that "broadcast quality" in radio terms is WAY, WAY below the standards followed for just about anything else. Common radio setup [CBC reporters carry this stuff]: * MZ-R57 recorder * 3.5mm -> XLR adapter [with bracket, screwed onto the bottom of the MD] * AKG dynamic omnidirectional mic [handheld reporter's mic, response drops at 15kHz] MD settings: HIGH mic sens, AGC on NORMAL By my experience, most actual radio recordists are about as far from purist recordists as one can possibly get. Their goal is to get the sound, period, even if it means compressing/limiting the crap out of it, using a mediochre but extremely durable omni mic, &c.

I also mostly use SB now - mostly because you advised it [and were right about that]. SB itself is a near-perfect application at what it does. It has one purpose, and it does it well. I wish SS were like that, too, even if it has improved a lot.

Also, if you're running on Windoze pre-2000 be sure you've got the Personal Audio Driver and storage drivers [in the same download in our downloads section] installed.

Playing digitally via USB works for HiMD units with HiMD-formatted discs. Legacy MDs [MDLP or SP discs] can only be played via the analogue route, i.e. by running a cable from the headphone or line output [if there is one] and routing that through a preamp, your computer, or speakers. As A440 said, you can control any netMD or HiMD from SonicStage, but playback other than with HiMD-formatted discs is via analogue only.

I've seen SS 3.x warn, but only when you actually attempt the transfer. I don't recall if it was a sel-recorder track that was already uploaded or not .. part of my testing. I think I may have capped the warning and posted it here a while ago.

Note that cranking the EQ induces harmonic distortion above a certain level.

A440: every attempt I've seen at copying anything written by computer to HiMD back to any installation of SS [including the one it originated from] simply erases the recording from the disc exactly like a "traditional" NetMD's check-in.

SonicStage can write in pseudo-SP, that is, LP2 padded out to look like SP. It has the same sound quality as SS's LP2, since it is SS's LP2. If you don't take issue with SS's implementation of LP2, this is a reasonable option for you. You can also record direct to real SP mode on your NH900 via the analogue [3.5mm] or optical in [same jack, different cable obviously]. This is true Type-R SP mode, but recordings must be made in real time. To get your recorder to record in true SP mode, put a blank MD60, MD74, or MD80 in the unit, and switch it using the menu system to "NetMD" mode [look up the exact location of this in your manual]. You can achieve the same results with a Hi-MD reformatted MD by switching to NetMD mode and doing an "erase all" in the edit menu. In NetMD mode, NH-series HiMDs act exactly as any other recording NetMD or MDLP-capable unit would.

==slaps zerodB on the wrist==

I'm sitting here editing a small concert I recorded two weeks ago. I don't know about you, but I remember things like where I sat, where others were sitting when annoyance sounds occur [especially celphones ringing]. The first thing I noticed was the cel phone. The second was the person sitting beside me clearing their throat. They're in the wrong channel! For some reason, SS, while converting the PCM tracks from its library, decided to reverse the channels. No, I didn't have the mics backwards. With the SP-TFB-2s, there's only one way to put them in your ears, so that's not the problem. Neither is it that my editor has reversed them mysteriously, or that my headphones are reversed, or any such thing. During mixing, all left/right panning &c. works as it should, and other files dropped in the same editing session are oriented correctly. This is the first time this has happened to me, and while it's not catastrophic, it certainly is weird.

Not that I'm aware of, of course - it depends on how fast your system is. Mine is c.2003, an athlon XP 2500+ [barton].

As indicated in several hundred posts over the past several years, no. There is no such thing as uploading from legacy MD / MDLP discs. You can do digital transfers from MD / MDLP discs with a home deck that has an optical output, however. In any case it is faster to just rerip the CDs anyway. On my machine it only takes about 5-10 minutes to rip+transfer a CD to HiMD using Simple Burner [and that's using the slower, 80-minute MDs reformatted as HiMD].

A lower minimum input level on the mic preamp means that it should have a lower noise floor, and consequently a higher dynamic range while recording. This doesn't mean it will be able to handle loud sounds better, but it does mean it should be able to handle quiet sounds better.

Microphones put out a very low-level signal. A preamplifier brings that signal up to a level that can be used over longer cables [transmission loss being the main reason to amplify microphone signals] as well as to match the expected input level to mixing desks, recorders, and the like. When you plug a microphone into a mixer, you're plugging it into a preamp. In its simplest incarnation it is just an input jack, a gain control, and an output jack. Other things commonly found in preamps are equalisation, phase inversion, &c. Portable preamps range from pocket units meant specifically for use with the small mics used with MDs, such as the Boost Box from Reactivesounds [see http://www.reactivesounds.com/spa2.php], or the SP-Preamp from Sound Professionals [see http://www.soundprofessionals.com/cgi-bin/.../item/SP-PREAMP], to those meant specifically for use with balanced microphones [like the M-Audio DMP-3, see http://www.minidisc-canada.com/shopexd.asp?id=342]. I would recommend using a preamp that offers balanced connections with the NT4. Balanced connections let you use much longer cables [i.e. 10 metres instead of 1 metre] without incurring significant signal loss or absorbing large amount of electromagnetic interference from other nearby equipment or electrical lines.

Have you tried following the removal directions in kurisu's faq? See here: http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=8071

I don't see anything silly about it, no. The first 'real' recordings I made [c.1992] were using a Technics SV-100 digital audio processor [which I still have sitting beside me here] and a pair of matched condensors with custom preamp that together retailed for about $5,000CAD. The SV-100 I paid $250 for, and used with a $500 Sony VHS VTR. The SV-100 is a 14-bit processor with a noise floor that is actually pretty damned horrible. My NH700 records far more cleanly, with higher dynamic range, lower noise floor, better linearity, &c. - it also consumes a fraction of the power, doesn't require a second device to record the signal it processes, and leaves the old stuff in the dust in terms of reliability and ease of use. I would really recommend using an outboard preamp with the NT4, though. The mic preamps on MD and HiMD recorders are fine for general-purpose use, but if you really want to make full use of the mic, something with "real" headroom, a lower noise floor, &c. would be a fine idea.

Have you tried formatting the disc on the unit itself? enter the menu, go to "edit", then down to "format". I've had discs do this before from things like downloads getting interrupted, but reformatting them from either SS or on the unit itself always fixed the problem immediately. Not sure why it's staying like that for you.

How about this for a figure: a full 1GB disc takes between 30-60 minutes to upload, depending on the number of tracks on it. In terms of PCM recordings, uploading takes place at between 2-3x realtime.