dex Otaku

I am not aware of any physical difference between the units in any region, other than enabled support for asian languages. European and North American units are the same except for a setting that limits the output levels of the headphone amp [which can be altered in service mode]. If you're not interested in using Connect, the US/Canada version of 3.0 should not pose any problems for you. I would still recommend backing up your SS database [with the SS backup tool] before upgrading in any case, though.

The recording quality difference between basically -all- HiMD recorders is essentially nil. There may be minor improvements in the hardware codecs in 2nd-gen units, but the analogue side is pretty much identical throughout the entire range. This narrows the real decision down to features, such as backlit remote [NH1], OLED display [RH10], and timestamping [NH1 and RH10 only].

The discs have to have the CD-Text info on them. While CD-Text has technically been around for a long time, I have never seen a single commercially-produced disc that actually had the info on it. It's rare, to say the least. If you're burning your own CDs, you have to make sure that: * your burner supports CD-Text disc creation * your burning app supports it [Nero does, for instance], and that * you title things accordingly in the burning app, and enable the option

It's odd that it doesn't support 88.2kHz, but that's not really a bad thing. The reason I suggest multiples of the sampling rate you'd end up at [44.1kHz] is that resampling [converting from one rate to another] can cause distortion of several kinds, and resampling between rates that are not evenly divisible can cause -more- distortion. Really, when it comes down to it, if you're only doing one resampling then it doesn't make a huge difference. Also, if you're not doing a lot of editing it may be more advisable to just stick with the rate you'll end up at - 44.1kHz. I only suggested it in the first place because it's one of my "avoid adding distortion as much as possible even if it makes you seem obsessive-compulsive" guidelines. Dither: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dither Wikipedia has excellent entries on many topics related to digital audio, btw.

Component deck with digital out - see the equipment browser on http://www.minidisc.org .. We're talking about home and professional MD units that have optical SP/DIF outputs on them. As far as going the analogue route is concerned, I'd record in the highest resolution your sound card will support with a sampling rate that is a multiple of 44,100. For example, I use 88.2kHz and 24 bits for recording from most analogue sources that are destined for CD. Record in high res, do your editing, then as the final step resample/requantise and then dither/noise shape if necessary [any bit-depth conversion basically must be followed by noise shaping].

Yes, people have tried. No, it doesn't work. You can find the old threads discussing this by using the search function.

The usable space on MD80s is 291MB.

You're thinking of a balanced mono TRS connection, which no MD/HiMD recorders have, to my knowledge. The connection on your RH10 is an unbalanced stereo mic jack, which follows the same layout as any standard stereo 3.5mm jack, with the exception of plug-in power which I believe is applied to the sleeve [common ground].

You can use 3.0, yes. The only thing that is adversely affected is the Connect part of the program, which is set to the American URI. You can change this to Connect Europe using a registry patch we've linked to in the software forum.

The NH700 is still available here.. dunno. The new RH10 has the AA battery add-on, I think the RH910 might as well. I might be mistaken on this, but I'm pretty sure that the stick battery has to be in the unit for the AA to work, and the AA actually charges the stick when the unit's not in use. Yes, you can record beyond 6+hours by replacing the battery, but you do have to stop the unit while you swap the batteries.

Thanks, ozpeter.

I have made 6+ hour recordings [1GB disc at HiSP] with a single generic AA battery in te NH700.

This is precisely the reason [other than budget] that I bought a NH700. I would never consider purchasing a unit that doesn't at least have the AA add-on pack. You should check out http://www.quietamerican.org/ .. he does location recording using MD equipment [and has done it all over east Asia, including Nepal].

Interesting [and I grasp the reasons why it should/could be the case] but my experience says exactly the opposite. Much of the problem comes with case design and how the element is protected, but generally speaking, my experience with mics from Sony, Schoeps, Sennheiser, Shure, AKG, EV, Peavey, Tascam, and about a dozen other companies, including with microphones costing in excess of several thousand dollars each [and not intended for outdoor use, but hey, oops], is that omnis [and figure-of-eights] tend to be more susceptible to wind noise from any angle, though again - this depends on case design as much as it does on pickup pattern. Elements with closed backs, for instance, I have always found to be worse at handling wind [in the worst cases actually achieving something close to a DC offset because of constant negative pressure on the front of the element]. Pretty much regardless of what mic is used, I have found that certain angles of element-to-airflow are always louder than others, and found omnis to be far less forgiving for any given angle, creating broadband noise [including hypersonics which can severely mess with A/D converters] rather than simple rumble which can usually be filtered out. Certain cardioids and hypers are worse than others, particularly shotguns which use interference patterns set up by ridges along the mic casing and around the element, as each ridge acts as its own wind baffle.

If your DVD re-writer software is an add-on driver, it might be interfering with Sony's software attempting to find the drives. It may also have installed a deprecated ASPI driver. I would suggest that you try removing the DVD rewriter driver to see if that fixes the problem. You should still be able to use DVD+/-RWs with XP's writing util as well as with Nero and other writing utilities. As a general rule of thumb, the UDF drivers included with almost all writers [except for DVD-RAM drives] are not necessary for using RW drives in XP. Most UDF drivers cause more problems than they're supposed to solve.

Last night's feature film: <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0213314/">Xing yuan</a> (English title: Fly Me to Polaris)

I'll back bug80 on foobar2000, and drop a hint towards dBPoweramp as well.

Take a look at single-point mics on sites like www.soundprofessionals.com .. single-point mics often use batteries in their handles rather than taking power from the recorder.

There are two setting for bitrate: * the first applies to conversions as made from CDs &c. * the second applies to tracks sent to your player in the transfers window This way you can rip in one format and write a different one to your discs if needs be. It sounds to me like you have the second setting set to 105kbps. Some of these are largeish, so please allow time to load them .. The settings for what encoding gets used when ripping from CD are found here: [attachmentid=178] They can also be reached in the preferences from here: [attachmentid=180] [using the "Select Format" button] This is the settings dialogue from either place: [attachmentid=179] The settings for what gets written to your HiMDs or MDs are here: [attachmentid=181] They can also be reached in the prefs from here: [attachmentid=184] [using "Set Transfer Mode"] The basic dialogue is this: [attachmentid=182] Note that Standard mode tries to write whatever format the track is currently in the the disc asis; specifying a mode, well, specifies a mode, which is what it sounds like you've done. The advanced dialogue has additional settings: [attachmentid=183] In particular: * "Delete the converted files after transferring" and * behaviour for the "Standard transfer settings" mode Chances are, if you just switch the "Transfer Mode" to "Standard" your problem will be fixed.

M/S stereo is a specific single-point transducing/encoding type. It uses 2 microphone elements [a side-facing figure-of-eight element and a forward-facing cardioid] and matrix circuitry in order to reproduce a stereo field. Not all microphones are capable of M/S, in other words. Most microphones are not M/S stereo, and in fact, most "single point stereo" mics are not M/S either. Most use coincident patterns of one type or another. You have this backwards, A440. Any directional mic is more likely to reject noise outside its polar pattern, and that includes wind noise. Avoiding wind noise is, I would say, probably one of the main reasons for using cardioid and hypercardioid directional microphones. By comparison, omnis, being omnidirectional, will pick up wind noise from all directions simultaneously, including buffeting from shock mounts, mic clips, booms, partial obstructions such as walls, or even the person wearing the microphone. Incidentally, umbrellas, especially huge durable golf umbrellas, make great windshields when recording with omnis. Flyingpylon: There are whole collections on the net of samples from different microphones, including the ones mentioned in this thread already. Reactive Sounds and Sound Professionals both have archives of sounds recorded with the various microphones they sell, for instance. Searching the web for microphone model numbers will give you a few places to look for short demo recordings. I'm quite fond of my SP-TFB-2s, myself, though I wish I had a setup that could do on-location dolby stereo matrixing.

No, but it would be simpler and less of a quality hit for you to convert directly to uncompressed WAV and then use the resulting files to convert to atrac/3/plus. The fastest and simplest method, if you're using whole albums, is to write CD images using something like Nero [will Nero automatically use m4a files though - I honestly don't know], then mount the image using Nero Imagedrive, and dump them to MD / HiMD using Simple Burner. Converting m4a -> mp3 = an encoding generation loss... mp3 -> atrac/3/plus = another generation loss.. better to skip one of those generations, or, if possible, convert directly from the original source CD [which will take less time than either the way you're doing it now or the way I suggested above].

Its called Digital Rights Management [DRM] and it's specific purpose is to stop people from doing exactly what you're trying to do.

WAV is just a container. With WAV PCM this is like saying "here's a PCM stream with a header saying what it is". The header requires no processing, and the stream requires no decoding because it's already in the native format that the DAC uses. Note also that HiMD does not use WAV files, so the above is basically irrelevant anyway. HiMD uses a native [OMG] container for PCM. PCM recording and playback requires more battery power because of the higher bitrates used. It does not require -any- processing power other than for encryption/decryption.

I don't have a single MD/HiMD that is irreplaceable. While I do leave the majority of my discs alone [they being filled with my most often listened to albums and compilations] my sources are generally either CDs or CD images. The most work I'd have to do to recreate any disc that got damaged would be to mount a CD image or put a CD in the drive. Perhaps this is ironic, considering the fact that MD is more reliable in a long-term sense than either CDR or DVDR are. This does reflect the fact, however, that my NH700 was purchased primarily for recording. The download/playback features I consider to be little more than a bonus.

I'm sorry, but I have no solution to this problem. My only advice is to try uninstalling SS -and- SB, and re-installing them. Check this thread for instructions on removal: http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=8071 It does sound like one of SS's components [which are shared by SB] is missing. Unfortunately, as I have never experienced this issue myself, I can't really do more than guess at what the problem actually is. Good luck, and again - let us know the results. edit: What version of Windows are you using, and is it updated to the most recent servicepack &c.?