dex Otaku

Outboard battery packs have been around for aeons for such things as cameras, portable lighting, video cameras, professional sound recording equipment, &c. As long as you can find the proper connector for the power input of your recorder, and as long as you use the right combination of cells for the proper voltage and current requirements, you don't need to worry about regulation of either. DC from a dry cell is DC, period. I have been considering building one of these myself since I [re-]discovered the problem caused by trying to record from a powered mic when usingthe AC adapter: HUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM. I know I've said it before, but it seems that companies like Sony have gotten so cheap that they're unwilling to throw a voltage regulator [less than a few cents each in quantity] and a capacitor into their AC adapters to prevent this kind of issue. I guess in their quest to maintain low manufacturing complexity they simply cut these things out. Incidentally, I can also hear the hum when -playing- discs on my NH700 while plugged into the AC adapter, which is annoying as hell.

The only real answer to your question is that you can't upload from MD, period. You can transfer digitally from MD using a home or professional deck with optical out, but there is no way to transfer from MD to your computer via USB. Despite the fact that it should technically be possible [and quite simple, really] Sony have decided simply not to support this as an option for their customers.

I find parts of this hard to believe. In the case of the Lyra recorder, sure, no problem. But the thought that someone can't tell the difference between MD at SP and a device that records over 4 hours in only 128MB is a little harder to come to terms with. Yes, there are dedicated speech codecs that work amazingly well. Yes, the recording bandwidth is probably limited by using a 8 or 16kHz sampling rate, which simplifies encoding and helps prevent artifacting. Still, though. This thing is either a miracle product, or these videographers are either deaf or have REALLY low standards in terms of audio [which admittedly is true of most people I've met in video-related industries]. Let's not forget that until quite recently [i.e. the last 10 years], the best-quality audio used when location video recording was usually the linear tracks of whatever videotape format was used - which had about equivalent quality [often worse] to cassette tape [similar track width and tape speed]. I know a few professional videographers and video artists. Most of them have absolutely no clue what they're doing with audio [which is how I get to know them - they come to me to help with that part]. They often come my way with questions about "How do you un-distort audio?" because they made their only recording of a vital and non-repeatable function on their cam and didn't even bother to set levels. Archiviing on DAT? That's also a bit strange, considering that it's one of the most volatile and least reliable tape formats ever created. The vast majority of archival houses still use exclusively 1/4" analogue open-reel tape for longevity. Most actual archivists won't use DAT as anything other than an intermediate medium [like what the recording is originally made on, to be dumped and erased immediately after]. God. Sorry. I'm being snarky again. Grain of salt, grain of salt. Time to go meditate or something.

If you really want to get into a discussion on video.. IMO, if a storage system with sufficient bandwidth were cheap and practical, hi-band or HD analogue video is VASTLY superiour to ANY form of digital video recording. This is one of the reasons that I look at DVRs and cringe - yeah, great, I'll record what was originally a clean analogue video signal [in most cases still] but has been lossily compressed for satellite transmission, then converted back to analogue, then back to compressed digital for local cable distribution.. Whatever. Most of the stuff on TV now has already gone through between 2-5 generations of lossy compression before it even reaches your TV, even with analogue cable systems. So yeah, again - great, let's take that 4th-gen signal and recompress it on my DVR. Fantastic. The whole concept makes analogue masters playing to analogue satellite transmissions to analogue cable distribution to standard VHS tape in the home sound nothing more than blissfully high-resolution, to me. I also believe that analogue audio recording is inherently superiour. It's the same thing though - given a high enough resolution storage and transmission medium, analogue will always be better than digital. Digital is far easier to store and transport, though. It's also easier to process in most ways. Storage, processing, and distribution are what digital is great for. Consistent quality, sure, when used properly. Most of the time, though - as with cable distribution - it's not used properly. By the time the signal reaches the viewer, it's gone through so many generations of loss that it's hardly worth watching. You may as well download windows media 150kbps streams and put them on your TV - I'd say they're roughly the same quality in many cases.

Remotes: to my knowledge, the non-tuner remotes should work across the line of HiMD players. If there's a specific remote you want to know about, please say so - those with more experience trying these things out [i don't have the means to do so] will probably be able to answer your question. Incidentally, the RM-MC40ELK remote seems most popular as a replacement for the ones included with North American and European models. [This is the remote that comes with the NH1] Storage: Hmm. I usually just stick the unit in one of my pockets, though I have also put it in my backpack or worn a hip-pocket thingy just for carrying it. Honestly, the players are small enough that even the fatter AA-battery using ones can easily slip into a pants pocket and barely be noticeable. They don't skip while you're walking, either, though constant jarring will wear batteries out faster and likely shorten the life of the player as a whole. linux: Simply put, no. And welcome to the fora.

I use a combination of things. For simple timeline editing, I still use Vegas actually. As I said, I like its interface - it has the simplest combination of features in terms of nondestructively splitting, combining, and crossfading tracks. For most mono or 2-track editing I use Sound Forge 6. [7 has too many problems co-existing with other Sonic Foundry/Sony products because it has unicode support while the rest don't - meaning a whole different set of basic plugins, file converters &c. that are compatible between the new and old.] I find I use a combination of SF6 and Vegas for most things. Most processing I do in SF. Timeline editing I tend to do in Vegas, which many might consider odd, since Vegas is actually intended for video editing. At various times and for various purposes I have also been known to use Samplitude [which I stay away from now as the recent versions have so many bugs in them that they're completely unusable for even just general-purpose editing], Cakewalk [my first multitrack mixes (tracks dumped from an analogue 8-track portastudio) on computer were done with Cakewalk back in 1998 on a K6-233 wtih 32MB], Nuendo, Acid [which I consider to be next to useless for basically everything], Reason, Live Delta, Audacity, and Cool Edit. The only truly popular editor I have purposefully avoided is probably Cool Edit. I have never liked its interface. Adobe Audition doesn't appeal to me, either. It's nothing to do with actual functionality or buggy software; it's just that I like things to work a certain way. Sonic Foundry products seem the closest to ideal in most instances for my purposes and preferences. Mind you, I'm biased on that point - back in about 1991 or 92, I informally beta-tested Sound Forge 0.x and have pretty much stuck with the Foundry people since. I was extremely upset to discover that Sony had bought them not so long ago. But.. Perhaps the SF folks are who might tackle the problems with SonicStage. That would be interesting, to say the least.

Vegas 4.0. Used for mixing 5.1 surround. Yes, there are better progs for that, but Vegas by far has the simplest interface I've used of any of them. Also, at the time that I did this [mid 2003] it was the only app I could find that would do it.

[Click for larger image]

The lands and pits are a modulated analogue signal. And, technically, the lands and pits themselves, even on a CD, are an analogue of the digital signal. Which makes all stamped optical media inherently analogue, even if the recorded signal is digital. So there's one to think about, aye?

The difference between 48kHz and 44.1kHz sampling rate is minimal at best. Also, if you're recording anything for later distribution, chances are -very- high that you'll end up resampling to 44.1kHz anyway. 16 vs. 24-bit recording is another matter. If you're going to be making recordings that need to be post-processed in any great way, it makes sense to use higher than 16-bit resolution when you can. Converting it down to 16-bit later isn't much of a problem. Properly [carefully] processed 16-bit audio is more than adequate for most people's needs, but [especially] if you're going to be messing around with amplitude-related [volume] processing after, the higher the bit resolution is, the better things will work out. Caveat: Crappy A/D converters are crappy A/D converters, regardless of their resolution. Bad 24-bit recording is worse than good 16-bit recording. You tend to get what you pay for in this department, though it's nice to note that relatively high-quality equipment is available for not that much money these days.

Yes, the only USB device is the trackball. I have other things, like a 2nd NIC for P2P, a 1394 card, a cheapo webcam, &c. but I only connect them or install them when they're actually being used.

System specs: Nforce2-based motherboard; AMD Athlon XP 2500+ [barton core, 1.833GHz]; Samsung 512MD DDR 400 RAM; Kensington USB trackball; Panasonic DVD-RAM [-R/-RW/RAM/CDR/CDRW writer]; Optorite 40x12x40 CD-R; 2 x WD 80GB 7200RPM ATA100 hdd; separate ATA133 controller for hard discs [each IDE device has its own interface to itself]; ESS 56k voice/faxmodem; Revolution 7.1 sound card; Nvidia MV34 [FX 5200] 128MB dual-head AGP 8x video with analogue video in/out I think that's it.

This sounds more like a hardware problem than anything. I would look at exchanging it, myself.

There's no way to prevent it when using the line-in. I pretty much ignore the trackmarks, and after uploading to SS I just combine all of them for export and editing.

Incidentally, sometimes new messages get bumped off the bottom of the "View New Posts" page, which I actually use. If the board has a few really active topics, it's easy for something that hasn't been replied to recently to fall off the bottom.

Well, first - the instructions aren't for the line-in/line-out method. They're for recording digitally over USB in the case that your sound card has a digital through in its mixer. Second, there's no optical out on your portable. Hooking up an optical cable won't do anything for you in this case. You can use optical going -from- your computer -to- the line-in/opt of the HiMD, but not the other way 'round. If you want to copy things the analogue way from your HiMD, connect a 3.5mm stereo to 3.5mm stereo cable [like earphone plugs on each end] from the headphone/line out of your HiMD to the line-in on your sound card. Make sure that AVLS and the EQ are turned OFF on the HiMD. Turn the volume up to about 25/30. I have no idea what kind of sound card you have, but you must have the line-in selected as its recording source, and you should set the recording levels so they're neither off the bottom of the scale nor peaking too high. It is possible to calibrate your line-in for "line-level" from the HiMD, but that requires test files and patience. At this point you should be able to record in Audacity.

The old tricks are the best tricks.

bump

Interesting that you put it this way. When I came here [only last summer] I knew very little about MD or HiMD. I came to learn about them. I'd used MD equipment before, I was around and knew about its existence when it was released. [side note: at that time I argued fiercely against both it and DCC's using lossy compression. I actually wrote an essay/speech about when I was in high school. No one else knew wtf I was talking about, of course.] Point being - I came here for the same reason you did. I've been on the net one way or another since about 1988. I've seen it go from being a tight-knit community in many areas to being an overpopulated, overrated, commercialised pile of junk. Still - there is such a thing as community out here. It's tended to become more insular, sure. But it's still here. And it's here. I know that. Incidentally, I spend a great deal of time here. On a busy day, probably 5-6 hours. And I'm not even a mod or admin. The truth is that contributing to this place [even if I am sometimes a snarky bastard] is one of the only things I actually still do in my life.

This is not strictly true, from my understanding; if you format the HiMD from explorer, you should be able to make full backups of it. Of course, the disc will be unusable for audio, which defeats the purpose.

This is not necessarily so. Most recorders that use standard media like flash cards can be used with basically any OS on any computer that supports USB mass-storage devices [i.e. card readers]. From MD - not HiMD - there have been two preferred methods for this. First is to get a home deck, since they have the optical output the portables lack. Second is by analogue means, just like with any other audio device. This is true when using the line input. The idea is to automatically mark tracks where a quiet passage goes to a louder one, which is imprecise at best, but actually does work well under most circumstances. If you're using the mic input [at least on the HiMDs and the more recent MDs I have used] this doesn't happen. Track marks are either automatic at timed intervals [i use this, and it's something you have to turn on that isn't on by default] or happen when you pause/restart or hit the "track mark" key. If you'll be making ambient recordings with an external mic preamp going into the line-in - There might be some weirdness there. Still, as I said, it usually works out okay. Aside from which, you can join and split tracks later either right on the MD / HiMD or using SonicStage, or, for that matter, in your editing software. Most of them don't have real line outputs anymore [attempting to run a 1V+ p-p amp along with the rest of the internals off a 1.5V power supply?] What the line out option on the 900 and NH1 does is force all filtering off, and probably squeeze a bit extra juice to the output, which in both cases is a digital amp. While it's not the same, I have copied recordings off my NH700 using its headphone output and they still exceeded my expectations in terms of freq response, noise floor, dynamic range, &c.

#1 - no MD or HiMD portables have had optical outputs for quite some time. I believe only one model or series of models ever had it, but I might be wrong. Check out the equipment browser on http://www.minidisc.org and compare models. #2 - MD does not upload, period. HiMD does, but it relies completely on Sony's software, which in all likelihood will never exist on the Mac platform. So, again, my suggestion is something like the Edirol R-1. I do NOT keep current on what other digital recorders are on the market, and I don't have any way to test any, as the nearest place that even -might- sell any of them is at least 240km away, so my opinion regarding the R-1 is based on advertised functionality alone. The R-1 does not fit in your price range, though. I would honestly consider the NH900 HiMD for your purposes, though. You can make PCM recordings, and even copied by analogue means [counting on your puter having reasonable A/D conversion] the end-quality of your recording will be excellent. Mind you, that's all in real time. I used standard low-end consumer MD equipment for field recording of sound effects and location ambience a couple of years ago, along with the stellarly mediocre Sony MS907 stereo mic. That was copied [by the headphone out, not a line-out] analogue to my puter for further editing, and the results never failed to exceed my expectations [at that point being exceeded in quality only by recordings I'd made with DAT and Nagra open-reel recorders] despite lossy compression, successive A/D and D/A conversions, and not having a real line output. The NH900 is in your price range, and if you can handle the realtime dubs, I'd seriously consider it.

I finally got around to listening to these two recordings.. The common element between them [as with virtually all live recordings made by micing the space] is that sense of being inside a box. Most people don't reflect on the fact that when you point a mic into a room and hit record, you're recording the room, really. It's a bit like the bad PA/good band analogy, and in fact is a corollary to it - a good PA can't make a shoddy band sound good, but a good band sounds good even on a bad PA. Likewise, a good band can still sound great in a place that is a craphole in the acoustic sense. That said... The Visulite recording sounds more .. bassy. The band itself is clearer, from what I'm hearing so far. The Variety Playhouse recording sounds like it's in a better space. The crowd is balanced almost perfectly in a stereo sense, and the room acoustics don't seem to make things wacky. The bass is weaker, but a pinch of EQ fixes that. This one seems much clearer in an overall sense, even though there's much more of a sense of listening to a recording of a PA system rather than listening to a band. I seem to prefer the Variety Playhouse recording.

TOTALLY off-topic, but hey: WAV files are big.. heh.. my first editing with 16 bit audio was done on a system with a 210MB hard disc. Not much room for editing. Then two years ago I found myself editing 16GB worth of audio that was mostly 24/96. For a single project that ended up being 56 minutes in length. Yeah. WAV files are big. Heh.

:: imagines a large-pocket-sized 4 x 'D' cell pack .. along with claims for 100 hour battery life ::