dex Otaku

Mac Mini = the beginning of the end of computers in clunky cases. Maybe this is the first little step in moving towards a world of ono-sendai decks and sandbenders. Thanks to USB, 1394, and wireless shite, we're becoming more peripheralised by the minute. Everything is optional. Heh. edit: Note that this isn't saying that the Mac mini is a powerful computer by today's standards. It is, however, well-purposed for simple, single-task use in an "everyday" household environment. Check your email. Watch a DVD. Fill in your appointment calendar. Browse MDCF. One thing at a time, generally. It's a design predicated on compromise. The idea is to make it small and relatively cheap, and highly functional in terms of single-task use. Make it an appliance. Make it ubiquitous. A box you plug the rest of the stuff into; monitor, speakers, keyboard, pointing device, hard disc, television, goggles. You can bundle it up in your knapsack with a power cable and know that you can plug someone else' keyboard, mouse, CRT, etc. into at the other end. Iti's the transient's computer. Heh.

Check out the Marantz PMD-670 at http://www.soundprofessionals.com/cgi-bin/...item/MAR-PMD670 This is a pro broadcasting recorder, with XLR jacks, phantom power, et al. Looks to be about the size of a modern DAT portable, sans the moving parts. More expensive, yes. But you tend to get what you pay for with things like this - it's probably something that could last you 20 years if there's still anything around by that time that can read the media. In the HiMD line I'd look at either the NH900 or the NHF800 [or the NH700 depending on where you are]. The advantage of models other than the NH1 is the ability to use AA batteries. This is the only reason I would never get an NH1. I have an NH700 and it works very well. I wouldn't really recommend it for broadcast use, though. It's shape and all-plastic case would surely lead to it having a short lifetime given the kind of regular use and abuse a reporter's rig usually sees. For the occasional interview or something, it would be fine.

If we were to wiki-ise this, and have inline media, the catch-all could work nicely. Put a photo of an RCA output up and say, "If it has this coming out of it" &c. That way all people have to do is identify whether or not the plugs/jacks look the same. And yeah, it may seem a copout, but really, the procedure for any recording is identical once you have the equipment hooked up. It's hooking it up that's different every time, so concentrating on what all those different pieces of equipment have in common is.. well, that's the idea. From my POV at least. How does that go.. give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime. Something like that. Anyway, enough pontificating. Incidentally, the SACD thing is true, as you said above. The important thing to note is that what you're ripping is a CD-compatibility layer, which will usually be a 2-track mastered version of the same recording, same as would come on a normal CD. I.E. in copying the CD layer of an SACD, you're gaining absolutely nothing over ripping a plain CD version, unless it was another remaster or something.

I would heartily recommend the Edirol R-1 [http://www.edirol.com/products/info/r1.html] for journalistic use. Also, for journalistic use I would recommend a mono handheld dynamic omni microphone such as the broadcast models that AKG make. They are not overly cheap, but are built to take a beating. I know people using AKG omnis [including CBC people] who have had the same mic in good working condition for 20+ years, going from open-reel to cassette to MD with the same mic. You might consider a HiMD unit for her purposes, but the totally non-mechanical aspect as well as the ability to upload recordings very easily and completely in the clear [without having to rely on any proprietary software at all] give the R-1 some pretty clear advantages.

I would check in the file properties. It's likely that SS has kept the original copy as well as the lp2 one. Just -rightclick on the file in the SS library then go to 'properties' if I'm not mistaken. The last tab on the window should tell you what copies of the file it has stored.

2-channel version on DVD-A, as with the compatibility layer on SACD, are completely different mixes of the same tracks. Mixing down a 5.1 source to 2.0 channels != engineering a whole other take in stereo. If you're listening in stereo, you want a stereo source. Downmixed multichannel is NOT a substitute.

Is it encoding at 48kbps atrac3plus by default? Check the bitrate you're encoding at. It sounds to me like you're hearing the compression artifacts of low-bitrate encoding.

Ah. Well, good.

Why not go the step further and have something like that edirol 24-bit recorder with a HiMD drive built-in - recordings could be made without any mechanical parts moving, no danger of skipping or loss from shock movements.. the ability to edit either in memory or on disc just as with md/himd already, and finally the option to 'burn' the himd. Like those hard disc/RAM recorders with CD-Rs or DVD+/-Rs built-in. Only a heck of a lot smaller, and taking way less power.

Dag Nabbit! Now she spends all her time with her iPod!

If he has USB, yes - that should work. Make sure you take the Sony CD with you though - if he has windows98 you need the drivers.

What, do you want lessons in how to burn DVDs?

Use the backup utility in SonicStage. Iti's extremely slow, but it does create an archive of your library that you can then burn to DVDs.

How I figured out that 18/30 was "unity" [actually slightly below it]: 1) I played a loosely-calibrated -12dBfs signal [output by my sound card as -12dBVU] and matched the levels on the HiMD so that the hash mark on the scale was where -12 sat. I then repeated this with -6dBfs and 0dBfs signals to see how close it was. It's out by about -1.5dB at 18/30 according to my exquipment. This would be more accurately done with a signal generator and oscilliscope, but alas, I have neither.

Copy the Zip disc using your computer and write its contents to a CD.

Sites like http://www.wikicities.com/index.php/Wikicities permit free hosting of community-based wikis. Another possibility is http://www.riters.com/?content=About%20Us . If there is anyone out there with more wiki experience than I [none, really], please do speak up. Your input would be greatly appreciated. The possibility of having a "community access" wiki for basically all the [currently] static pages on minidisc.org also exists, for those willing to assist in the work. This could mean an evolution of sorts for both minidisc.org and parts of MDCF.

The skinny on surround sound: It might technically be possible to ship the data for a DTS CD to a HiMD in PCM mode, though the forced resampling might munge the data. A HiMD deck with digital output -might- be able to play back this disc as DTS with suitable equipment. Not worth putting in the FAQ, really, but there it is. Dolby Stereo, Prologic, and Prologic II all use the same basic standards for matrix-encoding their signal. Any system capable of true stereo encoding or joint stereo encoding [NOT intensity stereo] should work properly for playing back and stereo matrix-surround format. MDLP / LP2 should be capable of this, as well as HiSP, HiLP, and SP as well as PCM modes of recording. Again, steering information [phase angle and/vs. intensity per channel &c.] will get progressively more damaged as bitrate is lowered as well as with any generation loss incurred by transcodings. In plain English, this means that it will work less well at lower bitrates, but it should still work. Again - compression artifacts will also be more obvious in the decoded rear channel. Stereo matrix surround formats depend on the "stereo" part for campatibility. Anything that can encode stereo or joint-stereo properly should work with matrix surround. Period. Important note: any stereo analogue source that follows the general standard of home stereo equipment [eg. tape decks, satellite receivers, CD players, VCRs, another MD, &c.] can be recorded to HiMD. This should probably be the #1 answer in "what can I record from?" since the correct answer is basically "anything you have to right kind of cable to plug in to." Another important note: while many receivers now have SACD convertors built-in, there is no way to directly copy the DSD stream digitally without using equipment made just for that purpose. It is possible [nay, easiest] to copy a stereo SACD by analogue means simply by using the correct kind of cable for your equipment. The same applies with DVDs, and in fact, any analogue source. 8a. See answer re: SACD. Copying DVD audio digitally may not be possible, depending on the format it was recorded in. Analogue copies [in stereo] are always possible. 9. Can I record from my TV? How about my Satellite TV Music? You can record from any analogue source as long as you have the proper cabling. [An obvious exception to this is from turntables, which require a phono preamp to be recorded from.] 10. Can I record from my FM Radio? You can record from any analogue source as long as you have the proper cabling. 10a. My HiMD unit comes witha Radio Tuner. Can I record from that tuner to my MD? No. The radio [in the remote] does not have a feed going back to the recorder, so alas, this is not possible. 11. What is T-Mark button for? Pressing it while recording will cause a track mark to be inserted; the track that was being recorded will be marked as ending, and a new track will begin. 12. What is Download button for? I don't even know the answer for this. 13. How do I adjust volume during recording, it's entirely too loud! 13a. For microphone recording? Two interpretations for this: A1: Turn down the volume control. The HiMD routes whatever input you are recording from straight to the headphone output, so you can hear what you're recording. The normal volume control affects the headphone volume while recording just as when playing back. A2: The record levels are too high / the mic sensitivity is set incorrectly / the mic is too close to the subject. In this case, using manual record levels and setting them lower, switching the mic sensitivity from "high" to "low", or moving the mic farther from the subject should fix the problem.

I'm just not sure I'd be the ideal person for the task. I tend to be impulsive, and occasionally rather rash and even vindictive. I would rather not have the power to to stupid things than the temptation to do them.

Oh, nothing. I was just musing on how nice the actual lack of responsibilty attached to being an "offical advisor" is.

We need to wiki this. Editing would be so much easier, as would a peer-review process.

Actually, it's due to the read/write limitations of the disc itself, as well as the transport. This is an important thing to note because part of the limitation is due to the magneto-optical format itself, not because they just made the head block or processing circuitry slow or something. 4a. No, but yes: HiMD cannot play any formats other than ATRAC/3/plus and PCM natively. The yes part: any format that you can drop on the player as a file and play back using basically any player software you can think of can be played from the HiMD. The catch is that, as with mp3s drag & dropped from Explorer, these can't be played -by- the HiMD itself, or by SonicStage. The long and the short of it is that you can play any file format [audio, video, or otherwise] while using HiMD as a data drive as long as the file's bandwidth doesn't exceed the HiMD's read speeds. 4b. See above. 4c. Dolby surround will work with any recording mode that uses true stereo [sP] or joint-stereo recording [as low as HiLP; part of how joint-stereo works is actually the same as how basic Dolby Surround encoding works, incidentally]. Loss of 'steering detail' will occur at lower bitrates, but both Dolby Stereo and Prologic-II recordings will work when played from HiMD. All matrix-encoded stereo formats [Dolby Surround and otherwise] should work properly playing from HiMD; note that low-quality encoding will always affect the rear channels most obviously, as compressionartifacts tend to show up as out-of-phase signals/sounds quite frequently. This will show up as warbling sounds in the back channel. The solution is, of course, to use a higher bitrate for encoding.

Technically, transcoding is converting from any encoded format to another format. Ripping a CD [PCM -> atrac3plus, for example] is transcoding just as much as converting an mp3 to an atrac file is. Perhaps telling the straight truth on that would only confuse people, though.

See also: http://minidisc.org/hi-md_faq.html#_q104 Actual transfer rates are specified there for each disc format.

There is a device from Sony which allows transfer from flash memory devices to HiMD. Try looking at the equipment browser et al on minidisc.org. I'm sure the link is in there somewhere.

Hm.