dex Otaku

The issue is more with the HiMD's not automatically titling tracks. How do you retrieve a non-existent title?

No. The best way I've found is to take the time to title all tracks on the recorder itself [using the transfer window in SS] and -then- upload them. Also, having the option in SS's prefs that allows it to rename files when you change their info is a generally good thing.

A wiki would be an excellent idea, but that's something I'll have to educate myself on the starting of. If you're already knowledgable on this, please throw some ideas in. This is a community, after all. And great job on the questions - that was way more than I was even asking for. Anyone with any suggestions or modifications, please post them. Other contributions can only make this -more- useful, after all.

My equipment [when using as a portable for listening] is the NH700 with stock remote [no display] and a cheap pair of Koss pseudo-canalphones. [With proper EQ they sound -okay- and they're among the most efficient 'phones I've ever used - ear-splitting volume with most modern material at 18/30 with the NH700]. I like the wear the 'phones upside-down so the temples of my glasses pin the cables; these boys suffer greatly from cable-shake microphonics which are annoying in the extreme to people like myself. I then run the 'phones cable down my back [it being winter here, I wear a t-shirt and sweater overtop, so the cable goes between layers of clothing]. I then pin the remote to my belt loop, with the HiMD in my opposite pocket. Pretty much the only way you can tell I'm using a portable is to look directly at my ears [my long hair obscures the cables completely]. The remote itself usually lies just under the edge of my sweater/hoody/t-shirt/cargidan/sexy beast top. The most obvious thing about all of it, actually, is that I'll occasionally stare into space while appearing to play with my right front belt loop. I do something similar when out wearing winter outclothes, like a jacket, but the player gets moved to a jacket pocket, and the cables get run through it as well. Once again, pretty much the only what to tell I'm using a portable is to look directly at my ears. Either that, or in the case of using the unit while I'm wearing jeans, checking out the barely-discernable square bulge in my left pocket. Chances are it would only be noticed by someone trying to check out my "package" [so to speak] anyway, which is a more than rare occurence, so again - no one notices. I find the basic stock remote, the el-cheapo no display version, to be just fine for my usage. I pretty much never look at the display when I'm using it for listening; I'm using walking somewhere or something, and even with a remote this would just be an interruption. Aside from that, I generally know what's on all of my discs, and can skip forward and back among albums and tracks without ever needing to look. I never use the more advanced playlist-type functions. It's just skip forward, skip back, whatever is simplest. It helps to have a good handle on what your music collection is, I suppose.

re: HiSP vs LP2 - yes, noticeably so, especially when encoding through SonicStage

Indeed, there is no SP recording in HiMD mode. If you are recording from analogue or optical in on the unit itself, you can either choose to use netMD mode [with true SP, MDLP, type R and type S, correct?] or HiMD mode [with PCM, HiSP, and HiLP]. From SinceStage, there is no actual SP mode. You can, however, write any [atrac] format that you can encode to in SS to a HiMD-formatted disc, meaning, for example, that you can use LP2 [as many do].

Let's try a different approach: If you're a HiMD user, post a few questions or issues that you think are important enough to make available to anyone coming here. i.e. things that are in the "need to know" category for anyone using or looking at buying a HiMD. The questions/issues can then be categorised and duties split so people can write different chunks of the FAQ. Come on, people. Doesn't anyone care?

Um. Hm. I'm a pretty girl? ["I am not a Pretty Girl" by Ani DiFranco pops into my head] Incidentally, mp3s do not carry DRM info. ID3 tags are simple metadata - titles, &c. If you're having problems with importing MP3s, chances are the source did something wrong and the file is at least partly corrupted in some way. Sometimes this can be from missing or incorrect chunks from file transfers; sometimes it can be because someone used a shoddy encoder [Xing, anyone?]. The problem I encounter most often is that certain mp3s will come through as silence, because the SS transcoder can't figure out something about them. It doesn't seem consistent as to encoder [i -do- pay attention] or bitrate, and doesn't even seem related to VBR vs. CBR. Both do it, occasionally. The simplest solution I've found so far is to use something like Nero's 'image recorder', record an image of an audio CD with the tracks you want on it.. then mount the image with their ImageDrive utility and rip it in SS which, at that point, sees it simply as another CD [and if it's a full album, it's likely to even pick up the title info from CDDB as well]. This isn't a new method by any means. I think I may have first read about it here or on T-Board months ago. It does work, though, even if it is more time-consuming. Unfortunately, some mp3s just don't work with SS. [Note that it will usually play them if you add them to the library, but it won't transcode them correctly.]

Giving more slack might work as well. The best way to find out is to just go out with the mic, and see how loud it goes without distortion. Periodic peaks will exceed 0dBfs in any situation if you don't give enough headroom when recording. Setting levels to what looks safe and then backing off another 'dash' or two on the meters might have avoided the problem. On the other hand, there are many handy things about having an external preamp. If it's not a problem to afford one, go for it. The advice about headroom still stands, though.

Heh. I hear ya. I buy batteries in bulk, though - the local "Superstore" [a western Canadian thing] sells cheap AA alkalines in 40-packs for $11.99CAD. My NH700 lasts roughly, for playback, 22-27 hours. For HiSP recording [on a 1GB disc] it can last 6+ hours. It may sound wasteful, but at that price and considering the longevity of these cheap batteries.. It takes me a year to get through a box. The benefit of NiMH batteries would be close to nil for me.

It was a solution based on what I had on hand at that moment. Eventually it ended up getting modified, too. There's a blob [sort of rectangular] of plastercine; In it is stuck two backplane fillers from a computer case, so that the "L" ends are at opposites ends of the plastercine block; At the halfway point is a piece cut from a CDR, that fits over the backplane fillers with a slot, and sticks into the plastercine, making a perpendicular flat piece sticking up in the middle; The covered DVD-R baffle clips onto this piece; At each end I have an alligator clip attached to the "L" pieces; On each of these two clips is a rubber insulating boot with the tip cut off so the open end of it is large enough to fit the plastic hooks on the mics into it - acting as a stable "holder" for the mic from which it can easily be pulled at a moment's notice. So - you end up with a block of plastercine, a covered DVDR standing in the middle as baffle, and the mics stuck in rubbered gator clips. It's all very stable, and can actually [because of the plastercine] be "stuck" to almost any surface. I guess I like doing things the ad hoc way is really the point.

Favourite albums: * Weakerthans - Left and Leaving * The Police - Zenyatta Mondatta * Pink Floyd - Meddle * Peter Gabriel - So * Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral * Skinny Puppy - Cleanse, Fold, and Manipulate * Elvis Costello - King of America * New Order - Power, Corruption and Lies * The Beatles - [almost everything they recorded] * The Cure - Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me / Wish * Talk Talk - The Colour of Spring * INXS - Listen like Thieves * Crowded House - Crowded House * Counting Crows - August and Everything After * U2 - The Unforgettable Fire * Coldplay - A Rush of Blood to the Head * Talking Heads - Fear of Music * David Gray - Lost Songs [1995-98] * Elliott Smith - Figure 8 * Sneaker Pimps - Splinter * VAST - Music for People * Depeche Mode - Violator & Songs of Faith & Devotion * Miles Davis - Kind of Blue * The Northern Pikes - Secrets of the Alibi * Enya - Watermark * The Tragically Hip - Day for Night * Pixies - Doolittle * Chalk Circle - Mending Wall * Pulp - We Love Life, This is Hardcore * The Smiths - Hatful of Hollow * Hooverphonic - The Magnificent Tree * Lush - Split I know that's more than 5, but that's how hard is is for me to choose a limited few. I have about 500-600 albums. Sometimes it gets hard to figure out what I want to hear.

Increased density usually means increased read and write speeds. I know that's oversimplifying a bit, but it's usually one of the results.

Once again - you're adding an entire extra step that need not even be there, and is actually passing the audio through a generation of lossy compression. Why not just run a cable from your phono preamp to your computer, and skip the MD step entirely, saving you a completely unnecessary repetition of virtually the same task [which is also incurring a loss on the signal]? On the other hand - if your goal is to have a true-SP recording on MD, then stick with this method. Otherwise, you're just wasting your time and degrading the signal more than you probably intend to by passing it through the MD stage first. [And yes - I do realise that people don't always or even often have their turntable within reach of their computer. If your reasoning for probably adding another 30% to the time it takes to do this is that your stereo system is in another room.. well, I'd probably consider moving the 'puter to the stereo to dump a bunch of LPs. The 5 minutes it takes to move the 'puter once is probably a lot less than the extra several hours you'll be sitting there waiting for an extraneous realtime pass of each recording.] edit: I do note that you're going digital from the MD to the computer. The above is said assuming that your computer has quality enough A/D to make the difference worth it.

No, they're not. Powered microphones [with the the exception of some micros that have built-in preamps] are made for use with mic preamps, still. What the power does is make the mic work [condensers need bias voltage so that their element can act as a transducer, whereas dynamics actually induce their own power when hit by sound waves]. The mic impedance of powered mics is usually made to match the same range as that of dynamic mics - that way the same mic preamps can be used for both. Sensitivity &c. are another matter, but still, they're made to go through preamps. Any mic can be used with a line-in as long as the SPL being transduced is high enough to drive such levels out of the mic [usually this would have to be very loud, i.e. rock-concert volumes]. Line-in, technically, is just another input preamp [buffer] much the same as a mic preamp [usually without 'phantom power' of any kind], but with a different default impedance, expecting a much higher input level as normal. Mixing consoles use the same inputs for both microphones and line-level signals, for example; the main difference there is that you have to turn the channel preamp up for microphones. In most situations you'll want to use the mic-in for recording 'normal' sounds, unless the microphone has a built-in preamp [which is not usually the case]. If you're recording something extremely loud, you can try the line-in. The main advantage of using the line-in in loud situations is that the mic preamps on many portables will clip if driven with too high a signal; the headroom added [by none other than what is technically an impedance mismatch] going into the line-in can mean undistorted recordings where the mic preamp may have been unable to cope with the levels coming in.

An interesting thing about the in-ear binaurals is that when listened to ideally [i.e. with decent headphones] you get a very real sense of depth that depends totally on who is wearing them. Listening to a recording made with you wearing the mics doesn't sound the same as with someone else wearing them. Another interesting find with them came with recording myself having a conversation with others. As the wearer of the mic, you'd expect a certain "hole" effect or something with your own speech, but no - it sounds pretty normal. As a result, it can be very disorienting to listen to while using recreational drugs. I probably shouldn't say that here, should I.

@wheeeeeeeeee!

The euro version of the 600, 800, and 900 all have 3+3mW headphone amps [5+5 for the rest of the world AFAIK]. If you don't have very efficient [high SPL for low power] 'phones, the sound won't get very loud. Also, the headphone amps are known to clip [or possibly soft clip] above volume settings of around 25/30. Material that is recorded at extremely high volumes [i.e. most modern CDs which are bit-pushed before mastering, i.e. highly compressed or limited] will appear to pump a bit if you have 'phones that need a lot of power. Basically, it's the amps driving near their limit, given the unit's tiny power supply. Remedy: buy more efficient 'phones, or get an outboard headphone amp that can drive with a lot more power.

There are a number of sites on the net that offer archives of recordings people have made with various binauaral setups. I'd suggest taking a look for some of these and trying them out on your stereo. While yes, binaurals are not optimal for normal stereo speaker playback, this really depends on what it is that you're recording. Natural ambient recordings tend to be just fine, IMO. It's more the stealth-recorded concerts et al that sound odd, since most people have a fixed frame of reference for them - sound up front, crowd in back, &c. Instead, binaural recordings often end up with that 'boxed' sound [especially indoor recordings]. Natural sounds do not sound as weird [iMO] because there is no fixed frame of reference. Even street recordings and such sound pretty good this way.

Most important considerations for copying from cassette [iMO]: 1) transport stability. portables [walkmans] are notoriously bad for this, meaning wow, flutter, and usually also incorrectly-set playback speed. Component decks usually use small flywheels and dual capstans &c. in their transport to ensure that tape motion is as stable as possible. 2) head azimuth [alignment]: the #1 cause of lost high frequencies on playback. With a decent prerecorded cassette and a jeweller's screwdriver one can usually fix this in a minute or two just by listening closely and re-aligning the heads with their set screw. Do -NOT- realign heads on an autereverse/quickreverse deck unless you know what you're doing, though. 3) properly calibrated preamps and Dolby NR [for prerecorded tapes]. Dolby B's proper functioning requires that the player be reproducing signals at the proper level before they get to the NR decoder. Too low or two high will generally ruin the high end. I advise actually -using- Dolby B for playback if the cassette was recorded with it, as you are otherwise just adding emphasis [and compression[ to the high end, artificially sweetening it. This does go to taste, though; improperly-biased recordings may end up sounding totally flat and lifeless, and leaving NR off will sometimes help with this. Also, use the proper EQ setting for playback, i.e. 120us the type I [ferric oxide], type II [chomium dioxide], type III [extinct, ferrichrome], and type IV [metal oxide]. Once again, using the wrong setting will either emphasise or de-emphasise the recording. What I would suggest is looking on eBay or even in pawn shops for a half-decent component cassette deck, which often go for very little money these days. Buying a used deck and paying for a tune-up is worth it and will give great results if you're looking to archive your cassettes. Chances are the midi system, if it really is 'high end' to any degree, will be better than any walkman.

No, SS trashing tracks refers to a bug that intermittently causes SS to dump a track while you're uploading it to your computer, usually also damaging the version on disc as well, meaning neither is then playable or uploadable [i.e. it's gone forever]. Hence my repeated suggestions over the last few months that people use Total Recorder to back up their recordings -before- uploading them with SS, since the TR method does not risk damage in any way, and there's no real way of predicting when SS may or may not trash your irreplacable recordings. And yes, re: your first paragraph insurgente, that's exactly what it means. However - once you have the recording on your computer and have converted it to WAV, you can do whatever you want with it.

ATRAC: SP mode is 292kbps ATRAC3 [MDLP]: 132, 105, 66kbps There is a huge difference between atrac3plus 256 and 64kbps [HiSP and HiLP]. My suggestion would be to simply try recording the same thing in each mode to compare the relative diffences. For some applications, lower bitrates are perfectly fine. Note that when recording from analogue or digital sources on the recorder itself in HiMD mode - only PCM, HiSP, and HiLP are available. Also: encoding done by SonicStage on your computer is not the same as when recording from an analogue or digital [optical] source. Encoding done by the hardware atrac3plus codec appears to be of higher quality, possibly due to shortcuts used in the PC codec to make it faster rather than of higher quality.

The issue is less that of USB 1.1 vs. 2.0, as the MO media used by MD and HiMD are not capable of reading or writing at the high rates used capable with USB 2.0. HiMD, which is faster than MD [the read/write speeds of the media itself, in a HiMD recorder] still runs slower than USB 1.1's maximum data rates. Hence, USB 2.0 support is completely superfluous with these media.

Ummm. I've been using SS since 2.1 and its had these features since at least then.

I have a pair of Sound Professionals in-ear binaurals that I use exactly for this purpose. I recently spent some time on a small campus of buildings that had several elevators in different buildings. For whatever reason, I went around recording the sounds of each elevator in its shaft; the newest ones in particular are really -huge- sounding and cavernous. One also had one of those speaking door systems that announced when it arrived at a floor which floor it was stopping on - I kept expecting the woman's voice to say "Thank you for pleasing a simple elevator." [kudos to anyone who knows where that comes from.] I have also used these mics for recording crow noise at various functions, ambience inside spaces ranges from an art gallery with cathedral-like acoustics, several restaurants, coffee shops, &c. What I love about these mics is that they sound great, are comfortable, don't pick up microphonics easily [like the cables jiggling], and especially that people just assume you're wearing some kind of fancy earbuds - something most people are accustomed to seeing and write off immediately as non-threatening, so they don't play up for the fact that you might be recording. I do avoid recording conversations, I might add.