dex Otaku

The record and volume levels on HiMDs have a range of 0-30, setting wise. SPL = Sound Pressure Level, i.e. the actual measureable loudness of a sound, in dB, decibels.

It's not SCMS. It's proprietary DRM which does not exactly follow SCMS since there are more rules added to it than just "original", "copy", etc. It's not just a couple of bits, it's an entire filesystem more or less, including encryption. Note that at this point, the SonicStage still trashing tracks issue is still present. If what you're copying isn't in at least duplicate before you do the upload/convert cycle, you are risking losing it. Period.

They don't remember the manual record level setting between record/stop cycles.

SonicStage plays gapless from hard disc. The player plays gapless. The player, controlled by SonicStage and playing by USB, does not play gapless.

The only recordings you can upload from HiMD using SonicStage, to my knowledge, are those recorded from the analogue inputs on the recorder. Copying music from somewhere else with another copy omf SonicStage will not work. Copying optical recordings might, but I have no way to test it. If they were following SCMS rules, they may or may not be - depends on the source it comes from. Copying from a CD to HiMD, then to a computer, should -not- work, for instance.

There's only one way to do this kind of thing properly [especially with close-micing]: Use manual levels. And rehearse the sound several times to make sure the levels are in range. The headphone output on most MDs is a bit anemic when it comes to driving full-sized headphones. If you can find a pair of decent earbuds or canalphones for monitoring while recording, it makes things much easier. Their generally [much] higher sensitivity [more SPL with less power] make them ideal for portable use. I use a cheap pair of Koss "pseudo-canalphones" that have a horrid response curve, but are designed with plugs like "EAR" brand earplugs. They're excellent for monitoring location recordings because they isolate you from the outside sound quite a bit. They sort of suck for general listening, but are ideal for this purpose, especially since a HiMD like my NH700 [5mw/chan I believe] is almost ear-splittingly loud at 13/30. By contrast, my Sennheiser HD330s [old, 'mid'-sized open studio cans] have to be turned up to maybe 25/30 to get the same sort of volume. So yeah, Manual levels, and rehearse. After a while, you start to get to know your recorder and your mic, and know roughly where to set the levels for a certain SPL at a certain distance. Also: if your mic is M/S stereo, know that when you get very close to sources with one side or the other of the mic, stereo separation basically disappears completely. M/S is -ideal- though for close-mic'ing that you'll be mixing down to mono, as there's a true center there. Just point the mic straight at your subject.

You won't see this realised until one of the following happens: * Someone decides to risk the legal wrath of one of the world's biggest corporations, reverse-engineers their protocols/encryption, and releases the results as either public domain, GPL'd open source, freeware, or shareware * Someone liscenses the necessary software components and/or protocol and encryption info from Sony [which would cost money] and then releases the resulting software as above [which would incur a rather large loss on their part] * Sony decides out of the goodness of their hearts to publicly release enough information on how their protocols/encryption/codecs etc. work that someone can put together an alternative, released same as above Basically, the only chance I see of there being a free alternative to SS is if someone does the first option, which would surely land them in court for patent/copyright infringement.

It's interesting that you point this out, actually. Mastering techniques in general have changed since the 90s. Overall dynamic range has decreased dramatically in the majority of recordings as mastering engineers have started bit-pushing the hell out of the content going onto disc - the object being to have the CD play as loudly as possible. Essentially, they compress the hell out of it - so much so that it makes the compression that used to be used on LPs and cassette tapes look like nothing by comparison. On one hand, this makes the average recording released now far less faithful to its sources, far louder, more listening-fatigue inducing, etc. Basically, IMHO, the quality of recordings being released has, in general, plummetted to far below what they were even in the 1970s. [Note: I'm referring to the quality of what consumers get, not the quality of the original 1st-generation masters] On the other hand, the fact that the dynamic range is so incredibly reduced makes it far easier for certain CODECs to handle the transients that in uncompressed versions of the recording would have caused artifacts such as pre-echo. mp3, in general, benefits from this practise. The end result of bitpushing is quite similar to pushing open reel tape [1/4" half-track at 30ips] to the absolute edge of saturation; you get a louder recording, and there -is- distortion present, but most or a lot of it is masked out. Most people won't notice the difference in terms of distortion, listening fatigue [most people don't listen to music pretty much all day, every day, as I do] etc. - the only difference they'll notice is that it's so much louder, and hey, that must be a good thing, right? So - chances are extremely high that the reason your CD, "Red" from 1995 doesn't encode as well as your "Valenti" from 2003 is because the one from 1995 is in fact a higher-quality master. I might be wrong, as I'm familiar with neither, but I will say that I prefer CDs from the late 80s and early 90s, when recordings were actually mastered with -some- dynamic range.

Download the SS 2.2 installer directly from http://www.connect.com DRM is inherent to HiMD. SS is the only software that will download/upload music in Sony's formats. It's easiest to use SS itself to do your ripping/encoding. Importing tracks as wave files means you have no track number properties [and SS doesn't allow changing track numbers for some reason]. Basically: take it or leave it. SS rarely crashes on my system, but then, I'm meticulous about what I leave running [including shutting down unnecessary system services]. I still run with the same mentality I've had since I was running OS/2 2.1 on a 486 with 8MB of memory: conserve memory at all costs. Ditch everything that isn't absolutely necessary. Turn off the stupid desktop enhancements that take up CPU and RAM. The list goes on. SS is not rock-solid, but in the 2 months I've been running it I've had it crash fewer than 10 times, and I've transferred maybe 100 discs worth of music out, and every recording I've made in. If it's that unreliable on your system, I'd look at what else you're running. Going by others' accounts, it sounds like I pretty much have the most reliable running copy of SS that I know of. [Funny thing being that, despite that fact, I hate its interface and how much of it functions.]

I've used it experimentally to record monaurally-broadcast radio stations. For limited-bandwidth monaural recordings HiLP is actually decent. I can't imagine what I'd ever actually do with any [HiLP recordings] since their quality is too low to be editable, but if all you want is to record CBC or NPR or something, it works great. Recording on the units themselves [this was by analogue line-in] gives significantly higher-quality results than encoding done by SonicStage. sknight: Some people are still using older versions of SonicStage, some [netMD users] are still using what came -before- SonicStage. Since none of them are in any way reliable, stable, or for that matter, truly usable, I take the updates as soon as they're released in the hopes that some improvements have been made over the previous release.

Are the tracks you're transferring transcoded mp3s? OpenMG/SS have problems with certain types of mp3s. Most people experience this with VBR mp3s, but the only ones I've had trouble with are older fraunhofer-encoded CBR files. The result is a track that is silent.

2.1 was my first install. It also played gapless from hdd.

I'll try again: You CAN NOT USE a phono preamp for microphones! I'm sure they might have a preamp kit made -for- microphones. It's more than just an EQ curve, it's also exactly what gain it uses. Phono preamps are not often variable-gain [or variable output].

Are you sure about this? Sonicstage plays gapless on my computer. In fact, its one of the only things I've considered Sony to have done right with it. It doesn't play discs gapless over USB - but it plays 1st-generation encodes in its own library gapless.

HiSP is significantly better than LP2, I find. I can tell HiSP from PCM but it takes close listening. Others here have equated it to 320kbps mp3. PCM is straight uncompressed audio, the same format as CD uses. For really important things I ony use PCM. For everyday recordings [sonic snapshots] I use HiSP and the recording results are excellent. I haven't done a serious comparison between HiSP and MD's SP but understand that SP is still slightly better.

I already posted this in the other 510-related thread, but here goes again: Phono preamps can NOT be used with microphones. Part of the purpose of a phono preamp is to apply a rather harsh equalisation curve to flatten out the pre-emphasis that records are cut with. Putting a mic through that EQ would result in sound with an extremely loud low-end and a high-end that drifts off to nowhere. Phono preamps also lack the plug-in power that condenser microphones require to work.

You can't use a phono preamp with microphones. Phono preamps apply a rather harsh equalisation curve to make LPs play with "flat" response. A portable stereo mic preamp with plug-in power is what you'll probably need. Reactive Sounds and Sound Professionals both make good pocket-sized preamps like this which sell for $150-200USD. It would probably be more interesting to see what kind of performance you can get out of something you've built yourself, though.

The mic sensitivity setting indeed has no effect if you're recording through the line-in. No, there isn't a general rule about what level setting to use - since the kind of mic, how far you stand from the subject you're recording, what way you face the microphone, room acoustics, etc. all influence the level of what's getting to the recorder. There are general guidelines about setting the levels according to how the meters read, though. If you can actually see your recording meter when making your recording - using manual levels, make sure your peaks go no higher than halfway up the meter. This leaves enough headroom that a sound 4x louder than your average peaks can still be recorded without clipping. Do -NOT- record with the meters peaking at the very top. You're using a piece of equipment with a huge dynamic range, so -use- that dynamic range: if you know that you'll be getting even louder peaks than the music [such as the guy standing next to you cheering at the end of a song] then leave even more headroom - run it so the music peaks just into the bottom 1 or 2 segments of the meter. You an always limit/compress and amplify it later, and shouldn't have a big problem with hiss, either.

PCM is the most common way of recording digital audio, ors rather, doing analogue to digital conversion. CD uses PCM. DAT uses PCM. And most videotape formats with digital audio use PCM. Portable HiMDs do not have digital outputs [save the USB connection] so the method you mention using your video camera would not work. I'd still say that, if you really want to use HiMD, and unless you want to get a used PC just to do transfers to/from the HiMD, the easiest method is still by analogue connection. Yes, you'd be incurring one 'generation loss' because of the d/a and a/d conversion happening, but the effects of a single generation of conversions - especially if you have a decent a/d in your computer, and Macs usually have reasonable equipment for this already built in - would be negligible. Otherwise I would suggest looking at an Edirol R1 [ http://www.edirol.it/europe/details.asp?co...346&id=12&la=UK ] or perhaps a Marantz PMD670 [ http://www.soundprofessionals.com/cgi-bin/...item/MAR-PMD670 ], both of which allow PCM recording and transfers to computers without any of the restrictions of DRM. And I don't think it's necessarily that Sony won't share their toys with anyone.. it's that they appear to have something rather specifically against Apple. None of their products have ever offically had Mac support, so far as I know. And - is Sony the best choice? Probably not, actually. I, myself, had an extremely limited budget to buy equipment with. HiMD at that very moment was the least expensive option with high-capacity media, PCM recording, extreme portability, and lastly that takes standard, commonly-available batteries that can be found anywhere cheaply. With one standard alkaline AA battery I usually get 4-5 hours of recording time with my NH700, which is a very significant thing for me.

My understanding is that with netMD, they were called groups. With HiMD, they're called albums. They're functionally equivalent is what I get out of it. I can't be absolutely sure though, as I never use netMD mode, and doubtless never will. Why can't the artist's name be displayed? It can - just name the album something like "Joni Mitchell - Blue" rather than "Blue".

Many musical instrument stores carry them. In Canada, Long & McQuade would be an example of a place to find them. Not sure about where you are.

I'm not sure that all Sonys do it, but most, when recording from the line-in, automatically make track marks if levels basically go silent for longer than about 2 seconds. The player will stop recording automatically if the limit for track #s is reached. I believe that would be 99 tracks.

I work occasionally as a computer technician, mostly doing software/OS troubleshooting. In recent times, I'd estimate that 90-95% of the sudden "my xx software/device isn't working" or "my system is slower than molasses in january on the north pole" problems are caused by either adware or spyware. Have you installed any other software recently? Windows updates? Updated your BIOS? Installed other new non-USB hardware? Any changes at all that you've made to your system, however small?

I have all current SPs installed on XP pro, SonicStage 2.2 and Simple Burner both work .. uh, nominally I guess is the right way to put it.

I'd check for adware/spyware with something like Ad-Aware [ http://www.lavasoft.de ] or Spybot search and destroy. Also, if you installed any other USB devices recently, look to software related to those as a possible culprit. And, unless you use the Connect service in Europe [or anywhere other than the US], you should try updating to SS 2.2 after reinstalling per Kurisu's advice.