dex Otaku

With the 707 yes - you have to have the unit on pause to change levels - but I don't know if it's the volume control or the track back/fwd keys that change levels. Check your manual.

Does it work if you just use the player by itself?

I'm speaking of the here and now. And as for the marriage question, it is purely a semantic one. Which makes all arguments based on "definition" completely specious.

I'm back at that point where I wonder.. I seriously wonder.. I mean.. it pretty much makes me ill to think that so many Americans are this naive, gullible, and outright stupid. Saddam killed thousands daily, indeed. Um. Yeah. Please - did you miss the part where Bush's [and the military's] delays, and sending troops to Iraq instead, meant that Bin Laden got away scott-free? And yes - Bush is doing a fantastic job making sure no one attacks the US again. After all, Iraq attacked the US so many times that.. oh, wait. Iraq never attacked the US. In fact, Iraq never attacked anyone. WAKE UP.

Woohoo!

I have actually done this with non-MD digital equipment without seeing any drifting in timing at all. The big problem tends to be finding a reliable way to sync the recordings afterwards. As long as you start the recording session with the same sound recorded simultaneously on all tracks, and end the session with the same [to measure if there's been drift] things should be usable afterwards. Still, it's a more complicated [and time-consuming] way of multitracking than I'd want to use again.

Your old RadioShack mic uses a lower bias voltage and hence puts out a lower-level signal. The battbox puts 9V bias on your new mics, which are likely also a lot more sensitive than your old one, so the same SPL will make for a higher output level going to the recorder. I hope that made sense. No, there's no way to make Sony's recorders default to manual rec levels. Some of the pro units and older recorders actually had switches for this, or would go directly to manual levels if you held the record slider for 2+ seconds, but newer recorders have to be set via menus etc. It's a pain, but you do get used to doing it. Manual levels aren't needed for all applications, either. I never use manual for voice recordings, for instance. AVLS only affects playback levels on the headphone output. I would recommend leaving it off at all times.

None of Sony's offerings are Mac-compatible in terms of computer software. With traditional MD equipment this point is moot, though, if what you want is to make recording and transfer them to your computer. PC users have to do it the same way as Mac users - by analogue means. Unless you happen to have a home MD deck with optical out, at least. HiMD, which supports digital uploading of recordings, is only PC compatible at that. Mac support will likely never come to fruition, because Sony deems it so. All the same, A PCM recording made on HiMD [i have an NH700 and use it for this] and transferred by analogue means to your computer through a quality A/D converter still gives you very high-quality results. Last year I worked on a sound/visual installation [the sound part was a 5.1 surround radio play, essentially] and all of my sound effects recording was done using a standard MD in SP mode, copied to my computer by analogue means. The results were far better than I expected. Doing the same from a PCM source would be even better. What kind of installation are you going to be working on?

Did you have the battbox plugged into the mic in or the line in of your recorder? You should probably be using the line in. If you had it plugged into the mic in, you were doubtless overloading the preamp, resulting in the clipping you got. With moderately loud sound and the battbox plugged into the line-in you should be getting more than enough signal for a clear recording. No. Don't set the bass rolloff as high as it will go. The problem is most likely overloading the mic preamp, not that the bass is too loud. Manual recording volume is a good thing to use. Compression [generally] = bad. You can always compress a recording afterwards, but you can't undo the effects of compression once it's done. [Compression i.e. AGC] I might be wrong about this, but 3-5 bars should be up to almost the -12dB mark, meaning you're getting good levels. The reference mark on the rec level scale on MDs, the one in the middle of the scale, that's -12dBfs. It's a relatively safe spot to pick as a peak or average level depending on how dynamic what you're recording is. I wouldn't worry too much about the music/dialogue thing with line-in recording. Your MD recorder has a high enough S:N ratio and dynamic range that even though the dialogue will be much quieter, it should still be clear as a bell. You can simply compress those passages later while editing. Incidentally, if you use manual record levels - that difference between the music and dialogue represents a reference for natural dynamic range.

I have used the encoder with SF6 sparingly, and it sounds okay, but I haven't subjected it to any testing to see if it has the same defects that programs like Audiocatalyst did.

Jadeclaw: thanks for that bit of info [deleting on the HiMD via SS = editable file]. I was rather frustrated with not being able to combine tracks .. having used the auto track mark function to keep tracks short, so that SS's track-trashing feature would only destroy short chunks instead of entire recordings. Incidentally, did you know that if you try to transfer a track a 2nd time, it simply deletes the track from your disc? Rude buggers.

Funny. I didn't read the manual until I'd had my NH700 for something like 3 weeks, and then it was only to read what the stated specs were. Later, I did read the section on how to use the group functions on the recorder, but the instructions themselves are so ambiguous that they make no sense. I don't understand why they didn't put a rocket on the unit like there is on the remote. It would have made navigation that much easier.

Interesting point: Sony bought Sonic Foundry. Sound Forge, to my knowledge, still uses the Xing encoder for its mp3 encoding. [both v6 and v7 have Xing with them.]

As someone who can differentiate between HiSP and PCM, and finds HiLP fatiguing to listen to [it actually gives me a headache after a while] I find it difficult to believe that there's no difference to you. On the other hand, I agree completely that each user's experience is unique to them, and if you're happy with what you're hearing, that's all that actually matters. Cheers.

The only things I've had difficulty recordnig were nature sounds, such as birdcalls from several metres away. The results were usable but having the preamp on high gain [high sensitivity] meant an increase in noise - though it was hard to tell what was what that day, as the breeze through the trees sounded much like amp hiss by itself. Dual monos are highly versatile, yes. Still, keep in mind that mics of that type are usually omnis, and will not reject background sounds at all. Careful mic positioning is required to get realistic recordings. Were I to do more of the "nature sound" ambient recording I would prefer to use an outboard preamp. The only reason I didn't get one to begin with was that my budget is severely constrained. The other reasons to have an outboard preamp are the ability to record louder sounds, and the ability to record sounds louder [hooray for ambiguity]. First, since they usually run on 9V batteries, they can provide higher bias voltage to the mics - meaning the ability to handle higher SPL without distortion. Second, external preamps usually have much higher headroom in terms of signal amplification, meaning it's harder to drive them into clipping than it is with the built-in preamps on MDs or HiMDs. This means you can send a much higher-level signal to the line-in of your recorder, recording signals higher above the noise floor than through the internal preamp. As I said though, for general-purpose recording, the built-ins work quite well.

Most commercial recordings are, yes. I'd agree to probably all but those of classical music, or audiophile series records. Pop music is generally compressed extremely hard [bit-pushed] now so that CDs will sound as loud as possible. To me, most music mastered this way just sounds like crap; it's harsh, strident, and hurts to listen to after too much exposure. I like to try and preserve a natural-sounding dynamic range, personally. But then, it depends on what the recording is of. I'd still compress music recordings, but not to the extent that is common nowadays.

"Compromised" would be a better word. For high-gain applications, like recording extremely quiet sounds, it's better to use an outboard preamp with a much higher S:N ratio [i.e. lower self-noise]. It's not just the S:N ratio you should be looking at. Dynamic range is just as important. Consider for a moment that S:N and dynamic range are different things. Most modern recordings have very high S:N ratios but -very- low dynamic ranges, often less than 25-30dB. This means that even with a rather poor mic setup you will be making recording that are far more dynamic than any of the music you probably listen to. As I said, I have the SP-TFB-2 mic and I have used them for recording ambience very successfully a number of times now. Their sensitivity has actually surprised me a number of times. In the city, for example, it's almost impossible to escape background noise such a s traffic, trains, etc. - even while sealed indoors. I have made some recordings such as that of a train passing by where the dynamic range is .. natural-sounding, shall we say. I mean - I have to turn my amp up all the way to hear the 'normal' bits at a normal level, which makes the train as loud as a train actually is. This is a rather foreign experience for anyone who is mostly accustomed to listening to studio-recorded music. The idea of actually having a dynamic range greater than 60dB is strange at best. Even classical recordings don't usually make use of the full dynamic range available. What setup you should use depends on what the recordings are to be used for, too, though. Binaural mics are usually meant [if actually using them in a binaural config] for recording for headphone listening. You can also use them for recording for speaker playback [it's the angle the mics sit at that mace the difference, binaurals face straight out to the sides, other stereo patterns usually face straight forward or at a angle to each other that faces mostly forward]. If you want to make recordings that you can mix with music, etc. I'd suggest using an M/S stereo mic or another coincident combination. The fact that they come as a single fixed point of reference is of tremendous use, since it makes for consistency. M/S mics also mix down to mono a lot better than many other [stereo] types. This makes recording sound effects to be placed in other recordings much easier. [as a side-note, you can still do this by using just one side of a pair of "binaurals," but since most of them are omnidirectional you can't get really directed recordings out of them as you can with other types of mics.]

The jump in hiss is just the preamp switching from low to high gain. It's like switching a Sony from low to high sensitivity - everything gets [pre]amplified with higher gain, so everything - including the amp's and the mic's self-noise - gets louder.

You could use both a HiMD and any card reader at a computer with 2 USB ports, but I doubt that's a solution to your needs.

A440: just for trivia's sake, it appears that Sony has chosen not to market the NH700 in the US. Their websites don't even acknowledge that the 700 is an existing model in the tech support areas, for instance.

SonicStage [currently at version 2.2 though versions to use the online Connect music service vary in different regions] is what replaced OpenMG Jukebox.

I've been using audio software on the PC since, well, the dawn of audio software on the PC [back with Windows 3.0, which had no sound built in]. My second sound card was a Pro Audiospectrum 16 [since it was the first largely available consumer 16-bit audio card] and I started editing with pre-1.0 versions of Sound Forge which I informally beta tested. I was using Winamp in the pre-1.0 days. I was experimenting with mp3 encoders/decoders before PCs could even decode in realtime - 24 hours to encode a song on a 486/33. I've seen player software go from simple single-song players to playlist-based to library-based. I think I'm qualified enough to speak LOUD and clear when I say that SonicStage has some of the worst implementations of management features ever seen in a piece of audio software. Ever. Even the severely-crippled library system in Winamp3 was light-years ahead of SS in terms of usability. SonicStage gives a very deep impression of being something designed by people who have never used a computer to manage or listen to music before. I have actually had very few problems in terms of reliability, i.e. crashing. I haven't had any issues with installing or with things in the library getting lost, or bad encodes/transcodes. The one serious bug I've found is the upload-trashing feature, which is absolutely critical and requires Sony's attention. Unfortunately, Sony have no mechanism for submitting bug reports. There is no way to submit feature-requests, either. They have the rather typified attitude of a company who have no experience in the computer world [or at least, a division that does], and don't understand that customer feedback should be an integral part of the development process. You don't just write some software and then expect millions of people to buy it [think for second of the range of products they sell that depend completely on SS to work] and use it without paying any heed at all to what might be wrong with it, what the users' experiences are, or how to improve it. I have already submitted bug reports by the only mechanism available: going to sony.com using their web form meant for tech support, hoping that putting a message in that reads "Please forward this to your SonicStage software engineers" will actually be heeded by someone. Sony have a lot to learn about paying attention to their customers. Recent posts here that reflect how poor the user experience is with HiMD, from misleading advertising and sales or support people who are totally uninformed, to the POS that SonicStage is and the crippling restrictions their ridiculous DRM impose on what is actually the recordist's property, not Sony's or some record company's... Ye-ah.

None of the HiMD units can recharge batteries while being used, whether via USB or standalone. In SonyThink, the cable you're asking for wouldn't really have a purpose, since they can't think in terms of the convenience a single cable would offer for those who, say, travel - and find carting the cradle et al around to be a pain. If I'm not mistaken, the connector on the NH1 is completely non-standard and you won't find anyone other than Sony who could do anything with it. But I might be mistaken. I don't have one, myself.

Here in Canada, we use Canadian dollars. Not US dollars. Just thought I should point that out, since Bush hasn't invaded and annexed us yet. :wink:

I've had both Simple Burner [which I used only once and ditched because it can't do accurate rips] -and- SS have trouble doing rips. Sony, as with many other companies [Microsoft, etc.] wrote their ripping module with speed in mind, not accuracy. Using the 'interpolation' option in SS does help some but there are a few CDs I've found in my collection that SS simply can't cope with because of what I view as flawed programming. EAC rips anything I throw at it [with the exception of totally bit-rotted CDs or those that are so scratched that you can't see through the substrate at all any more] perfectly without any complaints - and normally does so no slower than SS or SB, interestingly.