dex Otaku

Okay.. Rather unscientific when it comes down to it, but I had deleted the test file I created before and didn't have the patience to do it all over again. The new test is simpler but still gives some idea of at least the attack and limiting levels. I didn't measure for release. Test consisted of a series of 1kHz tones of .1sec followed by .1sec silence repeating for 5 sec, followed by 5 secs silence, then repeating 1dB quieter all the way down to -32dB. My loose calibration was off by approximately +2dB so the first burst is clipped at its beginning. full view of the original file: Click here to zoom in some full view of the Normal AGC'd file: Click here to zoom in some full view of the Loud Music AGC'd file: Click here to zoom in some The spike on the 10th burst is Trillian, which I forgot to close, alerting me to someone sending me an IM. the first 3 bursts on Normal: Click here to zoom in some the first 3 bursts on Loud Music: Click here to zoom in some first burst on Normal: Click here to zoom in some first burst on Loud Music: Click here to zoom in some This is what I see, which I openly admit might not be correct: Loud Music appears to have a longer attack. It looks like the there's fast attack, *very* slow release [longer than the 5 seconds between each burst!] compression going on here, followed by limiting applied to approx. -6dB. The compressor's settings change between normal and loud music, the limiter's don't appear to. Anything below that is left alone, though gain might be being applied below -30dB which is where I stopped testing. Like I said, not entirely scientific, but it gives some idea. The difference is really very small though. I'd expected it to have been more obvious.

My perspective is pretty skewed on this, Hyena, as I view MD and HiMD primarily as recording media. I see absolutely no purpose in the player-only units, and as I've stated elsewhere, since HiMD can function as MD / netMD, there's no reason to keep the MD only units around. To twist that off my skew a bit though - if you're interested in it as a player, then the significantly longer battery life and lower cost are big pluses, yes. MD media, on the other hand, cost about 15x what CDR does here. There are lots of arguments for and against, and I'm a proponent of both MD and HiMD as formats, but as I said - I view both primarily as portable recording formats.. Which is what I think Sony should be marketing them as, since there pretty much -is- nothing else out there to compete with either in terms of recording quality, durability, size, and cost. The advantages over other formats for playback only are not that great in number, really. edit: having reread what you said and actually absorbed it, I see your point in terms of the advantage for those with existing MD collections.

Problem: it's easy enough to figure out what unity gain is with the line-in, but what [in manual levels] is unity on the HiMD?

It's one of those things I could see trying to start a petition for.. except for the probable fact that the majority of people out there don't know what we're even talking about and don't care, including a lot of MD users.

I don't see the purpose in further MD models but they are at least pretty.

It did on the ones I've used. And AFAIK the difference between normal and loud music settings should be that loud music uses a different attack and release [hard knee with limiting vs. soft knee with limiting] and more gain with a lower threshold [meaning there isn't more headroom, just much harder compression, which is why noise in the quiet parts becomes more apparent]. I'll do it with the mic in if I can get it to calibrate somewhere near right.

You'll still need to use TR for step 2. Once you have the WAV file from it, you should be able to use Wavelab for the rest. Exception: if your sound card has the option of selecting "Wave" as a source in the recording mixer, you can use Wavelab to record from it. I would still trust TR more though, unless you know exactly how to set everything to make sure you're not increasing or decreasing the volume unintentionally.

My findings would suggest that you're right, A440.. I made a test file consisting of burst tones of varying lengths from 1ms to 500ms in sequence with increasing gaps between them. It should be possible to see the ADSR envelope of the AGc's compression this way. I then repeated the sequence in incremental drops of 1dB each. I recorded this via line-in. The results were surprising - ADSR and average levels were -identical- for both the "normal' and "loud music" settings. I did not try this using the mic input but by my experience with older MDs this should not make a difference.

Sorry, Skyther, I hadn't even realised this was directed at me. I never said that lossless encoders use j-stereo. I just said that j-stereo is lossless. edit: I also had it completely wrong, there: it doesn't switch between modes. j-stereo uses either intensity stereo [horribly lossy] or m-s stereo [lossless]. I was in fact referring specifically to m-s stereo. Certain encoders will switch between intensity, m-s, and dual channel depending on how different the channels are and what the volume level is. If I'm not mistaken, I believe Lame's VBR modes work this way if you do not set a base bitrate [i.e. below 96kbps it always uses intensity stereo or something similar]. Apologies for spreading misinformation.

Tried and tested - yes, aeriyn. But the truth is that any HiMD can function exactly as an MD. You can use it to make exactly the same format discs: it has the same codecs in addition to the new ones; it will record in the old mode in the same ways that any other MD does. You can use it to play exactly the same [standard] format discs for the same reasons. Counting on the hardware being without serious design flaws, it is fully possible for the current line of HiMDs to completely replace [at the very least] functionally-equivalent MD models. This was the express purpose in designing HiMD to be backward-compatible; it is, quite literally, an interim format specifically made to make MD obsolete without losing support for it altogether. Had they not made the choice to go with backward-compatibility, HiMD would doubtless be larger in capacity than it is. I don't expect to find native mp3/AAC support in the future. This war has only just begun; DRM and proprietary codecs are a couple of the weapons it will be fought with. It would have been much more intelligent of them to make a proprietary container format that was fully independent of whatever codec; that way they could have maintained their DRM guff and supported other open as well as closed codec standards, with whatever media and DRM implementations standing on their own.* Mind you - Sony is a major participant in this war. Their desire is to dominate, not to make things easier or more convenient for people. Which is a shame, because they could be doing a lot better business with a more open approach to things. * - On the other hand, that solution might have presented problems such as not being able to maintain a total stranglehold on what people did with their software [music]. DRM would likely have to be much more relaxed to work with such a model. The way things are now, their forcing you to transcode everything means they have absolute control over what you do with it. Or at least.. they think they do.

In Canada the HiMD models and MD models run very close to side by side as far as prices are concerned. Considering the fact that you can use a HiMD as an MD or netMD, this makes no sense to me [speaking specifically of Sony's offerings]. There is literally no benefit to buying the MD models, unless you're really that concerned with cosmetic differences or slight differences in the interface. Sharp MDs, on the other hand, have sufficiently different features that they can still compete side-by-side. Still, considering the price difference between the lowest model Sony MD and HiMD with mic and line inputs is about $30CAD.. and considering the benefits in terms of capacity, even with older discs.. I can't say I see any reason to buy MD any more.

TR is very small, for one thing. For another, it is basically just a utility that allows you to record anything that you play through your sound card - it acts as a proxy between the actual sound card driver and whatever program you're plabing from. In other words, audio played from SonicStage gets routed through TR to be recorded by it, then out to your sound card. TR is not for editing, though. You would use something like Audacity to edit the files recorded by TR, yes. You would then use whatever CD writing software came with your drive or computer to create audio CDs with the tracks you've recorded. To summarise, you: 1) Play through Sonicstage 2) Record using Total Recorder 3) Edit with Audacity [or Audition or Sound Forge or Protools.. the editor of your choice, in other words] 4) and burn your CDs with your choice of CD creation software [i'd recommend Nero]

This contains a lot of personal opinion, so I hope it manages to stay within the guidelines of "Non-BS" :wink: I'm combining these two questions because some of my answers overlap. I very much like my NH700. It meets my various needs [and exceeds some] as a portable player/recordable. Among some of the reasons why it works for me: * It's very small [and that despite being the bulkiest model in the current line] * It takes commonly available batteries and has what I consider to be good battery life. For example: recording in Hi-SP mode, I have completely filled the 2:23 capacity of an older disc in a single run without killing a battery that had already been used to play discs for more than 3 hours. * It uses highly durable, small, inexpensive, and widely available rewritable media [and that's even taking into account the lack of HiMD media on the wordwide market] * The recording quality exceeds that of any other portable format I've used other than DAT [note: this doesn't mean that better things don't exist, only that I haven't used them] * Recording length, even on HiMD-formatted 80min MDs, is excellent for my purposes. I rarely need to record anything longer than a few minutes, so PCM on HiMD'd std-MDs still has more time than I need for most sessions or outings. The option of 7:55 on 1GB media using HiSP mode means being able to record shows uninterrupted by anything other than power concerns. * While it may not have the best implementation of such, it allows for manual control of most options, most notably recording levels; most inexpensive DV cameras and the like record LPCM but offer no options for manual control and very severely compress recordings, for instance * While it takes some effort, it is possible to get recordings off the unit without any D/A and A/D conversion * The output volume is more than sufficient for my needs [i usually sit it at between 10-13/30 as anything above that is uncomfortably loud for me with my 'phones] * Gapless playback is good, at least coming from frame-accurate sources [i.e. ripped from CD] * The built-in EQ is sufficiently good to compensate for the known deficiencies of my portable 'phones. I have no use for the effects like virtual surround that are built into the higher end models. * Sound quality in general is good [noting that the model I have does not feature a digital amp], especially when one keeps in mind how small the unit is and that it's running on 1.2-1.5V from a single battery. * Even with just the stock remote [black stick with no display] I find the player a pleasure to use. I like being able to stuff the unit in my pocket, string the remote to another pocket, hide the 'phones cord under my shirt, and go for a walk with something that -never- skips, sounds good, and if presented with the right environment or situation I can have set up for recording in under a minute As to the hdd player question, I actually have no practical use for anything that is player-only, regardless of capacity, sound quality, or features. If it can't record, it's basically of no use to me. With the extremely limited income I have, it's important in the extreme for me to be as pragmatic as possible with purchases of any kind. HiMD presented me with the best compromise available at this time. As to specific reasons to choose it over a hdd player, the only ones I'd really point out are the ability to use common batteries and the durability of the media. I'll skip the "if not" part and just get to what's wrong with it. * The worst thing about HiMD is, in one word: SonicStage. Generally speaking, it's crap. The interface is confusing, poorly-organised, and ugly. It terms of functionality, it's bug-riddled and strongly gives the impression of being an alpha-release despite being Sony's supposed flagship for their Connect music service [which I don't use and likely never will]. SonicStage has a long, LONG way to go before it will have the consumer appeal of a product like iTunes or Winamp [this coming from someone who has been using Winamp since the pre-v1.0 days]. * Sony's DRM.. Yes, it's the wave of the future. And I sincerely hope that when people realise that, they'll rise up against it in all its forms. DRM has seriously hobbled this format into something that the average person will find unusable for - what I at least - view as its best intended purpose - portable recording. * There's no reason why, on something that costs $300CAD or more, they can't include a switchable indiglo-type backlight on the unit's display, especially considering the fact that $10 watches that run for 3-4 years off one battery have had this feature for years. Same goes with all of the remotes with displays. This omission is a serious one and their engineers should be slapped silly for it. * The inability to permanently set it to manual record levels is another one they should be slapped silly for. A switch as with older units or a remembered setting would be great. I'd prefer the switch, myself. * The group function is great, but why not have that "group" button, while recording, start a new group and track? [this can only be done by pressing stop, which means having to put the unit back in manual levels through the menus again] * The lack of a mid-quality [128-192kbps] bitrate with atrac3+ is another serious omission. * When recording with powered mics and using the AC adapter, there is audible hum in the recording. Have electronics companies forgotten the true value of a $0.03 power regulator and $0.02 capacitor, or is it just me? * Plastic. Plastic, plastic, plastic. Gone are the days of aluminum-cased units, in the interests of lowering prices, I guess. The NH700 still seems durable to me, despite being all-plastic, but I doubt it would survive even one good drop. Thankfully, I'm accustomed to being very careful with things like this, but many people aren't. IMO, MD itself can't survive in the current market, and neither can HiMD - not as consumer formats. The consumer end of things will remain an offshoot of the professional uses such as MD had such success with. By 1995, MD had almost completely replaced cart tape in most of the upscale Canadian broadcasting industry, and was already being used for location recording by the CBC. Now all CBC reporters carry MD recorders. HiMD could easily phase into that market and completely replace MD in time. Among other reasons for this is the fact that you can mail or courier an MD / HiMD somewhere without much worry. CDs do occasionally get mangled, and I wouldn't want to send flash media anywhere like this, personally. The durability of the media speaks for itself after more than 10 years of embedded use in various industries. The ability to upload unrestricted, as I would expect to see on professional versions of HiMD, would also help secure its place in various industries that rely on location recording, fast dumps to notebook computers and then uploading to regional HQ via internet. CBC's procedures work this way and could only be helped by unrestricted upload, which would become a great selling point [to pros] of course. So yes, it's enough of an improvement to survive. But not in the consumer market. I'll point out here that since MD came out, I have only met one person in Canada [and have never even heard of anyone else, and I have met a lot of people who work in various aspects of the independent music industry, music schools, etc.] who used MD for "general purposes" and had a home deck. The one person I met had a bookshelf system with built-in MD, and that was back in 1994. He didn't even know that MDs used adaptive compression, and spent a few hours in the student pub with me trying to convince me [over several pints] that MD audio was exactly the same as CD audio. He didn't know that I'd written papers in high school on things like why DAT died as a consumer product, and how the wave of the future would be formats using lossy compression [DCC and MD were just out at that time]. I have never actually even seen a home deck, myself. I have never been anywhere that sold them. See also my answers to the next question. No. I would not even begin to recommend either MD or HiMD to anyone who doesn't need something specifically for recording. IMO, both MD and HiMD are very ill-suited as consumer formats/devices. While the selling points I listed above are advantageous, most people are more concerned with being able to carry lots of music at once and being able to put things on the player as quickly as possible. Even the cheapest hdd players can outdo any HiMD/MD in terms of transfer speeds. Most of them are not hobbled by the same DRM restrictions. Most of them work either as simple USB/firewire removable discs or with multiple options in regards to library software, be it RealOne [gag], iTunes, or whatever else. They have much, much larger capacities - I don't take that argument about "when the disc is full you just put another one in," and most of the people I know who want mp3 players wouldn't, either. Most of them would rather quickly remove a few tracks and put more on their hdd player than to have to carry more than one disc around, because that means fiddling through pockets or purses and having to negotiate the removal and insertion of media - juggling several objects and sometimes possibly dropping the player in the process. While it is true that there are many hdd players out there that have truly horrible user interfaces, most of the ones I've seen weren't so bad that the average person couldn't at least figure out how to get it turned on, get it playing, and find what they want to hear. Finding it quickly is another issue, of course. The worst point against hdd players is that of the fragility of the disc itself. MD and HiMD both have this beat, hands-down, and in the case of MD has done so for 11 years. In terms of an audio format in general, MD and HiMD are convenient, but are falling seriously behind the times. With SACD/SDDS and DVD-A now out, 24-bit audio becoming commonplace enough that people might notice a format's support of it, and mp3/mp2 support available on $50 DVD players everywhere, MD and HiMD present no serious advantages to the average consumer in a home environment. As a portable format its strengths speak for themselves, but the issues of transfer speed, closed codec support, obligatory transcoding, and seriously hampering DRM will disappoint most people to the point that they will either stay away from it completely [if, indeed, they ever even hear about it] or return units after purchasing them because Sony fail to deliver on their promises. And that's without even mentioning SonicStage, which is the biggest single reason the average consumer will probably be frustrated to the point of wanting to employ a large mallet and a hard swing in improving the functionality of their HiMD, atrac3+ CD, and other atrac3/atrac3+ players. There is no Sony store where I live. I purchased my NH700 through Minidisc Canada. I found their service excellent. In all the correspondence I had with them, I always dealt with the same person, which I find noteworthy. I will definitely deal with them again in the future, and would recommend them to anyone in Canada. They in no way mislead me at to the capabilities of HiMD, though I must point out that I'm not the average consumer and knew more about the format before even checking out their website than many people would know about it after having purchased and used one for a year. First of all, they could tell the truth about it, rather than using hyped claims that will lead to product returns and customers on support lines who are fed up with their [sony's] inability to help them with some of the misleading and/or outright false claims they've made about it. They could also start distributing actual HiMD media. The biggest thing they could do is completely remove DRM restrictions on self-made recordings, and push the format, push it hard as primarily for recording - with the added bonus of being a portable music player [which is basically how I look at it]. IMO, they should completely ditch all player-only models except the top-end ones, and push HiMD as hard as possible as the portable recording media of our time. Because really - what else is there nowadays? Most of the people I know are still using cassette and microcassette for portable recording. While the sound pros and broadcasting pros I know use everything from DAT to Nagra open-reel recorders - an awful lot of them use MD. The situation where I live isn't exactly the same as everywhere else; I have never seen Sony promote MD, anywhere, ever. I've never seen an advertisement [except in American magazines], and until last week when Sony started running one with MuchMusic I had never seen any kind of promos, either. MD is the invisible format - no one knows it exists. Perhaps if Sony stopped relying on their own chain of stores in Canada.. Perhaps if they aggressively marketed the format to retailers in general [since you will never find the players, recorders, or media at a place like Wal-Mart up here, though computer stores tend to carry the discs at reasonable prices] and actually tried to inform the people who were supposed to be selling them as to what they were.. perhaps that would make a difference.

Hopefully Sony will fix this problem. In certain cases [system or power failure during writes, etc.] it can be expected that people will lose data but it should not occur during simple operations that the units were specifically intended to be used for.

It's not perfect, but for those who are willing to put the effort in it's a great solution for high-quality portable recording on a budget. Nothing that I know of achieves the same quality vs. cost. I wouldn't recommend it for daily professional use, though. Mind you, I also wouldn't recommend a lot of other things.. I have used pro, semipro, and consumer equipment for various kinds of recording and the needs and expectations of a professional recordist are simply not the same as those of the average person. I make do with less expensive solutions because I simply haven't the money to afford anything else. I'm also a consummate hack, and actually enjoy working the problems out of a system - but I realise that most people aren't like that, either. I know how to work out the details in order to get good results from it. Most people don't care to try. Which is why I also realise that HiMD in its current state is not suitable for pros. Unfortunately, I also realise that it's even less suitable for the average consumer. Sony have hobbled the format so severely that for those who want plug & play type ease of use, HiMD in its current incarnation will -never- be an option. I can see many people looking over the features and buying one, only to return it a few days later as Sony haven't nearly delivered on their promises to their customers. Which is unfortunate, because the format has great potential. I was explaining to my father yesterday bits of how Sony's DRM system work. He asked me, "Why are they bothering to sell them, then? Technically, they can't be used for anything." I pointed out to him that with the DMCA [and its equivalents in countries other than the US] in effect, all consumer audio devices that are designed and marketed as such are required by law to have at least some form of these limitations. He was disgusted to learn even a little of how Sony's DRM works. Most people, once they realise this is how things are basically going to be from now on, will be too. My hope is that once the average person has realised that our governments have created laws that are limiting what we can do with our own creations to the point that they're next to useless, people will say something en masse and try to get those laws changed. Which, after all, in countries with democratic governments at least - is how the system is supposed to work. The people are supposed to decide, and get the government to implement what they want. Not the government deciding and ramming it down the throats of the people, which is how the US administration seems to count on working for just about everything - and the rest of the world just falls in line, because [generally speaking] their economies depend on the US so much. I'd better stop before I start into the importance of voting. :wink:

If your sound card and its drivers offer a 'wave' option in the windows record mixer, you can record in digital using whatever application you prefer by choosing that as your source.

Joey: See here. More on this, though: * You can upload recordings made on your HiMD into SonicStage [which occasionally trashes them due to bugs in how it handles things] * The recordings are uploaded in the format in which they were made [i.e. PCM, HiSP, HiLP] * There is currently no export mechanism in SonicStage for these uploaded recordings, and burning them to CD from SS in not permitted The only solutions for full-digital transfer are in the post linked above. edit: only *known* solutions *I have seen*.

I think they basically haven't added that functionality to SS yet. You can do it to the file while it's in your library in SS, though, before converting and downloading it to MD/Hi-MD. edit: I'm assuming this can be done with MP3s too. I might be wrong. I have used it for WAV files though.

1) Did you actually read the post? Not to be rude, but if you'd actually read the post, you likely wouldn't have asked questions 1, 2, or 3. But.. oh well. When I said transfer, especially in that line in bold, I think it was reasonably clear that I meant uploading the track via SonicStage. Especially since I specify there, "In SS, play the track from the Hi-MD itself. DO NOT TRANSFER [iT] FIRST." 2) Yes, recordings made from analogue on Hi-MD units themselves. Hence the line, "this is the method I have settled on for transferring recordings from my Hi-MD to my computer." I usually use PCM but occasionally use Hi-SP for slightly less important things. Incidentally, the transfer rate with PCM is about 3x realtime. Extrapolating, 256kbps atrac3+ should transfer at roughly 16x. The 100x figure that Sony give is for 48kbps audio and is highly misleading. 3) Once again, did you even read the post? The point of the post is how to get your audio that you've recorded on Hi-MD onto your PC in WAV format. No, there is no export mechanism in SonicStage for audio you've recorded yourself. It's not even possible at the moment to write [using SonicStage] the audio to CD [CD-DA] to then rip it back onto the PC with something else. There is no simple 1-step method at the moment to get your audio off disc. Sony's WAV convertor will eventually make a 2-step process available, though until they fix the bugs in SonicStage this method will be completely unreliable and cannot be taken seriously by those of us who are making recordings that we cannot risk even a 2% chance [Jadeclaw's estimate] of the track being destroyed. There will likely NOT be a way to upload to the PC as MP3 and then convert to WAV which would mean 1 or 2 generations of lossy encoding before you get to your audio, which would be a complete waste of time. Once you have the WAV files as I've attempted to detail the process of creating, you can then edit and convert to MP3 as you see fit. edit: God, was I ever bitchy this afternoon. Sorry.

No, it only trashes the one track.

In my case I knew because there was a track missing from everything I'd uploaded. It still appeared to be on the disc, and claimed to still be uploadable, but the data was trashed. It would start copying the track again and then give a "unspecified error" and quit. The track was no longer playable or uploadable at that point.

Damn. Norah Jones is good.

I think they should go for it. If Sony can get Apple to include NetMD/HiMD support in iTunes, it's likely that their device sales would take off - SonicStage is among the biggest reasons users are not buying into Sony's newest wares, or returning hardware after having bought it. If iTunes worked with HiMD I'd drop SS without a first, let alone second thought.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I'm going to recommend this again. HiMD does not have and probably never will have a sync'd version using SMPTE or anything similar. We'd have to wait and see what offerings companies like HHB bring us in the future. It's not like SMPTE sync is really necessary with something that has a fixed sampling rate, but it would sure be nice to do sync'd starts and stops at least. It is -not- compatible with Mac as far as uploading and downloading are concerned, and in true Sony fashion, it doubtless never will be. [edit: see this thread] I'm making the assumption that your shotgun is self-powered, but I'll still point out that HiMD does not have 9-48V phantom power as required by most professional condenser mics. The controls are also very small and I would say ill-suited if not unsuited to professional film use. It's important to keep in mind that these are consumer devices and as such lack certain niceties of pro equipment. On the other hand, if you're under a strict budget and don't mind 'making do' as far as things like sync'ing goes [i tend to do things like tap the mic visibly on camera as the sync source], and have access to a PC to do uploads+backups with, the recording quality with HiMD is the best I've ever heard from a consumer device.

You cannot transfer recordings from standard-mode MDs digitally without a home deck with an optical output. The only way to do this with your PC is by analogue means.