ozpeter

Having read through this thread without having downloaded the new version I find myself seriously confused, but bits of it do rather sound like wavpack lossless/lossy "hybrid" compression. " The hybrid mode provides all the advantages of lossless compression with an additional bonus. Instead of creating a single file, this mode creates both a relatively small, high-quality lossy file that can be used all by itself, and a "correction" file that (when combined with the lossy file) provides full lossless restoration. For some users this means never having to choose between lossless and lossy compression!" - quote about wavpack, not any form of Atrac, from the wavpack site www.wavpack.com Am I thinking along the right lines here?

More or less on topic - I've just added an NH1 to my NH900 (thanks, Sefu!!) and took it to the park with me yesterday together with the free Tbar mic (with extension lead to avoid machine motor noise). Hearing a group of "bell birds" peeping to each other I quickly set it up and banged it into Hi-SP record without making any settings - though I did wrap my hankerchief round the mic a few times to deal with a little wind noise. Back home I ran the result through Audition's frequency analyser and was astounded to see very clear harmonics of the birds' calls extending above 17kHz. The conversation of a couple walking along the path about 100 feet away was also clearly audible above the noise floor. When I can find an alternative piece of miniature hardware which will reliably turn in that kind of performance (for $230AU!!) I'll be equally impressed. But I think I'll be waiting a while.

Here we have a 40gig HD CD player from Teac which were greeted by such a yawn from the buying public that they were cleared at prices reminiscent of the current sale of Hi_MD at MiniDisc Australia. It's like a hi-fi-unit-size iPod. Chief reason for buying it was that a member of our household uses a wheelchair and access to our sizable CD collection is actually problematic. Now access to any CD is via a convenient remote. Sometimes these inventions have more benefits than the inventors expect. Shame it doesn't play any form of MD!

Now that I've changed back (just personal preference....) - when's Halloween??

Seems to me that anyone walking down the street glued to their iPod video screen is asking for trouble with the next lamp-post. At least with audio you only get run over 'cos you didn't hear that car coming. Or am I an aged reactionary?

http://www.tascam.com/Products/hdp2.html looks nice - but way over the top! Read around here a bit and you'll find several previous discussions (some very recent) which bemoan the fact that a really good replacement for Hi-MD has yet to appear.

Hmm, combining that number of files using whatever that combining package was I found would be an interesting test. Of course the key thing now is that one can go about it different ways during testing without SS deleting the files at the start of the second run! Which makes me think maybe another round of testing may be warranted. I'll see what time allows.

dex, note my edit to the above post if you want to dig deeper sometime.

Trouble is, with auto track marking, you get short repetitions around the track mark point whatever you do. Leastways, that was my conclusion a couple of months back which I reported here somewhere... Edit - found it - there's this one and this one on the subject.

Just a thought - I hope that if there are further concrete developments concerning the future of MD (eg specific Sony announcements) that the moderators won't bury them in this excellent but rather long discussion - when/if that time comes, a new thread might draw more attention.

It seems to be pretty risky to mention the M-Audio MicroTrack around here, but this Yahoo Groups post seems to indicate that it's got some weird "features" - such as inability to set levels or monitor without actually recording, and inability to run off external power (just recharge) - which indicate the problems with other products' immaturity. [Edit - reading other posts does present a confusing picture of the truth of these matters, but the general point in the next para here is valid I think.] While Md/Hi-MD has a slew of known irritations, at least a lot of the wrinkles have gradually been ironed out over the years. While doubtless new devices will appear to take over the MD mantle in the fullness of time, I rather wonder whether there will be an awkward hiatus before genuine alternatives are not only available but fully developed and de-bugged.

Check out http://noisetheatre.blogspot.com/2005/07/m...s-minidisc.html and the various links on that page for interesting reading on this overall subject. Note that items on the page are like three consecutive words which point to three different links - kinda confusing.

To record what? That could make a big difference. Needless to say Adobe Audition would be a good start for many purposes... A pro sound card (ie not one from Creative) should be pretty high on the list. Don't forget monitoring! If you can't tell the quality of what you've recorded, you're dead in the water at the outset. And good monitoring ain't cheap. Acoustic treatment for your room, depending on the nature of the recording. The means to record remotely from the PC if it makes a noise, or to silence it. Have you a feel for your overall budget?

I stopped using my very costly HHB PortaDat a few months back and replaced it (for my particular purposes) with an NH900. However, I'd been using that PortaDat for about ten years and production of it ceased several years ago. The fact that it was no longer marketed had no impact at all on my use of it. The fact that nothing better for the format was ever subsequently released meant that the value of my large investment was maintained. Now, there's no reason why I shouldn't carry on using the NH900 for several years to come - I've enough discs for my purposes - and when the time comes that I need to replace it, I don't doubt something pretty awesome by today's standards will be available. Of course I would be sad to see minidisc go - I was I think the first person to appear in print in a pro audio magazine preaching the virtues for location recording of the very first MD portable within weeks of its availability (it's in the cupboard somewhere...) and I have several hi-fi MD units around, but I wasn't planning to buy a new unit every year - indeed, rather than being grateful to Sony for constantly bringing out newer and better models, it was always a bit annoying to see one's flashy new item out-dated in months. The key thing for me is ongoing support - Sony does have that duty towards existing customers, though I don't think it has any duty to bring out new models. I would hope that media will continue to be available, and I would expect service backup for several years. With perhaps the former and certainly the latter, I'll continue to be a Hi-MD and plain MD user for years to come, and if the eventual replacement doesn't say "Sony" on the box, I think I'll cope.

[betamax to VHS?? That's changing deckchairs on the titanic, surely? One major UK retailer has dropped VHS in favour of DVD recorders altogether.]

Sony will be looking several years ahead. MD's optical disk technology simply won't cut the mustard in five years time, when it's likely that substantial amounts of solid state memory will be available in compact formats at low prices. The whole concept of using media which "only" holds 1gig of data and which "only" downloads at Hi-MD transfer speeds will seem hopelessly outmoded then. And don't get me wrong, I've been a huge MD fan from day one. Before long, mp3 players will have acceptable quality mic inputs (acceptable for stealth recording) and the pros will be using devices such as this - "The HHB FlashMic is the world’s first professional digital recording microphone. Combining a high-quality, Sennheiser omni-directional condenser capsule with an inbuilt, broadcast-quality Flash recorder, FlashMic is a convenient, easy to operate and durable recorder that’s perfect for press and broadcast journalism, or any other voice recording application. With no messy cables, just one button press is all it takes to start recording in either linear or MPEG 2 formats. Simple ‘drag and drop’ file transfer at up to 90x real time to a Mac or PC for editing or onward transmission is enabled by a ‘plug and play’ USB connection. Two AA batteries provide more than 6 hours continuous power and, with a 0 - 10 seconds pre-record buffer and 1GB of flash memory, you can be sure that you’ll never miss a word of that important interview with a FlashMic." Sure, that mono capture device is of little use to most of us here, but it (along with others of the general type) shows the way things are inexorably moving. When I bought my Hi-MD machine about 6 months ago, there was nothing better on the market for my purposes. Today that is probably still true, though other devices are snapping at its heels. In one year, two years, I rather doubt whether my buying decision would be the same. But hopefully my NH900 and the 25 discs I have for it will still be going strong!

http://www.core-sound.com/pdaudio-to-micro...comparison.html makes interesting reading. It seems to me that perhaps M-Audio have got Core Sound worried if they find it necessary to go into this much detail to defend their product, but perhaps I am reading too much into it.

http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Micr...k2496-main.html Just because this device and an MD recorder are both small recording devices doesn't mean they compete head to head. A hammer and a screwdriver will both fit in a normal toolbox but you use them for rather different tasks, and nobody would say "a hammer is better than a screwdriver" unless specifying the precise purpose you want to use each for. If the media cost was identical, you might start to have a discussion on your hands, but at present, the cost of CF cards etc is such that any device of this sort is purely intended as a location capture device. Its feature set and cost points to professional use as the intended market. CF media is in fact remarkably robust - there's the famous photo taken of one digital camera by another, the first being accidentally destroyed in an explosion, but its card still worked. As for knowing what is on which disk, well, here I simply number them and keep a list of contents on a searchable page on my PC. One could do just the same with memory cards. Sadly my old eyes are not up to precise labelling of either media.

Thanks for the reminder. I don't actually need them but I'll get a box of ten to see me through my old age if Sony pulls the plug.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4198360.stm has the story.

My dealings with HHB go way back to '84 when they had a digital editing suite in a converted garage in north London. HHB are primarily an equipment supplier (of most major audio brands) who started getting equipment made to their specifications to address requirements they felt were not being properly fulfilled by others. They will keep going quite happily if their own-brand stuff ceases production. For me, their "Portadrive" hard disc recorder is the most desirable bit of kit on the planet! But Mrs Oz says "no"...

I'm now told HHB has scrapped plans for a Hi-MD model - there representative was heard to comment at a recent pro audio exhibition that "MD is dead", and that they were debating whether or not to go ahead with a final run of 500 of their pro MD (standard mode) model. Shame. I guess they are looking to memory cards as the thing of the future for location pro sound recording.

Given that repeated samples can be found in SonicStage transfers and wave conversions derived from analog recordings (at points where auto track marks have been inserted), then it's possible that marcnet's conversions may be more bit-perfect than Sony's.

Not that I know of. If anyone did, it would be HHB I guess. "Of course HHB has HiMD high on the agenda. HiMD has still not yet hit the consumer market, although this is supposedly imminent and SONY have not released the fine details of the new specification to rainbow book licencees yet. So a professional HiMD is certainly not going to be available in 2004. I agree with you that this is an exciting step forward for HiMD provided it actually delivers what is says it will deliver. Paul, HHB" Quote from Paul Isaacs, HHB, June 2004.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that 16/30 is standard line level and that if you have to be using 13/30 or less, you are probably overloading the MDs input at the outset - so lower the incoming signal.