ozpeter

I seem to have overcome this problem (which actually was affected another internet-related program) by simply connecting Internet Explorer to the net - which I think I'd never done with this PC as normally I use Firefox. Anyone with a similar problem might care to try that solution.

If it would make you feel more comfortable, I'll sell you some of mine! Like many here, I seem to have collected them rather irrationally, from the first one (within days of release) onwards.

Not long ago I did some tests using a CD as a source into the line in and then the mic in. The CD player has a digital level control enabling me to attenuate it enough to record into the mic input. Having recorded a bit of the same track each time, I then paused the CD player to enable me to record just noise. Although I did my best to make the two recordings at comparable levels, I normalised them in the PC afterwards to ensure that the signal part was identical, enabling the noise to be compared. Trouble is, I forget what the result was, although the NH900 mic input appeared to be no disaster. I guess I must either find the previous post here again, or repeat the test. I've also got another possible route for evaluation, which is the Sennheiser mic preamp I use with Sennheiser MKH series mics - seriously expensive and about as low noise as you can get. That can output at either line level or mic level, so that might make the basis for an interesting experiment. [Edit - I've now found the info and the result was that "Peak noise level on the mic input is about -62dB, compared with -72dB on the line input".]

But the chances of the laptop having a usable sound input are close to nil, unless I'm being very cynical. You'd have to add some kind of external sound card to get the equivalent quality of a Hi-MD mic or line input, and the overall cost would be likely to considerably exceed a minidisc solution.

Mine seems to be glowing a little more than when first tried. Maybe the glow develops with use. Or is it to do with my day job at the nuclear power station? dunno...

It's an urban myth. Several times I've challenged anyone to come forward with test results showing there is any way of defeating auto time mark but nobody has. It's extremely easy to test - just play a CD into the line of your recorder, pause it for a few seconds, and see if when it restarts you do or do not get a track mark.

Though why anyone would wish to do so in such an inefficient manner I can't imagine. It's slow, the medium is expensive, and the chance of Md players still being around after CD players have gone is minimal. Just copy to CDR, and use a CD recorder which supports error checking after burning to be sure that the result is readable. Probably 40 times faster and 10 times cheaper.

Minidisc Australia - probably not as cheap as eBay or the like but, as you have noted, very quick and efficient! And reputable. If I was less fussy about who I did business with I might, or might not, be a wealthier man.

Got mine and it's very handy- improves ergonomics significantly - but the backlight is the dimmest backlight I've ever seen on anything - much dimmer than the stick remote. I guess it's to save the battery. Should be adjustable. I'll check the FAQ to see if I'm missing something.

Well, I did see the previous version, and I've now read this version a couple of times, and I'm still struggling to encapsulate what you are saying into a single sentence - such as, "if you move a section of a live recording outside the original group, upload it and then delete it, it will reappear within the original group as if nothing had happened" - or some summary of that sort, to make the thing clear. (You've described it in admirable detail which I don't doubt I could follow if I tried, it's the principle of the thing I'm feeling a need to get a grasp of). Also, with the material I work with, creating a single file at the outset is not possible as auto track marking kicks in regardless, so that might render the thing impractical anyway, here at least. But hey, it does look like you've hit on something that might be useful under some circumstances, and you've doucmented it comprehensively, so thanks for that from me anyway!

Maybe try cleaning the contacts as a first line of investigation?

Huh. This discussion has just cost me the price of an Rm-mc40elk. Seriously, thanks for the 'heads-up' - using this I will be able to put my recorder somewhere less visible (and thus less thief-tempting) when doing non-stealth concert recording and just work with the remote. And I can retire the book light.

Well, no harm done, I've for one learned something useful re the DirectShow renderer.

C'mon Marc, let's have some effects included in your program.

That figure reminds me of tests I was doing with Audition, which would record from a Hi-Md connected via USB at faster than realtime - but stopped after a similar amount of time. Maybe some cunning element of Sony's DRM?

Copying your music to MD and then deleting it from the PC, in an effort to preserve it for the future, makes no sense at all. It would be far cheaper to copy it to archive-quality CDs, and if you want to play it on the move, copy those to MD as required. The best I've seen MDs rated at is 50 years - the best CDs are rated at 100 years. MD hardware has a doubtful future, but the sheer installed and purchased base of CD should ensure its longevity. Finally, work out the relative cost per gigabyte of hard drive storage and MD storage. You'd do better to just leave it where it is.

It's been covered here before and a search should turn up plenty of advice, but in brief, my advice would be to keep 'normal' peaks around the first fixed dot, and let exceptional peaks reach to the meter segment just before the second fixed dot. If you hit the segment at the second fixed dot, there's a good chance you'll get distortion. You won't see meters on playback on the current models as I understand it. Use something like Audicity to examine the waveform of your recording and judge how well you've set the level afterwards, and learn from what you see (and hear).

EAC will rip a CD to a single file (with a separate cue sheet) in one pass. At a glance I'm not sure CDex does that.

Well... normally a radio mic is connected to a transmitter pack about the size of an NH1 and the receiver is usually larger. And the two would be side by side on your belt. As a space-saving substitute for a length of wire it doesn't cut it - unless someone outside the CIA really does make a mic plus transmitter (including batttery) the size of a stealth mic, and a receiver built into the connector for the MD's mic socket. Maybe look for one of those fisherman's style waistcoat jackets - all pockets and not much else. I have to say that I've often thought that if someone made a very lightweight waistcoat-type garment for guys to wear in the summer, with a few good size pocket for wallet, sunnies, and phone etc, it would sell well. I bought such a thing about 15 years back but the pockets have turned to holes. But maybe I'm getting off topic.

(2) - Adobe Audition has a Group Waveform Normalise function which attempts to make a set of tracks (files) soundequally loud, taking into account the characteristics of the human ear. You can specify whether you are prepared for the tracks with already high level should have a limiting effect applied to them or whether the original dynamics should be left alone, and if necessary, high-level tracks to be reduced in level to enable the quieter ones to subjectively sound louder in comparison. It takes a bit of experimentation with test copy files to get the measure of it. You can download a trial from the Adobe site.

You can't merge tracks on the MD that have been transferred from the PC - part of the digital rights management process, I'm afraid.

Sorry to return to this, but curiosity is my middle name... Never being one to accept what I'm told without verifying it myself, I did a test line-in recording using Hi-SP of a CD track, and while it was recording for about 90 secs, I put in about ten track marks manually. I then loaded it onto the PC with SS 3.0 and converted to a set of wave files. I combined the waves into a single file using two alternative methods, and checked that they were identical (to ensure my method of combining to one file isn't faulty). On replay, I could hear tiny bits of audio were missing at most of the joins. Following the advice given by dex, I then combined the files within SS, converted the SS-combined files to wave, and compared that to the version combined outside SS. At each track mark the SS combined version played a little further behind the version combined outside SS, and the total difference in file length was around half a second in the 90 second recording. So, at least here, it's clear that the problem lies in the conversion to wave of uncombined .oma files. If you do as advised by dex Otaku, namely let SS combine the .oma files into one, then convert that to wave, you'll have a transfer without overlaps or missing material at track marks (but see next section below ==== lines). Now, this of course means that (if you wanted them at all) your track marks have gone from the SS-combined version. Here at least I've got a reasonable workaround, involving a freeware tool called CueListTool. This has the ability to copy cues in a wave file from one file to another. So, assuming you are working with Hi-SP format (haven't tested Hi-LP, and PCM seems not to have the problem) in combination with Cool Edit or Audition (or possibly other programs), what you can do is.... 1. Transfer from MD to PC and to wave without combining, thus creating a set of wave files, one file per marker. 2. If need be use the method I've described elsewhere to automatically rename the wave files to ensure correct chronological order. 3. Use the "Open Append" command in Cool Edit / Audition to create a single large wave file, which Cool Edit / Audition will automatically mark with wave file cue marks where the original files begin and end. 4. Save that big file and delete the original set of wave files (if you like). 5. The file that you have just created will have bits missed or duplicated at the cue marks. 6. Now in SS, combine the .oma files into one. 7. Convert that large .oma to wave 8. In CueListTool, open the Cool Edit wave file, and read in its cues. 9. In CueListTool, open the SS-combined wave file, and write the cues you just read from the other file. 10. Eureka. You have a file with no glitches, but you have cues, and you didn't have to do anything manually. But - of course due to the fact that the cues come from a file with bits missing, then they will be in slightly the wrong place in the file you've written them to - the further you go into the file, the more inaccurate they will be. But the difference will not be that big, and to correct that (by dragging them in Cool Edit, or even using CueListTool ) is easier that trying to work out where they would have been from scratch. As with any typed out procedure, it seems long winded, but in fact it's no big deal in practice, particularly if you are reasonably familiar with the programs concerned, and each process is pretty automatic and brain-out-of-gear. And what's the alternative? ================================= Now for part two. Yup, there's more. Using the above, I think I have proved that converting to wave from a SS combined set of Hi-SP files leads to a wave file with no problems where the orignal track marks were, ok? Well, that's only true if you put the track marks in manually. Days back I commented on how I was getting duplicated material at track marks when inserted automatically during a line-in recording at points where the volume comes back up past the -40dB threshold (or whatever the figure is). Doing the above test tonight, I wasn't getting that problem. So I repeated the whole procedure above but this time, by playing the CD track at low level and recording it at low level, but bring the level up and down a bit, I caused automatic track marking to be triggered. This time, whether combining the tracks in SS or externally, little bits of repeated audio could be clearly heard where the original track marks were. You can in fact hear these repetitions when replaying the SS-combined .oma file in SS - it's not caused by the conversion to wave. So in this scenario - Hi-SP with auto track marks - there's no way of getting a transfer without repeated bits (overlaps) at the track marks, unless you use an analogue realtime transfer, because for reasons I can't begin to understand, playback on the NH900 itself is free of these overlaps. For some unfathomable reason, SS3.0 can't accurately determine where the track marks are if the level is low at the point they occur (which is where they are when placed automatically - they seem to be inserted just before the increase in level rather than right on it). =========================== For many users, these problems won't matter a jot. But if you are recording material with a wide dynamic range using hi-SP via line in, (eg classical music as I do), then you should be aware of the issues at least. Whether these issues affect other versions of SS or whether they affect other models I don't know of course. It would be interesting if someone could test a 2nd gen model in due course. [Edit:- just for completeness, a test of PCM shows none of these problems occur and there should be no need to use SS to combine PCM tracks to obtain a glitchless file.]

Well, that's handy to know - in essence, that's what I'm hearing, overlaps at track marks. If that's inherent in the format, then it's simply something one has to live with, or deal with by the various possible and somewhat tedious methods in instances where it's clearly audible. In my experience (with Hi-SP) so far, it's not something that jumps out at you very often.

What format are you using to record in? In my experience, PCM format does not appear to cause any loss or addition of material at track marks. Hi-SP causes (here) duplication of material at track marks. Hi-LP I don't use so can't comment. Another factor is how the track marks are inserted. Mine mostly arise from using line input and the tracks being inserted at points where the level rises from close to silence. Maybe pressing the button manually, or inserting them automatically on a timed basis, causes different problems. What surprises me is that these problems are starting to be discussed only now. Maybe this is to do with SS 3.x or a recently manufactured batch of recorders? Additional thought - you know how it's difficult to edit mpeg video apart from at certain frames? I wonder whether this is related to these atrac encoded files - maybe you simply can't have accurate joins exactly where the track marks are.

But.... if you load it to the PC as one long recording, track mark it there in wave format (you're using Cool Edit I note, so if you follow the cue/merge/batch routine as if for burning to CD, you've got a collection of files, one file per track, right?) then copy that back to the MD (on another disk if you don't feel comfortable wiping the original yet), then apart from the transfer time taken, you're home free surely? If you record in PCM format in the first place, and/or copy back to MD in PCM format, you've got no issues with double compression.