ozpeter

Regardless of copyright? Usually site providers restrict such uploads to very short segments of audio provided as technical examples (as "fair use"), to avoid being prosecuted if someone posts a work or a performance that they don't have copyright clearance for. Hopefully you've got this angle covered with the benefit of proper advice. I love this site and would hate to see any heavy handed mob shut it down!

Hmm - I have in the back of my mind that there's some option which when turned off will make it go faster (no complaints here....) - is it the facility to transfer from CD by simpling pressing 'record' on the MD? I get the feeling that someone will point us to an FAQ with a degree of irritation any moment now...

Indeed, I'm talking hi-md as mentioned in the first post (whew, for a moment I thought he'd said something else!) As regards the "third way", I was referring to the technique I mentioned in this post which caused such excitement in the forum that the thread died an instant death.

You'll get a digital transfer if you have your MD connected via USB and you are playing back with SonicStage while recording with TotalRecorder using its "software" method, and with the recording volume set to 100% 0dB. Using this method, TotalRecorder picks up the audio before it gets to your soundcard. If you use a lower recording volume, TR will process the audio to reduce the level and so the transfer will no longer be a bit-for-bit transfer. It's possible to prove that that method provides a bit-to-bit equivalent to a transfer using SonciStage alone (setting aside the gap you get at track breaks). But using the soundcard method, you'll be recording after your soundcard has performed an digital to analog conversion, and an analog to digital conversion as well (as I understand it). In that scenario the levels for both playback and recording have an effect on the final outcome. There is a "third way" using a soundcard with its digital output connected to its digital input which can provide a digital transfer, but if you haven't got such a soundcard, forget it.

Have playback level where you like, recording level at 0dB 100% for accurate transfer. And you should be using the "software" setting if transferring via USB/SS playback.

I suspect you haven't read http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=6330 - if that doesn't answer your question, maybe post again.

Isn't this a hard-work way of doing it anyway? Especially if you are in the pro arena. Once the tracks are converted to wave format, you could use a program like Adobe Audition (and there are doubtless other choices, but that's the one I use) to 'open append' the files in one go. In Audition, you end up with one big file with cue markers where the MD tracks were originally. Very quick, very safe.

Double post self-deleted

I mentioned somewhere here that I've had some success with using a rechargeable battery intended for use with digital cameras, which seems to provide something like 24 hrs recording, while being reasonably compact. I connect it via the charging cradle as that's convenient for my purposes - connection via the charger socket is also an option.

Interesting, dex Otaku. Actually, last weekend I thought I had recorded something which might seriously upset my NH900 - it was a coloratura soprano (the loud squeaky kind), about 6 feet from very good mics, doing a very high trill and glissando - my headphones didn't like it much, but when I got home and recorded it into the PC, it came up clear as a bell with no audible artifacts (well, audible to me). Frankly it was the kind of thing which might split a mic diaphragm let alone upset ATRAC! So - well done Sony again. But as you say, organs can go even further.

In the current version of the Standard Edition there is a reference in the help file to "split mode" - if you look that up, you'll see that the feature is available in the Pro version only. Splitting can (it would appear) be based on file size and/or silence conditions. You may find that if you record into Total Recorder as one piece, that you could then apply some other program to finding the silences and splitting at that point. Maybe someone could make a suggestion along that line of thought (or have a rummage with Google yourself). audio silence split freeware ?

Personally I'd recomment an MS mic (or mics, though an MS pair using two separate mics plus a suitable preamp would be way over your budget) because most pipe organs are designed with the building they are situated in in mind, and MS mic techniques tend to be best at capturing the acoustic of a location as well as the instrument itself. Consider perhaps the most expensive Sony mic with an MS prefix to the model number that you can afford. However, I'll confess that this is very much a matter of personal taste! You may also need to think in terms of a tall mic stand unless this is for stealth recording. (As far as I know, the AKG Blue Line series of mics is the cheapest way of putting together a proper MS pair - it's the figure-of-eight mic that's the problem as they don't come cheap. You can record in MS and decode it to A/B in software when editing, but if you want to monitor in A/B you'll need to decode (dematrix?) on location using a mixer. There are arguments against the 'standard' trick of using three mixer channels - Phonic used to produce a small and quite cheap mixer that had M/S decoding built in, but I think it's no longer available. The Sennheiser MZA-MS1 (?) psu/preamp will do the job nicely but it's also not cheap).

http://www.batteryuniversity.com/ might be worth a look.

The version I installed when using 2.1 or 2.3 (can't recall exactly) still works now that I have upgraded to 3.0 (but yes, perhaps I don't need it anyway).

(Whispers.... That trick doesn't work here on my NH900 but I guess maybe it does on the model concerned at the start of the topic).

I've always had the impression that typical markup in the audio etc retail industry is such that something sold for $100 retail costs $30 wholesale - and the best profit is in accessories. And (for local readers!) don't assume that JB is the cheapest all the time - I've seen them offering something for twice the price of David Jones. You've always got to do your homework and compare a few prices from a few outlets.

Very good point! I was being a little unkind about Australians and new technology, I admit. In the UK people were more prone to buying the latest thing for the sake of it - here people tend to be more selective perhaps. Ooops, now I've upset another national group. Those Teac HD CD players are rebadged "Perception Digital" units, actually. I've been pretty pleased with the one we got. It's chiefly useful for a member of our household who uses a wheelchair and who has problems with getting the CDs from shelves and inserting them in the player. To be able now to access the whole lot from a remote is a great boon.

Maybe Australians are slow to take to new technologies. Recently Teac CD players with built in hard drives (iPods on steroids) have been dumped on the market here for $299 (Austrlian dollars, say 120 pounds sterling) - and still not being swept off the shelves.

My credit card statement came yesterday charging me 229 pounds for the NH900 which I recently purchased here in Australia using my UK card. Huh! But I still feel it's remarkable value for money, in the overall scheme of things. (OK, I shall cry myself to sleep tonight....)

oooh, I didn't know it would pick up CD text - and here it works a treat. Thanks for the heads-up, sorry it doesn't work for you!

Tip is left, ring is right, sleeve is earth. You sound a bit confused about balanced connections. Your five pin XLR handles a balanced stereo connection (common, left hot, right hot, left neg, right neg (or whatever terms you wish to use) - the three connections available with a trs connector can only support a balanced mono signal, not a balanced stereo signal (because only three paths are available, not five). If you could handle a stereo balanced connection on three pins, they wouldn't bother with the five pin XLR connectors on balanced stereo mics, would they? I'll give you a tip (pun not intended) - buy a prewired stereo minijack to 2 x rca lead, chop off the rca connectors and replace with a five pin xlr female - saves the tricky job of soldering up the minijack, unless you are pretty good at that kind of thing.

If there was a way, then there's a lot of people wasting a lot of time posting here. But if you do some reading of the FAQs and other posts here, you will probably learn a great deal about what is possible, and how to get the best out of SonicStage and your MD equipment.

Yes, but I did specify Sony hand held ones, which as far as I can see are all MS types as denoted by their model numbers. Indeed due to their wide distribution, perhaps most people buying a hand held one-point stereo mic will be buying Sony and therefore an MS type. Agreed, the output is A/B although years back I had a Sony MS999 (?) mic with optional MS output. As for wind noise, indeed, it's generally held that omnis as a class are most immune. See for instance the Schoeps site where they comment that " ... the difference in wind noise pickup between pressure transducers and pressure gradient transducers generally (i.e. omnidirectional microphones vs. directional microphones as a class) can be as much as 20 dB. Thus when wind noise is a factor, one should always consider whether an omnidirectional microphone could perhaps be used. Furthermore, it should be considered that a windscreen will affect the low-frequency polar pattern of a directional microphone". This link contains an explanation and useful advice on minimising wind and handling noise for anyone wishing to go into it in depth.

I started a now-lost thread just before the forums fell over in which I reported that, with my soundcard at least (Echo Mia Midi) one can record direct into Adobe Audition / Cool Edit / whatever (I imagine) from my NH900 via USB, and get a result which is bit for bit the same as would be obtained via Total Recorder. I did it by appropriate settings of the soundcard mixer in conjunction with looping its digital output back to its digital input. Playback is still via SonicStage, as if using Total Recorder - you can't readily get around that (or at all). I also mentioned that if I changed the sampling rate of the soundcard to 88.2 (from 44.1) the MD would play back (via USB) at double speed and could be recorded like that, then resampled to 44.1 - eureka, high speed digital download with no DRM. But - and there had to be a 'but' of course - the MD kept stopping after a couple of minutes. It also resets to normal speed for each new track. When I tried at 48kHz the MD seemed to be happy with that slightly faster speed and didn't bomb out after a couple of minutes. The double speed (88.2) just seems to be more than it can handle. In essence then, playback from MD to PC via the USB seems to work on much the same basis as playback through any other type of digital connection. This all indicates that there's some possibilities through that kind of technique, but as it stands it's probably more trouble than it's worth. Sorry this is slightly off the present topic but I thought it worth chucking into the knowledge pool here anyway, as I can't find similar reports already posted.

Have a read of http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=6330 You can't take a useable backup of a minidisc in the way you have tried. If you followed the advice given in the thread I mentioned, and you still lost material, let us know exactly what you did and which version of SonicStage you used.