JamesW

Well, I think LP2 is a reasonable setting that sits between Hi-SP and Hi-LP, and you can get 16h30 on a disc....so I'm happy with it. Just takes ages for Sonic Stage to convert and transfer the tracks. I agree that Sony should have thought it through. And Hi-LP should have been the actual missing setting, but at a higher bitrate. How can Hi-LP be worse than LP2? Illogical......

Well I was quite surprised myself. I did expect to get flanging problems etc. I also thought that playing back a disc in a different recorder than was used to record it would cause problems. But it was ok, seems that MD is very stable and precise, at least in the short term. Not sure about 1hr or more recordings, but we're only talking about 5 minute tunes anyway. Although..I have a feeling even long recordings would be ok. I found it easy to synch aswell. I used two mics for the drums, one for bass (amp), one for the sax....and I tend to get quite a bit of leakage - hard to separate the instruments really (we don't have screens, it's quite a basic set up really). But leakage makes it easier to synch the parts together.

Well.......I've finally tried it (with an MZN-710 and an MZN-NH1), and it works brilliantly! Transferred it to my PC for editing and synching the parts together, and it was really easy. And in fact, you could have a couple of tracks slightly out of synch in order to create interesting delay/echo effects. But in general it's a success. Now I'm battling with mic placement and so on, but that's another kettle f fish... As for the tascam mp3 recorder, this and all the other 'pocket' digital 4-track recorders, do NOT allow you to record more than 2 tracks simultaneously. I checked them all and none of them allow 3 or 4 tracks to be recorded together. So I'm glad the two minidiscs solution works :wink: Thanks, JamesW

That's interesting, Qwakrz. But isn't realtime a bit of a drag, i.e. a bit slow for recording? Anyway I'm about to give LP2 a go on my NH1......see how it goes. JamesW

I think I've found the answer to my question, on the http://www.minidisc.org/hi-md_faq.html page again. You can record 16hrs 30min of LP2 on a Hi-MD 1GB disc. Which seems well worth it. Glad I found that out, and I think the extra time converting in SonicStage is the same as if i was using Simple Burner and the MD did the converting (or does Simple Burner do the converting anyway?), so same difference really. Either way you have to wait a bit.

Sounds promising. Any guess as to how much recording time you can get with LP2 on a Hi-MD disc? I've been put off using SS because the time factor for encoding, and the slowness on my 366MHz PC when using the software in general. Much prefer Simple Burner. But if the above works then I might be prepared to put up with it. But what if your music is in wav or mp3 to start with? I suppose you could always burn a temporary CD (or use Nero Image Drive).

Hmm.......can you use LP2 recording mode on a Hi-MD disc, and if so, how much recording time do you get? Trouble is, the simple burner and sonicstage software only allows HiMD settings for transferring music. How do you get LP2 music onto a Hi-MD disc?

Well I thought LP2 was acceptable for listening to music on headphones....nice crisp and clear cymbals, good for jazz and classical. Now that I've bought a new HiMD recorder, I'm a bit annoyed that Hi-LP is just not good enough and I'll have to use Hi-SP (i.e. 8hrs on a disc instead of 34hrs with Hi-LP which would have been great, especially considering the price of HiMD discs....oh well). According to SONY, Hi-LP ATRAC3plus 64kbps should be equivalent to LP2 ATRAC3 132kbps. Please see their chart at: http://www.minidisc.org/hi-md_faq.html - about halfway down the page. The dotted lines show the equivalent sound qualities, with the red part to the right being Hi-MD (ATRAC3plus). But this is obviously NOT the case. I guess there should have been an intermediate level between Hi-SP and Hi-LP, equivalent to ATRAC3 132kps, as was touched upon by aeriyn, which perhaps would have given around 15hrs recording on a disc .....a good all round setting. And this could have been called Hi-LP, in place of the current lower quality Hi-LP setting. I presume Sony must have thought this through, but still, they're not the best range of HiMD settings.

I need a small portable device for recording four tracks simultaneously, and of the few around - Tascam, Zoom etc - they all can only record a maximum of two tracks simultaneously, whereas I'd like to record three of four tracks at once (at my band rehearsals). There are some recorders that can record 4 or more tracks simultaneously, but these tend to be the high-end expensive models and aren't so portable either. So I've had an idea: why not use two minidisc recorders, with two mics going into one MD (for tracks 1 and 2), and two into the other (for tracks 3 and 4), in oreder to record four musicians. Then when I transfer both stereo recordings to my computer / digital audio workstation, all I need to do is separate all four tracks and then align them so that they're all sync'd together. This way I'll end up with four separately recorded tracks for mixing / overdubbing etc. Has anyone any thoughts on the above? I did wonder if one recorder might recorder a fraction faster than the other, or otherwise cause sync problems. Possibly a flanging effect might occur when all four tracks are played back together on the computer. I'm ust wondering if it's worth splashing out another £100 on a second MD recorder. Thanks in advance. (I'm also not sure where to post this hence adding it to more than one forum - sorry!) JamesW.

I need a small portable device for recording four tracks simultaneously, and of the few around - Tascam, Zoom etc - they all can only record a maximum of two tracks simultaneously, whereas I'd like to record three of four tracks at once (at my band rehearsals). There are some recorders that can record 4 or more tracks simultaneously, but these tend to be the high-end expensive models and aren't so portable either. So I've had an idea: why not use two minidisc recorders, with two mics going into one MD (for tracks 1 and 2), and two into the other (for tracks 3 and 4), in oreder to record four musicians. Then when I transfer both stereo recordings to my computer / digital audio workstation, all I need to do is separate all four tracks and then align them so that they're all sync'd together. This way I'll end up with four separately recorded tracks for mixing / overdubbing etc. Has anyone any thoughts on the above? I did wonder if one recorder might recorder a fraction faster than the other, or otherwise cause sync problems. Possibly a flanging effect might occur when all four tracks are played back together on the computer. I'm ust wondering if it's worth splashing out another £100 on a second MD recorder. Thanks in advance. (I'm also not sure where to post this hence adding it to more than one forum - sorry!) JamesW.