greenmachine

It is difficult to draw the line between compensating for the shortcomings of the recording equipment / room acoustics and optimizing for your own playback equipment and listening tastes. What may sound good to you may not sound good to others and vice versa.

Chatter is usually a non-issue for me when recording such loud shows, the main sound is just so much louder. It s difficult to overload the line-in, so I don't think a bass filter is necessary, you can always post edit if the bass got too prominent.

What mode are you recording in? There's not much sense in bloating a low bitrate file to a higher bitrate, you won't gain any quality, in fact you will loose some. If you've recorded uncompressed (PCM) and encode to a lossy mode, you will get lower quality the lower the bitrate. The threshold of good quality is up to every individual's own hearing and cannot be judged by spectral graphs. They tell virtually nothing about perceived sound quality. Do you want to create ATRAC CDs (compressed) or plain Redbook Audio CDs? For Audio CDs, don't convert to a lossy bitrate before transferring, it will be decompressed eventually and you just lose quality.

Since SP and ATRAC are different descriptions for the same mode and you said to have tried SP already and it doesn't work, I suppose there must be a problem with the car unit.

My electric toothbrush charges wirelessly.

What kind of unit do you use to record the MDs and what mode/bitrate?. Don't know that particular Kenwood car model, but it might be compatible with SP (and MONO) mode only (which can't even be transferred via Sonic Stage in full quality).

As far as I know, ATRAC 3+, unlike the old ATRAC SP mode for example, uses a joint stereo channel coupling method (virtually lossless at higher bitrates, at lower bitrates probably more lossy - channel narrowing or intensity stereo are lossy coupling methods, m/s joint stereo works virtually losslessly). Thus a pure mono mode is not really necessary or useful, you will automatically benefit from a higher quality at a given bitrate if you encode from a mono source instead of stereo. There would be no difference in the resulting quality if you encode from a mono source to a given bitrate with the same parameters to mono or joint stereo. There is no loss if you encode mono to joint stereo compared to encoding to mono, but there is a significant loss in quality and/or filesize if you encode mono to stereo with no channel coupling (sometimes called real stereo or dual channel). For lossy encoding, no matter if from a stereo or mono source, I would suggest to never use a dual channel mode, you will always sacrifice some of the quality/filesize ratio (unless you have 100% discrete channels). As described above, (m/s) joint stereo will automatically take care of compressing mono or stereo files in the most efficient way. Intensity stereo (channel narrowing) should be used with care as it will destroy some of the stereo field in favor of filesize, but you don't have options to fine-tune ATRAC(3+) anyway, all parameters are pre-set for a given bitrate (proprietary codec). MP3 and many other codecs on the other hand can be fine tuned (which is usually not recommended, but that's a different story).

When encoding in VBR (variable bitrate), you choose a quality setting instead of a fixed bitrate and the encoder automatically chooses the minimum necessary bitrate to achieve a defined quality. Complex passages of a track will get encoded at higher bitrates than easy-to-encode ones. This way VBR produces a better quality-to-space ratio compared to an equivalent CBR algorithm. Every individual's threshold of acceptable/good quality is different, so you may be perfectly satisfied with 48kbps, while the other wouldn't go any lower than PCM (two extremes, the average person's threshold seems to be somewhere in between). When recording speech, it is usually only necessary "to get the information", while for music enjoyment quality is of a higher importance.

This -was- the magnetic recording head. Don't insert any more MDs into the unit, they might get damaged / scratched / randomly erased. It's not easy or inexpensive to repair, so your best bet would be a replacement unit - a Hi-MD if you can afford it, or one of the older (used) models if you can't.

AGC maybe?

I think you can be proud of the sound quality this setup produces. The only drawback of small diaphragm mics is their relatively high self-noise level, which is audible during the quiet parts, but to a great part masked during the main performance. I have noticed the noise level and the overall volume going up during the quiet parts - what kind of dynamic compression did you use?

I know about three kinds of mics used nowadays: - the dynamic mic, (doesn't require power at all, large, heavy diaphragm, weak high frequency response) - the pre-polarized condenser / electret (needs voltage of 1.5-10V typically, usually small) - the externally polarized condenser (needs voltage of 9-52V typically, usually larger) As far as I know, both condenser variants increase in sensitivity when using a higher voltage (within the nominal range, overpowering would destroy them). What kind of mic are you talking about and why do you think 5V would be too high a voltage and decrease sensitivity?

"Better" is a highly subjective word. In some cases you may be able to make a sound or image more pleasant or appealing while losing accuracy of the original. Sometimes it's just the placebo effect (I record at a higher resolution, therefor I imagine it to sound better). I would say re-recording a digital file the analog route is somewhat comparable to re-encoding a lossy audio file to the same format (like a 128kbps mp3 to mp3 again). You will have a quality/accuracy loss, no matter what. While you have some loss re-encoding to the same bitrate and the loss usually is less the higher bitrate you encode to, it's usually just not worth the increase in filesize. The accuracy of the copy can never be higher than the original. It can sound more pleasant to the ear though, or in other words "better" if the sound is getting colored in a more appealing way. Take audio editing as another example. While you lose the accuracy of the original file with every editing step* (EQ'ing for example), you may be able to make it sound better or more pleasant to the ear. *I am aware that editing can be a way to compensate for the weaknesses of the recording gear, which is another story.

I have just tried this by using SS4.2 with a short PCM and Hi-SP sample. In the properties->file info it still says "copy protection: available" in both cases directly after upload, whereas for the converted file it reads: "copy protection: none". So, yes, DRM is still applied by default for your own uploaded recordings. (come on, Sony). I can't find an option to change this behavior. Maybe someone else can?

They recorded in realtime. But you obviously need a recorder model for this. There were also some prerecorded albums, but the market was largely dominated by CDs (at least outside of Japan). NetMD had USB connectivity, but were downloaders only. Most of today's units, including Hi-MD allow transfers in both directions, but only some of them can record in realtime, which is invaluable for live recording. To my knowledge, there are no recording models only, playback ability is standard. Why not just get a mp3 player?

Did you try to set a different destination folder (tools->options->location to save...)? Do you have the option "save in wav format when importing" checked? (transfer mode settings button->advanced->import settings)? Make sure a valid folder is specified.

Two channels are perfectly sufficient for a natural 3-dimensional hearing. You have only two ears, don't you? Mic placement will make the difference if a recording appears 3-dimensional or not. The XY arrangement of the NT4 will give some channel separation, but not necessarily a naturally perceived one. Unlike your ears, the receptors of the mic are close together. The angling of the directional elements will give separation in the higher frequency region, but there is almost none at lower frequencies, which is good for mono compatibility, loudspeaker playback and whatnot, but not necessarily perceived as naturally 3-dimensional like a binaural recording, where the mics are arranged like the human hearing. Although I don't think any mic placement will cause distortion, it's usually just the 3-dimensionality that suffers.

A properly working box should have no effect on the mic's sensitivity, neither in the positive (well, maybe just a little bit because of the higher voltage) nor the negative direction - it just supplies power. There's no need for a battery box when you get no significant distortion recording directly via mic-in. It's designed for recording without pre-amplification via line-in to avoid distortion when recording loud sounds. Maybe you just forgot to connect a battery or used an empty one?

Hi-MD can record in the more efficient and upload-able Hi-MD format, even on standard MDs plus in the uncompressed PCM mode. For recording long sessions, less than a handful of 1GB discs would be sufficient, so it wouldn't be that much of an additional cost. You can always find them online if not available in your area.

The RH710 is a recorder, but has only the line/optical input, no preamplifier for microphone recording.

There's always some crosstalk which is normally only noticeable in extreme situations like yours. 100% discrete channel processing is rare, particularly among portable players.

Sounds sweet, enjoy your new hobby.

Am I the only one not to hear any significant distortion in the samples? (maybe subtly in the very beginning of the 2nd sample, not sure though) Could the problem be in your playback equipment or is it just my untrained hearing?

I don' think a battery box is necessary here with this low sensitivity mic unless you want to tape louder bands - I can't hear significant distortion - but there are AGC artifacts everywhere, which you can avoid by using a manual level setting. Low and high frequencies sound rather weak and the stereo image rather narrow, which are most likely limitations of the mic. Also, the whole recording sounds kind of out of phase, did you play with the phase in post processing or is it also a problem of the mic?

Your local optician may have some.