greenmachine

Sounds to me that your battery suffers from the memory effect and/or the effects of over-charging. The memory effect is typical for Ni-CD and Ni-MH rechargeables and tends to occur when the battery is recharged without first being discharged. It shows its effects in a weaker than usual battery (capacity loss). The affected battery can be reconditioned by a few complete discharge - charge cycles. Overcharging on the other hand is a more serious problem with non-reversible effects (permanent capacity loss, deformation). If you force the charger to continue after its full battery detection has interrupted charging, you risk to overcharge. For a more thorough guide how to take care of your batteries, visit: http://www.batteryuniversity.com/

ogg is a lossy codec, flac its lossless brother, both open source.

When recording from an analog source, you will only benefit from a higher resolution if the analog-to-digital-converter section is up to the job. For portable listening, you will only benefit from a higher resolution if the digital-to-analog-converter section is up to the job. In portables, i doubt it generally is. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

The NH600D or NH600 would probably be the least expensive Hi-MD for your purpose. It is recognized as a mass storage device by XP and draws power from the USB when connected. It also doubles as a portable audio player, in case you ever need it.

Hi, i can't give you any graph, but it seems his graph shows a much finer resolution in the dB scale (1dB, vs. 10dB in yours). Also no ones measurement equipment is 100% accurate, but at least the other guy has some other device to compare to so that you can see the relative difference (without calibrated measurement equipment there is no such thing as absolute value, but you can at least compare the difference between two or more devices). Also, a slightly "colored" response (loudness effect) isn't necessarily bad, but can sound "pleasant" or even compensating over most headphones (which often show a contrary response - weak lows and highs) as others have pointed out. Also 1 or 2 dB isn't really much of a difference, just take a look at most headphones' responses, much more variation. Electric to acoustic transducers (headphones and loudspeakers) have always been the most critical part of the chain, and always will be.

Does it have to be internal? Hi-MD can be used for data storage via USB connection. http://minidisc.org/equipment_browser.html

(Hi)MD is a relatively slow medium compared to nowadays harddisk or flash read/write times, uses a (magneto-)optical pickup, seeking will be more more CD like with noticeable delay.

The quick mode is like a standby mode. It will remember the disc index information so that the startup can be faster. But it uses some (minor) power from the battery to remember this information. With the quick mode off, the disc index needs to be read every time the unit is powered up, but there is (virtually) no current drain when turned off. If you - use the unit regularly (battery charge used up within less than a week or two), use the quick mode for faster startup. - use it from time to time (once every couple of days/weeks), turn the quick mode off. - don't use it for several weeks/months, remove the battery from the unit.

Deleting might not be possible for regular members. Deleting the first post probably isn't even available for special members, it would erase the entire thread including all following messages. A moderator will move it if necessary.

fanimej, you can see the board statistics on bottom of the front page. There are usually just a dozen of registered members online, but quite a few unregistered visitors (guests) at a time. In the member list you can see the total post count of each member among other details.

Virtually any software based audio editor has a built-in equalizer (EQ), so does the free Audacity. An example how the EQ (in the menu under effects) could be set to reduce low frequencies: [attachmentid=2156]

352 kbps is only available by using SS, not for real-time recording, which means USB transfer only. The quality should be superior to 256 kbps in theory, but whether it's worth the increased space demands and if you can hear the difference depends entirely on -your- ears. The only significant audible loss (or not, depends on your ears) happens when PCM is compressed to a A3+ (or any lossy codec). There should be no quality loss at all from cables, software or the like since it's an all-digital transfer (unless something goes wrong like CD read errors). In theory, software transfer should be quality-wise superior to real-time recording since there is no re-sampling (hardly audible difference though).

Suzanne Vega - Nine objects of desire

I think what you're talking about is the sample rate. Since lossless and lossy formats usually use the same sample rate for standard / high quality audio (44.1 kHz), there is no forced cutoff below 22.05 kHz. Although the presets are usually set / tuned differently, you could force the encoder (with LAME, for example) not to filter the highest frequencies even at 192 or 128 kbps. The trade-off would be increased artifacts.

When using the same parameters, like cutoff frequency, yes, but since it is set lower and frequencies above 18 kHz are to a great part inaudible anyway, there is less to encode, the encoder can focus on the important/audible part, a lower bit rate might sound as good or better in theory, the poster's suspicion is justified.

I don't think it is a problem that can easily be fixed by yourself, i'm afraid. Better see if you can return it or get it repaired. Contact the seller.

About the matching: Connect two capsules, hold them as close together as possible, play back a constant test signal through one loudspeaker (could be a sine, saw square wave, noise, etc., try at different frequencies). Put your MD recorder in record mode with manual levels. Move the capsules forward and backward to/from the loudspeaker while observing the record level meter. The two dots should rise and fall relatively simultaneously (in the upper region, which has approx. 2dB between the dots, in lower regions the resolution is much lower). Monitor the signal with (preferably closed) headphones. In a quiet surrounding (turn off the test signal), turn up the levels of the recorder and make sure the self-noise from both channels sounds relatively similar. This method works relatively well for its simplicity. Be careful/fast when (de)connecting the capsules, they're relatively heat sensitive, excessive heat can damage them. Oh, and by the way, i have experimented with headphone mounting a while ago. the results were not so promising, got plenty of handling noise (of course this depends which kind of headphones you use, how you mount the mics, how you lead the cable, etc.. Glasses mounting gave much quieter results. By the way #2: Live monitoring is a no-no with headphone mounted mics, you will get lots of (acoustic) feedback, which will also be on the recording.

The NH900 should work with both standard and 1GB MiniDiscs. The system file writing can take up to approx. 30 seconds, but not significantly more. Try with a different disk of the same type. If the problem is still there, it's most likely the recorder.

The human ear is most sensitive in the upper mid-range, trumpets and brass in general may appear louder to you than to your recording equipment, which usually has more problems to deal with excessive bass from amplified PA than with mid-high frequency emphasized brass instruments. Depending on the sensitivity of the microphones (lower is better in your case) you won't even need a battery box. If there is a low-sensitivity option for the mics, choose it.

Aside from the quality of the gear itself, mic placement has a great influence on the resulting sound quality. Make sure the mics were not covered by anything with acoustic influence, otherwise high frequencies might get muffled. This includes a high enough position in order not to have ta great part of the sound blocked by objects / persons in front of you. Headworn mics roughly capture what you hear, so if you didn't have a good position to begin with, don't have too high expectations on the recording. Also your playback equipment will additionally color the sound. Distant miked recordings are best listened to through relatively neutral headphones, loudspeaker playback usually requires close miking (to minimize room reverberations)and some EQ adjustments to sound good.

I don't wear glasses either, but for recording i do. I was lucky to find sunglasses without any darkening effect (reading glasses without magnification would be nice too i guess). Although i try to be disciplined (i.e. not too move too much) during a recording, cable noise is really a non-issue most of the time with this setup. For speaker playback i'd suggest to use the same (or a similar) miking technique, but to move closer to the source, i.e. not to include too much room reverberations, otherwise it will sound too muddy if played back via speakers in a room. It is this "room in a room" effect that gives you the impression of a muddy sound. For headphone listening, far miking is usually o.k. or even preferred.

I know the problem, my camcorder's (omnidirectional?) mics were also placed with virtually no distance in between, both directing upwards, not even angled to the sides. The stereo seperation was virtually non-existing and directing them upwards didn't exactly help to preserve fidelity either. What i did was to replace these built-in mics with a 3.5 mm stereo jack for an external microphone. For convenience i use a DIY T-mic with approx. 20 cm between the elements. For highest fidelity, i "wear" the mics close to my ears (HRTF, head as a separator). I did a test with mic placement a while ago: http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=11297 http://www.taperssection.com/ is also a good place for anything mic related.

Midnight Cowboy, Sideways, Maria Full Of Grace

A method for recovering tracks from a corrupted / accidentally formatted / erased Hi-MD, similar to TOC cloning in pre-Hi-MD days.

Reanimating a lost Hi-MD with RH1 General: - tested with SonicStage 3.4 - recorded continuously (no parts were cut out or moved) Limitations: - seems to work only with the RH1 (MD needs to be initialized and recorded with the RH1, doesn't matter if initialized via soft- or hardware) Procedure: - access the damaged MD in data mode (via file explorer) - copy the file ATDATAxx.HMA to your harddisk (xx are placeholders, the numbers/letters are subject to change when the system file is being written by the recorder) - initalize/format a new MD (standard or 1GB, doesn't seem to matter, though the original recording needs to fit on this disk) -disconnect RH1 from PC -start a "fake recording" on the blank MD, which needs to be slightly shorter than the total of the damaged recordings. Let the system file to be written when finished. - connect RH1 to PC, access in data mode - delete the audio file of the fake recording ATDATAxx.HMA (usually named ATDATA02.HMA when recorded continuously). Remember the exact name of this file. - copy the damaged file from your harddisk to this location and rename it exactly like the file you have just deleted. - disconnect RH1 from PC - put RH1 into LineOut mode Transfer and limitations: You can now do a realtime analog transfer (see here). You will hear short interruptions in places where previous trackmarks have been. [if you don't put the RH1 in LineOut mode, it will seem to play normally past these previous trackmarks, (level indicator will work as usual), but there will be no sound output until FF button is pressed]. Alternatively you can use SonicStage to play back the files. To do so, connect RH1 to PC, start SonicStage. The fake recording should be displayed in the "transfer" section. Playback should work normally to the point of the first trackmark in the original (damaged) recording. SS will interrupt playback at this point and jump back to the beginning of the file. If you move the trackbar beyond the point of the first (or following) original trackmark, playback will continue. The file can be imported from MD to PC via SS without problems. Playback behavior of this file will be as described beforehand. Converting to WAV will result in an error message at the point of the first original trackmark, conversion will be aborted. Converting to a different bitrate will result in an error message.