greenmachine

Go to your soundcard's control panel and check if line-in recording is enabled and the level is set high enough. [attachmentid=1618]

As far as i know, all of the Hi-MD machines allow on-the-fly recording level adjustment, it must've become a 'standard' already a few years ago - before the introduction of Hi-MD.

Because of the low power consumption, it doesn't really matter that much if you use a super expensive high performance battery or the least expensive. I usually use the least expensive alkaline i can find. Avoid heavy duty batteries though. Just check the voltage from time to time and replace when necessary. Depending on how often you use it, it should last at least approx. 1-2 years. Just remember to interrupt the circuit by either disconnecting mics or battery when not in use.

You need to do a realtime transfer by connecting headphone-out of the MD to line-in of your soundcard. Details are here: http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=7070 Feel free to ask further questions. By the way, i think the correct model no. should be MZ-R501.

I'd say the major difference is in the quality of the input and output stages. There aren't many mp3 players with a built-in hq stereo microphone preamplifier either.

Only with ac adaptor plugged, usb unplugged and battery inserted.

When unplugging from USB, the unit will re-read the disc index and thus consume some battery power. If you let it power down and switch back on, the indicator should be back to normal (assuming you use the quick mode). There should be no battery power consumption when connected to USB, thus no need to remove the battery.

The night & day combo, lol - why build a unit which can do both (backlit lcd for example) if you can sell two instead?

It depends on the power consumption of you mics. If, for example, the capsules are rated for 0.5 mA each, the total would be 1 mA for a stereo mic. Assuming the 9V battery is rated with 500 mAh, you would get approx. 500 hours battery life (500mAh/1mA=500h). I wouldn't recommend using a rechargeable battery for low power devices like battery boxes, since self-discharge is rather high - they will discharge even when not in use. I use a rechargeable for the recorder, but alkaline for the battery box. You could use a multimeter to keep track of current consumption and battery voltage. Once the voltage drops below approx. 6-8V, it's recommended to replace the (9V) battery.

http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=7070

It adds tags without asking.

You could invest either in a external preamp or a unit with mic-in. You might be able to get unit with mic-in used for the same price or lower than an ext. preamp. An ext. preamp means additional bulk (and also needs to be powered separately).

See also this recent thread: http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=15221

Feel free to PM me or Top Cat if you can't find anything in australia. Fortunately worldwide shipping isn't too expensive nowadays.

I guess the major problem wouldn't be the procedure itself, but to find a working replacement battery (for an acceptable price / at all).

Thank you for your detailed thoughts. Although it's somewhat hard to imagine, i suppose there's some truth in it.

It's not just filtering frequencies in the inaudible range (>~16-18khz), but also lowering high frequencies in the audible range. It can be roughly corrected via EQ though.

The relatively high capacity of alkalines is rated under modest current consumption (maybe 1/10 or even 1/20 C). When used with high current draining devices (Hi-MD can reach reach higher peaks), the usable capacity will be significantly lower. Rechargeables on the other hand can handle high current peaks better and thus might outperform Alkalines. Drawback, among others is a relaitvely high self-discharge, which is a non-issue if used regularly. I'd be interested about the reasons why not to use two rechargeables at once as well. What's the difference to using to using gumstick + alkaline? I would suppose the latter combination could in theory give more problems because of different voltages (1.2 vs. 1.5V), not?

If you feed the recorder with a 180° phased stereo signal and record in mono, you'll get (close to) zero, the channels will be substracted. [1/2+(-1/2)=0] If you feed the recorder with a one channel mono signal and record in mono, you'll get roughly half the volume. [1/2+0=1/2] If you feed the recorder with a two channel mono signal (stereo in phase) and record in mono, you'll get roughly the full volume. [1/2+1/2=1] I suppose either your signal is out of phase and/or unbalanced, or your recorder does not work properly. You can't bring back what's not there, but you can at least try the aforementioned amplify method.

If you're lucky, it's just the disc. Try a different (not baked) one.

Also there's no lossless way to move SP recordings from one MD to another as far as i know.

I was referring to metal film resistors with 1% tolerance. If you don't have options, use whatever is available, the common 5% carbon resistors will also work.

If i'm informed correctly, the RH1 will upload SP recordings, but you can only save them in pcm (decompressed, waste of space) and/or transcode to a different codec since there's no Atrac/SP codec for the PC (yet). LP2/4 can be saved without conversion. Although the conversion is lossy, SP to A3+@352/256kbps propably won't sound too bad though.

A battery box will enable line-in recording with electret condenser mics. To use the line-in will allow for recording very high sound pressure levels with very little distortion (no preamp overload). A little more info here: http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?s=&sh...indpost&p=71008

As far as i know there's no such thing as VBR with an approximate target bitrate of 320 kbps, since this is the highest available 'regular' mp3 bitrate. The highest available quality (320kbps CBR - often overkill for portable listening) would be "-b 320", whereas the highest quality VBR preset would be "-V 0" (~245 kbps target bitrate). I'd suggest to use something like "-V 2" only unless you know what you're doing. Adding "--vbr-new" can speed up encoding quite a bit when using VBR without significantly sacrificing quality. You can find a list of recommended settings here: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=28124 And a detailed guide to command line options here: http://lame.sourceforge.net/USAGE Again, better stick to the presets unless you know what you're doing, otherwise you could do more damage than good. Hope this helps.