greenmachine

120 minutes of PCM and most live recordists would be happy. But they went for the magic number of 1GB.

Not sure about that. The frequency response may be wider, but the channel separation will be virtually non-existent. Omnis either need some spacing (a couple of cm at least), a relatively large barrier (again, a couple of cm at least) in between, or both. Think of it as a mono mic with two elements. The Sony uses directional elements. By the way, are Reactive Sounds out of business? I can't find their homepage.

If the mic has a decent output, loud concerts don't need preamplification. Electret mics need a bias voltage though which can be supplied via a battery box. Unamplified acoustic instruments may need preamplification. What kind of concerts are you going to attend / how loud?

There are huge differences between the quality of different encoders. Some low quality hardware encoders cut off at 16 kHz even when recording at 320 kbps mp3. LAME is considered to be one of the best.

Also, what kind of tones are used for matching (white/pink noise, sine, which frequency)? If you, for example, use only a 1 kHz sine for matching and match within a tight tolerance, lower or higher frequencies can still be quite badly mismatched. Not all capsules have perfectly linear characteristics.

I've had mixed results with the automatic TOC writing shortly before the battery is empty on my NH700. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, probably depending on the battery type and condition. I've had better results with Alkalines (slow dropping voltage when in near empty state) than with rechargeables (particularly the supplied low capacity type - fast dropping voltage). Luckily these were tests only. You can easily lose hours of recording when the TOC fails to write. Unlike with analog gear, everything is lost and there's no TOC cloning possible in HiMD mode, so be careful.

Never heard of such a feature. How long was the set and what kind of batteries were you using?

If you mean the auto track marking, it only happens when recording from the line-in and unfortunately cannot be turned off. But there is no lost audio. All you have to do is to recombine the tracks, either on the unit itself before uploading, via SonicStage or in a separate audio editor. Auto track marking is a known major annoyance for most live recordists.

I know about FLAC and use it for archiving pcm/wav recordings - it just seems like a big waste of space to re-compress a 256 or 64 kbps file to around 500-1000 kbps without any quality gain. Although disk space may be relatively inexpensive, I don't like to waste it and use it for more useful things instead. I don't use the SS library, never did, but just un-DRM the .oma's and organize them in folders like any other file type. As long as they can be decompressed, I see no problem with this proprietary format.

Lossless compression like FLAC saves about 30-70% space, depending on the material. Recordings where (very) good instead of (bit-)perfect quality is sufficient can be lossily compressed. Saves about 75-90% of the space of the original wav file without significant perceived quality loss, depending on the format. Even higher compression ratios are possible for recordings where information is more important than quality. Huge external harddrives are not expensive these days. I save copies to two or more physically independent storage places for important recordings.

You need a mixer - or a multi-track recorder.

Hey, that's exactly my version of choice under XP. Great functionality and very efficient (filesize, speed, etc.). I've just recommended Audacity because it's free and easily available to everyone. Thanks for the info about the 2 GB limit.

Glad we could help.

Have you tried the method described in post #2?

Wav files larger than 2 GB can be problematic. What you could try: Go to http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ download, install and start the latest stable or beta version. From the menu, choose File -> Import -> Raw data to import the affected file. Try to open using the default options (16bit - 44100Hz). If that worked, use export from the file menu. FLAC is a lossless compression format and should be able to handle files larger than 2 GB.

Alternatively you could use the line-in of your soundcard, clean it up if necessary and then transfer to MD.

For me, unencrypted .oma files aren't entirely useless. I use them for archiving live recordings that have been done in Hi-SP or Hi-LP. Converting them to lossless would just waste too much space. As long as I have a computer that is capable of converting them, I'll keep them. I agree that encrypted .oma and similar audio formats are too restrictive in the long run.

If you are taping real loud stuff, I would suspect that the mics have reached their limitations and you would need different mics with a handle higher SPLs handling. The problem might be less noticeable with a prominent bass. As far as I know, recorded distortion is irreversible. If new mics are not within your budget, try not to surface mount them during recording, i.e. far from reflective surfaces like your body, walls, etc.

Only the table of contents (TOC) is erased, which is quite a quick procedure and doesn't cause significant wear. Erasing the whole disk would take a long time.

Versions prior to 3.2 had the dreaded "upload only once" restriction. Do not use these for uploading (MD to PC).

Use SonicStage to upload and convert to wav.

You could use the supplied AC adapter to recharge if available. If the Energizer charger (a model no. would help) doesn't charge in pairs and has a delta-V detection, it can be used with any battery. A timed charger that is set for 2500 mAh batteries or an uncontrolled one could overcharge the 700 mAh batteries (dangerous!). Of course, you could also use a higher capacity battery like the Energizers in the 600D.

Set the output volume of the MD to max. Open the Recording Control mixer on your PC, select "Line In" and set an appropriate level. To access the Recording Control in Win XP, click Start - Control Panel - Sounds and Audio Devices - Options - Properties - Recording - OK.

USB transfer works only in one direction from PC to MD. NetMD had no upload abilities. You'll have to copy in realtime though the headphone jack int y our PC's line-in of the soundcard. http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=7070

They should.