greenmachine

Use about 6-12 dB headroom when recording, afterwards you can normalize to peaks just ever so slightly below 0 dB. Use the level meter to monitor/deternine a suitable setting for your recording situation.

I'd use the NE410 to do the 'donkey work' like putting songs onto MDs via USB. If you happen to have a power adaptor, use it as often as possible to avoid battery drain/wear. Battery life should be pretty good with a conditioned/new NiMH rechargeable battery. Mp3s can't be transferred without conversion to Atrac, which carries quality loss. The latest versions of SonicStage should be able to perform this conversion/transfer internally. Li-Ion batteries (which the N10 uses) are underlying the aging process - even if you don't use it, performance will decrease with time - no matter if you use it or not. A replacement battery is propably very expensive. Enjoy it as long as it lasts.

As far as i know, the MTBF of modern hard drives is rated between 300,000 and 1,200,000 hours, which equals ~ 34 - 137 years. I doubt we'll still be using them in 50 years though.

CD/DVD-R are not the most reliable media in my books. I wouldn't use either one for long-term storage. I've lost too much (fortunately not too important) data on CD-R. Harddisks on the other hand seem to work for ages as long as you don't expose them to mechanical shock. Minidisc seems to be the most durable of all mechanical media - considering this and the problematic transfer/storage, why not save yourself a lot of headaches and keep it on those discs?

It depends - if you record from a distance, stereo is much more enjoyable even for speech, especially when listening with headphones. I can't listen to mono with headphones at all - it drives me crazy - i don't like to have the the speaker/music/whatever in my head but rather somewhere around me if you know what i mean. For close miking and loudspeaker playback, mono is fine. Other than that - no thanks.

It's always the left channel, whether in- or output. How about upgrading to the end-1950s standard - (((Stereo))) ?

Hooray, i love dark / low contrast skins.

Absolutely - if you don't mind a non-backlit display...

NH700 and NHF800 are virtually equal units with the difference of a tuner remote. AFAIK in the US there's no NH700 unless you import it.

MDs in standard mode (SP, MONO, LP 2/3/4) can't be directly uploaded or copied in its' original format without quality degradation - all you can currently do is a realtime re-recording of the decompressed data, preferrably in PCM to avoid further quality loss, upload and store in a losslessly compressed format or record in Hi-SP involving a quality-degrading transcoding process, but at least withou wasting too much disc space.

Such problems can occur if you fill a disc up to the top. Not sure about a solution or why it happens though.

Upload in its compressed form ain't possible with MDs in standard mode (SP, MONO, LP 2/3/4). All you can currently do is a realtime re-recording of the decoded data.

'More efficient' does not equal 'better', but 'louder'. 'Louder' does not equal 'better'.

Let me guess: You've been listening to it via headphones at first versus now through loudspeakers. A binaural or hrtf recording will be much more involving through headphones no matter how much you tweak it for loudspeaker playback afterwards, it will loose the greatest part of its realism. Recording in a closed room with a significant distance from the source will emphasize the effect.

Perhaps try more efficient headphones?

For a (close to) bit-perfect decoded copy you'd need a recording device without level control or with defeatable l.c. at the digital-in. I use(d) a NJB3 for this job to record the decoded 44.1khz 16bit Windows pcm (*.wav), upload to the 'puter and encode to *.flac for storage.

How about decoding (himdrenderer) before testing? Most PC-based ABX systems can handle Windows PCM (*.wav).

You could attach them to a cable.

You should give LAME's VBR encoding a try some day - it doesn't need to be 320kbps all the time, especially if you set value on efficiency or don't have one of these multi-gigabyte players.

Wanted to stock up just a few blank MDs but ended up buying a pack of 80 pc. instead, used through ebay for just €40 incl. shipping. This is what i call a good price. With their theoretically possible one million re-write cycles they should still last for quite a while.

I must be somewhere in the blurred low-priority area beneath the clouds, about here: 49°23'38.88"N, 11°08'14.17"E

I've recently recorded my first lecture in Hi-LP and must say it's almost transparent for sources without extensive high-frequency content like speech. It's more than sufficient if your main intent is to 'get the information'. I wouldn't use it for quality demanding applications like recording or listening to music though.

Electret mics need to be powered in order to work. With a battery box you could record without preamplification via line-in, but with potentially very quiet/noisy results. It depends on what you want to record. For close miking mono is usually sufficient, but for ambient recordings (far miking) a second mic will improve the realism considerably. Considering the prices and additional bulk of external preamplifiers, get a used MD recorder with mic-in.

There is no quality gain whatsoever when converting from a lower to a higher bitrate, but you at least avoid further quality loss when decompressing to wav even if this might not be the most efficient way to store data.

Branford Marsalis Trio - "Bloomington"