greenmachine

I'd like to have a 'sidecar' which can hold two batteries (parallel). This way you could change batteries on the fly without having to interrupt a recording. But given the rather low power consumption it ain't really necessary. Just a thought.

From what i've heard, the fact that i've started with 3.1 and upgraded to 3.2 soon saved me a lot of headaches. Nevertheless i don't love it.

How durable is the connection between mic and cable with the SP / CS / what materials do they use around the mic elements to prevent wear / stress on the connections? Is there any chance that connections might become loose over time? I remember reading about TFB-2s with loose connections, but don't ask me where - i don't remember.

Neither does it combine PCM perfectly, there are short (<0.5 sec) repetitions around the combining point. I have to try it in an audio editor instead, although that makes the process way more complex than it needs to be. Proper MD recording is becoming a science.

Sony wants you to believe something like that. 4kbps ain't a significant difference imo. When i compared A3@132 to A3+@128 they sounded different - A3 with better high frequency resolution but more artifacting, A3+ dryer, somewhat lifeless, but less artifacts. In the end it comes down to personal preferences.

Considering its low power requirements it ain't too bad.

With an optimally configured FET amplifier stage, small diaphragm mics beat large d. at high SPLs, while large d. outperform small d. at low SPLs with their lower self noise. http://www.dpamicrophones.com/page.php?PID=28 Many 'non-professional' mics don't have an optimally configured FET amp stage though and are limited at high SPLs because of that. The source follower mod can improve the performance there, which seems to be the main difference between core sound high and low cost 'binaurals'.

It's not the sensitivity of a mic that makes it suitable for quiet ambient sounds, it's a low self-noise. There are slight differences between models, but virtually all miniature mics perform rather poorly for this task. For extremely loud sounds you should look for their max. SPL rating. I got poor results with rather highly sensitive mics and attenuator to mic-in at extreme SPLs.

Main drawbacks: limited (low) frequency response, fixed mic elements in xy-config. Giving left and right channel a distance of about 6-8" will greatly improve stereo realism.

A mono dynamic mic like the AT is pretty useless except for close miking applications like interviews. Listen to Volta. A 'binaural' electret stereo mic like the sp-bmc-2 should be much more versatile.

just to let you know: the high/low sensitivity setting doesn't have any effect if you're recording from line-in.

Hell no! I always need at least 2GB free disc space to upload a 1GB recording because of all these unnecessary steps.

What's wrong with drag & drop? Oh, you're right - having an encrypted .hma file which needs to be converted to .oma and finally to .wav seems much better...

As you propably know, the DSM-6S/L are low sensitive mics with their -64dBv±2 at 94dB SPL sensitivity rating, so they're significantly less sensitive than what the averave folk uses. Your best bet is propably to skip the battery box / line-in at all and use the mics directy in the mic-in jack. All (Hi)MD recorders are capable to power electret microphones ('plug in power'), so there's no additional external powering necessary. Sonic Studios encourages the use of plug in power. Use the low sensitivity setting from the 'mic sens' menu. Your levels should be in the normal range without having to use the highest level setting. Visit Sonic Studios' site about DSM mic models: http://www.sonicstudios.com/dsm.htm ...and powering microphones: http://www.sonicstudios.com/pa_x.htm Although these sites seem chaotic at a first glance, there's quite some information hidden between the lines. If it's not too much effort, please share some clips in the gallery, i'd like to know what these mics sound like.

m4a is supposed to be the successor of mp3, a lossy psychoacoustic compression method like mp3, atrac or ogg http://www.m4a.com/ Your best bet would be to re-rip with sonicstage or the like and put it to md without unnecessary lossy format conversion. If you don't have the possibility, you need to find software to decompress it and feed sonicstage with the resulting '.wav'.

Suzanne Vega - Nine Objects of Desire (1996) - an older recording in SP

Depending on how they're built, windscreens can attenuate high frequencies more or less. If the mics are not going to be used in windy conditions, there's no real need for windscreens.

There is no such thing as the best unit for everyone. Use whatever fits your needs best and use it as long as it works or your needs change. Don't be a victim of fashion.

Yes, it should work for all electret mics without a rather uncommon certain way of implementing the source follower mod, which would require a reversed voltage.

Treat your rechargeables right and they will be reliable. http://www.batteryuniversity.com/

Global warming and HF radiation mainly.

I couldn't agree more with A440. There are people who care more about functionality and recording quality than gimmicks like ultra slim design or expensive housings.

Hehe, nice to see someone actually doing it, i'd like to see more people giving it a try. Looks pretty good for a first attempt. Actually, the resistors should usually be somewhere in the 2-10kOhm range, but you're right - it doesn't matter much. A few months ago when i joined here, i had no idea about all this - what a good microphone should look like, how it should be placed - i didn't even have the slightest clue what a battery box is or what you could need it for. But i knew about Minidisc's high quality recording capabilities and wanted to use it for live recording. Music is an important part of my life, why not conserve some of it? I started experimenting with some older microphone capsules i had lying around from disassembled tape/radio recorders soon. The first results were promising, but the recording came out clipped above a certain loudness. So i started researching if there are possibilities to avoid it. What i found was the (simple) headphone attenuator and the battery box. I went for the simpler solution first which gave a slight improvement at high SPLs but realized soon that this design has some serious limitations. So i gave the battery box a try. I had some serious problems to find a small yet durable design, the first try was really awful, rather large and too fragile. But i realized that this kind of external powering of the microphones is the way to go for undistorted recording at high SPLs. At the same time i discovered the very welcomed source follower mod which i use for serious recording ever since. Spending lots of thoughts about optimized designs, some less successful attempts and testing various microphone elements finally lead me to these two designs, as illustrated above. I'm a happy recordist ever since. Thank you all for your kind words, i'm glad to help.

Check the "Delete this music file from the computer" box in the "Remove Tracks" window and confirm with "Yes". A new window will appear and ask you to confirm a second time. After that, files will be permanently deleted.

Stupidly it's not pre-installed, but you can use the Win XP version of msconfig: http://www.techadvice.com/win2000/m/msconfig_w2k.htm