greenmachine

Sounds like you could need himdrenderer and lame.

I can confirm this from my own experiences, at least for recording acoustic instruments in rather large rooms. It usually gives a good mix of direct sound and room reverberations. However, i never used single point microphones except for testing purposes. I prefer to space the microphones to approximately the distance of the human ears (about 6" or slightly more) and usually use my (or an artificial) head as a baffle. Had only good results so far.

I don't see a reason why it would be any better than your TFB-2s. According to the specifications, it seems to use exactly the same microphone capsules as the TFB-2s with high sensitivity option. Did you choose high or low sensitivity by the way?

Unfortunately, i can confirm this misbehavior of SS. Sometimes it converts only partially, sometimes it freezes during the upload with combined tracks. Sony, you should work on this. Without editing i had no problems so far.

I have never heard of an omnidirectional one point stereo microphone before. The (ideally) non-directional pickup characteristic of omnis requires to have both channels physically separated (or at least to have a rather large baffle in between) in order to get a stereo effect. Otherwise you'll get (close to) mono. Maybe someone can explain this better than me. Check out my recent thread about omnidirectional mic placement. http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=11297

I did this kind of substraction in a different listening test, still doesn't tell much about perceived quality though: http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showt...indpost&p=59476

If you use Hi-LP at 64 or 48 kbps respectively. But beware of the quality.

He/she wanted to know if it would be worth getting one, as i see it.

Looks like they're not matched, in this case you have to be lucky to get a pair without noticable channel differences.

If you want a player exclusively for playing mp3s, i suggest to get a real mp3 player and not an atrac player. It's propably not worth the effort and quality loss for transcoding.

So what file format do you try to transfer?

We know - use flac only and you'll have no concerns about sound quality

I assume you mean a separable miniature omnidirectional stereo microphone, i consider binaural as a certain recording technique. Some manufacturers abuse this term for labeling their products and thus create quite some confusion. You can record binaurally with such a microphone, but you obviously don't necessarily have to, it's propably one of the most flexible and experiment-friendly solution. See my recent tread about microphone placement to see how some common techniques compare. As for the attenuator against battery box discussion, there's quite some disagreement. Some say a battery box would be too expensive and gives too quiet results, while on the other hand the headphone volume attenuator decreases the signal to noise ratio, lowers the bias voltage, is susceptible to mechanical wearout and dirt and is made of potentially lower precision components. If you're a hardcore headbanger, the battery box is propably the only possible solution for you, otherwise the attenuator may do suffice if it's not getting extraordinarily loud. I don't know of any european manufacturer of such microphones except for the german soundman.de, but i wouldn't call their products inexpensive. I took a look around at ebay.co.uk but couldn't find anything suitable either. They're really easy to do for yourself though, see this thread: http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=11254

I'd say it's not too unlikely for the next generation of Hi-MD units to be able to use all the new Atrac3+ bitrates, at least for playback.

As i've said before, the frequency analysis alone doesn't tell the whole truth about sound quality, it's just a rough orientation point to see if there's happening something exceptionally weird, like with the native mp3 playback for 2nd gen md portables. All you can see here is that a lowpass filter at 18kHz is used for 192 kbps, which is needed for effective compression - you have to draw the line somewhere, after all it's a lossy compression method. I recently did some tests with lowpass filters in various musical pieces. I was hard pressed to hear a filter above about 16kHz, above 17kHz it was next to impossible to detect for me. Although this value may vary between users, a 18kHz lowpass should be generally very hard to detect. One should propably worry more about other oddities of the codec. Here's another one, comparing uncompressed, Atrac3+ at 128kbps and Atrac3 LP2. Atrac3+ at 128 kbps may have a lower lowpass frequency than LP2, but what you cannot see here is the awful artifacting of LP2.

Put the left one into your right ear and vice versa. If it's going to be louder on the right side, the earphones (or your player) is/are faulty, if it's still louder on the left, you should consult a doctor.

What a clever move, they'll sell more blank discs this way if you can keep your recording -without getting rendered useless- on the disc for backup.

Wind noises are an issue with any insufficiently screened microphone. Crowd noise is a matter of mic placement and/or directionality of their pickup pattern - it's often unavoidable. Trying to improve a bad recording often fails, it's propably better to invest in good equipment. Getting rid of distortion in an afflicted recording is next to impossible. In order to record virtually distortion-free in loud situations, you'll need either a very low sensitive mic or an attenuator or a battery box through line-in. At least you've identified the majority of problems by yourself, a good first step for improvement.

Green = original uncompressed file Red = Atrac3+ at 320kbps Blue = Atrac3+ at 256 kbps Linear view: Logarithmic view: No significant difference i'd say. But remember, a frequency response curve never tells the whole truth about sound quality.

First impressions of the new atrac3+ at 128kbps: Has less warbling artifacts than lp2, but at the same time sounds somewhat dull, there's propably a strict lowpass filter at about 15 kHz. Could be good enough for portable listening in a noisy environment though. Anybody interested in a listening test?

How about pronouncing the first letter in atrac like the first letter in 'adaptive'?

sweet

Don't push these guys too hard, they're already doing an incredible job - we'll propably have an english version soon anyway, it's just a matter of time. BTW, atrac lossless seems to be still missing

I guess both these bitrates are high enough to be transparent to most users. At least it'll be very tough to compare. Who can successfully abx wav and hi-sp anyway? The difference between 256k and 320k would be even less significant. Nevertheless, it's good to have something in between hi-lp and hi-sp i.e. 128k atrac3+. I guess even this will be (close to) transparent for not too critical listening. I can see a listening test coming up between lp2 and a3+ 128k.

I always choose the best quality i can afford, my ears usually appreciate it.