greenmachine

http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=15573

I got into MD (stationary deck, SP mode only) in the late 1990's, when burning CDs was less common and expensive, and did optical copies from CD mostly. I have used audio cassettes before and was amazed by the quality of the copies. A friend of mine got me into it. In 2003-2004 i got into live recording with a MDLP portable (never used the LP modes though) and soon thereafter HiMD. Never really used MD for portable playback.

The battery may have gotten deep discharged and may be damaged irreversibly. Try removing the battery for a few hours, then re-insert and try to charge. When not in use for several weeks, turn off the quick mode and/or remove the battery.

I have spectrum analyzed H2 line-in mp3 recordings at various bit rates and they all seem to be cut off at 16 kHz, even at 320 kbps. The on-board mp3 encoder does not seem to be the very best in terms of efficiency - if you can afford it (card-size wise), record in wav, upload, edit where necessary and then convert to lossy via a more efficient encoder like LAME if you need to. For rough drafts the on-board mp3 encoding should be sufficient, just don't expect it to be of the highest quality. Other than that, owning both a NH700 and H2, I agree with ozpeter's observations. The built-in mics work surprisingly well (for the size and price), but the external inputs are suboptimal.

Recording directly into line-in (via battery box to power the mics) is a way to use a (much) lower gain in high SPL situations where the preamp would overload. As long as there is no clipping, there is no need to reduce the gain - just use the mic-in.

If there are already Hi-MD format tracks on the disc and you set the recorder to MD mode, you cannot record in any of the MD modes unless you format the disc or use another blank MD. Hi-MD mode and MD mode cannot be mixed on a single disc, the structure is different.

The mic probably needs phantom power, which is approx. 48V - plug-in-power is less than 5V usually.

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

The crowd noise indicates that your setup is capable of capturing a much wider range than emitted by the PA. If the sound source doesn't sound good to begin with, don't expect wonders from your equipment. Try recording unamplified instruments to get an idea of what your equipment is capable of.

The highpass in most battery boxes is a simple 1st order filter (6dB/oct.), not that aggressive at all. If set to 100 Hz for example, the frequency one octave below (half the frequency), in this case 50 Hz would be attenuated by 6dB. 25 Hz (again, one octave below, half the frequency) would be down by 12 dB; 12.5 Hz down by 18 Hz, etc.. 6dB are perceived by the human ear as roughly half the volume.

You can go the analog realtime copy route though. http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=7070

The counter never worked properly at my end either, usually starts at 30% and finishes at 80% when uploading Hi-MD content. No idea why, but transfer worked reliable so far.

You're welcome, please let us know if it worked for you.

The supplied power adapter of my NH700, which is a similar model without the radio remote, is rated at 1A (1000mA), which is fairly high. Your replacement adapter may not be able to keep up with the current requirements of the peaks in rec mode. Be very careful with the polarity, reversed polarity may cause permanent damage. Are you sure your batteries are OK?

Onto a new MD, as I understand it. I've edited the translation to make it clearer.

In the 16bit recording world, you have to set your levels as close as possible to the 0dB mark to get a detailed, noise-free recording. If the bass is very prominent in your recording, other frequencies (mid range, high frequencies) are recorded at a much lower level and thus at a lower resolution which can lead to loss of detail and a lower signal to noise ratio. If you know beforehand that what you want to record will be very bassy and you would have to roll-off in post anyway, it can make sense to roll-off low frequencies before the signal reaches the digital realm in order to record the most musical frequency range (midrange) at a reasonably high level. With a 24bit medium, you can set your levels much more conservatively (lower, more headroom), you can even include the prominent bass and edit afterwards without significantly losing detail. http://www.24bitfaq.org/

Omnidirectional mics (R-09) tend to pick up the bass more accurately when recording from a distance, whereas (particurarly inexpensive) cardioids (ECM-DS70P) tend to roll off and sound tinny. In some situations a roll-off is desired (boomy room, bassy mix, a cheap way to avoid preamp overload).

Do you remember if you were in simple or advanced mode before the accident happened? If you are in advanced mode, put a disc in and set to REC pause. From there, according to the manual, pages 28 and 29 (I don't have a RH10 myself): - Hold menu (2sec) to enter the menu - Scroll up 3 clicks, press enter to enter "REC Settings" - Scroll down 1 click, press enter to enter "REC Level" - Scroll down 1 click, press enter to select "Manual" (not 100% sure about this step) If this doesn't work, you're probably in simple mode. In this case: - Hold menu (2sec) to enter the menu - Scroll up 1 click, press enter to enter "Option" - Without scrolling, press enter to enter "Menu Mode" - Scroll down 1 click, press enter to select "Advanced" (not 100% sure about this step) Here's an essential excerpt from the manual to help you navigating through the menu blindly:

The signal is digital, but you will get some generation loss, i.e. the ATRAC encoded lossy audio is decoded and re-encoded each time.

Nice one indeed. Although i find these types of earplugs a bit too isolating. Should give you excellent recordings though.

Do you know if the NH700 has the same ADC chip? Maybe all Hi-MD recorders with a mic input do? Just curious.

Listening to: The Human Beast - Volume One

Unfortunately all uploaded ATRAC files are DRM'd by default and can only be used / converted by the PC / Windows installation where they have been originally uploaded to as far as I know.

I'll give you three mp3 files. All of them are encoded at 80 kbps CBR, from the same short wav file, but with different parameters. The first one uses default settings, the 2nd has the lowpass filter disabled (-k switch in LAME), the 3rd has lowpass and joint stereo disabled (-m s switch). Notice how the artifacts increase as you disable these encoding options. Sample_01__default_.mp3 Sample_02__HFF_disabled_.mp3 Sample_03__HFF__JS_disabled_.mp3

I don't own a RH910, but my NH700 consumes about 50 mA in Rec-Pause, which means if I would be using a 2000 mAh battery, half of its capacity would be used up in about 20 hours (in Rec-Pause). The RH910 has a non-backlit LCD just like the NH700, so it shouldn't be using much more power. If you have a multimeter, you could check the consumption for yourself.