deadwing

Great- nothing better than coming home from a show you've recorded and listening to it again!! Hows about posting a little sample?? i'm intregued by the levels you used- I've found that the no distortion point seems to be around 15-17 depending on the 'conditions' of course. Aything pas 18 and I start to get a level of distortion. I suppose it could come down to different mics

That's right, I was confusing the two..I do have it set mic sens low and I've still needed the attenuator - when an Eagles covers band are doing 'Take it to The limit' and you are still getting a ton of disortion then you know that you are going to need another solution before your next death metal gig!!

Doesn't the low/high sens setting only apply to auto recordings? That is my understanding of it. Strange that it's only just happened-I got a similar thing from my first recording (You've posted on it's thread recently) when i tried the auto setting with sens -low and then manual settings with the sens-low setting, and I was getting really bad distortion (There is a sound sample from that recording on the thread). A440's attenuator trick has worked great for me, and for such a small outlay, it would be worth trying before splashing the cash on anything more expensive.

Really? That's a surprise. I know it reverts back to 'auto' on every recording, but I thought that as soon as you entered the manual setting,it reverted to the previous manual setting. Or does it only reset to 13/30 when you swap a disc? I know this has probably been asked a ton of times before, but anyone know how come Sony have never introduced a toggle switch to enable you to start in either manual or auto? Surely, it's not beyond the wit of the people who create the operating system/firmware? They offer a toggle for simple and advanced modes, so how hard would it be?

I think you are going to go a bit high at 20/30. My first recording with the attenuator I set at 19/30 and got some slight distortions, this weekend, I tried everything from 13 to 17 at a festival with 6 different bands on, and they are all much better, though I won't go as low as 13 again as that needed a significant sound level boost. 15-17 gave the best results, though the PA at the festival seemed to be struggling all day long

Just a final report back on this thread - recorded almost all of a 6 hour festival I was at last night-I used HiSP mode to make sure I could get it all, then changed the disc and went to PCM for the headline set. Using the attenuator and setting the level at 15 seemed to really do the trick- though when I switched discs, i must have inadertently knocked it down to 13 as the main set came out a little quiet, though it boosted up just fine in Sound Forge. So, thanks to all for your tips and help since this thread started. Ay other Brits who need to get the volume down on mic input recordings can safely be directed to Maplins and their £2.99 attenuator

Cheers- I didn't see anywhere in the manual about fully discharging the battery on the first three cycles!!

Is there any real advantage to using line in if you can get a good, non distorted level via the mic input? It just seems to add to the expense and, especially, the bulk. I'm only asking the question here, i've got no hidden agenda or anything.

Got a long recording to make on Saturday- In total it will be about a 7 hour show, though i'm not planning on recording it all-proably around 4 to 5 hours-I'm just wondering how accurate the battery life ratings that Sony offer are, and whether these li-on batteries are like ni-cad's where they don't start offering their full capacity until they gone through several charging cycles. Also, what sort of price do you folks pay for replacement/spare batteries (My MD is a Sony MZ-NH1)?

One thing I always try and steer clear of is recordings that someone-and not always the orginal taper- has decided needs 'Remastering'. OK, if there are repairable flaws in a recording, SBE errors, gapping on tracks, by all means fix that, but anything beyond a slight volume boost is, to me, a complete no-no. I've never understood why people put so much store into getting a 'non-lossy' version of a show, then EQ the life out of it to such a degree it sounds like a low rate MP3-or worse!! Look at it this way, if you've got the recording of how it sounded in it's original state then the listener can tailor it to his individual tastes quite easily with a bit of EQ-ing, but if the EQ-ing is done BEFORE you get it, you can never get it back to that original state, and as we all have our own personal tastes, then surely, the first way is better. In other words one is destructive, one isn't.

HanzO, please do use a volume attenuator-A440 and Greenmachine gave me a great deal of help last month after I'd just bought a Sony NH1 Hi MD. I did a test run on a local band gig without the attenuator and even at a low manual recording level(I tried it as low as 10/30), the preamp was overloading, especially on the percussive/bass sections. A440 then suggested the volume attenuator. As I'm not in the US, I had to track a similar thing down here in the UK (Maplins do one), and with it in place, my second outing was MUCH improved-not perfect, because I'd still had the manual level a notch or two too high(Set it at 19/30), but close enough to tell me this little £2.99 bit of kit was going to be vital. I've not had a chance to make a further live recording since, but i'm confident that with the attenuator in place, a setting of 14-16/30 will get it just right If you want to follow my story (There are links to sound samples from the recordings I made), here's the thread http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=9558

Just looked on ebay and couldn't find anything being sold by Sound Profssionals at all, though I did find these which looked pretty similar? http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...ssPageName=WDVW sound profesionals website want $40 plus $10 for clips and then carriage Thing is, the L shape of the mic - what you describe as 'cumbersome' - is actually an advantage with the jacket I am going to use as my 'Stealth Jacket'! It's got two top pockets with a kind of button hole in each one, which means the mic would just protrude a tiny bit from each. That said, I'd certainly consider getting another set of mics if they make things easier or better, but I'm convinced that on the next recording I make, if I drop the volume level to 15 or 16, I'm going to get pretty good results (To be honest, I was surprised how well the recording came out at the weekend-I expected several failurs before I got to that point!). I picked up some mini jack extensions today-Only had a chance so far to try the separation on recording from a home Hi Fi- I recorded the same thing with the mic in the original holder (i.e. limited separation) and then a gap of about 7 or 8 inches apart-honestly can't say I notice any real difference in the recording at all-I know, it's not really the same test as a concert would give it, but as the source was actually pumping out stereo, I thought it would have been noticable.

When you listen to the recording i made last week, would you say your 'bad distortion' was more of a problem than that? The show last week was pretty loud, and was in quite a small venue (Maybe 500 people) and most of the shows I go to are in that kind of venue. One other thing I was thinking about..on volume levels...would I be better dropping right down to, say 9 or 10 and having a quieter level and then boost that after transferring to the PC?

I think you are right on that, being so close on the second recording would indicate thats the most likely scenario-Trouble is, i've got no more shows for a while now, so I'll have to do another pub gig to test things out!! I tend to stand as far back as possible as it is-at the show last week, I stood directly in front of the mixing desk which was on the back wall of the venue. The two main reasons for going with this model of MD was the ability to record in PCM audio and not having to muck around with a battery box. I find it useful for setting the levels, yes. The recorder itself has a single line readout which is not backlit and is impossible to read in dark conditions . That said, if i set the levels before the band come on stage (which I did last week), and leave the machine in pause (Does that do any damage? I know you shouldn't leave tape decks on pause for too long) then I could disconnect the remote, but it's also handy for checking disctime remaining-especially as I'm recoding in PCM mode. wow, it's like being a spy, isn't it!! My only concerns with this would be the number of connections you are relying on not becoming disconnected. I know the mini jacks have a nice 'snap' connection, but that's four individual connections to make. I'll take a trip to Maplins tomorrow to grab a couple of extension leads with clips on them.

Thanks for that- I think my 'Good' hearing went west many years ago, thanks to having my head stuck in too many bass bins as a kid!! I do understand what you are saying about ears being overloaded, but wouldn't the same thing apply to the microphones as well-they are only picking up the same inormation as your ears, after all?

Thanks for all of that..Just realised my last few messages on the subject of mono/stereo might have sounded like a '2 week-know-know-it-all' that wasn't my intentions at all,and i'll certainly give it a go-it just seemed to me that, with the volume you get at a loud gig (and all the ones I go to had better be LOUD!!), the nuances you and greenmachine talk about would be lost because of the 'Wall Of Noise' effect. Anyway, moving this on...I've just taken a look at the mic, and blow me, I see now that the actual mics do remove from the body! I got a warning with the mic that it hould not be 'dismantled' as the wiring inside is very tight-I didn't realise that each of the two actual 'L' shaped mic pieces were just on mini jack plug in sockets!! So, I guess the answer is to run a couple of extension leads off the body, and plug the actual mic parts into them to give seperation. The problem then comes that you start being a mass of trailing wires- firstly the remote conrol unit, then the attenuator, then two more wires coming from there..stealthing them, while possible, would be a bit more difficult.

But with most concerts-especially loud rock music concerts, there is no real 'perception of depth', it's more of a wall of noise.

My understanding of the word stereo is when the sounds are specifically mixed to give a seperation of sounds to give a perception of depth. With the way he sound at a show hits you, it has no stereo seperation-you may get certain sounds louder on one side of the room to another, but that isn't 'real' stereo. I've spoken to a lot of 'Stealth' tapers who use mini disc, and they record in Mono to enable them to get longer record time on the disc to save the (potentially life threatening!) problem of swapping discs mid show. Then then just create a stereo field from the mono source -with HiMD discs, that's not really necessary because of the extra storage space

I don't think the mics unplug, and as I'm not good with a soldering iron, i'm not going to attempt to pull it apart. Now I'm using that attenuator lead, the mic isn't plugging directly into the MD, so it's not going to be giving the mic socket any problems I understand the baiscs of what/how stereo works, but I'm still rather sceptical about getting more 'stereo separation' at a gig when the noise is coming straight at you as it does. Surely, unless you can get a mixed stereo feed, it's always going to 'bi-aural mono'? I'm on v2.1 of sonic stage-i'll take a look for an update on the sony site

eh??? Tell me more-using a stereo microphone-but how are you supposed to get any real stereo separation at gig using mics?

you can here a full song from the recording (in mp3) here http://homepage.ntlworld.com/barneystorm/Kino/Kino0105.mp3 A couple of other question-When I transfer to my PC by USB, the process is VERY slow -almost real time (87 minutes took about 75 minutes)-is there something i'm missing in my settings somewhere to speed this up? Also, when i have transferred it, it downloads as an openMG Audio file. I recorded in PCM format, so i didn'texpect to have to run a conversion, I thought it would have opened up as a PCM/wav file in my sound editor(Sound forge), but it won't. When I then run the Sony file conversion tool, it says files in PCM format do not need converting. However, i've used a program called 'HiMD Renderer Win' and that quickly produces a .wav file from the openMG audio file. Am I missing something here? I assume the HiMD Renderer program is not converting the files (It seems to work far too quickly for that), so what is actualy doing

Right.. with last weeks lessons in mind, I tried again last night. MUCH better results. unfortunately, we didn't get there early enough to do a 'test run' on the support band, but, I set the manual recording level to 19-I think if i'd gone down two more notches, I'd have been perfect! That said, the distortion is minimal really, and it EQ's up quite well too (This sample is as it was recorded, no EQ on it). so a big thanks for all your help and tips-looks like that £2.99 i spent at Maplins was very worthwhile!! kinosample.mp3

I'll report back at the weekend with the results Many thanks

Right..managed to track one of these Maplins headphone volume attenuator thingys. I'm open to any suggestions on how I can test this in a 'non live music' situation, but here is what i've done so far-plugged the unit into the mic socket, and the mic into the other end of the unit. Put the TV on to higher than normal volume, then turned the volume on the attenuator all the way up, pressed pause/record on the player, went into the sndrec menu , changed to manual and set it to around 22. Started the recording, and just to be sure the volume on the attenuator was the right way around, I slowly turned the volume wheel down and then back up. When i played back the recording, it was pretty quiet but clear, and it did fade to nothing, then back in again at the points where I messed with the attenuator volume. So it seems to work- I could do with trying it on some live music to give it a real test though , but it looks like it's 'Debut' will be at ashow I REALLY want to make a good recording of on Friday night-looks like i'll have to record the support band to check I'm doing the right thing! Another really good thing about the lead is that the volume controller is right at the end and has a kind of tie-clip type thing on it, ideal for my mic as it fits straight into that!

right..looks like I'll be onto a friend in the US to pick me a couple of these up, unless I can find them in the UK or on ebay, but could you just take a look at this item, and see if it looks like it will do a similar kind of job? It looks like it does to me, but I could be wrong http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?Module...ldID=6&doy=17m4