insrc

Thanks Volta, I tried that. Indeed in the album view it looks like it transfers in a different way, but still I hear a tiny gap between songs. Like the minidisc needs time to load the next track and it looks like this can't be avoided. Do you not notice any transition between the live tracks at all?

Regarding the playback settings. Now PlayMode is set to Normal and SubPlayMode is set to Normal as well. I tried other values such as Group Play, Repeat, etc, but it doesn't help. Sound is set to Normal, no EQ. This thread was moved from hi-MD discussion to Live Recordings, but the problem is not that it is a live recording. I'm just trying to playback a continuous recording which has no 2 second pauses between tracks. The files are in 256kbit/s ATRACplus. Transferred from CD. It was not recorded by hi-MD unit originally.

I agree, upgrading to SS3.2 eliminated a lot of problems, but I still experience problems from time to time. Now it allows to copy the tracks multiple times. I found that SS3.2 version on this site (without online option and some bug fixes) works best for me. Still sometimes it refuses to transfer the recording - gives me an access error. In this cases I have to find workarounds, which I call "pain". Split the recording into smaller peieces, use total recorder, or other methods. Even after some failed attempts it just transfers ok without a reason.

Thanks for getting my hopes up. I have RH10. I uploaded 3 different live concerts on my MD. The gaps are on all of them during the transition between tracks - it takes a split second for MD unit to load the next track and I hear a gap. It's kind of the same thing that I had in winamp before I found out how to set a 500ms read ahead option.

Of course the pain has nothing to do with time/length. I don't care that much if it takes only 2 times faster than real time (unlike some high seed usb recorders). Really. The pain is in the transfer process itself. Look in the software section on this site, or at other sites, and you notice that often hi-MD recorer refuse to transfer data to PC. And it's not only because people do something wrong, believe me, it's because lousy sonicstage. To be short, the main reason is the files protection that sony uses, which is not perfect. Of course you can always just buy hi-MD and see for yourself. Nomad Jukebox 3, MicroTracker, Edirol R1, and some other. Check the taperssection.com for more info. Of course hi-MD has it's advantages as well. Small and stealthy size is one of them. That's why I bought and use this thing. There are some disadvantages too, but nothing is perfect.

I have both miniDV cam and hi-MD recorder, which I use to tape live music. First question, what kind of band is it? From my experience: recording a loud rock band in a club will get levels too hot on minidv even with external good mic. Recording piano music at open amphitheater was ok. Consumer MiniDV has no sound level adjustment. On minidisc you can low the levels to be all good. Also miniDV cam doesn't have line-in. In most cases using line-in on minidisc with battery box and decent mics will get you much better sounding recording than minidv with the same mics. When recording with both minidv and minidisc I use a mic that mounts on accessory show of the cam (or you could just use built-in cam mic if you plan to sync the better audio to the video). Minidisc in the other hand or in the pocket. Battery box and minidisc mics are on my body. So it's quite comfortable. Note that minidisc PCM records in 44.1kHz and you will have to upsample it to 48kHz for the video (DVD). Just use a good program to do that. Minidv records in 48kHz already.

The transfer of live recordings to PC via USB is a pain process. It may even fail to transfer some of recordings. Other than that hi-MD is great.

I have a live recording on my hi-MD unit, which is split into tracks. During playback the transition between tracks is quite noticable - a click. Is it possible to have a gapless playback on hi-MD? Maybe some virtual track marks or something? (The original recording is gapless/clickless).

I reinstalled Sonic Stage complitely to give it the last try. Now for all my discs (2 of them) it simply says: "Cannot use this disc as an audio disc because it was initialized by a program other than SonicStage. Click Properties on the Device/Media panel and initialize the disc to use it as an audio disc". Initialization will delete all data on disc. Both discs were formatted by sony minidisc unit and used to record live music through line-in. It is clear now that SonicStage is only for buying music from sony connect and uploading it to minidisc. Anything recorded through line or mic in is not supposed to be transferred to PC. Beware of this before you buy it.

I knew someone would suggest this. That's not a digital transfer and there might be some quality loss, though I would try that for sure if only I had the line-in on my laptop (or maybe mic-in would work? I think it may add some noise). Or I could play it out loud and use a microphone, because right now I don't have a wire for phones-out line-in thing. Ok, now I wonder is it a common practice to use non-digital transfers for hi-md units? I see people complain a lot about access errors, which I'm almost sure is due to the software limitations that sony did on purpose.

My RH10 wasn't able to transfer in SS two tracks out of seven. I upgraded to SS3.2. That didn't help. For some reason it can't even play the tracks in SS (I wanted to use Total Recorder), it gives "access error". It still plays fine on the minidisc unit itself! I had left nothing to do but put a track mark on the problem track. That didn't help at all. I know from this forum that in my situation I can't do anything. Minidisc is unreliable, everyone knows it. I thought I would be able to use Total Recorder method to copy tracks to PC, but I can't. But what is weird that I still can play the tracks on my RH10 itself just fine! Grrrr.

I agree, of course. But did you check the specs for BMC-2 as well? I understand it's omni and its frequency responce should be flat, but look below what I've found! I searched Audio Technica website for frequency responces of their mics. I don't know what is inside BMC-2 (SP site doesn't tell), but its higher price brother BMC-6 has AT803b inside (omni). Cardioid CMC-4 has AT853 inside. Now look at the graphs! They are in the pdf files: - CMC-4 (AT853) - cardioid - BMC-6 (AT803b) - omnidirectional Both mics have the same frequency response!? I checked the other omni's mics too to be sure it's not a mistake - some are more flat, some are less (for example: AMT10a - super flat, AT804 - less flat). Let me type the specs now for comparison, note how they look almost the same: - Core Sound Low Cost Stealthy Cardioid freq. resp. = 40 - 18000 KHz low freq. roll off = from 100 Hz at 6 dB/oct - Sound Professionals SP-CMC-4 (AT853) Cardioid freq. resp. = 30 - 20000 Hz low freq. roll off = from 80 Hz at 18 dB/oct - Sound Professionals SP-BMC-6 (AT803b) Omnidirectional freq. resp. = 30 - 20000 Hz low freq. roll off = from 150 Hz at 6 dB/oct It would be interesting to see BMC-6 vs CMC-4 (or BMC-2 vs CMC-2) comparison. In my opinion low cost CSB/SC is worse in general.

oh, and I forgot to add that even this bass loss for cardioids seem to be not enough and people use additional bass rool-off in battery box, which now looks even more strange.

Interesting discussion, keep it going, thanks. I've seen people post at TapersSection.com: "I wouldn't recommend low cost CSB", so maybe the reason is just in the low cost CSB mic, and not the cardioids in general? A440, don't you have SP-CMC-4 also? How does that compare to SP-BMC-2? From the SP: Binaural vs Cardioid FAQ it follows that cardioids are better than omni's if you are not close to the sound source (20-75 feet away from it). The only reason for that as I see from the FAQ is that cardioids are directional and therefore reduce reflected sound from the walls and audience noise. The FAQ doesn't even mention bass loss! According to the FAQ omni's beat cardioids only if you are located rather close to the source (like FOB maybe?) in a venue with good acoustics and quite crowd. This SP FAQ is very convincing towards cardioids and that could be one of the reasons why people prefer them to omni's, but I agree with A440 who question this for the real world. It surprises me that cheap BMC-2 omni mic produce rather good results. I wonder how better would be its more expensive version, BMC-6? Does it come close to DPA 4061? Here is another quote from TapersSection: "The reason a majority of stealthers use Cardioid pattern mics (unless you've got the money to blow on DPA4061s, of course), is that the results are crisper, and you eliminate some of the audience noise around you."

Thanks, greenmachine, that was helpful. I guess I'll even save your posts for future reference As you mentioned camcorders, I have a question. It is not very off-topic, because it helps to understand the mics setup for recording devices discussed here. The only reason I wanted to go for battery box WITH level controls is a possibility to use the mics+batt.box in my camcorder (as well as in minidisc). It has only mic input and when I use an external mic the volume level is rather hot sometimes and clipping occurs. The question if I reduce the levels with battery box will it be lower on the recording as well? I'm not sure, because camcorders adjust the volume level automatically, so it may doesn't matter (while it is all below the maximum sound level - I don't fight with distortion, but only with occasional clipping, so I want the sound volume lower in the camcorder). Is there a point to plug battery box in mic-in for minidisc? I thought the whole point of battery box was to plug it into line-in.