tmsnyder

Those are some crazy mics! Flexible?! Very cool. I'd contact the company and see what they think. Personally, I think unless you're in an electrically noisy place it won't make a difference. Even then ,the unbalanced mics are still sheilded. On the other hand, the balanced connections are more professional and universal. I'd bounce the original question you asked off the c-ducer people. They would be the ones to know.

What mic? Some don't need it if they are battery powered themselves (Nak CM300's for instance)

The JE630 has optical-out. For best quality you could play this into an interface to your notebook. One option is an eridol ua-5 or UA-25. Capture it in real time, split it up with CDWave (free) into tracks, burn it to disc.

Hi Tim, After recording line-in on my MD player (assuming it's the same for the new Hi-MD units) I've come to the theory that the recording level on my Sony MD player is 0db at 15. So subtract 15 from the recording level to get the gain you are applying to the signal. Based on that the first scenario above is preferred. Add 10dB with the booster box, then if you need more gain you can add it by setting the recording level from 15 to 30. That gives you a combined range of +10dB to +25dB. The second scenario is not as good. You really don't want to add 20dB with the booster box and end up with a signal that's too hot to record at 0dB (recording level=15 on the MD). Todd in Buffalo

Dam, those are expensive, and no digital out :-( Maybe Sony will do the right thing and put one out. It's great to see Onkyo made a couple, but I don't see them on their website....

Definitely, it's not my website though, just a member. I just feel that you've done great work and it might be a nice option for tapers over on that website. I've posted your website there a couple times now. Can you tell me an example of how it might not be bit perfect?

That answers all my questions. If it's all right with you I'm going to copy this over to www.taperssection.com. It sounds like you've made digital-in recording on the HiMD a real decent option for tapers running external A/D. Not bit perfect, but very very close. Can you give examples of how the output file might be slightly different than the original?

Wow, cool. Thanks Tommypeters! How much extra work is it to render the file to .wav? Also, is the transfer bit perfect? Looking at the website for HiMDRenderer it doesn't appear to be.

It's not bootlegging if the band allows it. They're called trade friendly or taper friendly. Check www.archive.org for a good list of taper friendly bands. If you ask a band for permission to tape and they say 'yes', document it and add it to the list on the archive.

modded ua-5 or an AD20 Check www.taperssection.com, that sight is awesome for this info.

I don't care about the mic input, that's analog-in recording. I was asking about digital-in recording. You're saying you can record a dig-in signal and then can transfer the recorded lossless format to a pc, then get it off as a .wav? Is the entire process lossless?

Is it true that for field recording, if you use an external A/D converter and feed a portable Sony HiMD recorder a digital optical-in signal and record it as a .wav file that you can't get your recording off the disc? Is there any brand or model of HiMD that allows you to record uncompressed digital-in and recover the files? For instance, let's say I wanted to tape a band and I had some microphones and a box like a modified eridol UA-5 that powered the mics, provided the gain, performed the A/D and outputs a 16 bit, 44.1k digital audio signal. What portable HiMD recorder could I use to tape this as a .wav and later transfer by USB or firewire to a pc with no loss of quality? Do any of them do this? Sorry if this is answered somewhere else, but my searches didn't turn this up.

If it were me, I'd skip the analog transfering and just go digital. It'll save a lot of time re-doing your transfers later on. I started out doing my transfers with a new sony MDS JE480 deck going line in to a new creative audigy sound card which was supposed to be a pretty decent one at ~$200. What a waste of money and time. Now I go dig-out from my md deck, to dig-in on my creative nomad jukebox3 (I know, this is supposed to be an MD web site!) You could pick up a md deck (JE510 is one) from ebay with dig out for ~$150. Maybe someone could suggest a good way to record the digital audio. Probably there's a cheap soundcard out there with dig-in even if you have to figure out how to make the connection to the board itself.

Ok, thank you. Is it just me, or does a MD at 292kbps sound way way better than an mp3 recorded at 256kbps?