dgelting

I don't know what all the fuss about bit rates is. I am new to minidisc and audio compression in general, and when I got my minidisc recorder I did some trials of a song ripped from CD in a variety of bitrates. I wasn't using a very hifi stereo to listen, but I really could not tell much difference between any of the compressions and the source. I don't know if what is happening in the music has anything to do with it (ie. dynamics, variety of tones/frequencys) - It was just one of the tunes off of Van Morrison's Astral Weeks. I don't think I have bad ears (I am a classical musician), but even if one does think the playback sounds bad, I don't understand why you wouldn't just play the original pressing of the album when you want to do serious listening? My main reason for getting a minidisc was for the recording functions, and for that I use the PCM file system just because it's there, and I would of course want the best possible quality for my own recordings. But for portable audio player purposes, isn't the point of the portability capacity? I like having 35 hours on one disc - it would defeat the purpose if I had to bring along a wallet of minidiscs. Why not just bring your original CD's then and not bother with any transferring/compressing? So, in the end, I'll just repeat Shozzer's comment that if it works for your purposes, use it.

I finally got around to doing some a/bing with my PC recording setup, and my results confirmeed RockyDisc's. While I didn't do any specific objective analysis with graphs, I did just record a silent room with a variey of setups and listed to the playback really loud to hear what kinds of noises were hanging out. I just set the gain to read out about the same reading for a test tone before recording the silence. The mic in on my RH10 was produced about the same volume and "tone" of hiss as my old tascam 8 channel mixing desk's preamps. I use the mixing desk as an 8 channel front end using the channels' direct outs to feed into an Aark PC input box. I never really had any problems with the amount of noise it made, but I also rarely recorded anything quiet with it. For quiet things I always used the ART tube MP mic preamp that I have. In my test it proved to be much quieter than the other mic preamps. I didn't have the proper cables to feed the ART into the line in of my RH10, but I did just record the line in without anything plugged in, and it was the quietest of all (go figure). Anyway, not much exact science in there, but interesting to me. Maybe I'll end up getting a battery operated preamp, I'm not sure. It depends on what kinds of situations I end up recording. It is tax return time......

Thank you for the fast response. You're right - I do still have to do more testing before I can put any of the blame on the RH10 mic pre - I just made an assumption that the preamp would not be of highest quality and would introduce noise when recording low volume ambient sound. I'm happy to hear of such good experiences that you have had. To clairify, is it right that you do not use an external preamp and the line in imput to make recordings (of quieter sound) and you haven't been unhappy with the built-in mic pre? I just got the recorder and have only made a couple of recordings (with more to come this weekend when I have more time). One of them was in a large, empty concert hall, recording solo piano. I had the mics on stage within about a meter or two of the piano. There was some ambient noise in the hall as the heating system was circulating air, so this is not a difinitive experiment. As for mics: I picked up a pair of Crown Soundgrabber II PZM mics, and these have been my first recordings with them. specs from the Crown website: Equivalent noise level (self noise): 21 dB SPL typical, A-weighted (0 dB = .0002 dyne/cm2). S/N ratio: 73 dB at 94 dB SPL. These specs are not as good as other more expensive models, but it is within 1 or 2 dB of them. My next project will be to a/b some minidisc recordings with my home based recording setup. I should be able to do some of that this weekend, and get to the bottom of just what component is doing what (not that my mixing desk is that quiet itself! ). If you're curious, I'd be happy to update you regarding my results. Regardless, I still would be curious about what the specs are, just for fun. I'll keep looking around. Thanks

I'd like to get lower-noise recordings w/ my rh-10. Does anyone know what the s/n ratio or self noise is on the built in mic preamp? I'm shopping around for a pre amp so I can record in the line-in, but I'd like to compare the preamp candidate specs with the minidisc's preamp specs.

I just downloaded it here at school and haven't got back to my house yet to try, but when I clicked on the link above http://forums.minidisc.org/downloads/details.php?file=21 it explicitly suggested that one removes old versions of the program. I by 3.3 version has been freezing on me a bunch, so I hope this next one is better. Although, I can't really blame the program, because it is really more likely that my old, crappy computer is to blame. Thanks everybody!

I really wasn't concerned about the analog/digital sound quality isuues with the transfer, I just wanted to save some time. I would have to do all the transfer in real time, but if the HiMD would read the files as data, I could transfer them at high speed to my computer. We record lengthy free jazz jams with the MD multitracker, and by the time we would put all the audio into the computer in real time, we can already get a good mix using the analog board.

Thanks for the info. I'm looking forward to getting a minidisc anyway, but that would have been a cool feature.

I'm wondering if you can upload the raw data files of a minidisc multitrack recorder to your computer using a Hi-MD player's usb hookup. My friend has an old yamaha multitracker, but it dosn't have any digital outputs. I'd like to mix down recordings made with it in my computer - I'm thinking maybe I cn just put the disc into a Hi-MD player, and voila!?