boojum

I have downloaded Reaper. It looks like it can do more than I need. I will play with it, try to learn it, and see what happens. Thanks!

In response to the two previous posts: 1) I do not consider it a convenience to edit tracks on the RH1. I record, I upload, I edit. I do not feel safe until I have a copy on my PC. I have not yet lost anything on a Minidisc. I do not plan to either. 2) A440's grief with SONY is something I want to avoid. I am not sure they are responsible for lost data. It would be nice if they would help. I just do not want to be calling them for something like lost data. When I get my data uploaded and converted to WAV, I enter tracks in WAV and do some processing in WAV and then label, apply ReplayGain and so on in FLAC. I burn to disc as either FLAC or WAV and sometimes make an MP3 for e-mailing a track or compiling a bunch to play in the truck. YMMV

FWIW - I do not consider the Hi-MD recording safe until it is on my PC. I edit, enter track numbers and do all other file manipulation on the PC with the pristine Hi-MD as the safe backup in case of disaster. Track numbers are easily entered in CD WAV Editor. FLAC for compression, foobar2000 for ReplayGain and Audacity and Cool Edit for other post-production work. I just do not want to take a chance on losing the "mother" disc/recording. YMMV

PA - Thanks for the help. I poked around under "mixer" rather than function: "equalizer." I will try Cool Edit first. The low frequencies are there from the MS957. They are just shy and need some coaxing. Cheers.

Hi - I am recording two bands now. One I just record it, ad some ReplayGain and post it to etree. The other, a local bluegrass group, would like to see some bass boost (my mic drops off bel;ow 70Hz) and so on. Cool Edit does not seem to do bass boost but Audicity does. But it also requires a separate pass for each boost, as in 100Hz, 200 Hz, etc., and then a separate pass to raise the volume. Is there a post processing piece if free software which wil do this in all one pass??? I can work with Audacity, but would like to do it all at once after I know the settings for each venue. Thanks.

PA - I am behind the mic in its dead area. I do not think I am heard at all. I try to stay out of it. I was on the left, anyway. The place was a zoo. Good track, too. Lex Browning played lead guitar and did well. Turtle plays backup on the more echoey guitar. I agree I could crank up the bottom. But I also like to leave the sound alone. If FMR wants to use it down the line they would like to have their guy sweeten it from a pristine file. So, other folks can sweeten it. I will not. Not being a purist, just recognizing other folks' tastes. Glad you liked it. I am starting to get the hang of this. Equal is art to science. I got a good almost three hours of a bluegrass/jazz/blues/folk jam tonight with the mic about 9' up and just over the fiddler's head and infront of the rest of the group. If I can pull a good track I will post it. Damn, this is fun! Thanks for all the help and encouragment. I will have mic-man back east send me photos of the whole kit he is selling. ;o) Seems a good idea. Cheers

Rich, OK, next time. Thanks for the heads up. L8R

Well, I am learning just how important mic location is. Close counts, but spot on is even better. And I am getting closer and closer. Check out this track from set 2 of Freak Mountain Ramblers on 2007-02-25 jamming at The Laurelthirst Pub, aka Church. Lex Browning rips it with this verison of Clapton's Crossroads. If you are not happy your money will be cheerfully refunded. ;o) Mic location: 10' high about 8' from the band. The usual recording setup: ECM-MS957 > MZ-RH1 (PCM) > PC (WAV) > CDWaveEditor > FLAC 8 > ReplayGain (foobar2000) > burn CD's. The MP3 file is from a FLAC 8 in LAME VBR V2 new fast. Ees good! 1_FMR_Church_2007_02_25_set_2_08.mp3

I do not think that Soundman is that expensive. I bought them while I was living in Mexico. He had to send them with a bogus repair tag to get them past a huge customs fee. They were mailed to a US address and then transported to a private postal box I had where I lived. Otherwise, forget it. They would have vanished and some poor soul down there would be using them to listen to a Walkman with. Yes, I will U/L a track when I get around to recording with them. Got a recording tonight in Portland of Freak Mtn that was killer. They kicked out the jambs. I will U/L a good track some time tomorrow. This live recording is fun.

Greenmachine has the proper answer! Yes, I will write the guy and ask for some samples. But, in his post to TS he says he has little used the mic. And, while GM suggestion is a good one the seller could send me a sample of anything. He might have some nice Neumanns around, but I doubt that. He has agreed to an extended evaluation period. Low note which are audible? Yes, it does degenerate to a "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin" arguement. And there are plenty of those over at the high-end audioo boards which are mostly pissing contests for folks with lots of money and incredibly expensive audio systems. My haflers, tuner, pre-amp and two amps, were kit-built back in the days when you could buy kits. They came in pretty cheap. OK, back to MS5's. It seems the evaluation period is as good a deal as I can hope for. If I pay for it with PayPal I am covered by my credit card as a protection against getting burned. Also, I can buy PayPal's buyer protection for double protection. I would like to try it out. The Soundman electrets can work on a Jecklin disc and for binaural. BTW, my solution for the 12" disc for making a Jecklin disc: an LP. Pretty simple. Now I just need some fake lambs wool and sone insulating matwerial and I am off and running. Some cheap parts from the hardware store will make the mic mounts. I will post the results with the disc, as soon as I make it and test it. Cheers, and thanks for all the input. I am so new to this, and enjoying it immensely.

Using you link above I read: "16 to 32 1st (octave) The human threshold of feeling, and the lowest pedal notes of a pipe organ." Feeling is not hearing. My most used speakers are ± 55 Hz - 20Khz (KEF 104/2's). When I drive them with my two monobloc amps (hafler 500's with about 1200 - 1500 amps into 4 ohms) the sound and feeling is apparent. The speakers do not hit a flat wall at 55 Hz, either. I also have the manufacturer's "bass extender" which gives me ± 2 to 30 Hz. With it in the circuit the first pedal note in the Saint-Saens Organ symphony is just pressure in the room, barely perceptible with the orchestral music going on over it. It is spooky and somewhat unsettling; ominous. I guess it is meant to be. As the organ moves up the scale it is audible. The 65 Hz of a cello is close to the sound of house current, if you have ever heard that. Scare ya, it will. Pianos? How many folks have the damned Bosendorfer with its extra bottom octave, or even need it? Little is written for down there I would wager. As for the mic begining at 70 Hz; no. That is where its range of ± whatever ends. Stuff I have recorded with my ECM-MS957 shows bass below its low point, although diminished. And that is of the Freak Mountain Band whose sound is amp'ed by not the best amps and played through not the best speakers in the world. I am not going to get flat bass down there, true. I am uploading to this a capture of a random spectrum from CoolEdit of an FMR number. I guess it is representative. It shows sound below the 957's rated bottom. Attenuated, true. But if I really want to hear it I can bring it up with a mixer. Let me know what you think as I am still a real neophyte with this stuff and you have way more experience than I.

hear = audible. If you cannot hear it, it is not audible. You can feel the sub-audible pressures. I am looking at an old pair of AR-2ax's tomorrow. They could reach down to 20 - 30 Hz. Not bad for a bookshelf speaker with one 11" woofer each! I have a pair of Soundman (www.soundman.de) in-ear binaural (specs follow) for headphone use. Although I do almost no binaural now. I could with the MZ-N1. I am also thinking about a Jecklin disc with the Soundman electrets. That should be way cool. I would use it with the mics pointing forward for stereo and pointing at right angles from the disc for binaural. Woohoo. Specs for the little mics: Input impendance 1 kOhm Output impedance 47 kOhm Frequency response 20 Hz - 50 kHz (+0 / - 3dB) Frequency response with filter 300 hz - 50 kHz (+0 / -3 dB) Noise Level (A-weigthed), 47 kOhm loaded max 30 µV Max. output voltage 1,5 V eff. Max. output voltage with ATT. 1.0 V eff Battery 6 V (4LR44 o.ä) Battery life time 50 h (OKM I), 100 h (OKMII)

The seller is a major player at TS. Says he got the thing on a snipe bid while he was on vacation. Is willing to allow a trial period longer than the usual 48 hours. He has been recommended by other folks there, FWIW. I have looked at analyses of what I record with my ECM-MS957 in Cool Edit and Audacity and it goes below its rated range. There is a dropoff, yes. The bass is there, yes. I have not seen the MS5 curve from SONY so I do not know how many db it is down at below 60 Hz. I disagree that we hear to 20Hz as that is a subaudible frequency. You may be able to feel it, but no one can truly hear it. You did get his screen name right, though. Howdja do that???

I see this mic for sale in the Taperssection board and wonder has anyone any experience with it? I like the MS type as they are easy to handle in crowds. I am concerned with the sound quality. It retails for ~$1,500 and this one is <$400 so I may be interested. And, how does one buy used stuff by mail without getting stung?? Thanks for any help. I need it!

There was an in-car vinyl record player in the Chrysler line in the late 50's. I solve the "no way to play MD's in my car problem" by uploading them to my PC and burning them to CD-RW discs. Works just fine, as it does for playing commercial CD's. As for changers, why?? I can burn an MP3 CD-RW or CD-R with all the varied stuff I want to hear for 8 - 11 hours of music. Usually longer than I am going to drive. Pretty simple. If I want more music, I burn more discs.

Have you heard that SONY has released some Hi-MD recorders which record in PCM, which is the same as CD's?

Um, I hate to suggest this, but has anyone thougth of getting discs off the net, from Minidisco for example?

OK, here is the latest effort at recording. This is a group of guys who are pretty good, cranking it out on a Monday night in Cannon Beach, OR??!! From a far left radical to a retired West Point grad, these folks like to get together and make music. Hope you like it. I will be recording some of these same guys at a regular gig at Bill's Tavern in the same town on Thursday. If anyone has any ideas on how I can make thes recordings better please share them. I know so little and there is so much to learn. 1_CB_Bluegrass_jam_at_the_AL_2007_02_1929.mp3

Brian - Part of the beauty of the MD is that it is so small you can carry the recorder easily and feed it from a pair of tiny lavalier mics pinned to your lapel. Some of the more experienced folks can point you to the right mics for the deal. Look deeply into my eyes . . .

Even when I am sure it is OK I ask one or two of the band members and when I get the nod I promise them a set of CD's of the gig. It is courteous and it is the least I can do for their letting me record. I do find it useful to ask though, when they are setting up. Never hurts. Cheers.

Or, you can pull them all into foobar2000 and select convert to a single file in the same folder, click the button and you are done. That is how I do it. Now that's simple!

SONY ECM-MS957. They seem to be bass shy. There is more bass on other tracks, though. I will find one if you want. I just picked a pretty short track. I will have these two up on etree.org by tonight. Do not tell TS this is a SONY mic, OK? Re etree posting: I think I want to get a go-ahead from the band before I post their music. One said it was OK, but it was a quartet that night. I want to see what they say as a group. Just minding my manners.

Folks - This is track 5 of set 2 of the Freak Mountain Ramblers playing at the Laurelthirst Pub in Portland, OR (NE Glisan and 30th) on Sunday, 11 February from about 6:00 to 8:00. The mic was about 10 - 11' up and about the same distance from the stage. The band was hot, they had their usual receptive audience and they knocked us out! Hope you like this track, too. They 1) asked for a copy and 2) also said it was OK to torrent this, so the whole gig will be on etree.org in a week or so. Rock on! 1_FMR_Church_2007_02_11_set_205.mp3

I have no doubt that it is possible to record binaural (?) which will play OK over speakers. But what is the point? You wind up with bad binaural and bad stereo. If I want binaural in addition to stereo I will just drag along the MZ-N1 and my in-ear mics (Soundman) and get binaural tracks. A more pratical solution is to get a styrofoam head and wig for it and use that to record with. I may want to fill what is empty or empty what is full in the course of a recording session. Thanks for all the feedback and help so far. I really appreciate it. The board devoted to live recording and which boasts about how helpful it is to beginners has yet to answer any question I have posted there. Go MD'ers!

A440 - Thanks for all the info. I just sent a note to Aaron at quietamerican. I sent him a binaural recording four or so years back and may start doing binaural again. I will be checking the links you posted. I would have attached an MP3 to the e-mail I sent you but could not figure out how to. LibArts major; what do you expect?? ;o) I will post it here so you will know who I am taping tomorrow. And so will the other folks here. Cheers 1_Robbin__Banks.mp3