Last minute shopper – first time buyer...

[moxy]

Well, I hate to bother you folks with a newb's question but, after searching in circles around various threads, I've decided to post to see if I can get a quick piece of advice. Here's the bullet:

My wife is a singer who needs to record accompaniments at a pianists house. He's got a mic hooked up to his stereo system, and she's been dragging my digital camera there, hooking into the analog outs and recording on dv. I've been dumping the session into final cut pro and carving up the songs into .aiff's to dump onto a cd. Bad workflow.

For Christmas, I wanted to find an easier solution. I've been looking at the Sony MZ-NH700, and thought it looked like the magic bullet. On the recreational side, It would allow us to keep md's of each of our family member's own music libraries for portable listening, etc. – and I thought it could become the recording medium for these little piano sessions.

But here's where I'm confused - can I edit this mess once she's done a a click-and-record into the thing? I'm seeing posts about converting to .wav through third-party software, and uploading in realtime, etc. and have gotten a little confused. I understand that the files will be in a proprietary (.omg?) file format. Can these not be edited by the software that Sony provides with this rig? By editing, I mean cutting off audio slates, deleting songs that the pianist muffs, etc.

Obviously, I'd love it if the system could be seamless enough that she could even plug into the pc, upload the sessions and pick and choose the tracks she wants as keepers and then dump them to cd - all by herself (and she's not exactly a computer whiz). Might sound daft, but I'm wondering if this is possible with this system.

If anyone could take a moment and let me know the process for accomplishing this - if it exists - I'd be very appreciative. Looks like a great community here, so I'm not worried about support on this rig. It's just you folks are so far ahead of me here, I'm having a little trouble keying into the basics.

OS is not a concern, btw, as I'm running both Windows (XP and 2000) and Apple OS X at home (communications business - have to bridge artists with business folks for a living).

Any help would be appreciated.

Jesse C

[Christopher]

Welcome to the forums. :welcome:

Here are the options for Hi-MD: http://forums.minidisc.org/viewtopic.php?p=32073

Anyway, the short answer is yes, you can upload faster than realtime the recordings you make with the unit. You can then use either Sony's software or Marcnet's software to convert the recording to *.wav, allowing you to edit it with any program you wish. I don't have experience with uploading, yet, but I will very soon. It seems to be a relatively easy process with a few slight shortcomings, but I would honestly say that it is worth your time.

No Mac support btw, but the *.wavs can be manipulated by relevant Mac software, of course.

[moxy]

Thanks, Kurisu!

Just read through the posts - and I think I get it now. The confusion (on my part) was the diff between recording and uploading. I see that I can record via the sound card - or upload via usb (but that might be in the beta stages)

I'll likely take the plunge, if only to get the offending singer away from the mac.

Thanks for the pointers. My main hope at this point is to find a way (realtime or upload, don't care which) where I'm uploading the songs into separate files (as opposed to one long one) or at least with id's. Then I could teach my wife how to mark them in the MD and I could just record them to the pc, convert and burn.

Thanks again!

J

[A440]

For mic recordings, if you have separate tracks on the MD then you'll be able to upload fairly quickly via USB to separate tracks even with Sonic Stage.

SS 2.3 will show you the lengths of the tracks so you can choose. (It still lacks a checklist feature so you could transfer, say, tracks, 1, 4 and 7--dumb Sony--but you can highlight upload a bunch of adjacent tracks with Shift.) Or you can upload the whole MD and the tracks show up as separate files. Then you can use Sony's own Wav Converter to turn them into .wav files you can edit.

Hi-MD Renderer will also go track by track, and while it's still beta software, it's very reliable at this point.

Enjoy your magic bullet.

[moxy]

Thanks, A440. I guess the only question now remains whether to get the 700, 800 or 900. Looking at the specs I can't seee much diff other than a tuner added to the 800. Saw on another thread that there was no lineout on the 700, but that doesn't show in the sony specs (in fact, all three of them only seem to have a headphone out.)

Will check other thereads, but anyone know off hand what the diff is between these, considering the applications I've outlined abvove?

[linzq]

I am a classical singer, and have the 800... it is the same as the 700, but with the tuner remote.

There is no lineout on the 700 or 800 - headphone out only... however, using USB to transfer, you don't need line out. -- You just need to transfer the files to .wav, in order to do whatever you want with them (editing, burning to CD).

I actually used my 800 to do my audition CD for my master's voice performance, and I'm VERY happy with it! Sounds just as good (and sometimes better than) my classical CDs -- (Just make sure to get a good mic).

Good luck!