Had my MD for a year now and still haven't...

[mgdimo]

How do I put this? This might be a long one...

I'm ok with computers, but I'm no geek! When it comes to codecs and some technical stuff, I'm a dummy. I need my hand held and things explained. This is why I'm simply friggin nuts for this place. You guys are all so cool with your advice, so helpful. So thanks in advance.

I'm thrilled with my equipment so far: nh 900, auris mics, boost box. I've made GREAT recordings and I want to share them either by CD or email/etc. I got a horse eating grass- mics right up to his nose, Miles Davis in the rain, my band segue-ing in off the grand finale of a fireworks display, my kids, and so much more. I only use my md for mic recording. The 'connect store' means nothing to me. Just so you know where I'm comin from.

Here's what I'd like to be able to do:

-burn a cd of a mix of things for family.

-compile many recordings on to one cd for my records (backup)

-attach an audio clip to an email

-submit a one minute vacation to quietamerican.org

-put up some clips on our very own MDCF gallery!

-not swamp my computer with all these music files and duplicates

Here's what I HAD:

-an old Gateway machine w/ no cd burner

-SS 2.something, updated to 3.2

Here's what I HAVE: (we were fortunate to inherit)

Dell Dimension 4300

Win XP Home v. 2002

SP 2

intel ® pent ® 4

CPU 1600 MHz

1.60GHz

512 RAM

currently have 2.17 of 18.6 GB available.

Sonic Stage 3.2

-also-

I bought a Maxtor 250 GB external HD to help transfer photo and SS files from old Gateway(usb 1.x) to Dell(fire wire), and eventually use as storage for such files.

Questions:

-what's a good program for editing: taking one minute of this track, fading into another snippet of another track, normalizing?, getting the best possible sound out of the original recording(usually hi-sp), etc. Maybe I used Audacity wrong in the past, but it (the files) took up a hell of a lot of HD space and I didn't know where to put 'em.

- mp3, .wav, flac, ogg.... what's best for what?

-storage. What do/don't I need to store? I'd hate to lose priceless recordings of my kids' voices. But if I 'render' to .wav, do I need to save the omg (initial Sony format?)?

I don't consider myself a noob. Perhaps more of a boob. If some of you could delve into my concerns, I'd really appreciate. I have a feeling many others would benefit from this as well.

Thanks as always.

GREG

[A440]

OK, lots of different questions here. It's all about the formats. Wav is big and uncompressed, full CD fidelity --about 10MB per minute. You need it for CDs that play on conventional players, and you need it to free your recordings from SonicStage's encryption (omg).

So it's a good thing you've got that external HD.

Flac is lossless compression, which sounds like a contradiction but somehow maintains all the information of a .wav file with fewer MB.

mp3 and ogg are lossy compression: making compromises--some audible, some not--to save space. A lot of space: mp3 is about 1MB per minute.

First, to get those uploaded recordings out of SonicStage's encrypted prison (ATRAC, .omg), you need to convert them to .wav. You could convert to other formats with Marcnet's HiMDRenderer--which, as we remember, beat SonicStage to the punch--but I'd go for .wav if SonicStage will convert them.

One by one:

Burning CDs means creating .wav files to be played by a conventional CD player. I don't know what format your uploaded recordings are, but I'm guessing Hi-SP, which is about 1/10 the size of .wav files. So hook up that external drive and when you convert with Sonic Stage, put the files on it: Go to Tools/Options/Location to save files and change it to the external drive.

Do the same with Audacity under File/Options/Directories. That solves the storage problem for the next 250 GB.

To save space at this step, upload the whole disc to My Library first without automatically converting, then only covert to .wav the files you need.

All kinds of media players (Real, WMP, iTunes) will burn CDs. I suggest putting the files you want to burn in a folder and naming them with numbers in order, like 01-FirstTune, 02-SecondTune, etc.--so you can just highlight and burn the whole bunch. Nero is a good professional CD-burning program--you can specify gapless, normalize files, etc.--but it's not free.

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Backing up recordings: This is the beauty of .flac, When you have the .wav files, use dbpoweramp (from Downloads) to convert to .flac, burn to CDs, and store. Regular CD players won't play those--you'll need to play them with your computer or convert them back to .wav.

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Attach an audio clip: Hi-fi probably isn't necessary for these. dbpoweramp again: convert them to mp3, which just about everyone can play. I think you have to download the Lame mp3 encoder separately, but dbpoweramp has instructions for that.

Go into dbpoweramp and set the bitrate for mp3 conversion to at least 192. For the best fidelity (and larger file sizes), use alt-preset-extreme. The higher the bitrate, the bigger the file, but a song should only be about 1MB per minute.

ogg is an open-source alternative to mp3. Some people say its way of compressing sound turns out more musical than mp3. But just about everyone has mp3 playback, and doesn't want to be bothered with installing ogg.

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Mixing snippets: You're talking about cross-fading, and Audacity does have cross-fading under Effects. The geeky thing about Audacity is that it does all its editing in its own format--- .aup ---and then you have to export it as .wav . Sound editors you have to pay for work directly on the .wav or .mp3 files. I have one--Adobe Audition--and I end up using Audacity anyway because it's a lot less cluttered with pro-studio options I don't need. It shouldn't matter as long as you have HD space, which you will with the external drive.

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What format does quietamerican want? I suspect .wav .

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For the MDCF gallery, it does take a while to upload a file. Convert your uploaded recording (with SonicStage) to .wav, convert (with dbpoweramp) to mp3. A 5-minute song in mp3 is about 5 MB, and it takes some patience. But it's just a big attachment.

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Not swamp your computer: make the external drive is your storage place. And just be rigorous about deleting the duplicates after you've burned things.

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What to save?

Put the .wav file on a CD. And then, if you're truly paranoid, leave the .omg, which is considerably smaller, in My Library. You can always convert it again to wav. But you don't need to keep both .wav and .omg on your computer. The .wav won't sound any better than the original upload--but unlike mp3, it won't sound any worse.

[mgdimo]

Thanks A440. You do so much at this place. You simply kick ASS!

NEW PROBLEM:

Performed SS backup from old machine (SS 3.2) onto external HD. Try to access files on new machine (SS3.2) and get this SS message:

"There is invalid rights management information in the open MG content." It asks me if I want to go online (connect store) to find the lisence. No dammit! These are all my own original recordings!

Any way you know of for me to access my XHD files in SS? This sonic stage, for me, has just been a comedy of errors. I'm not laffin'.

[mgdimo]

NEW PROBLEM:

Performed SS backup from old machine (SS 3.2) onto external HD. Try to access files on new machine (SS3.2) and get this SS message:

"There is invalid rights management information in the open MG content." It asks me if I want to go online (connect store) to find the lisence. No dammit! These are all my own original recordings!

I'm assuming I need to load old machine files on MD itself, then transfer to new machine? Can anyone identify with my problem?

Also, FLAC seems to be the way to go for HD storage, yes? WAV to burn CD's. And bang it down to MP3 to send via internet. Can I get an amen?

[mgdimo]

Ahem...uh...bump. Help?

NEW PROBLEM:

Performed SS backup from old machine (SS 3.2) onto external HD. Try to access files on new machine (SS3.2) and get this SS message:

"There is invalid rights management information in the open MG content." It asks me if I want to go online (connect store) to find the lisence. No dammit! These are all my own original recordings!

I'm assuming I need to load old machine files on MD itself, then transfer to new machine? Don't want to have to spend time doing this. Can anyone identify with my problem?

Also, FLAC seems to be the way to go for HD storage, yes? WAV to burn CD's. And bang it down to MP3 to send via internet. Can I get an amen?

[A440]

SonicStage is designed to prevent you from making files portable. It doesn't want you making a HD full of files and giving them to someone else.

As I understand it--and I'm not a software professional, so I may have this wrong--when SonicStage installs it derives something from your machine's hardware that identifies it. Your previous SonicStage, on the other machine, had a different identifier. So when the new SS gets connected to your hard drive from your previous SonicStage, it thinks --OH MY GOD! MUSIC PIRATE AT WORK! THE INDUSTRY WILL COLLAPSE!

I hope you still have your old machine. You have to get those uploaded files unencrypted: You have to convert them from .omg to .wav on the SS that uploladed them. Once they are .wav files all the rights garbage vanishes. But .omg files are not portable. Your backed up files are still tagged with your original SonicStage.

And yes, Flac for HD storage, .wav for playable CDs, mp3 for internet.

[mgdimo]

So when the new SS gets connected to your hard drive from your previous SonicStage, it thinks --OH MY GOD! MUSIC PIRATE AT WORK! THE INDUSTRY WILL COLLAPSE!

Laugh Out fuckin' Loud!!!