Deciding between Hi-MD and other audio recording devices

[nittany_tim]

This is my first post here. I have a decent collection of 45's, albums and cassette tapes that I want to make sure stay with me for a while. I also like to make mixes out of all of my music, and so I've been researching the best way to do that (this site has been a great resource). After looking over some CD recorders, recording irivers, and Hi-MD, it's clear to me that Hi-MD is the best option for me, based on many factors. But before jumping in, I have a few questions/concerns:

1) The future: A common theme in these forums seems to be the uncertainty

of Sony's commitment to continuing the MD format. Suppose Sony

discontinues the format -- what does that mean? Would they likely still

produce Hi-MD recorders and disks, but just not pursue advancing the

technology (similar to how you can still buy a Sony tape deck and cassette

tapes), or would they take it completely off the market? That really makes a

difference in the decision process.

2) Reliability: One of the complaints I've seen of the consumer-level Sony CD

recorder is that it can be finicky, unreliable and therefore frustrating to work

with. How do the Hi-MD recorder units compare in that regard?

3) Sound quality: The possibility of almost 8 hours of music in Hi-SP mode with

a Hi-MD unit is really attractive.... but does it sound reasonably good at that

level of compression? And how much of a dropoff is there when going down

to using Hi-LP mode? I've never listened to MP3's, but which of the modes

(linear PCM, Hi-SP, Hi-LP) would be closest to an MP3 (I'm just curious,

given the popularity of ipods)? I'm not an audiophile, and so on a scale, I

care more about the music than the quality of the sound, but there are limits.

4) How hard is it to make a minidisc copy of a minidisc (as opposed to a CD

copy)? Would I always have to first copy to a PC via SonicStage and then

copy back to a minidisc, or could I buy an additional Hi-MD player and use

that as input to my stereo receiver and record from there with my original

Hi-MD recorder? (I'm not exactly sure how the copy protection works with Hi-MD).

5) Restrictions on copying to CD: I downloaded the RH-10 manual, and on

p. 103, it says that "tracks that have been digitally recorded on a Hi-MD device

and then imported to SonicStage cannot be written to an audio CD." If this is

the case, then why bother including the optical input on the RH-10? Has this

restriction been a huge hassle for anyone, or has analog recording been an

acceptable substitution?

Thanks for any help, and many thanks to the folks here at minidisc.org for hosting such an informative and helpful website.

Tim

[Sparky191]

1) I'd say they stop, and you'd be searching ebay for HiMD units.

2) Once you get used to them they are ok. Not iPod simple though.

3) Sound quality varies a lot dependent on bitrate. SQ is also subjective. Different people are satisfied with different levels of quality. Theres many different levels of MP3 quality.

4) Not sure why you'd make a copy of MD, but it would depend on the source. I think through SS is the only practical way. Unless you use two decks with optical in and out.

5) The input used to be the only way to get digital source on to a MD. Now with USB connection you don't need it. So you can get download only units that don't have analog or digital in. Some claim that the hardware encodes better then the SS software.

[dex Otaku]

Before reading - please excuse the bluntness of some of my responses. I'm not intending to be rude, I'm just being honest about things.

1) The future: A common theme in these forums seems to be the uncertainty

of Sony's commitment to continuing the MD format.

Anything anyone can say on this is purely speculation at this point. I myself have considered MD to be officially deprecated [no further development] since HiMD was introduced.

It's important to note here as well that MD != HiMD. The future of MD is basically closed. Whether the same will happen to HiMD is, again, purely speculation.

In any case, and at the least, the media itself [both MD and HiMD] should be available for some time, even if the equipment is not developed further.

The fact that Sony have released new HiMD player-only units recently is a hopeful indication.

2) Reliability:

All equipment have their own quirks, whether by intent or accident. I think the biggest factor in this is not necessarily whether something is quirky [or even problematic] but whether hte user can come up with a reliable, repeatable method for recording. Expectations meet methodology, basically, and whether things work for you or not depend on both.

I personally have no serious problems using HiMD for portable recording that aren't related to the limitations of consumer/prosumer equipment - such as unbalanced connections being standard, and the limitations that itself imposes [short cable lengths, poor noise rejection in noisy electromagnetic environments, &c.].

As I was just discussing in another thread, [in terms of recording] I use HiMD only as a preproduction/production tool. I do my initial recording with it, but don't use it for editing or storage/archival, even if some related features are standard to the format.

The vast majority of the time, once initial levels are set [if necessary] my recording process is very much fire-and-forget. I start the unit, and don't touch it until I'm going to stop it. Sometimes I make trackmarks while recording, and I've never experienced any problems with that feature because I don't do any further editing on the unit itself. On-unit editing has limitations that vary with each bitrate [each frame stored having a different length of audio for each bitrate, and there being minimum lengths for a track during editing even if they aren't imposed when initially recording] that have caused some users grief that I have never encountered myself simply because I don't try to edit on the unit.

IMO, the biggest caveat to HiMD in use as a recording medium is that jarring the unit while recording can cause unrecoverable write errors that can cause problems when uploading tracks to your PC later. Anyone who has used a portable CD recorder [egen rack-mounted] is familiar with the issues that can arise if the recorder is banged during recording; MD, HiMD, and CDR being disc-based and either optical or magneto-optical, the reasons for this are fairly obvious. Mechanical tolerances must be kept in mind or things can go wrong in some way, period. That said, I have very rarely experienced write errors while recording, even when walking around with the recorder in a shirt or jacket-pocket.

The second biggest caveat, depending on your expectations, is SonicStage. You *must* understand beforehand that SS is required to upload tracks from HiMD to your PC, and is likewise required to convert those tracks to WAV for subsequent editing or archival. If you can accept being locked into using SS [which I find works quite well and stably since v2.3 for the purposes of uploading and exporting] for this part of the process, then you're fine. If you expect drag n' drop support from the unit to your computer without using Sony's tools, then frankly - look at another [more expensive] format.

The third caveat is that HiMD is a magneto-optical medium, and as such is not speedy in terms of either reading data from or writing data to disc. PCM recordings typically upload for me at about 2.5-3x realtime, for instance. This is a physical limitation of the medium itself [with a bit of an affect from low-power requirements and miniaturisation, but not that much], not the fault of Sony's software or anything else. If, like me, you have worked in ad hoc [i.e. home studio] production environments and have long been accustomed to copying exclusively in real time from analogue sources, this will likely not be an issue for you. If your expectations are to be able to upload 90 minutes of PCM recording in a couple of minutes, again, look elsewhere [and spend more].

Expectations are really the key here. If you're willing to accept Sony's near lock-in software-wise, as well as the mechanical limitations [including speed] of the format in order to save several hundred dollars on a high-quality recording medium, then the format is fine for you.

3) Sound quality: The possibility of almost 8 hours of music in Hi-SP mode with

a Hi-MD unit is really attractive.... but does it sound reasonably good at that

level of compression?

HiSP [256kbps] is pretty much transparent to me. I use HiMD for portable listening as well as recording, and use HiSP most of the time. I also use it for recording slightly less-important material. I find its quality to be acceptable in both cases, even with 1st-generation recordings. This is, of course, personal opinion - but I'll add that I'm pretty finicky about sound quality, and frequently annoyed by the artifacting that different methods and levels of compression can ruin music with.

And how much of a dropoff is there when going down

to using Hi-LP mode?

It's a pretty big drop-off to my ears, but I'm not the most typical listener on earth by any means. I do not use HiLP for music, ever, though I would consider it fine for making voice recordings. Many users find the quality of HiLP to be just fine for listening purposes. The only way to really find out your own opinion is to listen to material encoded in HiLP.

I've never listened to MP3's, but which of the modes

(linear PCM, Hi-SP, Hi-LP) would be closest to an MP3 ..

It's difficult to make a comparison in this way. MP3 sounds different depending on what bitrate you use [i.e. how much you compress things], and so does atrac3+, as with any lossy coding format. I, personally, find that atrac3+'s artifacting, even when evident, is not as annoying as MP3's when comparing similar rates of compression. Again, the only way to find out is to try it yourself.

4) How hard is it to make a minidisc copy of a minidisc (as opposed to a CD

copy)? Would I always have to first copy to a PC via SonicStage and then

copy back to a minidisc, or could I buy an additional Hi-MD player and use

that as input to my stereo receiver and record from there with my original

Hi-MD recorder? (I'm not exactly sure how the copy protection works with Hi-MD).

Well - first of all, again, MD != HiMD.

That said, I think of HiMD as a production tool, not a carrier medium [like CD is]. If you think of it in terms of being a production tool, and think in terms of how other production tools [specifically, recording equipment] commonly work, then HiMD is no more difficult or inconvenient to use than any other recording format [excluding CD].

A quick [simplified] summary of my procedure is this:

* make my recording

* upload it to the computer with SonicStage

* export the tracks to WAV

* edit my recording with a nonlinear editor [sS is -not- editing software]

* make my master and distribute them.

As part of a production environment, HiMD works well for me. It lets me make good uncompressed 1st-gen recordings, copy them digitally to my computer, and export them in a format that I can subsequently do anything I want with.

I would dare to suggest that HiMD is not a format for beginner users who expect everything to be as simple as burning CDs with, say, iTunes. Getting good results takes some learning and know-how.

5) Restrictions on copying to CD ..

The majority of the recording I do is from analogue sources ["line" or microphone]. These can be exported from SS directly to WAV with no hassle.

Recordings made with the optical input can be uploaded to your computer, but not exported with SS. Marcnet has created a tool that does permit digital extraction of these tracks, called HiMDRenderer.

See here:

http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=6087

Again, this relates to your expectations. I do not actually use SS for anything but uploading recorded tracks to my PC and exporting the to WAV. Okay, that's a lie - I use it to download MP3s to my HiMD recorder as well - but the important thing here is perhaps that I have never attempted to burn a CD from SS [i use authoring tools for that], &c. I always edit and archive my recordings using tools completely separate from SS.

I hope this addresses your questions adequately.

Cheers.

P.S. - Take a browse through the reviews section. The reviews can give a pretty good indication as to what the quirks of various models are.

[nittany_tim]

I hope this addresses your questions adequately.

Absolutely!! Thanks so much for taking the time to respond in such detail as you did. The information you provided is exactly the type of stuff I was looking for in making my decision.

I'm really not worried about any idiosyncrasies of using MD equipment or SS software... I sort of like tinkering around with new stuff. Honestly, my biggest concern was with the uncertain future of the MD format, but at this point, I don't care. I really want to get moving on this and get my old vinyl onto some personal compilations, and it's pretty clear to me that, for the price and for what I need, nothing else comes close to MD when you factor in both sound quality and flexibility.

Thanks again,

Tim