Auto track creation problem

[rocktap]

Hi All

I've just got the MZ RH1 for field recording and its a lovely unit. My only real grievance is this: when I start recording a track, it automatically increments the track number if there is a few seconds of silence. As I'm recording dialogue, this happens quite a lot, and I end up with lots of tracks. I just want one track for each instance that I hit record. I see it has an auto track feature but this creates a new track at a predetermined time interval (and its off in my case). Can anyone help me?

Peter

[The Low Volta]

if you are using mic-in you should be able to turn this function off I believe (or not exactly off, but by setting auto-trackmarks to 60min, you could trick the machine in only putting one mark every hour) and mic-in is advisable for speech and accoustic music.

if you are using line-in, there is no way to turn it off, but line-in isn't usefull for speech unless you're using an external preamp...but that really is overkill for speech

[ozpeter]

In my experience there is no way to avoid this with any setting.

The fact that auto track mark cannot be turned off proves to me that there will be an RH-2. They've left one thing to be fixed. OK, and it will have an external add-on battery case too.

[The Low Volta]

with mic-in this can definitely be overridden by using the 60min autotrack (or any other prefered min setting)on a NH900... that's how I record most if not all of my interviews which are filled with 'five secs of relative silence')

with line-in, I agree (as I said before) there really is no current way to get rid of it

Edited July 21, 2006 by The Low Volta

[greenmachine]

There is no auto track marking when recording mic-in unless you manually set it to a specific interval, is it?

[The Low Volta]

now that's a surprising remark greenmachine... you startled me

I really don't know as I read about the irritating automarks before I even did my first recording ever... at that time ppl were still convinced the timed automarks would override the silence-induced automarks when recording line-in. So I always used the timed marks set at 60min and noticed that I still got trackmarks with line-in and not with mic-in... so I was under the impression that it worked for mic-in... while all this time it never created one silence induced mark with mic-in

in that case, my apologies ozpeter!! you are correct!

...but this leads me to believe the original poster's issue really is a non-issue:

- mic-in is mark-free and it is definitely more than adequate for speech (conversations) and even for (most) unamplified music

- line-in would be way too silent for speech unless an external pre-amp is used, which is definitely overkill for speech and IMHO ith HiMD almost always (perhaps not when recording silent nature sounds, but even then I believe a test had shown how good he HiMD pre-amp really is)

[A440]

Rocktap, make sure that under REC SET you have SYNC RECORDING turned off. That may be inserting the track marks if you're using mic-in. As others have noted, there's no way around track marks with Line-in.

[rocktap]

Thanks everyone for your advice. Yes I am using line in - I'm a location sound recordist and I use the line out on my audio mixer to feed the RH1. But I can feed mic level so will try this.

Cheers

Peter

[greenmachine]

Track marks can be removed pretty easily either before or after uploading. There were issues with this in the past, but it seems to work now.