total newb to MD needs help

[lobosmoke]

tbh i thought that MD was a dead format.

i don't have an portable mp3 player and still use my old discman.

now i make music which would generally be considered to be lo-fi. i have been recording onto a portable cassette player and it works excellently for what i want to do. but recently i stumbled upon a thread on a music forum where somebody mentioned that they used MD to record all of their stuff, i got interested and here i am.

i am basically interested in a MD recorder that is good quality. im in the UK and would be ordering off the internet but don't want to order an item second hand because i've had bad experiences in the past.

i have a few general questions about the MD format

-how much material can each disc hold?? i've heard that up to 20 albums can fit onto one minidisc but the minidiscs ive seen for sale all are at 80 mins??

-do you basically record straight into the device and are minidiscs rewritable??

ive seen a MD recorder on amazon.co.uk with USB (Sony MD Walkman MZ-RH1 - Hi-MD recorder) and its 200 pounds. are there any cheaper alternatives to this or is this a general price for MD players?? i want to be a player and a couple of discs and store lots of music on some of the discs and then use the others for recording.

sorry if my questions are hard to understand but english is not my original lanuage.

all help is appreciated.

thank you.

[kino170878]

Wow, you are still using cassette recorders? I tip my hat off to you sir. I suspect most of the MD users here have now ditched the format completely and upgraded to flash based recorders. So in a way MD is indeed a dead format. But for me, there will never be anything better than MD for recording purposes.

The only new minidisc recorder available in the UK right now is the RH1. It is actually a 'Hi-MD' format recorder using Atrac3plus compression so that up to 45 hours can be crammed onto a special 1gb disc. As a comparison, the same disc can also record in Linear PCM mode (no compression) for 90 minutes. I would stay clear of low compression rates and use at least 256kps 'Hi-SP' mode, but you can go all the way down to 66kps rate I think (that is the only way to get 45 hours). At 256kps you will get around 5 hours on the disc.

There is one catch, so significant that it has forced me to 'downgrade' to the older compression format (more on this below). You have to use a computer program called Sonicstage in order to upload your recordings to the PC and edit there or transfer to WAV format. It is a DRM nightmare of a program, although when it works it works quite nicely.

The older SP atrac format is what I use mostly. The reason being is that I am free of using the computer, and also there is a much, much larger market for the older Atrac 4.5/Type R players/recorders/hi-fi systems. Also, using MONO mode you can double the recording time on a minidisc giving approx 160 minutes. Or you can use 'long-play' mode (LP2, LP4) which gives 2.5 and 5 hours respectively.

Please note the following. YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO USE HI-MD DISCS ON NORMAL MD RECORDERS/PLAYERS. Only 80 minute discs recorded in normal Atrac 4.5/Type R will work (basically anything before Hi-MD). You can, however, use the older SP format discs on the RH1.

Make the decision, do you want to use your minidiscs on other equipment or just upload to the PC? If it is the latter, stick to the Hi-MD format. If it is the former (like me), stick to the older MD format.

The one saving grace that Sony did is allowing the RH1 to upload the older (legacy) Atrac recordings to the PC. If I assume correctly, you are totally on the hardware side of things, so my advice to you would be to buy the RH1 but only to record in the older SP (292kps) format which you will be able to upload (the RH1 can record in both Hi-MD mode and SP mode). I also have a lot of Sony decks with digital output, and they allow me to do real-time transfers from say minidisc to a CD recorder: yet another reason to adopt the old SP mode.

Edited March 14, 2008 by kino170878

[Hungerdunger]

The RH1 is the only new MD recorder still available in the UK and it is generally accepted that it is the final model ever. 200 UKP is a good price - if you go to a Sony Centre shop you'll have to pay around £50 more.

With regard to recording, you can record direct from a hi-fi system in real time, or you can record CDs or MP3s via your computer at faster-than-real-time using SonicStage software (which will be supplied with the RH1). For CD recording you can also use a program called Simple Burner (also supplied on the disc) which is the easiest to use, but doesn't have so much choice in bitrates.

[lobosmoke]

ive actually used sonic stage before with a CD mp3 player and found the software to be abysmal.

ive been reading reviews on the RH1 and it says to order from the states because in europe there is some sort of volume limiter??

is this true?

[bobt]

ive actually used sonic stage before with a CD mp3 player and found the software to be abysmal.

ive been reading reviews on the RH1 and it says to order from the states because in europe there is some sort of volume limiter??

is this true?

The new versions of SS are actually quite nice to work with (3.4 and up), as to the volume limit, it's probably not a noticeable limit, especially with a good set of headphones, but there are ways around it.

Good luck,

Bob

[A440]

You don't need a recorder at all. You can record directly to your computer with a program like free Audacity. http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

You might need to buy a line input for your computer if its soundcard only has a mic input. That would be the Griffin iMic, which is not a microphone but an external USB sound input/output. http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/imic

Perhaps you want a portable recorder, though.

Before getting involved with minidisc for the first time, look into flash recorders:

Edirol R09

Tascam DR1

M-Audio Microtrack

Or even some of the portable multitrack studios made by Tascam and others. Guitarfxr might be able to suggest something.

We're minidisc diehards here. We're used to them, we like the on-unit editing features (adding track marks during recording, moving or removing them without a computer), many of us need their portability and stealthiness, some of us love their sound on playback (irrelevant to recording) and we've learned the tricks to make them behave.

You're used to cassettes: realtime playback when you want to transfer your music. That's the paradigm Sony had when it first introduced minidisc, and it never quite got over it even when Hi-MD finally allowed files to be uploaded.

Sony killed its remarkable little recorder with DRM and SonicStage. That program probably works far better as version 3.4 or 4.2 than it did when you last used it. Yet I still cross my fingers every time I upload a recording.

If you are recording through a mixer with a line output, the flash recorders can make higher-quality recordings (and longer ones) than minidisc, and you'll be able to drag-and-drop them onto any computer. Minidisc isn't low-fi, but flash makes more sense unless you need minidisc's very specific assets--basically the on-unit editing and a suprisingly good mic input (though it's useless for loud or bassy music, which overloads it).

I'm still a constant minidisc user. But I don't think this is the time to get started with the format.