MD for use in linguistic fieldwork and phonetic analysis

[kroddy]

Howzit all--

I recently joined the minidisc forum, did a search, and found only one thread prior to October 2003 that discussed the use of MDs when conducting fieldwork, e.g., recording interviews. Gees - I thought I was the only other person on the planet that uses an MD for purposes other than listening/recording music! It was good to find at least one other person doing this.

I'm a linguistics grad student at the University of Hawaii. Months ago I was looking for a good field recorder in which to take samples of a little documented language I've been researching in Micronesia. Our department had a couple of MZ-707s in the cabinet, and I assumed they could do what I wanted. Well, sort of.

I bought an MZ N707 because the department's ones were always checked out, and later was shocked (and a bit pissed) to find out that I could not move speech samples I had recorded with the MD to my computer through a cable without having to redigitize/rerecord againn using my PC's digital recording program! Whereas the audio speech sample *sounded* fine once I finally got it into my computer for analysis, I was worried that I wasn't going to be able to look at a spectral record of individual speech sounds (wave forms and spectrograms) without the possibility of 'compression artifacts' introduced into the sample by the second re-record, which might muck up the visual record I was looking at. [i always take samples at the highest rate to eliminate the compression algorithm's task of removing harmonics that I might want to see.]

Fortunately, I located an article by a phonetician in the Netherlands that has looked at this problem of artifacts, and whether they significantly affect phonetic/spectral analysis. Unless I'm looking at a +/- 3% in semitone difference, I may have nothing to worry about. Mostly, I use the samples for a hyperlinked dictionary I've been working on. However, there's a bizarre phoneme in this language that I haven't figured out how speakers articulate it {is it in the uvula, velum, etc.} so it would be nice to be able to run a 'clean sample' through spectral analysis when it occurs to see a visual record that might help me better identify and classify it.

After the disappointment of the 707, I bought an Archos Jukebox 20. I thought it would do what I wanted, but it has an annoying habit of recording the noise the hard drive makes when it's accessed (usually at the beginning of the recording, and that noise ends up as part of the sample! Aaargh.

My question: Are there *any* MDs out there, small and compact like the 707 (the Archos is a bigger beastie) that will allow a user to record a sample with a microphone in the field, and move it from the MD directly to a PC?

Thanks,

Kevin

[mAjEsTiC]

  Quote

My question: Are there *any* MDs out there, small and compact like the 707 (the Archos is a bigger beastie) that will allow a user to record a sample with a microphone in the field, and move it from the MD directly to a PC?

the simple answer to this is no...there are no MD units that will allow faster than real-time uploading from MD -> PC...

[Guest Anonymous]

Kevin,

You can digitally upload your speech recordings if you have an MD unit with an optical out. To my knowledge, only one portable, long since discontinued had an optical out. There are several decks that have optical out, however. You can find them through the equipment browser section on the front page of this site. If you need a deck strictly for uploading digitally to PCs, you might want to look at MDS-PC1, 2, or 3 models. Sony outlet is currently selling them for about $250 on ebay but you can find better prices if you look around.