sony mz-r55 recording question

[anti]

hey!

ive had a sony mz-r55 for a couple of years now and ive recently become interested in taping concerts.

it has a mic sensitivity switch and mic input.

i bought one of those cheap "Stereo Lapel Microphone for Minidisc" off ebay and tried it out at a concert. however the concert was in a club and the volume was extremly loud. as a result the recording was unlistenable due to distortion.

is this due to the cheap microphone?

if i buy better quality mics, will i get rid of the distortion? or is it the recorders fault?

thanks for your help guys!

[squaredcircle]

First, did you have the mic switched to low sensitivity?

If you did, try getting a Radio Shack headphone volume control and running the mic through that (plugged into Mic jack, mic plugged into the headphone volume control jack, volume knob on headphone volume control most of the way up). If it still overloads through that, it's the mic--if not, you're set.

If you have earbuds or unobtrusive headphones, try listening through the headphone jack as you record, and turn down the headphone volume control if it's too high.

[anti]

yeah i had the sensitivity set to low

the strange thing was the right channel was completly distorted and unlistenable, however the left channel was stil distorted but not too bad, thus i was able to save the recording by removing the right channel (using cool edit pro).

since it seems that one microphone was alot more distorted from the other (i was using a sterio mic), i think it may be the microphones fault since it was cheap and not the minidsics fault.