A440 Posted September 2, 2004 Report Share Posted September 2, 2004 Buried in the menus on the NHF800 are two settings for Mic AGC, Standard and LoudMusic. Has anyone tested them? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
damianip Posted September 2, 2004 Report Share Posted September 2, 2004 This has been briefly touched on in the HiMD forum: http://forums.minidisc.org/viewtopic.php?t=5882 Paolo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Markr041 Posted September 2, 2004 Report Share Posted September 2, 2004 Well, from that thread it appears we do not have the comparison we want. There is one person's experience (bad) with the loud setting. And there is another person's experience with the standard setting (good). [and one experience with neither - manual]. But who knows what went else wrong in the first case (maybe nothing). What we need is the same person, with the same mike and MD at the same concert using the two settings. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A440 Posted September 3, 2004 Author Report Share Posted September 3, 2004 I did a test, and I hear little or no difference. Went to see Oneida at the Knitting Factory last night--a great band, by the way, relentless loud minimalist Brooklyn update of Kraut-rock. Anyone in NYC should go hear them. MZ-NHF800, little SoundPro omnis, Hi-SP, Low Sensitivity and switched a few times in mid-song between Standard and LoudMusic on Mic AGC. Listening back through good headphones---Grado SR 125--the change is almost imperceptible. Level stays exactly the same. There may be a tiny bit more high-frequency airiness on the Loud Music setting, but that may be wishful thinking. I'd be curious about other people's results. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
b.l.s.1919 Posted September 3, 2004 Report Share Posted September 3, 2004 hey i just got into md recordings, and bought the NHF800. i'll be taping a lot of upcoming nyc show at irving plaza, bowery, bb kings etc. my first show at irving i used low sensitivity and loud music and the show came out pretty good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christopher Posted September 3, 2004 Report Share Posted September 3, 2004 Did you try analyzing the recordings in Audacity? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A440 Posted September 7, 2004 Author Report Share Posted September 7, 2004 I've used CoolEdit Pro to look at the waveforms in three different songs where I switched between Standard and LoudMusic. There's no difference. That doesn't mean that Loud Music doesn't somehow provide extra headroom, but it was a mighty loud concert to start with and Standard didn't distort either. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dex Otaku Posted September 7, 2004 Report Share Posted September 7, 2004 My findings would suggest that you're right, A440.. I made a test file consisting of burst tones of varying lengths from 1ms to 500ms in sequence with increasing gaps between them. It should be possible to see the ADSR envelope of the AGc's compression this way. I then repeated the sequence in incremental drops of 1dB each. I recorded this via line-in. The results were surprising - ADSR and average levels were -identical- for both the "normal' and "loud music" settings. I did not try this using the mic input but by my experience with older MDs this should not make a difference. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A440 Posted September 7, 2004 Author Report Share Posted September 7, 2004 Just to be sure, it would be great if you could run that test through the Mic input since Standard/LoudMusic are labeled as Mic AGC. And now you've really got me curious: does AGC get applied to line-in on the older MDs? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dex Otaku Posted September 7, 2004 Report Share Posted September 7, 2004 It did on the ones I've used. And AFAIK the difference between normal and loud music settings should be that loud music uses a different attack and release [hard knee with limiting vs. soft knee with limiting] and more gain with a lower threshold [meaning there isn't more headroom, just much harder compression, which is why noise in the quiet parts becomes more apparent]. I'll do it with the mic in if I can get it to calibrate somewhere near right. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dex Otaku Posted September 7, 2004 Report Share Posted September 7, 2004 Problem: it's easy enough to figure out what unity gain is with the line-in, but what [in manual levels] is unity on the HiMD? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dex Otaku Posted September 8, 2004 Report Share Posted September 8, 2004 Okay.. Rather unscientific when it comes down to it, but I had deleted the test file I created before and didn't have the patience to do it all over again. The new test is simpler but still gives some idea of at least the attack and limiting levels. I didn't measure for release. Test consisted of a series of 1kHz tones of .1sec followed by .1sec silence repeating for 5 sec, followed by 5 secs silence, then repeating 1dB quieter all the way down to -32dB. My loose calibration was off by approximately +2dB so the first burst is clipped at its beginning. full view of the original file: Click here to zoom in some full view of the Normal AGC'd file: Click here to zoom in some full view of the Loud Music AGC'd file: Click here to zoom in some The spike on the 10th burst is Trillian, which I forgot to close, alerting me to someone sending me an IM. the first 3 bursts on Normal: Click here to zoom in some the first 3 bursts on Loud Music: Click here to zoom in some first burst on Normal: Click here to zoom in some first burst on Loud Music: Click here to zoom in some This is what I see, which I openly admit might not be correct: Loud Music appears to have a longer attack. It looks like the there's fast attack, *very* slow release [longer than the 5 seconds between each burst!] compression going on here, followed by limiting applied to approx. -6dB. The compressor's settings change between normal and loud music, the limiter's don't appear to. Anything below that is left alone, though gain might be being applied below -30dB which is where I stopped testing. Like I said, not entirely scientific, but it gives some idea. The difference is really very small though. I'd expected it to have been more obvious. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christopher Posted September 8, 2004 Report Share Posted September 8, 2004 Top stuff, dex.. :happy: I really appreciate your constant contribution to the forums. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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