Topic: Best Mini Disc recorder???

[King Ghidora]

Neither one of my video cameras shut down while in paused mode.  They will sit until the battery goes dead before they shut down.  And battery life is one of the good things about MD recording.  I haven't really tried my HIMD to see how long it will record on a single battery but I get several hours of record time on a single battery from my old MD recorder.  It will certainly far exceed the length of the tape.

For my purposes letting the HIMD keep recording even during pauses is a very good idea because I only have to sync once with my video cameras that way.  People think they will get out of sync over the course of a disk or a tape on my video cameras but that has not been my experience except for a hiccup on my HIMD after I bought it.  I start all my recorders and sync one in editing and I don't have to sync again.  It's a very good setup really.

Swapping discs in the middle of a set is certainly a hassle.  If you know there will be a pause in the action for a couple of minutes then that's usually enough time to swap.  I've lost more time swapping video tapes really and they don't have any record settings to change.  I guess it was just more of a case of trying to swap too many things at once.

Regular MD was meant to be a replacement for cassettes.  I believe Sony accomplished that quite well when they first came out with MD technology.  MD grew into being a serious tapers technology replacing DAT for many people after the advent of HIMD.  Even before that people used MD because it was available and it was very good quality even if it was lossy.  There just wasn't anything better around at the time unless you wanted to spring for pro equipment.

[nameloc01]

When changing discs, the unit MUST be stopped, not paused, in order to write the TOC....this mean on all units, but the new RH1 (and the old sharps), the manual settings must be set again...in addition to waiting for the TOC to write, and changing disc time, this means any SERIOUS taper, must have two units. Now I say serious because amongst the trading community, having a 30 second gap isn't usually acceptable, and if your recording lossy so you don't have to flip, it surely isnt acceptable. Now if your just recording for yourself, and your not trading, then thats one thing, but for serious tapers that actually want to share their recordings, two units is the only way to do it. Now if your thinking optimum setup for hi-md, its would be two rh1's, so you don't have to worry about the default settings, and no gap to worry about (just some minor cut and paste in post). Two Rh1's will run you $640. And that's 16 bit remember. Even a lesser setup with an Rh1 and first gen-unit (cause you have time setting up for the gap, so why worry about default settings on your patch unit) will run you around $420. The only way to do it cheap and serious is to get two first gen units for $200 and say screw the defaults.

So what was the questions...best md recorder?
Best HiMD with no money in mind = 2 X Rh1 = ~$640
best value HiMD = 2 x first gen units ~$200
best recorder for the money without all the headaches with patches and uploads (and how are the defaults?) and 24 bit= R09 ~$350

umm............ the only way to do it seriously is to run 2 himd's because serious traders/tapers find a thirty second missing audience chatter unacceptable??  are you fucking kidding me?
i can probably give 500 names of people that have gotten shows from me over the years,but they too must not be too serious about anything.,seeing as how i only run one of my decks at a time,and there is always(at least with shows over 1.5 hours) a 20-30 gap of missing audience B.S. while the discs are flipped.
anyone else want to address these remarks??

i'm now wondering if you have any of my non-acceptable recordings in your collection of serious tapes.

[Carlos E. Martinez]

Neither one of my video cameras shut down while in paused mode.  They will sit until the battery goes dead before they shut down.  And battery life is one of the good things about MD recording.  I haven't really tried my HIMD to see how long it will record on a single battery but I get several hours of record time on a single battery from my old MD recorder.  It will certainly far exceed the length of the tape.

You know? You are absolutely right and I had it wrong. I just tried leaving the Sony Hi-MD and my Sony PDX10 in rec-pause, and they did not shut off even after half an hour. I missed a good chance to leave things recording in the Sony MD, instead of having the Shar shut-off due to some problem right by the end of the concert. I was video-taping, and I left the Sharp recording. Checked just by the end of the part I was most interested in, and it was still recording. When I got back the unit was off, and I thought the battery or the disc had run out. To find out later that it didn't write anything. 

For my purposes letting the HIMD keep recording even during pauses is a very good idea because I only have to sync once with my video cameras that way.  People think they will get out of sync over the course of a disk or a tape on my video cameras but that has not been my experience except for a hiccup on my HIMD after I bought it.  I start all my recorders and sync one in editing and I don't have to sync again.  It's a very good setup really.

You may not keep total sync in takes longer than 30 minutes, but you can always correct some frames now and then to get back to it. Probably one or two frames in one hour.

Swapping discs in the middle of a set is certainly a hassle.  If you know there will be a pause in the action for a couple of minutes then that's usually enough time to swap.  I've lost more time swapping video tapes really and they don't have any record settings to change.  I guess it was just more of a case of trying to swap too many things at once.

Swapping video tapes is certainly a lot quicker. I do it (as I did during that show) in less than 30 seconds. And you don't need to shut-off anything. The Sony MD is certainly a lot more complicated.

Regular MD was meant to be a replacement for cassettes.  I believe Sony accomplished that quite well when they first came out with MD technology.  MD grew into being a serious tapers technology replacing DAT for many people after the advent of HIMD.  Even before that people used MD because it was available and it was very good quality even if it was lossy.  There just wasn't anything better around at the time unless you wanted to spring for pro equipment.

In fact DAT was to be a cassette replacement, but the record industry did not allow that to happen. And MD just made it, mostly in Japan ane Europe, because it was not such great quality at first. So the labels didn't care for it. Sony was not smart enough to make it into a serious media, probably because by then they were already selling records too.

Another thing: how good is the quality when you tape in Hi-SP as compared to PCM? Same or better than old MD standard?

[Arni99]

HI-SP on HI-MD records in 256kbit/s ATRAC format.
It doesn´t sound bad BUT of course a WAV recording at 1411kbit/s sounds better and is more likely being accepted by lots of traders.
The transfer of a 95min WAV recording on HI-MD takes up to 40min as mechanical restrictions don´t allow a higher transfer-speed.

I used my md-recorders since 1994 for taping concerts.
Now i recently got an iriver H120 from ebay and it´s just awesome with rockbox-firmware for taping shows etc.!
Will NEVER use my HI-MD recorder again as I hate swapping discs after 95min when recording in WAV quality.
Arni

[taper420]

When changing discs, the unit MUST be stopped, not paused, in order to write the TOC....this mean on all units, but the new RH1 (and the old sharps), the manual settings must be set again...in addition to waiting for the TOC to write, and changing disc time, this means any SERIOUS taper, must have two units. Now I say serious because amongst the trading community, having a 30 second gap isn't usually acceptable, and if your recording lossy so you don't have to flip, it surely isnt acceptable. Now if your just recording for yourself, and your not trading, then thats one thing, but for serious tapers that actually want to share their recordings, two units is the only way to do it. Now if your thinking optimum setup for hi-md, its would be two rh1's, so you don't have to worry about the default settings, and no gap to worry about (just some minor cut and paste in post). Two Rh1's will run you $640. And that's 16 bit remember. Even a lesser setup with an Rh1 and first gen-unit (cause you have time setting up for the gap, so why worry about default settings on your patch unit) will run you around $420. The only way to do it cheap and serious is to get two first gen units for $200 and say screw the defaults.

So what was the questions...best md recorder?
Best HiMD with no money in mind = 2 X Rh1 = ~$640
best value HiMD = 2 x first gen units ~$200
best recorder for the money without all the headaches with patches and uploads (and how are the defaults?) and 24 bit= R09 ~$350

umm............ the only way to do it seriously is to run 2 himd's because serious traders/tapers find a thirty second missing audience chatter unacceptable??  are you fucking kidding me?
i can probably give 500 names of people that have gotten shows from me over the years,but they too must not be too serious about anything.,seeing as how i only run one of my decks at a time,and there is always(at least with shows over 1.5 hours) a 20-30 gap of missing audience B.S. while the discs are flipped.
anyone else want to address these remarks??

i'm now wondering if you have any of my non-acceptable recordings in your collection of serious tapes.

Ok, I'm not saying it's impossible to get a serious recording with one unit. What I'm saying is it's not practical to rely on one unit to get a glitch free recording EVERYTIME. If you can make your flip happen during pure audience chatter, then more power to you. It cross-fades great, and some dropped audience is always acceptable. But if your missing even ONE musical note, then you ARE making a compromise due to the limits of your technology. It might be fine if there are other tapers there, and you can download a patch later. But what happens when your the sole taper, and you gotta make that flip... and dam that jam has just been going on forever...I shoulda filpped at 60 min. But hey, if your one of the guys that stands there for a half hour and waits for that perfect moment between songs that might never come, go for it. It does add more sport to the hobby. Hell I did it for years, till I realized I could get a used patch unit dirt cheap, and save myself TONS of worrying that takes away from the show. When I say serious taper, I mean one who is going out there intent on getting the best recording they are capable of, and then trading it with the public. And believe it or not, most of the people I would call serious tapers believe "set it and forget it". This seems to be antithesis to minidisc. Now I'm also willing to accept that were coming from different places. There are plenty of bands out there that play songs, and then they stop and then they play another song. These also tend to be stealth jobs that minidisc is particularly well suited for. If this is the case then flipping is less of a concern (accept getting busted maybe). Then there are the bands which I KNOW will cause problems for a one unit, disc-flipper everytime. For instance, I just taped WSP recently and watched as the second set started stretching toward 90. There was only one flipper there, but he had to compromise his recording to do it. I always ask MDers what they do when they have to flip. I always get interesting answers. "oh, i'll flip during drums" "oh, can I record a patch?", "oh, I just run it on SP"... whatever the answer... if it's not "i got two", it's a compromise. I'm sorry but I can't remember EVER possessing a show that had music missing on it. Except for me back in the single md days. I realize the crux of your argument is that having a gap of audience chatter is fine. I agree. But I don't agree having any music missing is fine, when there is a dirt cheap alternative...to me, it just seems if you're flying solo you're not taking the hobby seriously. And in fact the number one reason I find when I ask an MDer what they do when they gotta flip, "Oh, I'll do it quick at a good spot, I've gotten pretty good at it.... besides, it's just for me".

[knoxmallette]

I guess the moral to the story is Hi-MD users are serious tapers just willing to deal with the disc swapping. I got exposed to taping through dead shows when cassettes were the only medium and losing part of the show came with territory.

[dunebug81]

WTF?  A *SERIOUS* taper.....hahahah.  Taper 420 you take your recordings to a whole new level of obsessiveness.  In the last 2 months of taping Ive seen Tool, Raconteurs, Jars of Clay, Wolfmother, Nickelback, Godsmack, Candlebox, Muse, Rollins Band, and OAR.  Of those 10 bands only 3 have played longer then 90 min and all 3 had a break of several minutes at around the 75 min mark.  Plenty enough to make a tape flip.  A tape swap takes all of about 45 seconds.  I don't see why this is such a huge deal that would cause you such stress.  Perhaps you should start drinking more...or worry less about what other people use to tape shows with. 

[taper420]

WTF?  A *SERIOUS* taper.....hahahah.  Taper 420 you take your recordings to a whole new level of obsessiveness. 

Touche

In the last 2 months of taping Ive seen Tool, Raconteurs, Jars of Clay, Wolfmother, Nickelback, Godsmack, Candlebox, Muse, Rollins Band, and OAR.  Of those 10 bands only 3 have played longer then 90 min and all 3 had a break of several minutes at around the 75 min mark.  Plenty enough to make a tape flip.  A tape swap takes all of about 45 seconds. 

Like I said, we're coming from different places. These bands are better suited for taping with minidisc. The bands I see usually just play one 2+ hour jam, rarely with any musical breaks. Plus...it's not gonna work perfect for you everytime, even if you are seeing these bands. Although I can see why it's not so much a concern, stealth usually doesn't sound as good as open anyway, so why bother with perfection.

I don't see why this is such a huge deal that would cause you such stress. 

It used to be a cause for concern. Not so stressful as I made it seem I guess. Like I said, it can be fun cause it adds sport to the whole thing.

Perhaps you should start drinking more...or worry less about what other people use to tape shows with. 

Calm down, perhaps you should smoke more.....I'm just sharing my experience with people so they know what to expect. I'm not writing this so much for the people who are already using MD to record. If your using it, you already know the strengths and weaknesses and if the format is suited to the type of bands you like to see. I'm writing this more for the newbie that's just getting started and letting them know what they have in store if they choose MD.

[nameloc01]

When changing discs, the unit MUST be stopped, not paused, in order to write the TOC....this mean on all units, but the new RH1 (and the old sharps), the manual settings must be set again...in addition to waiting for the TOC to write, and changing disc time, this means any SERIOUS taper, must have two units. Now I say serious because amongst the trading community, having a 30 second gap isn't usually acceptable, and if your recording lossy so you don't have to flip, it surely isnt acceptable. Now if your just recording for yourself, and your not trading, then thats one thing, but for serious tapers that actually want to share their recordings, two units is the only way to do it. Now if your thinking optimum setup for hi-md, its would be two rh1's, so you don't have to worry about the default settings, and no gap to worry about (just some minor cut and paste in post). Two Rh1's will run you $640. And that's 16 bit remember. Even a lesser setup with an Rh1 and first gen-unit (cause you have time setting up for the gap, so why worry about default settings on your patch unit) will run you around $420. The only way to do it cheap and serious is to get two first gen units for $200 and say screw the defaults.

So what was the questions...best md recorder?
Best HiMD with no money in mind = 2 X Rh1 = ~$640
best value HiMD = 2 x first gen units ~$200
best recorder for the money without all the headaches with patches and uploads (and how are the defaults?) and 24 bit= R09 ~$350

umm............ the only way to do it seriously is to run 2 himd's because serious traders/tapers find a thirty second missing audience chatter unacceptable??  are you fucking kidding me?
i can probably give 500 names of people that have gotten shows from me over the years,but they too must not be too serious about anything.,seeing as how i only run one of my decks at a time,and there is always(at least with shows over 1.5 hours) a 20-30 gap of missing audience B.S. while the discs are flipped.
anyone else want to address these remarks??

i'm now wondering if you have any of my non-acceptable recordings in your collection of serious tapes.

Ok, I'm not saying it's impossible to get a serious recording with one unit. What I'm saying is it's not practical to rely on one unit to get a glitch free recording EVERYTIME. If you can make your flip happen during pure audience chatter, then more power to you. It cross-fades great, and some dropped audience is always acceptable. But if your missing even ONE musical note, then you ARE making a compromise due to the limits of your technology. It might be fine if there are other tapers there, and you can download a patch later. But what happens when your the sole taper, and you gotta make that flip... and dam that jam has just been going on forever...I shoulda filpped at 60 min. But hey, if your one of the guys that stands there for a half hour and waits for that perfect moment between songs that might never come, go for it. It does add more sport to the hobby. Hell I did it for years, till I realized I could get a used patch unit dirt cheap, and save myself TONS of worrying that takes away from the show. When I say serious taper, I mean one who is going out there intent on getting the best recording they are capable of, and then trading it with the public. And believe it or not, most of the people I would call serious tapers believe "set it and forget it". This seems to be antithesis to minidisc. Now I'm also willing to accept that were coming from different places. There are plenty of bands out there that play songs, and then they stop and then they play another song. These also tend to be stealth jobs that minidisc is particularly well suited for. If this is the case then flipping is less of a concern (accept getting busted maybe). Then there are the bands which I KNOW will cause problems for a one unit, disc-flipper everytime. For instance, I just taped WSP recently and watched as the second set started stretching toward 90. There was only one flipper there, but he had to compromise his recording to do it. I always ask MDers what they do when they have to flip. I always get interesting answers. "oh, i'll flip during drums" "oh, can I record a patch?", "oh, I just run it on SP"... whatever the answer... if it's not "i got two", it's a compromise. I'm sorry but I can't remember EVER possessing a show that had music missing on it. Except for me back in the single md days. I realize the crux of your argument is that having a gap of audience chatter is fine. I agree. But I don't agree having any music missing is fine, when there is a dirt cheap alternative...to me, it just seems if you're flying solo you're not taking the hobby seriously. And in fact the number one reason I find when I ask an MDer what they do when they gotta flip, "Oh, I'll do it quick at a good spot, I've gotten pretty good at it.... besides, it's just for me".

since you are apparently not aware... there are 3 crucial things that make or break a "good/serious" tape.
these three things are equally important,none more than the other.

1.the sound your recording itself.(this encompasses,the bands sound itself,the venue and its acoustics,and additional noise ie. drunken hillbliies next to you screaming,crowd chatter,whatever....)
2.your position in the venue.you're only going to pick up what you are able to.ie. if your in the back of a 20,000 seat arena its going to sound somewhat like it.)
3.your rig.i really dont think we need to go into this anymore.

WITHOUT ALL THREE OF THESE FACTORS IN THE BEST POSSIBLE ARRANGEMENT YOU WILL NOT GET A PERFECT RECORDING.PERIOD.

so to put the emphasis solely on what rig your are running,really, is very,very wookie-ish.you could be recording with a 128 channel digital recording console,but if your in the nosebleeds with a bunch of asshole screaming,its not going to do a whole hell of a lot of good.

like i said before, to go into a situation not knowing what the fuck you are recording is also very wookie-ish. a little research and its not hard to find out (pre-show) where you need to flip(its worked for me every time)

and i cant think of off hand,any band that doesnt take at least a 30 second break somewhere prior to 1.5 hours into the show.i am sure they are out there, but i havent run across one yet.

your comments about earlier about anyone who doesnt run 2 himds or a r-9 obviously isnt serious,makes me think of this.

mike milliard,circa 1977.taping zeppelin at the forum(L.A.) uses a wheel chair as a prop to import his analog cassette deck and mics into the arena,along with his helpers,yes,he had them.and then proceeds to record some of the best live stuff ever done.period. on a fuckin cassette recorder.if you  dont know what i am talking about,listen to his 6/21/77 source.tits.
its surprising,coming from someone who really wasnt a serious taper.

[King Ghidora]

For my purposes letting the HIMD keep recording even during pauses is a very good idea because I only have to sync once with my video cameras that way.  People think they will get out of sync over the course of a disk or a tape on my video cameras but that has not been my experience except for a hiccup on my HIMD after I bought it.  I start all my recorders and sync one in editing and I don't have to sync again.  It's a very good setup really.

You may not keep total sync in takes longer than 30 minutes, but you can always correct some frames now and then to get back to it. Probably one or two frames in one hour.

I actually don't have much of a problem with sync times.  With my old recorders I can record a full mini-dv tape and only be off by a frame or two (1/29th of a second).  The used HIMD I just bought started out having a SERIOUS problem with sync times though.  It was off by as much as 4 minutes on a 30 minute recording.  It finally started recording right on time just like my old MD but I almost sent it back to the seller after some serious drama over whether it actually had a problem or not.  It's always possible to use time stretch in a good audio editor to fix problems but it's a hassle to get it right.  Still I prefer time stretch to messing with the frames unless it's just a single frame or two.  Not too many people will notice that small of a correction.

Regular MD was meant to be a replacement for cassettes.  I believe Sony accomplished that quite well when they first came out with MD technology.  MD grew into being a serious tapers technology replacing DAT for many people after the advent of HIMD.  Even before that people used MD because it was available and it was very good quality even if it was lossy.  There just wasn't anything better around at the time unless you wanted to spring for pro equipment.

In fact DAT was to be a cassette replacement, but the record industry did not allow that to happen. And MD just made it, mostly in Japan ane Europe, because it was not such great quality at first. So the labels didn't care for it. Sony was not smart enough to make it into a serious media, probably because by then they were already selling records too.

Yeah both technologies along with DCC were meant to replace cassettes and there was supposed to be a war to see which technology won out.  But as we know cassettes continued for quite a while after that mainly because of price IMO.  BTW I have only actually seen one or two DCC decks ever.  They just never got out of the starting gate.  I know most people think SCMS killed DAT but for me it was the price.  I could just never justify spending $600 in early 1990's  dollars for a recorder when a MD was available for much less (I bought a my first md, a MD-R70, at a Sony outlet store for $70 which was a steal of course).  I think price was a problem for a lot of people.  $600 back then would be equal to $1000 today.  Even on this board there aren't a lot of people spending that much before they start buying mics.  And even MD was priced too high for the market cassettes really occupied.  DAT and MD were both much more upscale and people were just happy to have anything that would give them decent sound so they stuck with the cheaper priced technology.  Plus the marketing of both technologies really stunk.  There was just never enough of a first buyer market to drive the price down.  Whether it was SCMS or whether people just thought cassettes were really good enough and the price was too high or maybe it was a combination of both at any rate none of those technologies really caught on in the US.  MD did in Japan thank goodness or we would have never had the good stuff we did get.

As for Hi-SP compared to old MD recorders I can't say as I can hear much of a difference.  They both sound pretty good.  It's not like LP-4 or anything.  The earlier models of MD might not sound as good IMO.

[Carlos E. Martinez]

At the time of DAT development I followed the comes and goings a lot, through a magazine called Studio Sound (unfortunately dead now).

The main question was that the recording companies threatened to sue the equipment manufacturers in spite of any protection measures that were being taken. The whole copy protection story would be funny if it wasn't tragic, because the question made it to the US Congress, to test a system (pre-SCMS) that supposedly locked recorders if you tried to record a protected disk.

The problem was the system was analog and didn't work as it should, didn't protect when it should have. Even worst: you could identify protected recordings from unprotected by just listening to them, when the protection should be invisible. It was rejected by Congress and the bill didn't pass.

But the threat on manufacturers was so high that they gave up on real mass production, making only DAT machines with SCMS (which could be easily defeated, as proved later on) mostly for the hi-end and pro market. That's why they were expensive.

Scale manufacturing, which would have lowered the prices in machines and tapes, never took over. But if they did you would have found a $70 DAT player.

So you have to blame this on the recording labels, mainly RIAA. They should be blamed for not letting progress and high quality move the road it was moving in.

In fact I am very pleased to see what is happening to audio & film industry, with piracy taking over a large part of their business and they not knowing how to fight it.

My recipe for fighting piracy: sell records so cheap that it wouldn't be good business to copy them, instead of going after as much money as they want to get. Same thing for movie tickets or DVDs.
 

[King Ghidora]

I knew the record companies were behind SCMS and other hassles for DAT.  It was before they learned their lesson on VCR's where what they thought would kill them became one of their biggest markets.  It's the same now.  They keep fighting downloads but they don't understand that 20 people will pay a dollar for a CD more often than one person will pay $20 for a CD.  It's simple economics but I guess they are too simple to get it.

[Carlos E. Martinez]

I knew the record companies were behind SCMS and other hassles for DAT.  It was before they learned their lesson on VCR's where what they thought would kill them became one of their biggest markets. 

Yes. What they wanted to forbid was cassette home copies people were starting to do for their cars and walkmans. So the inhibiting system, called Copycode, was supposed to be added in every cassette recorder. Every disc, LP and CD, was to have a fixed frequency peak recorded, which the recording machine would identify and not allow recording from it. That peak was supposed not to be listened.

The problem, as I said above, was the system didn't disengage recording on the presence of the tone and on listening tests people could identify recordings with that tone included.

But with DAT they were absolutely vicious. As this analog protection system was not approved, and they knew an analog recording from CD would still be very good, they threatened suing any vendor that brought DAT machines into the US. None did and the manufacturers, which would also be sued, developed the SCMS and try for a long time until they could get a green light from the RIAA.

By then the equipment manufacturers were already onto different plans, none of them considering a no-loss system as something for everybody. MD, DCC, etc. were some of them. None of them providing a perfect copy. Only the pro market, with pro prices, was allowed using DAT. And it didn't last too long.

The irony was that people didn't want all that quality and accepted MD quite well, mainly in Japan and Europe. Even cassette recordings flourished, still sold today,  mostly for commuters and their walkmans. You could find excellent walkman machines, by Sony and others, out of the US.

Until someone invented MP3 and the rest is history.

Something similar happened in video, where LV records were much better, quality wise, than DVD. But they were cheaper to produce, even if at first not sold so cheap. Only now, with new HD formats coming by, we may get back on track with "high quality for everybody", which I think should be fair. You can see how RIAA's greed was prejudicial to us all.