Minidisc players and recording

[Damon Rondeau]

Amen to that Sam. In light of that startling fact, I've enlisted the help of my neighbour, a recording engineer. We're going to experiment with the thing to see just how much mic and signal the thing wants before I start throwing more bucks at it.

[Chris Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by COOKING SHERRY

Dagnab, this is getting pretty expensive pretty quick . . .

Well, yes and no. What it comes down to is: "how huch is my time worth on an hourly basis" vs. "how much time will my dream system save me?" Add to that the question of "how much will I learn about how to improve my playing by listening critically to high quality recordings of my own live performances", and the cost might not seem so bad.

Hey, I can rationalize with the best of them.

Damon - what I'm most interested in at this point is the kind of input metering the thing has, and how easy it is to find a decent "set and forget" recording level that gets you a decent sound that still allows for the occasional peak without distortion.

[Phil Smith]

Originally Posted by Sam Sherry

Well, I just got a Jukebox 2 off EBay for $70.00.

And it turns out that the Jukebox One and Jukebox Three both can record shows. But the Jukebox 2 only has USB input. So I'm SOL and it's going back on EBay.

Crummy month, this one.

You want the 3.

[Nuno A.]

Sorry for bringin' to life this thread after so long, but i really want to buy a recording device(minidisc) to record shows, rehearseals, etc, i've been searching on the net, and there are so many minidiscs out there, i couldnt even figure out which ones i can use a mike with, so any sugestions? and what about this Nomad 3, can you record a live show like a minidisc, hows is the quality?
thanks in advance, im really confused and thats why i decided to post here thing im sure you guys use these devices for the same aplications i will..
By the way, i have a mac, seems none of this products has mac software right?
the guy in the store where i bought my mac told me to use a device called "m audio transit" to transfer audio to the computer, anyone nows this product?
http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_u...it-main-1.html

NUNO

[Alexi David]

Originally Posted by basscrazy72

Sorry for bringin' to life this thread after so long, but i really want to buy a recording device(minidisc) to record shows, rehearseals, etc, i've been searching on the net, and there are so many minidiscs out there, i couldnt even figure out which ones i can use a mike with, so any sugestions? and what about this Nomad 3, can you record a live show like a minidisc, hows is the quality?
thanks in advance, im really confused and thats why i decided to post here thing im sure you guys use these devices for the same aplications i will..
By the way, i have a mac, seems none of this products has mac software right?
the guy in the store where i bought my mac told me to use a device called "m audio transit" to transfer audio to the computer, anyone nows this product?
http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_u...it-main-1.html

NUNO

I bought a SONY NHZ (?) 900, their next to best model. It records on 1GB HI-MD discs - this machine records in PCM WAV quality! It's new technology a new model. It's about $250. I recommend it highly

[Damon Rondeau]

Alexi, I've heard some complaints about the Sony software for moving recordings from the player to the computer. One drummer I know -- she's extremely untechnical about gear -- and complained her new MD player was making her move files to her PC via an analog process because the digital-rights-management stuff Sony built into it "won't let her" move her own original recordings using the digital process. Is this true? Sounds unbelievable to me.

I own the Nomad JB III and really like it a lot. If you do a lot of live recording of performances, you're gonna spend a bunch of time moving recordings to the computer. You want to make sure that process is fast and hassle-free. I wound up buying some 3rd-party software for the JB III because I felt Creative's software sucked. Sucked bad.

Those new Sony minidiscs look awful nice.

[Alexi David]

Originally Posted by Damon Rondeau

Alexi, I've heard some complaints about the Sony software for moving recordings from the player to the computer. One drummer I know -- she's extremely untechnical about gear -- and complained her new MD player was making her move files to her PC via an analog process because the digital-rights-management stuff Sony built into it "won't let her" move her own original recordings using the digital process. Is this true? Sounds unbelievable to me.

Those new Sony minidiscs look awful nice.

Yup, the software is crap, and the protection stuff sucks. I forgot WHY exactly that thing happens.....on my machine I can make a digital "safe" copy first by plugging the MD via USB to the PC, playing back the MD, and capturing the audio with a recording software. Stays Digital.

[Wil Davis]

Originally Posted by Damon Rondeau

Alexi, I've heard some complaints about the Sony software for moving recordings from the player to the computer. One drummer I know -- she's extremely untechnical about gear -- and complained her new MD player was making her move files to her PC via an analog process because the digital-rights-management stuff Sony built into it "won't let her" move her own original recordings using the digital process. Is this true? Sounds unbelievable to me.<snip>…

She's absolutely right - Sony really shot themselves in the foot over that one - it'a one of the reasons that the MD format never really took off as a serious medium for mass music. That being said, I use a Sony MZ N707 for recording live gigs - it's very portable, and does a pretty decent job. The Sony has no digital-out, so I get over the transfer problem by playing the MDs on another machine (my HBB does have digital-outs). At one time there was some free-ware available on the web for transfering files from the Sony to the PC, but when I looked for it, there was a note saying that the author had been asked (leaned on by Sony's grey-suits) to remove the app. from the web. There are some fairly decent MP3 recorders out there these days, and the prices are dropping as the market is so competitive.

Good Luck -

- Wil

[Damon Rondeau]

Sony obviously cares nothing for the market that wants to use their device to record their own stuff. Too bad about that. Sony's always been pretty terrible at design, IMO. Their stuff looks great on the outside, but a lot of little details aren't thought out very well.

Anyway, on the topic of software, the 3rd party software for the JB III (to which I referred earlier) is NotMad Explorer. With that software and a Firewire interface, data transfer between JB III and PC is extremely slick. I'm very pleased with that aspect of things.

[Phil Smith]

I checked out the NotMad Explorer and while it is a slicker program, it wasn't worth buying because the Creative Playcenter is more than adequate for my needs. All I need to do is drag my recordings off the player and on to my hard drive for editing with CoolEdit/Audition.

[Bijoux]

have you guys checked out this site:
www.minidiscussion.com
the amount of info here is pretty insane.

[Damon Rondeau]

Originally Posted by Phil Smith

I checked out the NotMad Explorer and while it is a slicker program, it wasn't worth buying because the Creative Playcenter is more than adequate for my needs. All I need to do is drag my recordings off the player and on to my hard drive for editing with CoolEdit/Audition.

Playcenter was buggy on my machine. If you're using the JB3 for recording, all you need is the functionality Phil points out. It would be nice if Creative's driver had the player showing up as just another disk drive in File Explorer. That's all Notmad Explorer is: a File Explorer with your JB3 in the list.

As for audio file editing I'm a big fan of GoldWave. It's got all the goodies and it handles very large files (like the kind you get when you record an hour-long set direct to wav format) exceptionally well.

[olivier]

I've been delaying my purchase of portable recording equipment because I feel I lack the know-how & I'm lost with the specs. In our free improv combo, the tenor sax guy takes care of that part of things. He uses a MD with a hellovamic (sorry for no better specs) and does pretty well IMO, judging from the CDs he's being handling to us regularly. Actually he complains about how much time it requires to transfer the analogic signal from the MD to the PC...

So, I've been following this thread and have set my mind on JB 3 which get raving critics, particularly re: recording quality. Besides upgrading software, it seems that swapping the 20G HD for a bigger one is also feasable since it uses standard portable PC drives.

Now comes the choice of mic and preamp: fellow TDDBers, what would you suggest ?

[Phil Smith]

You can use a lot of pre-amps, but you probably want something small. I use to use an Art Tube OPL pre-amp and it worked pretty good, but wasn't that portable as it needed an AC power source. I'm now using a small stereo pre-amp from the Sound Professionals which I've been pretty happy with. I got it on sale because it was discontinued, it's the model without the gain setting, which is okay for what I'm doing. There are other small ones, but they are pricey. The ultimate way to go where money is not an object is to get a good A/D converter that's battery powered and use a SPDIF cable as the input so that your input source is digital.

As for microphone, I use two. One is a stereo mic that I also got from the sound professionals that is housed in a set of croakeys. That's my stealth setup for low volume recordings. The other mic I use is an Audio Technica ATM35, which I also use on my bass.

[Phil Smith]

Originally Posted by Damon Rondeau

Playcenter was buggy on my machine. If you're using the JB3 for recording, all you need is the functionality Phil points out. It would be nice if Creative's driver had the player showing up as just another disk drive in File Explorer. That's all Notmad Explorer is: a File Explorer with your JB3 in the list.

As for audio file editing I'm a big fan of GoldWave. It's got all the goodies and it handles very large files (like the kind you get when you record an hour-long set direct to wav format) exceptionally well.

Yes it would be cool if the thing just showed up as a disk drive that would make things pretty easy for using it to store stuff when you go to someones crib. They've bought into that whole digital rights management deal which is why the chose not to go this route and the OS they're using on the player isn't Windows compatible. Well, that's what I heard.

For editing, I'm using Cool Edit Pro and it does the job pretty good of editing, raising sound levels and EQing. I once made a recording that had some awful hum in it because of where the player and pre-amp was and was able to eliminate it using Cool Edit Pro.

[Damon Rondeau]

A year ago I knew nothing from audio editors and now I wonder how I got by without one for so long. 'Course, I've recorded hundreds of tunes with the JB3 in that year. (Thanks to you, Phil, who first turned me on to the JB3's existence. TalkBass rules!)

When I was doing my roundup and testing of programs a year or so ago, Cool Edit kept coming up again and again. I had an old demo version that came with a soundcard; it was a taste but that's all. It took a little Google-knocking to discover it had been bought up by Adobe, renamed Audition, and no more freebies. That's what turned me away at the time. If it's anything like Adobe's PhotoShop then Audition must be the mother of all wave editors.

I mentioned Goldwave before because nobody knows about it. I think it's an outstanding technical performer and cheap at less than fifty bucks. I sure don't mind buying it when it does its job so well. Suck up an 800MB file (a one hour set) with some of the freebies kicking around the net, then suck one up with GoldWave. See what I mean? Plus it's got all the butt-saving filters and effects that you need. As long as you don't want to multi-track with it I feel assured in saying it does everything else.