mini what?!?

[7875]

mini disc recorders.
anyone on here own one?
which have you found to be a good buy?
is there a difference in quality of recording between certain models?
-peace..

[piscaries]

they're an awesome alternative to tapes but they aren't cd quality. they can't handle low end very well. large bass spectrums either clip out or get filtered out during compression. the compression used on MDs is similar to that of MP3 compression. it doesn't seem like they got too much exposure here in the states. seeems to be a bit of a european thing? check out www.minidisco.com for some good info and whatnot. they've also got a lot of stuff they sell. i personally use an MD recorder for field recording to get found-sound stuff, and it's fairly good for recording your friends livesets... :!

[wheezer]

yeh minidisc players use sony's proprietary atrac format which nowadays after some revisions has about the same compression ratio as mp3s - newer models allow you to set between at least two different compression modes, thus allowing you to fit the standard 74 minutes or something like 2-4 times the amount or so on a single minidisc, obviously at a loss of sound quality. the new sony netmd player is nifty coz it has a usb hookup allowing you to take recordings straight from the minidisc player to your hard disc and vice versa...

[pille'ocheoni]

i have one stand alone and a portable, the potable goes usb, so i can put mp3's and shit. ive been using them for a couple of years now, and i would never throw those little unbreakable things away. i use tape also. but their very cheap and pretty cool.

[phil]

mini-kieves

[Basic 2: The Revenge]

I use a mini-disc to record sets from our nights. They are pretty handy, but as pointed out you need to watch with the bass on it. They are handy to have though, and I would recommend them.

[amble]

hooray for minidisc! i also got a standalone and a portable one, both sony and these little thingies are way underrated imo. they're small, pretty unbreakable (compared to cds) and deliver good soundquality. plus you get lots of helpful functions - kind of a good mixture of cd- and tape-advantages.

about the loss of quality: i don't think that is so extreme - you just have to take care of your recording level (not too loud, not too quiet) and there shouldn't be a big loss. i don't know i sometimes have the feeling that recording something from vinyl to md in fact increases quality. could be an illusion though.

havn't had the chance to check the new ones out wheezer was talking about. they seem pretty handy but as they won't run on old devices i'm probably not getting one.

[wheezer]

don't know i sometimes have the feeling that recording something from vinyl to md in fact increases quality. could be an illusion though.

it is an illusion, atrac and mp3s both use psychoacustics to minimize the data footprint of the audio (i.e. subtracting audio signals you cannot perceive for various reasons), thereafter applying various compression algorithms...

aside from that there's the whole digital vs analog debate - but in the end it's all subjective really...

[deccard]

i used 2 years minidisc as master cause i couldn´t afford a dat. the sound was absolutely ok. but that damn machine erased two time md´s with tracks and i had no backup. FUCKING SONY CRAP.
another guy i know had three different recorders cause they were all crap. from denon to sony.
but the portables are good. seems like better then the big ones.

[platinumray]

stupid question i know but i've always wondered if re-recording over & over on the some md leads to any noise reduction. am i the victim of an illusion factor?

[wheezer]

@platinumray

if you mean using the same mini disc and recording different sounds on it over & over, it should have no effect since it's a digital medium. otoh I guess minidiscs don't last forever either, being that it's a magnetic layer that's used for recording.

[deccard]

does recording an mp3 on your harddisk over and over on the same hd reduce noise?

[wheezer]

I see no logical explanation why. If you people mean re-encoding the same mp3 & minidisc sound over and over, that'll just reduce the quality overall since you are compressing it over and over, and both mp3 & atrac are lossy compression formats.

[deccard]

sorry. my post was a rethorical question. a reminder......sort of ironic...
....

i know that mp3 and attrac are lossy etc......but i had the feeling that attrac sounded better.

[wheezer]

ah ok - as for the quality difference, who knows, might just be some equalizing tricks...

[Yer_Maw]

right heres a question that some of you might be able to answer? how does sound actually get mixed down into one waveform? what im asking is if you have got drums, synths etc each with there own wave which is one line which passes 0 trought the wave how can the combining of each of the sounds still produce one waveform that again passes 0? is it an addition of all the frequences to produce a final frequency or what?

sorry this has been confusing me for quite some time.