quoted 2 lines What do people recommend for NON-mic recording... as in straight a/d converting... is the
> What do people recommend for NON-mic recording... as in straight a/d converting... is the technology increasing with minidiscs or is it the same? I want to get one for convenience reasons but would like to put out a quality cd and having a minidisc with cd quality sound would be highly beneficial to me. Is there anything out now or on the horizon that fits my needs...
> what I will use it for is turntable mixing out of a mixer directly into the minidisc recorder.
Alas there is no MD at true CD quality. For that, you can use DAT or
(soon) the Nomad 3 MP3 player which happens to record at CD quality:
however it currently has some problems, manifest as audible dropping of
samples from time to time -- I'm waiting till they sort that out. When
they do it'll be a nice option, 20+ hours of CD quality recording on its
internal HD.
However, to really capitalize on the quality you will want a nice outboard
AD convertor -- spendy. Also, I believe the unit does not provide "plug
in power" used by many small mics intended for use with portable gear (eg,
my Sonic Studios mis, some Core Sound mics, the Sony ECM-9x series...).
On the other hand I find MD compression currently almost inaudible when
the source signal is good. The weakeness of portable consumer decks is
their preamps and (perhaps) their AD convertors.
If you are feeding a line level out from a DJ mixer (NOT phono out!) you
should get quite high quality results with a decent consumer deck; my
experience is that Sharp decks sound slightly better than Sony.
Some will definitely tell you to use a lossless medium for your creative
process -- I do all my source recording on MD while traveling, and
have no complaints. YMMV.
Incidentally, Sony currently market a high-density second-gen MD for their
MD camera -- but for whatever reason (intellectual property concerns!?)
they have not indicated that they will EVER release uncompressed MD
recorders. Grrrrrrrrr.
Slashdot.org is running a story on a quarter-sized blue-laser format that
holds over a gig -- perhaps someday...
best
aaron
ghede@well.com
http://www.quietamerican.org
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