Let me first state that I am using a Mac G4, and wish to record not only some stuff my teacher plays for me, but also small gatherings of pipers playing. I understand that there is a problem using a minidisc on a Mac… Anyone have experience with this? Help!
Also, no, I will not switch to a PC, nor use a cassette recorder!
Elbogo, I spent far too much money on a Sony Walkman minidisk recorder and mic, being assured by store personnel that it would do what I want, only to discover that it is meant for downloads of digital recordings from a PC/Mac, not for uploading digital recordings to a PC/Mac. Sony later confirmed this.
I can’t speak to every model by every maker, but I can tell you that the Sony Walkman stuff is not what you want if you’re looking to do digital field recordings for upload to your computer.
As it is, I still have to do an analog recording into the sound card on my PC from the Walkman. I could have got the same recording ability from a cheap cassette deck at 1/10th the cost.
Hope that helps,
djm
I think there was talk last week on the whistle board about high capacity mp3 devices that will connect to a computer and send the digital directly to the hard drive without having to go to the sound card.
Hey all;
I have a Sharp Minidisc and the proprietary ATRAC encryption -which is used on all minidiscs, thanks to Sony because the encryption and the patents for minidisc tech is theirs- is specifically set up to prevent anyone from recording what they want and sending it straight to the HD.
Whcih is a terrible and stupid thing, because it means that one could record all the CDs in the world onto minidisc but one can’t record oneself and do the same thing. The recording industry’s weird, isn’t it? I’ve heard that if you want to spend a huge amount more, you can buy the ‘professional level’ minidisc recorders and they’ll allow you to record from minidisc onto an HD.
The only way that I know to do it is to accept the loss of quality and send your recordings through either a sound card or your stereo system and then to your HD. There may be someone out there who has figured out how to beat the encryption but I haven’t seen it anywhere. Besides, if you try it and it doesn’t work, there’s no shouting about warranties, is there?
Mark
I downloaded the freeware audiorecorder 1.3
Thanks, Tony (and others)… here’s a direct link about recording at Chiff whistle forum with good info:
http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?t=13029&start=0
Guess I’ll not buy a minidisc recorder.
I have the Sony minidisc, and it’s great for recording sessions as well as myself. Playback sounds like you are right there at the live event, however, as mentioned, in transferring the sound to PC all of that quality is lost. I had ideas of recording myself and/or sessions and transferring them to CD-Rs, but that has pretty much gone out the window(s). I have heard recently of a MP3 voice recorder that has recently come out that has digital quality in recording and can hold several hours of music. I thought that it had capability of transferring digitally to PC, however, I am not sure of that. But that may be something you may want to check out, albeit it is probably a bit high in price being new to the market.
Ailin
Can you just get a super quality soundcard upgrade for your PC, to get the best quality from your minidisc recordings then? Any recommendations there? I know it would not be digital direct-to-hd, but wouldn’t it be better (for those of us who already have a minidisc)?
Elbogo,
I’ve never used optical I/Os for transfer, but if you have an MD with that function, you should be able to make decent transfers and then master the recordings using something like Soundforge?? IMO G4s are the biz for audio recording, and installing a good quality SC like M Audio Delta series etc., is a good idea to make the most of the G4s abilities . And if you’ve no problem with cracks, you should be able to get some pretty hefty software 
.
Alan
I can’t speak for Macs, but I can second what AlanB says, that the Midiman Delta sound cards have superior A/D and D/A chips.
I don’t know how Mac deals with multiple sound cards, but Windows definitely does not like them, so after many headaches I eventually pulled my regular SC and now do everything through a Delta 44.
djm
I’ve been using minidisc for record sessions, lessons, etc. but I’ve got my eye on one of these:
Marantz PMD-690 CompactFlash recorder:
http://www.marantzpro.com/Products/PMD690.html
Expensive, but definitely worth it if you already have good pro microphones…
Michael! Craps, I been looking at this myself! Just the other day. This does appear to be THE recorder… a bit bigger, huh, a lot bigger, and much more expensive, but capable of digital to digital, flash memory, etc.
BTW, I did just send you an email.
Here we go, the ultimate recorder… "Real - time direct audio recording from a MIC or LINE-IN to CDR/CD-RW media or to PCMCIA Hard Disk drive, MicroDrive and any type of flash memory:)
QPS QUE!007
Elbogo,
I just looked at the ad. Maybe I missed it, but it didn’t seem to give any reference to the sampling rate or bits in the spec, and this is the most important thing about sound recording. Make sure it’s a min of 48khz and no less than 24 bit!! That Marantz looks a bit more tasty!
Alan
I’m not very technical but I picked up an Archos MP3 Jukebox 20 which has 20 Gigabytes of memory and has a built in recorder. I wanted to record my teacher as well as sessions, etc. Any suggestions on a good quality mic that I can use? Thanks.
It’s a piece of cake to record music from a minidisc recorder onto your G4. As a few other people mentioned above, you can’t do it digitally, but that’s no big deal: unless you use a very expensive mic and mixer to record to your minidisc, you won’t notice any loss in sound quality from the analog output of the minidisc. And you’ll end up with digital files once they’re on your hard disk.
I have transferred a lot of minidisc recordings to CD or my hard disk, and I have never noticed any significant loss of sound quality. I’ve tested both with my stereo and it’s hard to hear much difference. Maybe the Mac is better at this than PCs.
Your G4 has a sound-in jack. Your minidisc recorder has a sound-out jack. You simply run a patchcord from the minidisc output to the G4’s input. Alternatively, you can use a USB-based device such as the Griffin iMic. The minidisc plugs into one end of the iMic and the other end goes in your USB port.
You will need audio recording software to record the sound on your Mac’s hard disk. I use Audiocorder, but there are lots of alternatives available, some of them free. If you have iMovie installed (which you probably do as it comes pre-installed on all Macs) you can actually use that to record sound.
You will have to add tracks manually to the sound file, otherwise it’ll all be one big track. Audiocorder lets you do that pretty easily; I’ve never tried it with iMovie. Assuming you’re using OSX on your G4, you should then import the sound files into iTunes, where you can convert them to MP3s if you like or leave them in their original format.
The only tedious part of the process is creating tracks. Some recording programs will create tracks for you automatically when they detect breaks in the sound, but these don’t work well for session recordings where there’s always lots of background noise.
I actually went a different route: I have my minidisc recorder hooked up to my stereo, and I bought a CD player/recorder as part of my stereo system. It has a remote, so I can sit on the couch and add the tracks as I listen while it’s recording direct (analog input only, of course) from minidisc to CD. Then I take that master CD and copy the tracks to iTunes on my Mac, and I can burn CDs or put the tracks on an iPod (once I finally break down and buy one!).
I have unfortunately heard terrible things about the Archos recorders. I’m waiting for Apple to come out with a truly recordable iPod.
I dunno, it seems kind of out there to me: You pay $1260 for the machine, then you shell out another $60-$80 for a 192 MB compact flash card that only gets you only 1.5 hours of stereo recording time at 128bps. If you want to record more, you have to pay more for a bigger compact flash card. If you’re using pro microphones and you want DAT-quality sound, you only get 16 minutes of it with a 192 MB card. Even with a 1.2 Gig compact flash card (truly expensive) you only get 1.5 hours of DAT-quality sound and 6.5 hours of stereo compressed at 128 bps.
A good minidisc recorder goes for under $300 and minidiscs are cheap. You can get 12 hours worth’ for $20. If you wanted to record 12 hours of music in one go on the Marantz it would cost you $400 or more in compact flash cards. The sound quality of minidiscs is very good (not DAT quality, but most of us aren’t that fussy about field recordings).
I do think minidisc is nearing the end of its commercial life – they’ll be around for a few more years, but the market was never very big and it’s dwindling. Once good-quality portable hard-disk recording devices become available and affordable, I think you’ll see a shift toward them.
My point here is that you can still buy a portable cassette deck, mic, and tape for $50 - 60 and get as good recording quality as with a minidisc. You have to do an analog upload to the PC in either case, so why blow the bucks on MD?
I am a bit dubious about portable HD recorders. No-one has solved crashing HDs on laptops (been there, done that), so portable HDs make me nervous.
djm
Brad has it nailed here folks. I do nearly the same thing he does with the exception that my interface with the computer is a very nice Ensoniq unit (the PARIS 402) and of course the software is a big component here. The CDs I burn from MD recordings are pristine. 
For the folks who are getting crappy results by doing an analog ‘download’ into what ever kind of computer you are using, you may first want to look at your sound card.
You may lose up to 3dB of signal to noise with an analog to analog burn (like when dubbing cassette tapes) So typically you will want to sacrifice some of the recorded signal by rolling off the highs and reducing your noise again. But here you are starting with digital media (the MiniDisc) and ending with digital media Computer or CD. The analog transfer from one digital source to another shouldn’t degrade the recording by more than about .1dB…? MAYBE! If you like the sound of your MD’s (and I do like mine) and you are getting crappy results in transferring them to CD via computer then you gotta look at the sound processor. :roll:
CD quality sound is achieved at a 44.1kHz sampling rate at 16 bits. The recording industry agreed on this standard because of the average range of human hearing. Going beyond this sampling rate may be good for recording music for, I guess dogs, because it increases the frequency range on the high end. Going beyond this bit size, say to 24bit, allows for greater dynamic subtlety, but here you may be quibbling over weather a voltage gap of a sample is 0.004 greater or less than the established standard. Oh and by the way, you still only get 0.00002 seconds to hear the difference at 44.1kHz, even less at 48kHz. Most people I know do not have speakers that can respond well enough to represent the difference. I would have to guess that these applications are probably most powerful in a studio setting with $8000 microphones and millions in contract budgets to support it. It sounded like you just wanted to get a decent representation of some lesson exercises and tunes at sessions.
I would, however, be interested in seeing what portable cassette recorder people are using to get similar sound quality as MD. Especially for only $50-$60! 
For that price range I have never seen the type of acoustic or electric insulation you need to keep the mechanics of the recorder from getting onto tape. It also seems the type of noise reduction you would need to come close to the clarity of sound on a MD would push the price way way up and consequently make any tape recorded on that unit pretty bad sounding played back on any other standard deck.
My 2 cents.
Scott McCallister
The only cassette recorder I ever owned that equalled the sound quality I can get from a minidisc recorder was my Walkman Pro. which set me back something like $500. What I like about minidiscs is that the media and the recorder are smaller than cassettes, the recorder makes much less noise so you can stick an unobtrusive T mic into the side of it and get very little machine noise on your recording, and the fact that minidiscs have tracks so you can jump right to the tune you want instead of fast-forwarding or rewinding to who-knows-where.
The HD recorders out there now are not getting good reviews, but the technology should be there soon. HD players like Apple’s iPod are quite reliable. The iPod is the world’s top-selling MP3 player, and people wouldn’t be buying it if it didn’t work.
I suppose if I didn’t have a minidisc already and was trying to decide between MD and cassette, I’d probably go with a cheap cassette recorder and wait for good HD recorders to arrive on the scene. My main concern with MD is that I think it’s a dying technology and when my recorder poops out in five years or so I might not be able to find another one very easily.