"upgrading" My Audio Recording Equipment

[aeiseleusa]

I ment if I record a Metallica show with the battery powered mic hooked to the line in jack, will I be able to transfer it from the MD to the PC with the USB cable so I do not have a loss in quality or is this not possible ??!!

[Yverish]

I ment if I record a Metallica show with the battery powered mic hooked to the line in jack, will I be able to transfer it from the MD to the PC with the USB cable so I do not have a loss in quality or is this not possible ??!!

Yes, that should at least be possible with the latest Hi-MD's which act like a USB MASS STORAGE DEVICE, which you can access with explorer and just copy paste the files. With a normal MD you can upload the files through sonicstage (the later versions), which don't have any restrictions any more

[ChristophFe]

A question about Sony MD player. Can you transfer a recording you made with the analog line in directly to the PC or do you have to transfer it analog over the headphone out ?? I read somewhere Sony will not let you transfer captured stuff back to the computer via USB ?? If that is the case I wont buy an MD.
Thnaks !!

You can also buy a "better" soundcard with an Digital IN/OUT not too expensive. I have a MiniDisc Deck and it is connected with my PC, so I can easly optically transfer the MiniDiscs to my PC without taking the analog way...

of course a unlimited Sonic Stage via USB is much easier and faster, but since it had not worked with me, I sold my Sony MiniDisc Portable...

SO now I am only transferring some Recordings from friends and I will keep my MiniDisc Deck for that.


I would buy my Iriver again, like I did in March/April this year and not take the way with MiniDiscs! You don't need to change tapes and with 20gb you have a lot space, also if you visit Festivals for taping - if not enough take the H140 / H340 with even 40gb.
Upgrade with Rockbox Software and it is perfect! It is an awesome Portable player - also for listening music and not only for recording.

You can also buy a external Battery Pack for some Euros on Ebay - so you can run the Player with 4 AA Batteries - if you need longer battery power!

You could also store your recorded Shows on a 1gb USB Stick. They are not very expensive anymore and small - and you must not save all Shows in that way - only important ones like Metallica gigs or something - for others a normal DVD is enough I think!

[BMR]

To get a proper audio taping rig, all I can say that taking a low budjet will get you low quality rig as well. Proper mics, and good devices, tape decks... All these cost a bit. Some more and some little less. But with only $100 or 150€ budget you won't get great set.

Core Sound Cardioids. These great mics alone are about 250€.

DAT. From ebay perhaps, 350€. Maybe.
Edirol R-09 is also great. It's light, almost completely plastic too! Perfect for stealth and easy to get in. Only downpoint with Edirol is the red recording light that keeps flashing all the time when you record, but with latest updates you can get rid of it.

My rigs at the moment:

Mics: Core Sound Stealth Cardioids (CSC) and Sony ECM-719
Batterybox: Sound Professionals SPSB-6
Recorders: Sony TCD-D7 DAT and Edirol R-09

Usually, I go with CSC > TCD-D7

Samples: CSC > TCD-D7 and ECM-719 > SP-SPSB-6 > Edirol R-09


These are just my suggestions and opinions, but many tapers agree with those too.

[Yverish]

I've been looking at the Edirol R-9 as well, as my parents say they are willing to put more money in the bag then expected .

Can you use the built-in mics for stealth taping? Probably a no, because it's hard to aim them correctly. Is there a batterypack included/available for the R-9 or does it work completely on alkalines? The largest SD card supported is 2 GB, that would be enough for recording a full Metallica set at the highest settings (WAV @ 48 kHz) I think.

I've seen the R-9 on the internet (Dutch webstore) for €389 including a 1 Gb SD-card, which would be about the lowest you can buy them new I think. I also came by the Microtrack 2496, which would come in at €299, but I've read more positive stories about the Edirol.

Questions, questions, questions, who wants to answer them...

[CreepingDave]

DAT recorders are getting old and obsolete unfortunately, and I always found them a bit big to stealth (from pics i've seen). Everything BMR said is about right.

I think the Edirol can support bigger cards, but the maximum it can record is 2GB at a time. The iriver is the same, but it starts a new file without any gaps, for the Edirol you would have to start a new file manually, and that would mean losing 15 seconds or so, perhaps not a big deal. If you are recording in highest settings then 2 GB I don't think would be enough at all. I don't really know so much about it, just what i've read myself when I was considering it.

[BMR]

Sure the DAT's are getting a little out of date but for damn sure you can't get really wrong with DAT's either. D7 is a bit big but models like M1 or D100 are a lot smaller ones.

Edirol's internal mics are supposedly good. I have no experience about them myself. I've always used better external mics no matter what.

[CreepingDave]

Well its always recomended to use better external mics, but I think the internal ones can be ok from what I hear. I wouldn't trust my irivers internal mic!

[Yverish]

BMR, could you tell me if the Edirol supports cards bigger than 2 Gb, e.g. a 4 Gb one?

Recording at 48 kHZ would result in 110 minutes on a 2 Gb card according to the manual (online), so a 4 Gb card would be enough to tape a full concert at that quality.

[BMR]

Not sure. I use 4GB card myself at the moment.

Recording about 2 hours in 24 bit and 49 khz takes about 2 gigabytes. R09 also has file size limiter to 2 gb but it cuts without any loss to new file if necessary.