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I want a MiniDisc machine, but...

3/8/1999 10:14 AM
fet	I want a MiniDisc machine, but... Anyone care to comment on Sony MiniDisc as a medium for recording live music? Or comments on MD in general? Will it live, or die like Betamax, i.y.h.o.?

3/8/1999 10:35 AM
Benjamin Fargen	Fet, Minidisc is fine for consumer use....but as far as a serious medium for recording, I have some problems with it. The biggest problem besides cost vs. storage space is the way it compresses data to fit more on the disc. The Minidisc technology is to scan the source for low level or unused frequencies and drop them in order to save space. You might say "no problem" I don't care about unused frequencies. The problem lies in the fact that all the frequencies that are present or not present have just as much to do with the harmonic structure and overall sound of a single part or mix. This type of data compression starts to suck the tone and depth out of a part or mix. Think of how an acoustic guitar or piano works. All the subtle harmonic overtones add to the rich and complex nature of the overall tone.....without these subtleties the tone would be lacking. I think Minidisc is great if you want to capture a clean rough idea, but if you want to do serious recordings.......save your money and buy a DAT for live recordings and some sort of hard disc based system for at home. Any other comments on this? Benjamin

3/8/1999 10:35 AM

Benjamin Fargen

Fet,
Minidisc is fine for consumer use....but as far as a serious medium for recording, I have some problems with it.
The biggest problem besides cost vs. storage space is the way it compresses data to fit more on the disc.
The Minidisc technology is to scan the source for low level or unused frequencies and drop them in order to save space.
You might say "no problem" I don't care about unused frequencies. The problem lies in the fact that all the frequencies that are present or not present have just as much to do with the harmonic structure and overall sound of a single part or mix. This type of data compression starts to suck the tone and depth out of a part or mix. Think of how an acoustic guitar or piano works. All the subtle harmonic overtones add to the rich and complex nature of the overall tone.....without these subtleties the tone would be lacking.
I think Minidisc is great if you want to capture a clean rough idea, but if you want to do serious recordings.......save your money and buy a DAT for live recordings and some sort of hard disc based system for at home.
Any other comments on this?
Benjamin

3/8/1999 2:39 PM
fet	Thanks, Benjamin - this would be a musical sketchpad for composing, practicing guitar technique, and capturing rehearsals of a small jazz combo. I know a computer-based system would do it - maybe better - but the handiness of MD is appealing. I'd rather not have to fire up the P-II in order to practice 10 minutes or create a new musical phrase. But I don't want to buy something that will disappear from the marketplace anytime soon, either. The local Best Buy store's cassette department is gradually shrinking - maybe this is a good sign...

3/8/1999 2:39 PM

fet

Thanks, Benjamin - this would be a musical sketchpad for composing, practicing guitar technique, and capturing rehearsals of a small jazz combo. I know a computer-based system would do it - maybe better - but the handiness of MD is appealing. I'd rather not have to fire up the P-II in order to practice 10 minutes or create a new musical phrase. But I don't want to buy something that will disappear from the marketplace anytime soon, either.

The local Best Buy store's cassette department is gradually shrinking - maybe this is a good sign...

3/9/1999 11:07 AM
Trace	Fet; I agree with Ben here in this one. You could get a portable DAT recorder/player for less money and be WAY further ahead in the long run. I really don't see this format going anywhere personally. I think it's great and all but there just aren't many of these out there right now and it would take a long, long, time for them to be excepted as part of the recording feild. The DAT player would be killer. Even the Sony portable unit would rule for what you want. You can even record longer on one DAT tape than a mini-disc. My 2 cents worth; Trace

3/9/1999 11:07 AM

Trace

Fet;

I agree with Ben here in this one. You could get a portable DAT recorder/player for less money and be WAY further ahead in the long run.
I really don't see this format going anywhere personally. I think it's great and all but there just aren't many of these out there right now and it would take a long, long, time for them to be excepted as part of the recording feild.
The DAT player would be killer. Even the Sony portable unit would rule for what you want. You can even record longer on one DAT tape than a mini-disc.

My 2 cents worth;
Trace

3/11/1999 2:13 AM
Steve A.	fet: With DATs rarely if ever dropping below the $600 price level, I figured I'd get a Denon consumer MD deck for stereo mixdown. Although the early generation MD decks used lousy algorithms for compression, the new ones sound pretty good to my ears. Problem is that I moved my MD deck to the living room to record some radio shows and I haven't moved it back to my studio since then! It is great for recording live shows from the radio since you can go back and edit out the commercials later. You can pick up the stereo media for around $3.50 per 74 minute disk- not much more than a good quality audio cassette. Until they perfect CDR decks for on-the-fly recording, MD is probably the best format for consumer recording. Hopefully it won't follow in the footsteps of Betamax... As for the MD multichannel decks, you do need to buy media that is specially formatted for multitracks and you can pay anywhere from $8 to $16 per disk (since it is not heavily discounted like the consumer 2 track disks). The multitrack decks using a hard drive or zip disk have dropped considerably in price so that they are not much more expensive than the minidisk decks. Minidisk multitrack decks are also limited in the recording time available- an 8-track MD gets ~17 minutes per disk, whether you record on one track or all 8. Are you interested in recording just 2 channels live? If so, DAT may be the way to go as Benjamin suggests. If you want to record more than 2 channels at a time at a remote location, you should look into the hard disk multitrack decks. (Find out how many channels can be recorded simultaneously at whatever resolution you plan to record at.) If you need to record 8 channels at once (and don't need to do all of the fancy editing tricks later) it's hard to beat the Alexis ADAT. (Alexis does sell a card for your computer so that you can edit ADAT recordings, and either send it back to the ADAT machine or just burn a CD using a CD-R drive in your computer.) Steve Ahola P.S. You can also spend $350+ to get a decent audio card for your computer, but you probably wouldn't want to it around to remote locations for recording live music. With CD-R drives selling for less than $200 these days, you can master your recordings on CD-R media (as low as $1.00 for 74 minutes) which can be played on most modern CD players.

3/11/1999 2:13 AM

Steve A.

fet:

    With DATs rarely if ever dropping below the $600 price level, I figured I'd get a Denon consumer MD deck for stereo mixdown. Although the early generation MD decks used lousy algorithms for compression, the new ones sound pretty good to my ears.

    Problem is that I moved my MD deck to the living room to record some radio shows and I haven't moved it back to my studio since then! It is great for recording live shows from the radio since you can go back and edit out the commercials later. You can pick up the stereo media for around $3.50 per 74 minute disk- not much more than a good quality audio cassette. Until they perfect CDR decks for on-the-fly recording, MD is probably the best format for consumer recording. Hopefully it won't follow in the footsteps of Betamax...

    As for the MD multichannel decks, you do need to buy media that is specially formatted for multitracks and you can pay anywhere from $8 to $16 per disk (since it is not heavily discounted like the consumer 2 track disks). The multitrack decks using a hard drive or zip disk have dropped considerably in price so that they are not much more expensive than the minidisk decks. Minidisk multitrack decks are also limited in the recording time available- an 8-track MD gets ~17 minutes per disk, whether you record on one track or all 8.

    Are you interested in recording just 2 channels live? If so, DAT may be the way to go as Benjamin suggests. If you want to record more than 2 channels at a time at a remote location, you should look into the hard disk multitrack decks. (Find out how many channels can be recorded simultaneously at whatever resolution you plan to record at.) If you need to record 8 channels at once (and don't need to do all of the fancy editing tricks later) it's hard to beat the Alexis ADAT. (Alexis does sell a card for your computer so that you can edit ADAT recordings, and either send it back to the ADAT machine or just burn a CD using a CD-R drive in your computer.)

Steve Ahola

P.S. You can also spend $350+ to get a decent audio card for your computer, but you probably wouldn't want to it around to remote locations for recording live music. With CD-R drives selling for less than $200 these days, you can master your recordings on CD-R media (as low as $1.00 for 74 minutes) which can be played on most modern CD players.

3/19/1999 7:52 PM
moocow	A friend of mine uses a portable Sony MD recorder to records his gigs and then burns them onto CD using his computer. The CDs turn out really great, and I couldn't tell that they was any data compression used on them. In fact, I can't the difference between a CD and an MD recording of the same CD. I'm sure there are people who can hear the difference, but I'm not one of them. Maybe a DAT could do better, but the MD is better for live recordings than a portable cassette tape machine. About a year ago, I bought the Sony home recording deck and portable player. I am very happy with them both, and I especially liked the capability of repeating a section of music over and over, which great for stealing solos note-for-note. Mostly, I use it to copy CDs and then listen to them at work. In fact, I'm sitting at my desk right now, listening to B.B. King on my MiniDisc. Recently, the price of the recording portable MDs have fallen below $300, and the disks are getting cheaper, too. A few months ago, a box of five cost $20, but I just bought a 10-pack of Maxell disks for $25. Maybe the competetion from writable CDs is bring the price down ? I'd hate to see MD just disappear, but if someone comes out with a portable CD recorder that's just a convenient to use as the MD machine, then I'm going to switch over to that. After all, my MD player replaced my little Toshiba cassette player, which had served me well for many years.

3/19/1999 7:52 PM

moocow

A friend of mine uses a portable Sony MD recorder to records his gigs and then burns them onto CD using his computer. The CDs turn out really great, and I couldn't tell that they was any data compression used on them. In fact, I can't the difference between a CD and an MD recording of the same CD. I'm sure there are people who can hear the difference, but I'm not one of them. Maybe a DAT could do better, but the MD is better for live recordings than a portable cassette tape machine.

About a year ago, I bought the Sony home recording deck and portable player. I am very happy with them both, and I especially liked the capability of repeating a section of music over and over, which great for stealing solos note-for-note. Mostly, I use it to copy CDs and then listen to them at work. In fact, I'm sitting at my desk right now, listening to B.B. King on my MiniDisc.

Recently, the price of the recording portable MDs have fallen below $300, and the disks are getting cheaper, too. A few months ago, a box of five cost $20, but I just bought a 10-pack of Maxell disks for $25. Maybe the competetion from writable CDs is bring the price down ?

I'd hate to see MD just disappear, but if someone comes out with a portable CD recorder that's just a convenient to use as the MD machine, then I'm going to switch over to that. After all, my MD player replaced my little Toshiba cassette player, which had served me well for many years.

3/19/1999 9:33 PM
Steve A.	moocow: I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one to buy into the MD technology (which very well could become the next Betamax). I did do some on-line research before picking up the Denon MD deck... the new compression algorithms are much better than the old ones, but still do have problems if there is a lot of silence and low volume sections. Like one user tried an MD for recording bird songs in the field... it did not work well for him at all. But for the levels in rock music, I really can't hear any difference between the MD's and CD's. I believe that there will always be a problem recording CD's on-the-fly if you want them to be compatible with all of the CD decks out there. There are SO many different standards for audio CD's, and the older players don't usually support the new standards that allow for on-the-fly recording. In copying audio CD's, I have a few CD players that choke on "Disk-At-Once" mode copies so I need to use the "Track-At-Once" mode that adds 2 seconds of silence between the tracks. As you say, maybe a DAT will produce a higher quality recording, but it certainly isn't as convenient if you want to erase over a false start or otherwise edit the tape. And with the MD you can rearrange the order of the songs with a click of a button or two... Sure hope the MD format doesn't die out... Steve Ahola

3/19/1999 9:33 PM

Steve A.

moocow:

    I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one to buy into the MD technology (which very well could become the next Betamax). I did do some on-line research before picking up the Denon MD deck... the new compression algorithms are much better than the old ones, but still do have problems if there is a lot of silence and low volume sections. Like one user tried an MD for recording bird songs in the field... it did not work well for him at all. But for the levels in rock music, I really can't hear any difference between the MD's and CD's.

    I believe that there will always be a problem recording CD's on-the-fly if you want them to be compatible with all of the CD decks out there. There are SO many different standards for audio CD's, and the older players don't usually support the new standards that allow for on-the-fly recording. In copying audio CD's, I have a few CD players that choke on "Disk-At-Once" mode copies so I need to use the "Track-At-Once" mode that adds 2 seconds of silence between the tracks.

    As you say, maybe a DAT will produce a higher quality recording, but it certainly isn't as convenient if you want to erase over a false start or otherwise edit the tape. And with the MD you can rearrange the order of the songs with a click of a button or two...

    Sure hope the MD format doesn't die out...

Steve Ahola

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