Good points, Walt. Especially the one(s) about Cornell. Their tech
advice is all too often at odds with the experience of serious
professionals in the field, and is not given much weight by those who
really know.
We're looking into MD and solid state formats having moved and stored
our entire library to the digital medium and want to continue in that
vein.
Bernie Krause
> wrote:
>>
>> Yes, that is a good point. Compact Flash manufacturing is leading rapidly
>> to 1gig + using special high density layering, and they expect to reach
>> 2gig this year ( they are already at over 1gig ), so true solid state
>> should be up to those kinds of capacities soon. Microdrives do have moving
>> parts, but I have never heard of anyone having shock problems with them,
>> and since they are an enclosed system there should be no issues with
>> environmental conditions. I know of customers who have taken these
>> machines everywhere from the Arctic down into rainforest conditions
>> without any problems so I'm pretty confident about their resistance to
>> environmental conditions. When I worked as a sound recordist I certainly
>> had problems with both DAT and Minidisc in terms of extremely humid
>> conditions. It's interesting that people want uncompressed but are using
>> Minidisc, since MD is inherently compressed. Do people find ATRAC
>> compression on MD a problem ? In terms of audible quality, we really
>> consider anything from 128kbps upwards compressed MP2 to be broadcast
>> quality, although this may be different in terms of nature recording.
>
>I've used MD for quite a few years for scientific recording. I would not
>use it for elaborate and complex bioacoustics tests where very expensive
>calibrated equipment is the norm and virtually required in order to get
>through peer review and publish. But for probably 99% of the scientific
>work, it's actually just fine, on par with DAT, or your new recorders.
>The major limitation is the basic sampling rate. And that's not much of
>a limitation for most uses. Certainly not for listening.
>
>MD has had the disadvantage of most recordists that use it working with
>walkman MD's. These do not compare favorably with a pro level machine.
>And many problems that are actually a result of the consumer level of
>the electronics get blamed on ATRAC. There are pro level MD recorders,
>but most simply don't have the money or won't spend the money on them.
>
>>From my experience MD/ATRAC is not a problem technically. It's a problem
>of attitude and lack of experience with the technology. There seem to be
>quite a few that somehow think that uncompressed digital did nothing to
>the sound and it somehow stored all the analog information. And that
>somehow using compression finally adds "something" that destroys the
>sound. There's a reason why we talk about sampling in digital recording.
>We take a small sample of the infinite amount of possible samples from
>the analog sound and store that, just to get to uncompressed digital. As
>you noted, above a certain quantity of samples this becomes virtually
>indistinguishable from the original analog when converted back to
>analog. And MD's ATRAC falls in that class easily. It does some
>intelligent choosing of what samples are really needed to reproduce the
>sound. And does a amazingly good job of it.
>
>For nature recording this was aggravated by the dominance of Cornell.
>Certain persons in Cornell tested the very earliest ATRAC, which did
>change the sound in unacceptable ways and declared the technology
>totally useless, and then closed their minds to even testing it again.
>I'm not sure they were even open to the technology before testing. They
>also raised technical objections that showed a lack of understanding of
>the physiology of hearing in vertebrates. And did not relate to what
>ATRAC actually does. Many nature recordists got their start at Cornell,
>and tend to not question what they say and give it too much weight over
>other sources of information. Ever since, even into this year, Cornell
>continued to do the same thing. Their website section on equipment has
>had that original report as the entire thing to say about MD all this
>time. In most discussions, that report is virtually always quoted to
>show what's wrong with ATRAC. A number of us have tried to counteract
>this over the years with some limited success. Each person we get to
>actually seriously try MD generally finds just how wrong Cornell has
>been when it comes to modern ATRAC. Cornell has even gotten into MD in a
>very limited way, they were pretty much forced to equip themselves to
>handle recordings sent in on MD. But, so far they don't seem to use the
>recorders in the field. Stubborn bunch tied to old technology.
>
>I'm interested in the solid state and microdrive setups for the future.
>Right now I feel the cost of media is a big disadvantage. And for anyone
>who keeps the actual original recording they are, of course a problem
>and will have to be transferred to more durable storage for archiving.
>Not a big issue, I keep my original MD disks, but in reality never go
>back to them once I've transferred the recordings to aiff files on
>optical disks. I use the PCMCIA type III cards in my digital camera, a
>Minolta RD-175, and have yet to have one fail in many years of using
>that, and I understand the microdrives are just as good. I do, of
>course, transfer the photos off disk to optical, generally the same day.
>
>I expect by the time I manage to wear out my HHb Portadisc there will be
>some really good stuff out at reasonable prices. That is assuming that
>the music industry does not kill sound recording separate from them. Of
>course I may die before the Portadisc wears out. In my experience MD
>recorders are very durable. As is the media. I have no need to change now.
>
>A last note, when I got my first MD, I got it because I considered tape
>unreliable and wanted a more durable and reliable storage medium. With
>the heat and humidity of Georgia, cassette, or any tape system was
>unreliable. I also wanted to go digital, I was moving from cassette and
>reel to reel. I was familiar with optical disks, having used them with
>my macs for some time and knew how reliable they are. I agonized quite a
>bit over ATRAC, was very mad the recorder did not have a uncompressed
>recording mode. I read the Cornell report for the first time back then,
>but also read quite a bit that was available that clearly demonstrated
>that the report was not longer valid back then. So, with a lot of
>reluctance I bought my first MD, the then just out Sony MZ-R30. The
>excellent recordings I got quickly swept away any fears. And the
>sonograms I did reinforced that this was a quality recording system. I
>have never regretted going MD. Who cares if it's compressed, it's
>results that matter.
>
>Walt
>
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