a very important feature that has not been mentioned about MD recorders is
that they are comb filters, in other words they selectively record some
frequencies/frequency groups, never giving you the complete frequency
spectrum. This is either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on what you
are recording. Also like most consumer products, they operate at a
-10 db input level not +4 . That alone will give you considerable amounts of
noise that no Mic will be able to compensate for. If you are recording
ambient sounds, it will definitely affect the quality of your recordings
Miguel Rivera
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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>From Tue Mar 8 18:23:17 2005
Message: 1
Date: Wed, 05 Feb 2003 22:26:37 -0000
From: "jdmooreth <>" <>
Subject: Re:Where did I go wrong?
Many thanks for all the help. Some answers:
1. "Verify the Sony mic battery is good." The mic works OK with the
camcorder so I guess the battery has enough power.
2. "Is it possible that you are using the line input instead of the
mike input?" I did try the line input but only with the Sound
Professionals mic plus preamp, with both preamp and MD gain on
maximum. I still didn't seem to be getting enough gain, though.
3. "Is it possible you have attenuation set on the mike input? " My
model doesn't have a mike attenuation switch
4. "Could it be that you have the headphone gain set very high so
that you are setting the input gain very low? " I hardly ever use
headphones as I had the MD on automatic record and my position was
more or less limited by the geography.
5. "Do you use the same adaptor cable to mini-stereo with the
camcorder? ". I tried but it gives too much gain and pretty poor
sound quality. I got the Shure cable after seeing several
recommendations in the group but it doesn't seem to solve the
problem with my MD. It does give me a lot more gain but it also
magnifies the hiss and produces a sound that is not as crisp as
that of the mic alone.
6. "You don't want to use the auto mode .. for nature recording.." I
guess I ought to experiment more with this. As I said, the times I
used manual I put the gain about 75% up: the calls were louder than
on automatic record but so was the hiss. There were also a number of
louder calls which were totally distorted. How does a manual setting
cope with this difference in the volume of calls? This must be a
particular problem when you after soundscapes rather than recording
a particular call. There would rarely be enough time to alter the
setting during a recording and in any case I normally leave the mic
unattended on my tripod while I take the dog for a walk. (The trick
Walt describes doesn't seem to work on my recorder.)
7. I will try taking the MD back to the dealers but am not too
optimistic as notions of consumer rights are not too well developed
over here.
I would really like to do better than the results I am getting with
my camcorder and suspect that I should really have looked at a more
expensive MD, like the HHB Portadisc or the Marantz PMD650. I notice
that the UK price of the Portadisc is around 995 pounds whereas the
Marantz can be had for 550 pounds. Does anyone know if they are in
the same league ?
John (not V.) Moore
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