Hey Everybody,
My name is Greg and I am new to the list. For quite some time, I have been
into field recording, but never really knew anyone else interested (or at least
interested enough to know anything about it - I only really know 2 people with
minidisc recorders). I am happy after reading the posts from yesterday that
there are knowledgable people out there (way beyond mine in this field). At
this time, I am using a Song discman MD which I take out on the field, then
when I get back home, I pop my work into a Sony MD Stereo unit which I feed
into a digi 001 (I see Oryoki suggested this a few posts back, I agree with
him, this is indeed the cheapest high quality option in my opinion as well).
I have been slowly working my way up to getting better field recordings which
has been a fairly slow process having little money and no knowledge on what to
look for. I was starting off with dictaphones quite a few years back (sp?)
which is pretty much useless if you want some sort of recognition of what you
are recording (sometimes this is a cool feature though). I moved up to
minidisc about 3 or so years back which opened up countless options and
freedoms! Below is what I did for a long time before I got the stereo unit and
digi 001 which helps out a great deal!
Here is another very cheap way to add to Oryoki's concept which is cheaper, yet
lesser quality and more limiting (still can sound great though with some TLC!)
. Get free protools at digidesign.com (it is legal and easy especially if you
have dsl) or some other cheap computer program. The protools comes with eq's,
reverbs, pitch shift, etc. which will be very necessary if you use this
concept. With your minidisk, plug it straight into the back of your mic input
on the computer (1/8" plug with mic next to it, both pc's and macs have this).
When you go into the protools, just rec ready and play away. The signal will
be a little weak which is fine. Play it in and then normalize the signal after
to make it louder. If you are dealing with birds primarily, you may want to
use Oryoki's suggestion as you will have some issues getting it to sound
decent. With streams, traffic, crickets and louder signals amoung similar
lines, this concept has worked fine for me. Birds and oth!
er
quieter things, I had to really doctor up.
Here are some tips though if you can't dish out an extra $300 for the stereo
component (or maybe you could find this issue nomatter what you have) is to
import the signal as listed above and then with the 4 band eq, go after approx
9-12k... cut as much out which will eliminate some of the hiss you will aquire
through the transfer. Be careful though as too much cutting will muffle the
birds and may ruin the integrity of the signal. Also, you may want to fish
around somewhere in the 600htz to the 1k range. That seems to be where I find
preamp hums generated from the minidisc itself... once again, better to have
some hum, than wreck the whole signal all together to remove the hum.
I have some CD's which I can burn for anyone interested. All these I have used
the cheapest concept which I described above. The newer stuff I am doing
involves the stereo MD which are not done yet. I am not really wanting to sell
them, just give to anybody interested. Perhaps a trade if you have any works.
I don't know how to upload sound files so I can't really share them that way
(plus they are from 14 minutes to 72min). Below are the works I have using
this concept.
Chronicles of Lemur Mutation "A Study of Organic and Electronic Sounds Vol. 1"
--This piece incorporates flies, crickets, dripping water, streams,
oscilliscopes, theramin, CB, and many other things. In general, it is
basically a nature CD (no music involved) with a twist.
Chronicles of Lemur Mutation "Sounds of Mt. Lassen"
--This is straight forward bird and streams. I made it to listen to at night
to knock me out as I live under a freeway (in an apartment, not homeless haha).
oryoki2000 <> wrote:Gianni Pavan wrote:
> Can you suggest a good [MD] portable with
> low noise mic inputs AND both digital
> input and output ?
The more expensive HHB Portadisc ($1400) and the
Marantz PMD650 ($900) minidisc recorders both
offer digital coax (rather than optical)
in and out. These units are about as large
and as heavy as the familiar Sony and Marantz
cassette decks.
Less expensive consumer grade minidiscs (Sony,
Sharp, etc) have SPDIF optical digital input,
but all lack digital output. The solution used
by some is to purchase a separate MD deck like
the Sony MXD-D400 ($300). It offers optical
digital in and out, plus a cd player for cd
to md copying.
My bias is toward Sharp MDs for field use.
Take a look at the Sharp MD-DR7 (called MD-DR470
in Europe), cost about $280.
Whether any MD has a "low noise" mic input
depends a lot on which mic you're using.
--oryoki
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