A few months ago my beloved Sharp MD-MT90 finally gave out, and I
replaced it with a new recorder. They don't make them like they used
to. The MD-MT280E has a plastic case and feels cheap. It has fewer
buttons, and displaying remaining time requires going through a
rather obscure menu process that I'm still not comfortable with. No
rechargeable battery, just one AA cell.
Fortunately it sounds just as good as any Sharp, but I ran into
something new the other day. It was quite breezy where I was
recording, and I wanted to make sure none of the wind noise
overloaded, so I could filter it. I turned down from my usual record
level of MIC L 17 to 12. That's 10dB down at 2dB per step. I figured
I'd boost it back up in post. It was a quiet location.
When I loaded the disc into Pro Tools and jacked it up 10 dB I got an
unpleasant surprise. There was just audible above the mic hiss some
clearly digital hash that would come and go periodically. From the
timing of it I'm sure it was when the data was being written to the
disc. (Did you know that MD recorders don't record continuously? The
disc only spins about 1/5 of the time.)
I was recording 4-channel, with an MD-MS722 doing the rear channels.
Sound from that, using the same gain process, was fine.
-Dan Dugan
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