mini disc recorder

[Bruce Mannheim]

Sonja,

I will be very brief in answering this since I am writing from Perú.

The short answer is that you need both a DAT and a soundboard that is fully digital.  I was surprised to find that some soundboards have digital ports but convert the signal to analogue before converting it back to digital.  It does not make a lot of sense to me as an engineering solution, but I don´t know what considerations go into designing a sound board.

You will need a DAT for later instrumental work because the encoding used by minidiscs is a lossy form of encoding, where parts of the signal are dropped.  The resulting signal is very good to the ear (I am a minidisc fan and have one with me) but not up to speed for sound analysis.

I do recommend minidiscs for things like preparing speech samples for lectures and so forth, where signal losses are not at issue.  It is also not the case that the losses are all in inaudible ranges.

There is a midisc home page that discusses the technology in detail (though the compression formulae are proprietary to Sony).  I recommend it to you (though I do not have the address at hand).  It wll also likely have discussion of the digital capture issue, since it is one that is frequently discussed on e-lists of minidisc enthusiasts.

A common piece of advice in response to your question is that the key piece of equipment that is most often overlooked is the microphone.  It is important that you chose a good microphone (which will cost $$$) and one that is suited to the kinds of recordings that you want to do.  Others will have better guidence than I do.

Regards,

Bruce





>I know this has been discussed before and that I saved some messages, 
>but they're at school I think and I'm leaving tomorrow to collect new 
>data. I don't know if there are archives somewhere for this list (I'm 
>not typically a procrastinator but I planned to use a recorder from 
>our Linguistics Program and discovered that's it checked out for the 
>summer).
>
>I'm going to do two sets of interviews. one set that will likely 
>require spectrographic analyses. I want digital recordings so they 
>can be put on the computer. I would imagine my choices to be a mini 
>disc or a dat or possibly an analog recorder like a marantz that can 
>be converted to digital. My primary interest is in the content of the 
>interviews and the later transcription for the other set of 
>interviews.
>
>I don't know much about a mini disc recorder or a dat. I need 
>something that will have a good microphone, preferrably an internal 
>mic or with a fairly non-intrusive external mic. I read good things 
>on this list for the mini disc as well as some drawbacks (neither of 
>which I remember much right now). In any event, I'd like to know if 
>someone can tell me about a good mini disc or dat recorder they've 
>used for the situation I need to use it in.
>
>The mini disc supply here in Athens is limited to two Sony 
>models--one analog and one digital. But, according to the saleperson, 
>I'd need to buy a mic--and they don't have one. So, in addition to 
>good models I also need to know if a separate mic purchase is needed 
>as well.
>
>At this point, any useful info would be much appreciated.  --Sonja
>
>**************************************************************
>Sonja L. Lanehart
>Department of English                 706-542-2260 (office)
>University of Georgia                 706-542-1261 (messages)
>300 Park Hall                         706-542-2181 (fax)
>Athens, GA 30602-6205                 lanehart at arches.uga.edu
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