Hello All,

I see that folks are taking pre-orders for these, none I've dealt with
before. Kellies, B&H, Compmusic, Jack's Music Store...

Any non-binding, your opinion only, my-mileage-may-vary good/bad/ugly
experiences preordering with these or others that I may have missed?

Was dragged through considerable hassle the last time I did a
preorder.

Much obliged.
Andy

In article writes:

I see that folks are taking pre-orders for these, none I've dealt with
before. Kellies, B&H, Compmusic, Jack's Music Store...

Any non-binding, your opinion only, my-mileage-may-vary good/bad/ugly
experiences preordering with these or others that I may have missed?

I've been wanting to get one to review. I spoke to the product manager
for it at the NAMM show and he said they'd be available in about a
month.

I wish it was a little smaller and I don't need four channels and most
of the features, but it looks more substantial than a Jukebox 3 that
I'd love to replace. I really had hopes for the Sound Devices but I
couldn't figure out how to work it without asking, and that's bad. I
forget things quickly. Ditto with the Fostex. At least I could start
the Edirol.

--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

Mike Rivers wrote:
In article writes:


I see that folks are taking pre-orders for these, none I've dealt with
before. Kellies, B&H, Compmusic, Jack's Music Store...

Any non-binding, your opinion only, my-mileage-may-vary good/bad/ugly
experiences preordering with these or others that I may have missed?


I've been wanting to get one to review. I spoke to the product manager
for it at the NAMM show and he said they'd be available in about a
month.

This looks to be an ideal box for Ambisonic recording if it
is possible to hack it to have a common gain control for all
channels that track closely.

I'm tempted to buy one to hack in digital pots or close
tracking VCA'a.


Bob
--

"Things should be described as simply as possible, but no
simpler."

A. Einstein

On 28 Jan 2005 15:28:33 -0500, (Mike Rivers)
wrote:


In article writes:

I see that folks are taking pre-orders for these, none I've dealt with
before. Kellies, B&H, Compmusic, Jack's Music Store...

Any non-binding, your opinion only, my-mileage-may-vary good/bad/ugly
experiences preordering with these or others that I may have missed?

I've been wanting to get one to review. I spoke to the product manager
for it at the NAMM show and he said they'd be available in about a
month.

I wish it was a little smaller and I don't need four channels and most
of the features, but it looks more substantial than a Jukebox 3 that
I'd love to replace. I really had hopes for the Sound Devices but I
couldn't figure out how to work it without asking, and that's bad. I
forget things quickly. Ditto with the Fostex. At least I could start
the Edirol.

The beefier construction of the R-4 is what really has my eye --
Often having to setup the heavy stuff and then having to treat the JB3
with kid gloves is becoming too incompatible too often. If things
stay on the path we're on now, I'm darn near ready to give it a whirl
as soon as they start shipping.

Best,
Andy

remember that edirol also has a new 2-channel box coming out - the R-1
-
http://www.edirol.com/products/info/r1.html

Anybody know when the Sound Devices 722 will be shipping?

"Mike Rivers" wrote in message
news:znr1106933564k@trad...

In article
writes:

I see that folks are taking pre-orders for these, none I've dealt with
before. Kellies, B&H, Compmusic, Jack's Music Store...

Any non-binding, your opinion only, my-mileage-may-vary good/bad/ugly
experiences preordering with these or others that I may have missed?

I've been wanting to get one to review. I spoke to the product manager
for it at the NAMM show and he said they'd be available in about a
month.

I wish it was a little smaller and I don't need four channels and most
of the features, but it looks more substantial than a Jukebox 3 that
I'd love to replace. I really had hopes for the Sound Devices but I
couldn't figure out how to work it without asking, and that's bad. I
forget things quickly. Ditto with the Fostex. At least I could start
the Edirol.

--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

wrote:
remember that edirol also has a new 2-channel box coming out - the R-1
http://www.edirol.com/products/info/r1.html

It's out, but shipments are slow (first units shipped at the beginning of December, second batch last week.)

"Kurt Albershardt" wrote:
wrote:
remember that edirol also has a new 2-channel box coming out - the R-1
http://www.edirol.com/products/info/r1.html

It's out, but shipments are slow (first units shipped at the beginning of
December, second batch last week.)

First batch was indeed in December. They work as advertised, though they are
conservative about the recording time with batteries. I managed about 27
seconds shy of 4 hours with a freshly charged set of 1800 mAH NiMh. More
details later. I also made a short wavefile excerpt of the R1 recording a
fellow playing Spanish style on a Ramirez guitar using the internal
microphones against an e251, km54, cmc641 combo. Simultaneous recording,
though the R1 was a bit further back (by six inches). It's pretty darn good
as a practise recorder. It won't be replacing high end recording anytime
soon but it does very well for what it is.

bobs

Bob Smith
BS Studios
we organize chaos
http://www.bsstudios.com

On 2005-01-29, Bob Smith wrote:

though the R1 was a bit further back (by six inches). It's pretty darn good
as a practise recorder. It won't be replacing high end recording anytime
soon but it does very well for what it is.

It looks like everything that MD should be but isn't, with the exception
of dirt cheap media costs, of course. Am I reading the material
correctly? It doesn't place any DRM-ish encumbrances on the recorded
material? You can copy entirely in the digital domain? Oh hell, no
SP/DIF input? Dammit, it'll only be as good as it's converters.
Which aren't bad, I'm sure, but if it doesn't have a digital input, it's
not a digital recorder, it's an ADC with digital storage.

In article . com writes:

remember that edirol also has a new 2-channel box coming out - the R-1

That's out already. It's a no-sale for me because it has:

- Mini phone jacks for inputs (and outputs)
- Flash card memory rather than hard disk

Otherwise, I really like it. I wish it was something I wanted, but it
isn't.



--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

"james of tucson" wrote:
On 2005-01-29, Bob Smith wrote:

though the R1 was a bit further back (by six inches). It's pretty darn
good
as a practise recorder. It won't be replacing high end recording anytime
soon but it does very well for what it is.

It looks like everything that MD should be but isn't, with the exception
of dirt cheap media costs, of course. Am I reading the material
correctly? It doesn't place any DRM-ish encumbrances on the recorded
material? You can copy entirely in the digital domain? Oh hell, no
SP/DIF input? Dammit, it'll only be as good as it's converters.
Which aren't bad, I'm sure, but if it doesn't have a digital input, it's
not a digital recorder, it's an ADC with digital storage.

You are correct. Sadly, there is no digital input. The A/D converters are
pretty decent for what it is. It's a good replacement for the Sony TCD-8 DAT
recorder. The storage is compatible with Windows file system. One can either
connect the USB cable and it looks like USB Storage to the OS or the compact
flash memory can be pulled and inserted into an appropriate card reader. The
recordings are canonic MS wavefile format. No funny business. If you want to
hear the comparison clips, email me (remove the appropriate junk from the
reply if it's there) and I'll send you some 6 second 44kHz 16 bit samples.

bobs

Bob Smith
BS Studios
we organize chaos
http://www.bsstudios.com

That's out already. It's a no-sale for me because it has:

- Mini phone jacks for inputs (and outputs)
- Flash card memory rather than hard disk

Otherwise, I really like it. I wish it was something I wanted, but it
isn't.

Mike, We discussed the mini phone jack issue. What is it about the flash card
memory you don't like?


---------------------------------------
"I know enough to know I don't know enough"

In article y.com writes:

It looks like everything that MD should be but isn't, with the exception
of dirt cheap media costs, of course.

There's a couple of ways you can look at it. Minidisk media is
relatively inexpensive but not dirt cheap, and I guess some people
have a collection of disks in a box or rack somewhere. The only
extensive Minidisk collection I've ever seen myself was that of a folk
dance caller who uses them because it's easy to locate music on a disk
(he has several sets of disks on which he's recorded related tunes)
and he can adjust the speed to match the skill of the dancers.

I don't know of anyone, however, who stores recorded flash cards (even
for photos). The usual modus operandi is to transfer the data to
another medium and re-use the flash card. In this sense, it's used
essentially as a fixed-media recorder (like an internal hard disk)
with the added bonus that it's easy to change media if you run out of
space before you have a chance to dump it. In this mode, you can
consider it as being like a hard disk recorder with a too-small drive
that you can replace. So you spend a couple of hundred bucks on a 2GB
(which I think is the limit for the Edirol R1) memory card and then
you have about 3 hours worth of recording at 16-bit, 44.1 kHz (lots
more if you want to put up with data reduction).

Am I reading the material
correctly? It doesn't place any DRM-ish encumbrances on the recorded
material? You can copy entirely in the digital domain?

Yup. Files is files, just like they should be.

Oh hell, no SP/DIF input?

Oh, hell. Only a stereo mini jack for analog input.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

I believe the latest owner's manual for the R-1 states that it can take up
to a 4 GB flash card, although there's a 2 GB limit per file.

-Jeff

"Mike Rivers" wrote in message
news:znr1107003917k@trad...

In article y.com
writes:

It looks like everything that MD should be but isn't, with the exception
of dirt cheap media costs, of course.

There's a couple of ways you can look at it. Minidisk media is
relatively inexpensive but not dirt cheap, and I guess some people
have a collection of disks in a box or rack somewhere. The only
extensive Minidisk collection I've ever seen myself was that of a folk
dance caller who uses them because it's easy to locate music on a disk
(he has several sets of disks on which he's recorded related tunes)
and he can adjust the speed to match the skill of the dancers.

I don't know of anyone, however, who stores recorded flash cards (even
for photos). The usual modus operandi is to transfer the data to
another medium and re-use the flash card. In this sense, it's used
essentially as a fixed-media recorder (like an internal hard disk)
with the added bonus that it's easy to change media if you run out of
space before you have a chance to dump it. In this mode, you can
consider it as being like a hard disk recorder with a too-small drive
that you can replace. So you spend a couple of hundred bucks on a 2GB
(which I think is the limit for the Edirol R1) memory card and then
you have about 3 hours worth of recording at 16-bit, 44.1 kHz (lots
more if you want to put up with data reduction).

Am I reading the material
correctly? It doesn't place any DRM-ish encumbrances on the recorded
material? You can copy entirely in the digital domain?

Yup. Files is files, just like they should be.

Oh hell, no SP/DIF input?

Oh, hell. Only a stereo mini jack for analog input.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

On 2005-01-29, Mike Rivers wrote:

It looks like everything that MD should be but isn't, with the exception
of dirt cheap media costs, of course.

There's a couple of ways you can look at it. Minidisk media is
relatively inexpensive but not dirt cheap, and I guess some people
have a collection of disks in a box or rack somewhere.

I used them for a couple of years to document my piano practice. I
wouldn't have done that at the price of DAT, or even, of cassettes.

I don't know of anyone, however, who stores recorded flash cards (even
for photos).

The only reason I tend to keep my MDs is because they are such one-way
media. I mean, I *could* play them back into the computer, but that's
more work than I'm going to do, and also, it annoys me that I cannot
have a digital output from my MD.

The usual modus operandi is to transfer the data to
another medium and re-use the flash card.

Yes, but copying off a flash card is a matter of "cp audio1.wav"
to some other medium, it's a digital copy, and it takes no longer than
the time required to move 500MB over a USB2 link. That's entirely
different.

Oh hell, no SP/DIF input?

Oh, hell. Only a stereo mini jack for analog input.

I don't like it. Thanks Mike, you probably saved me $600.

In article writes:

Mike, We discussed the mini phone jack issue. What is it about the flash card
memory you don't like?

Ultimately, the cost. I'm perfectly content with 16-bit, 44.1 kHz
recording for the applications I'd use such a recorder. I consider it
to be a DAT replacement. It's been quite a while since I purchased DAT
cassettes, but I just checked Cassette House to be sure they were
still available, and sho'nuff, you can buy 2 hours worth of storage
for about $3.

Since I expect that it will be a quite a while yet before I can get a
flash memory card for $3 that will store 2 hours of 16/44 audio (and
when we can, it will be something other than the format used by the
R1) I'd have to use it as a fixed media recorder, buying one or two of
the largest capacity cards possible (adding a few hundred hidden bucks
to the $500 cost of the recorder) then transfer data (on my own time)
to a less expensive storage medium.

The Jukebox 3 that I bought new for about $300 when it was a new
product includes over 20 hours of fixed recording media, so it's
considerably cheaper than a flash card recorder. For my use, the R4
would be essentially the same as the Jukebox at considerably more
cost, but mechanically more robust and with some features that I might
use sometime. I can see recording 4 channels occasionally, but
probably will never use its editing or signal processing features.




--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

Bob Cain wrote:


This looks to be an ideal box for Ambisonic recording if it
is possible to hack it to have a common gain control for all
channels that track closely.



Bob
--

"Things should be described as simply as possible, but no
simpler."

A. Einstein


I was thinking the same thing. I'd also like 4 analog outs in addition
to the ganged gain. With an R-4 it looks like I'd still be tied to a
computer for B-Format.

Peter

Mike Rivers wrote:
In article y.com writes:


It looks like everything that MD should be but isn't, with the exception
of dirt cheap media costs, of course.


The usual modus operandi is to transfer the data to
another medium and re-use the flash card. In this sense, it's used
essentially as a fixed-media recorder (like an internal hard disk)
with the added bonus that it's easy to change media if you run out of
space before you have a chance to dump it. In this mode, you can
consider it as being like a hard disk recorder with a too-small drive
that you can replace. So you spend a couple of hundred bucks on a 2GB

About $150-160 for fast CF.


2GB (which I think is the limit for the Edirol R1)

They have a firmware update just about to roll which supports larger CF cards.



then you have about 3 hours worth of recording at 16-bit, 44.1 kHz
(lots more if you want to put up with data reduction).

No support for mono files and nothing on the roadmap yet ;

In article y.com writes:

I used them for a couple of years to document my piano practice. I
wouldn't have done that at the price of DAT, or even, of cassettes.

How cheaply are you buying Minidisks? I don't recall them being all
that cheap. DAT is about $1.50/hour, cassettes can be even cheaper
than that. Cheapest that Cassette House has (I just checked) is about
$1.60 for a 74 minute disk. That's about the same as DAT, and double
that of a cassette.

The only reason I tend to keep my MDs is because they are such one-way
media. I mean, I *could* play them back into the computer, but that's
more work than I'm going to do, and also, it annoys me that I cannot
have a digital output from my MD.

The nice thing about CDs and cassettes (but not DAT or Minidisk) is
that there are players everywhere. If I had a Minidisk recorder, I'd
probably have just one and I'd have to move it to wherever I wanted to
listen. I consider any recorder to be two-way - I don't make
recordings that I don't eventually want to play.

Yes, but copying off a flash card is a matter of "cp audio1.wav"
to some other medium, it's a digital copy, and it takes no longer than
the time required to move 500MB over a USB2 link. That's entirely
different.

It's faster than real time, sure, but it's something you have to do.
When I do this with my Jukebox, I have to get the Jukebox out of the
bag, find the USB cable, plug it in to the one computer that has a USB
port (the laptop), transfer the file to the hard drive, and then burn
an audio CD. It's still a pain.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

"Mike Rivers" wrote in message news:znr1107021605k@trad...

In article writes:

Mike, We discussed the mini phone jack issue. What is it about
the flash card memory you don't like?

Ultimately, the cost. I'm perfectly content with 16-bit, 44.1 kHz
recording for the applications I'd use such a recorder. I consider it
to be a DAT replacement. It's been quite a while since I purchased DAT
cassettes, but I just checked Cassette House to be sure they were
still available, and sho'nuff, you can buy 2 hours worth of storage
for about $3.

Since I expect that it will be a quite a while yet before I can get a
flash memory card for $3 that will store 2 hours of 16/44 audio (and
when we can, it will be something other than the format used by the
R1) I'd have to use it as a fixed media recorder, buying one or two of
the largest capacity cards possible (adding a few hundred hidden bucks
to the $500 cost of the recorder) then transfer data (on my own time)
to a less expensive storage medium.

The Jukebox 3 that I bought new for about $300 when it was a new
product includes over 20 hours of fixed recording media, so it's
considerably cheaper than a flash card recorder. For my use, the R4
would be essentially the same as the Jukebox at considerably more
cost, but mechanically more robust and with some features that I might
use sometime. I can see recording 4 channels occasionally, but
probably will never use its editing or signal processing features.

But if you can transfer everything to the computer at high speed,
what's the problem with that? Flash cards should last forever.

And in the same vein, has anyone ever seen a Sony ICD-BM1
digital voice recorder? "Professional quality sound and high-level
functionality ...". It might be a toy, but it's a toy I'd love to have.
http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTE...tSKU=ICDBM1VTP

On Sat, 29 Jan 2005 18:15:51 GMT, "jeffm" wrote:

I believe the latest owner's manual for the R-1 states that it can take up
to a 4 GB flash card, although there's a 2 GB limit per file.

-Jeff

The insert to the manual says that if you try to record a file bigger
than 2 Gig on a 4 Gig CF, it will be lost. This is incorrect. I ran
it with a 4 Gig card and at the file size limit it shuts off but saves
the file, using the 1.03 firmware. Mine came with 1.03, but I
heard that the Edirol Japanese web site has the 1.03 firmware
for earlier shipments. I have no idea how you update the
firmware. I filled a 4 Gig card with five files of from 2 Gig
(=2 hours 12 minutes) down to 30 minutes, all fine on
playback. If you edit the CF to move the files to a directory
you create called bwff it even plays back on a Fostex FR2.

I have been using line-in with a DPA MMA6000 preamp, and
I got pretty good sound. Still fooling around with it, to see if
I can hear those 24 bits. I'd love to hear what others are
finding.

It is pretty flimsy, and the CF slot cover worries me a bit. I
have taped over the volume-in dial, it has no scale markings
and is easily moved, so I just set it near max and put some
electrical tape over it, that works. The meters are also
pretty useless, no dB markings or scale indication, but
trial and error has got me close to the proper preamp
settings for most situations. Looking at the R1's meters
led me to be way over-cautious (by around 12 dB).
But operating it, without any of the garage-band type
"effects" menu stuff, is a piece of cake, as long as you
don't accidentally shut it off as I did today (=loss of file).

Jeff (another one)

On Sat, 29 Jan 2005 08:49:20 -0800, "Bob Smith"
wrote:


You are correct. Sadly, there is no digital input. The A/D converters are
pretty decent for what it is. It's a good replacement for the Sony TCD-8 DAT
recorder. The storage is compatible with Windows file system. One can either
connect the USB cable and it looks like USB Storage to the OS or the compact
flash memory can be pulled and inserted into an appropriate card reader. The
recordings are canonic MS wavefile format. No funny business. If you want to
hear the comparison clips, email me (remove the appropriate junk from the
reply if it's there) and I'll send you some 6 second 44kHz 16 bit samples.

bobs

Bob Smith

Do you know of any reviews of the A/D? I am using it line-in, I've
heard that the mic-in is noisy but haven't tried it. Can you get
anything from the extra bits running it at 24 bits 44.1 kH?

Jeff

L David Matheny wrote:
But if you can transfer everything to the computer at high speed,
what's the problem with that? Flash cards should last forever.

THEN where do we put it? I want to put it, quickly, on something that I
can put on the shelf and expect to be around soon.

And I am tired of formats that "should last forever." Too many of them have
already failed on me. I want a format that actually does last.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

In article writes:

But if you can transfer everything to the computer at high speed,
what's the problem with that? Flash cards should last forever.

The problem is that you HAVE to do it, and you have to do it in a
timely manner. Otherwise you won't have memory space when you need it.
Besides, "high speed" is relative. It's a multi-step process.

I've never really trusted the "format the CD so you can use it as a
regular disk and write directly to it" method. Seems like every time I
get one of those from someone else, my computer asks me questions that
I don't know how to answer before it reads the disk. So I transfer
from the Jukebox to the hard drive, then transfer from the hard drive
to a CD.

Now I don't have the most up-to-date computer in the world, and it
takes about 20 minutes over USB1.1 to transfer a one-hour 16/44
recording from the Jukebox 3 to the computer. Then, for convenience
sake, I'll run through the file, drop track markers so I can locate
things, and burn an audio CD. That might take another half hour if
it's not too complicated. Then I'll burn a data CD. With all of that
work to do, "high speed" transfer is down in the noise. If it took 5
minutes over Firewire, or even 1 minute, it would still interrupt
doing something else.

If I had a DAT, I'd put it on the shelf and I wouldn't have to do
anything with it until I wanted to listen to it or needed it for a
production.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

"james of tucson" wrote in message
atory.com...
On 2005-01-29, Mike Rivers wrote:

It looks like everything that MD should be but isn't, with the exception
of dirt cheap media costs, of course.

There's a couple of ways you can look at it. Minidisk media is
relatively inexpensive but not dirt cheap, and I guess some people
have a collection of disks in a box or rack somewhere.

I used them for a couple of years to document my piano practice. I
wouldn't have done that at the price of DAT, or even, of cassettes.

I don't know of anyone, however, who stores recorded flash cards (even
for photos).

The only reason I tend to keep my MDs is because they are such one-way
media. I mean, I *could* play them back into the computer, but that's
more work than I'm going to do, and also, it annoys me that I cannot
have a digital output from my MD.

I bought an MD deck for $150 for the sole purpose of getting a digital
output. I record on an MZ-R37 and playback to the computer on a JB-920.
It's still real time though. :-(

Norm

Scott Dorsey wrote:
L David Matheny wrote:

But if you can transfer everything to the computer at high speed,
what's the problem with that? Flash cards should last forever.


THEN where do we put it? I want to put it, quickly, on something that I
can put on the shelf and expect to be around soon.

Define soon.




I am tired of formats that "should last forever." Too many of them have
already failed on me. I want a format that actually does last.

I'm afraid the short answer at this time for digital media is "It doesn't exist." Digital archiving is going to require a completely different approach than analog archiving did, and it's going to require both technology and human intervention--neither of which bodes well for the archived material making it through a dark age.

Mike Rivers wrote:

edirol R-1
That's out already. It's a no-sale for me because it has:

- Mini phone jacks for inputs (and outputs)
- Flash card memory rather than hard disk

I have one. Mini jacks and CF card are the least of its problems,
but a firmware rev maybe could fix most of them -- metering,
file splitting, UI; but not that S/PDIF out, not in. USB mass
storage function works fine.

In article writes:

And I am tired of formats that "should last forever." Too many of them have
already failed on me. I want a format that actually does last.

And as I keep saying (and one of these days someone other than you
will believe me), the media may have a landfill life of 500 years, but
the hardware and knowledge to play it tends to have a life of less
than 50 years, often as little as 5.

I have a camera that uses xD memory cards, and you see about one ad
for those for twenty of the CF or SD formats, and they're roughly
double the cost per megabyte than the other formats. I guess this one
isn't going to last forever. This week's Circuit City flyer lists a
256 MB xD card for $60 less $15 instant savings and $10 rebate,
closeout, no rain checks. So I guess I'd beter pick one up PDQ lest my
camera that will last forever won't be able to take pictures. And it's
barely a year old. And there are a lot more people taking photos with
digital cameras than are recording audio.




--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

On 2005-01-30, Mike Rivers wrote:

I used them for a couple of years to document my piano practice. I
wouldn't have done that at the price of DAT, or even, of cassettes.

How cheaply are you buying Minidisks?

I bought a pile of them for just about a buck a piece, so that's
6 bits an hour?

I don't recall them being all
that cheap. DAT is about $1.50/hour

I have trouble even finding tapes for my Sony DAT, and when I do,
they are pricey. (Can you help?)

probably have just one and I'd have to move it to wherever I wanted to
listen. I consider any recorder to be two-way - I don't make
recordings that I don't eventually want to play.

I didn't mean one-way in that sense. I meant, I'll never use a track
that was recorded to MD except just to play it back, if I can avoid
doing so. I'm not a quality snob, but it just irks me that I've got a
nice digital recording, albeit ATRAC, that I can only access if I send
it through a cheap DAC. I really hate that.

It's faster than real time, sure, but it's something you have to do.

But it's a bitwise, lossless copy, unencumbered by any scheme aimed at
preventing you from doing so. That's a bigger issue than the time. I
don't like the device, and by extension, its manufacturer, asserting any
kind of control over material to which I have a sole ownership stake. I
have a fundamental problem with that. I actually think the goddamned
machine is abridging my authorship rights.

On 2005-01-30, wrote:

The only reason I tend to keep my MDs is because they are such one-way
media. I mean, I *could* play them back into the computer, but that's
more work than I'm going to do, and also, it annoys me that I cannot
have a digital output from my MD.

I bought an MD deck for $150 for the sole purpose of getting a digital
output.

I can't bring myself to do it, because I see this as giving more money
to the people who abridged my rights by making a machine that asserts
copy control restrictions on my own music. My problem here is more
political than technical, but it is a serious one. One that stops me
from being a consumer of the technology. I should have said it does a
sight more than merely "annoy" me. It chills me to the bone.

On 2005-01-30, L David Matheny wrote:

But if you can transfer everything to the computer at high speed,
what's the problem with that? Flash cards should last forever.

Actually, they do have a finite duty cycle. It's long but not easily
predictable, and it's enough of a problem to keep flash memory devices
out of critical aviation components.

james of tucson wrote:
On 2005-01-30, L David Matheny wrote:


But if you can transfer everything to the computer at high speed,
what's the problem with that? Flash cards should last forever.


Actually, they do have a finite duty cycle. It's long but not
easily predictable

It's far longer now than it was even a decade ago.



it's enough of a problem to keep flash memory devices
out of critical aviation components.

Completely? Or just for heavy read/write applications? Flash is perfectly suited to tasks where writes are few (like OS or firmware updates) but still somewhat dicey for things like VM swapping.

In article y.com writes:

I bought a pile of them [Minidisks] for just about a buck a piece, so that's
6 bits an hour?

That's not too bad. New? From a real store? Or an unknown eBay deal
that you may not be able to repeat?

I have trouble even finding tapes for my Sony DAT, and when I do,
they are pricey. (Can you help?)

http://www.cassettehouse.com

$30 ballpark for a pack of ten 120-minute tapes. Good quality, even
their unmarked house brand.

I didn't mean one-way in that sense. I meant, I'll never use a track
that was recorded to MD except just to play it back, if I can avoid
doing so. I'm not a quality snob, but it just irks me that I've got a
nice digital recording, albeit ATRAC, that I can only access if I send
it through a cheap DAC. I really hate that.

It would be worth an experiment to see if they really sound better
when played through something else. Buy a tabletop MD deck with S/PDIF
output and connect that to your (~$-eight-MD's-worth) Benchmark D/A
converter. If it sounds $1000 better, keep the deck. If not, return
it. If you don't know how "cheap" the D/A on your Minidisk is, you'll
always suspect that it's worse than it should be.

But it's a bitwise, lossless copy, unencumbered by any scheme aimed at
preventing you from doing so. That's a bigger issue than the time.

It depends on how much time you have. If you come home from a field
trip with 100 hours of recordings, it takes about five minutes to pull
them out of the bag, label the box, and put it on the shelf. How many
days would it take you to transfer that to CDs that you could put on
the shelf?

don't like the device, and by extension, its manufacturer, asserting any
kind of control over material to which I have a sole ownership stake. I
have a fundamental problem with that. I actually think the goddamned
machine is abridging my authorship rights.

It's not abridging your authorship rights. You're not authoring the
bits, you're authoring the music or whatever else you record. Does the
printing press abridge your authorship rights because it can't exactly
reproduce your handwriting?

I don't like the anti-copy provisions any more than you do. I think
it's a bad solution to a non problem. The best thing you can do is not
buy Minidisk recorders and blanks. But you did. Live with it or give
it up. You can't fight that city hall.



--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

"james of tucson" wrote in message
atory.com...
On 2005-01-30,
wrote:

The only reason I tend to keep my MDs is because they are such one-way
media. I mean, I *could* play them back into the computer, but that's
more work than I'm going to do, and also, it annoys me that I cannot
have a digital output from my MD.

I bought an MD deck for $150 for the sole purpose of getting a digital
output.

I can't bring myself to do it, because I see this as giving more money
to the people who abridged my rights by making a machine that asserts
copy control restrictions on my own music. My problem here is more
political than technical, but it is a serious one. One that stops me
from being a consumer of the technology. I should have said it does a
sight more than merely "annoy" me. It chills me to the bone.

I agree with you. Indeed, if I could do it over again, I would reject the
entire MD format, just as I did many other technologies. I probably
wouldn't have purchased the MD deck if it hadn't been on sale at a very
attractive price. My sum total investment in MD technology was $260 for the
2 recorders and a package of discs. I consider myself lucky to have escaped
for that price!

Norm Strong

"Scott Dorsey" wrote in message ...
L David Matheny wrote:
But if you can transfer everything to the computer at high speed,
what's the problem with that? Flash cards should last forever.

THEN where do we put it? I want to put it, quickly, on something
that I can put on the shelf and expect to be around soon.

And I am tired of formats that "should last forever." Too many of them
have already failed on me. I want a format that actually does last.
--scott

Actually I should have said flash cards should be reusable forever as
capture devices, not as a solution to the digital archiving problem. The
only solution there may involve making perfect digital copies to a new
format every few years. At least we'll have lots of backups that way.

"james of tucson" wrote in message
atory.com...
On 2005-01-30, L David Matheny wrote:

But if you can transfer everything to the computer at high speed,
what's the problem with that? Flash cards should last forever.

Actually, they do have a finite duty cycle. It's long but not easily
predictable, and it's enough of a problem to keep flash memory
devices out of critical aviation components.

That's interesting. Is the finite duty cycle due to the mechanical
wear and tear of normal usage, or is there some way that the actual
electronic components wear out over time. I put a 512MB CF card
in my Canon digital camera, and that lets it hold over 300 photos.
I have no reason to remove it ever. Will it still wear out?

"Mike Rivers" wrote in message news:znr1107089663k@trad...

In article writes:

But if you can transfer everything to the computer at high speed,
what's the problem with that? Flash cards should last forever.

The problem is that you HAVE to do it, and you have to do it in a
timely manner. Otherwise you won't have memory space when you
need it. Besides, "high speed" is relative. It's a multi-step process.

True, but isn't that a reasonable tradeoff for the increased reliability
that should result from using an all-electronic device (vs mechanical)?
And you can carry spare flash memory in case you get caught short.

I've never really trusted the "format the CD so you can use it as a
regular disk and write directly to it" method. Seems like every time I
get one of those from someone else, my computer asks me questions
that I don't know how to answer before it reads the disk. So I
transfer from the Jukebox to the hard drive, then transfer from
the hard drive to a CD.

That way you have backup on the hard drive, at least temporarily.

Now I don't have the most up-to-date computer in the world, and it
takes about 20 minutes over USB1.1 to transfer a one-hour 16/44
recording from the Jukebox 3 to the computer. Then, for convenience
sake, I'll run through the file, drop track markers so I can locate
things, and burn an audio CD. That might take another half hour if
it's not too complicated. Then I'll burn a data CD. With all of that
work to do, "high speed" transfer is down in the noise. If it took 5
minutes over Firewire, or even 1 minute, it would still interrupt
doing something else.

So you need a capture device that lets you insert tract markers as you
record? And you don't really need the audio CD immediately, do you?
Don't you trust the data CD? If not, you could read it before purging
the hard drive copy of the file. And your next computer will be faster.

If I had a DAT, I'd put it on the shelf and I wouldn't have to do
anything with it until I wanted to listen to it or needed it for a
production.

That's probably what I would do with the data CD. And I'm asking
all of the above because I assume you've thought this stuff through
a lot more than I have. Thanks for your comments.

In article writes:

Actually I should have said flash cards should be reusable forever as
capture devices, not as a solution to the digital archiving problem. The
only solution there may involve making perfect digital copies to a new
format every few years. At least we'll have lots of backups that way.

This is nothing new (just the media). History is that it doesn't get
done, but the originals are for the most part at least usably
recoverable when needed. I don't see a change in the (lack of) funding
necessary to support regular refreshing of the archive.

What I see is that fifty years from now, someone will hold up this
postage stamp sized hunk of plastic and say "This is a perfect copy of
a Britney Spears hit from 2001. Now if we could only play it in
something. How many volts do you think it takes, and on which pin?"



--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

In article writes:

The problem is that you HAVE to do it, and you have to do it in a
timely manner.

True, but isn't that a reasonable tradeoff for the increased reliability
that should result from using an all-electronic device (vs mechanical)?

We can argue this forever, but I think not. It's not the media or the
equipment that costs, it's the time. If you can find someone who will
trade off money (to pay for the time) for increased reilability of
playback of something of questionable (or unpredictable) value, that's
fine. Otherwise a lot of recording engineers will be donating a lot of
time for the sake of "increased reliability." We already donate too
much media - clients expect disk space for their recording project to
be free since it's in the computer.

So you need a capture device that lets you insert tract markers as you
record?

No, because I don't really want to be bothered with that as I'm
recording. Funny how we want those things because they're available,
though. An analog tape deck doesn't have track markers, though I
always put a track sheet in the box with the time for each track, and
I can cue it up pretty close (exactly if there's leader spliced in) by
looking at the counter on the tape deck. But we've become accustomed
to CDs and direct access to tracks. The fact that you might have five
songs on a 10" reel of tape and 20 songs on a CD makes a difference,
too.

And you don't really need the audio CD immediately, do you?

I might want to leave one behind for the client.

Don't you trust the data CD? If not, you could read it before purging
the hard drive copy of the file. And your next computer will be faster.

Either way, it's still a time sink.

If I had a DAT, I'd put it on the shelf

That's probably what I would do with the data CD. And I'm asking
all of the above because I assume you've thought this stuff through
a lot more than I have. Thanks for your comments.

I have data CDs on the shelf, too, but as the size and shape of the
medium changes, the documentation to go along with it shrinks. With a
10" tape reel, or even a 7" reel, I can write just about all the
information about the contents on the box, or on a sheet of paper that
I put into the box. I used to buy those cases that hold two DATs (the
real one and the eventual backup, or rough and final mixes, or first
set and second set) primarily because they were large enough so you
could write the contents on the edge of the box and put a log sheet
inside. I have yet to come up with a satisfactory way of listing the
contents of a CD that's easy to read, and quick to make. I have to use
a computer. Fooey!


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

L David Matheny wrote:
"james of tucson" wrote in message
atory.com...

On 2005-01-30, L David Matheny wrote:

Flash cards should last forever.

Actually, they do have a finite duty cycle. It's long but not easily
predictable, and it's enough of a problem to keep flash memory
devices out of critical aviation components.


That's interesting. Is the finite duty cycle due to the mechanical
wear and tear of normal usage, or is there some way that the actual
electronic components wear out over time. I put a 512MB CF card
in my Canon digital camera, and that lets it hold over 300 photos.
I have no reason to remove it ever. Will it still wear out?

Yes, flash can only be written so many times. Enough with current flash that for most users it can be considered a nonissue (since they will discard the camera or replace the card with one 16 times as big at a third of the price) but it is not RAM.