Minidisc Recorder Suggestions?

[Pjmsj21]

Well it is Christmas and my daughter a cellist, is asking for a good minidisc recorder.  Being a musician she needs it for recording student chamber quartets with portability being very important. In addition she would like to use it to record herself in our home.  Any suggestions?

Pat Mc

[damianip]

I use a Sony MZ-NHF800 which I believe is no longer made. It makes phenomenal field recordings in the HiSP mode and can store about 10 hours on a single disc in that mode. Basically, I find myself limited by the microphone. If you're a real stickler, you can record in PCM uncompressed mode. I guess the closest model now is the Sony MZ-RH10. The cheapest Sony which will record with a mic is the MZ-RH910.

A warning however, Sony makes it very difficult to get the music from your MD recorder to your computer. For some reason, they elected to use DRM even on analogue microphone recordings. This means you have two options to transfer the recording: Sony's method which allows you to do it only once and may trash your precious irreplaceable recording in the process, of record it to your computer in real time with third party software: basically, you play back the recording through your computer via the USB connection and the software captures the recording. While time-consuming, it doesn't put your original at risk.

An excellent on-line resource for this stuff is http://minidisc.org/.

Paolo