Re: RE: [Harp-L] Microtrack vs Sony Minidisc

[Garry Hodgson <garry@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Bill Hines wrote:

> The Microtrack is an interesting unit. 
...
> But my concerns are:
> 
> 1. What's the fidelity? It records to WAV or MP3 which have 
> been noted are not high fidelity mediums. 

time out, different animals completely.  WAV is 16bit 44.1MHz,
the standard for (amateur) live recordings.  also, all of your CD's
are like this.  MP3 is, of course, a lossy compression scheme.  
but it's hard to characterize its fidelity without specify bitrate, 
VBR vs. CBR, etc.

> Does a live 
> recording, say at a busy bar, sounds as good as when recorded 
> on a high-end minidisc like the one Garry bought?

my high end minidisc would sound exactly like the lowest end
sony recording 256KB atrac 3+, modulo potential differences
in A/D quality.  what matters far more is the quality of the microphones.

> 2. How long can you record? The Minidiscs (in their lower fidelity
> setting) can go for 8 hours. Is it possible to record 
> anywhere near that long on the Microtrack (in a similar 
> fidelity setting to the Sony's 8 hour setting)?

presumably the microtrack could record the same amount
of 256KB mp3 on a 1G flash card as a Hi-MD minidisc could
record 256KB atrac3 on its 1G minidisc.  the difference is 
that after that 90 minutes, i can stick in another $7 disc,
vs. another $80 CF card.  at the terra blues show, had
i been recording in WAV mode and not wanted to risk
a badly timed disc change, i would've needed 3 discs,
or 3 CF cards.  then i could've put in a fresh one for each set.

incidentally, the sony minidisc has 2 compressed settings.
the lower one (64KB?) can record 35 hours on a disk.  which
may be useful for meeting notes or the like, but not music.  
still, in an emergency, like i stumbled across a music festival
and had only one disk, i'd rather have that than nothing.


----
Garry Hodgson, Technical Consultant, AT&T Labs

Your love, your anger, your kindness, your hate.
All of it creates the future for you and your children.
What kind of future are you creating today?