Should I buy a minidisc mixdown deck? Plz help.

[Dolph]

Very cool forums, here... who knew?

Ok, so I'm looking to buy a mixdown deck and thinking of making it a digital one. I'll tell you my story really quickly, then I'd appreciate any advice you might be able to offer.

I've got an analog 4-track (Tascam 424 Mk2), which I really like. More tracks would be great and digital probably would, too, but I'm not about to convert to digital recording / mixing unless I can do it really painlessly. I've got these stacks of 4-track masters to think about. Also, I don't want to sell all my equipment and buy new equipment. I'm pretty happy with the Tascam setup.

I needed a 2 track mixdown deck, ideally a dual casette one for dubbing tapes. My horrible mistake was to buy a low-end Sony at Tweeter (they don't have any idea what's good for home recording). I should point out that I'm not too picky about every nuance of sound quality - I'm ok with some gritty lo-fi, if its under my control. However, this Sony TC-WE405 is total crap - the freq responses suck and the flutter is terrible. I set it aside and borrowed a friend's deck - a Pioneer CT-W404R, which is super good - very clear, very warm, makes great dubs. But of course he wanted it back eventually.

So now I want to do some mixing down, and I was thinking about buying a good Pioneer tape deck (either the 404R or its bigger better brother, the 616DR). I was researching prices and stats and stuff when I started thinking about mixing down to a digital deck instead. I'm a bit worried about the future of DAT, and DAT decks are always cumbersome and expensive, so I'm not leaning in that direction.

On the other hand, there is the Sony portable minidisc recorder / player - the MZR37SP - which goes for about $200, roughly the same as the Pioneer tape deck. I don't know much about minidiscs, especially as it relates to home recording. But in my naivety, it seems like it would be cool. I'd like to carry it around to record environmental sounds or live performances, listen to music in the car (I assume I can get a tape adapter), etc.. Plus, it seems like I can mixdown to it, even though its a portable. I'll need to copy the minidisc mixdowns to tapes or cds eventually, but I can use the Tascam to copy back in the case of tapes.

But for all I know, this is a stupid idea, and I'd like to avoid making another mistake like the Sony TC-WE405 one. I'm not worried about small amounts of hiss or very tiny amounts of flutter, minor sound degregations in general. I don't like the empty sound that comes from low-resolution digital, though. I'm more worried about convenience and flexibility - I don't want to wrestle with idiotic controls too much (for cue'ing up and setting record levels and stuff like that) or have to buy a stack of adapters to go into and out of my Tascam 4-track or anything like that. I just want to plug in and mixdown, then playback later.

What do you guys think? Should I buy an analog tape mixdown deck, or go for a digital one? Is a portable minidisc recorder / player a terrible idea for a mixdown deck? What issues should I be considering? What features should I look for in the minidisc deck? Where should I buy one? What brand do you recommend?

Thank you _very much_ in advance for any help you can provide. Unless I get some good help, I'm probably going to avoid risk and buy the Pioneer tape deck.

[Ray J]

You can mix to digital without buying any additional equipment than you would already have to buy, like another mixdown deck. If you decide to record, you know, track that is, digitally, you have several options, but most of them involve more than just buying a digital recorder. If you do buy a digital recorder you can still use any effects unit you may already have, if you use them, but the one extra thing you will almost have to buy is some kind of compressor, if you don't already have one.

When recording analog, you can get away with some clipping,(going into the red),in analog the clpping might not be desirable, but it is still a musical sound. When clipping on a digital recording, its an awful, non-musical noise, therefore you need a compressor to keep the clips out. It also adds punch to your bass and drum tracks, as well as allows you to get more volume out of your recording.

I use to record on a 4-track analog recorder and did not use a compressor, but it's a must, because I record digitally now. As far as mixdown decks, well I'm looking for one myself. Mixing down to mini-disc would be much better than mixing down to cassette, from what I've heard, hardly any noise, if any, and even with the data compression involved, there still won't be as much generational loss as mixing to a cassette deck unless its a real good cassette deck. But all of them have analog in, as for as I know, and I'm looking for something with a digital out so that I can go to CD after mixdown.

If you do mixdown to cassette, I here a bbe sonic maximizer is the thing to get. Its like an exciter that takes a lot of the noise out of analog recordings. If you read some of the other threads in this forum and others, you will get a better understanding of all of this.

[Rusty K]

Hey Guys,

I have a minidisc recorder. If I were going to mixdown to make tapes I'd use it probably but since I've been recording and mixing into my computer I'm not sure I'll ever use another cassette tape. In fact I'm backing all my old project tapes to CD at present.

I use Goldwave editing software and mix from my Sony MDM X4. I'm still learning and trying out equipment to help me, presently a compressor.

Why not try mixing into your computer. Goldwave is shareware so you can try it first. You can clean up your tracks if you wish while editing, very good noise reduction, and then go back out to a tape deck if you want to. Of course some say transfering from analog to digital repeatedly causes some loss in quality.

Hope this helps,
Rusty K

[virtual.ray]

I have 2 Sony Minidisc Recorders,1 in my listening-to-other-peoples-music system and 1 in my recording setup.I use the 2nd one to audition rough mixes and to catch ideas on the fly.I can tell you that probably even the worst minidisc machine will totally smoke cassette in quality and durability,and the blanks now cost about the same as good chrome cassettes,BUT they are still not quite as good as linear 16 bit audio,a.k.a. CD quality.I would try as hard as I could if I were you to get the minidisc machine.However if the unit you mentioned is one of those subminiature portables,I'd try to get a larger format unit instead,they don't cost a whole lot more than the figure you quoted and you gain a lot in ease of use,plus I find the operation when doing edits is greatly facilitated by the use of the remote. One coolthing you can do very easily on the larger unit is take a dozen songs on a disc and move them around very quickly in different order,last song first,3rd song last etc. which is great if you're doing an album project to see how the songs flow into each other.If you don't like the result after a couple of days you can changr it again in like 3 minutes,and when you've finally got it,you can then start burning a CD.Much better than burning lots of CD's as a 1st step togetting the program right. Cheers!

[Ray J]

As far as getting away without buying a compressor, it depends on what kind of music you're doing. For example, if you play an acoustic guitar and sing, I would say you certainly can get away without one. If you are doing some kind of rock music with bass and drums, you will probably need one to get your volume up. Even if you're carefull about the clips, its gonna be hard to get any punch out of your bass and drums without one. I don't know if you have an effects unit, but if comes down to choosing between effects and compressor, then yeah, I would say you need an effects unit more than a compressor. You can record without a compressor, to answer your question. If you do not use a compressor, one thing you can do is "ride the faders" during mixdown. You see, your not gonna hit the bass with the same amount of force every time you play a note (assuming you're using a bass guitar) and what will happen is the notes you hit the hardest, or the notes you play on the E string padrticularly, will want to clip. Same with the snare and bass drum. You can turn it down manually during mixdown, if you know when the clips are coming. That way you can keep the vol. up during the rest of the song. You will see what I mean when you start mixing digital material. What kind of stuff are you doing anyway?

[Dolph]

Thanks a lot for the feedback, guys. I'm still a bit undecided.

So I really absolutely need a good compressor to record from out of my 4-track into the minidisc mixdown deck? I can't work around this by being careful to record below the peak threshold? Do some minidisc recorders do their own recording compression to avoid clipping distortion?

I can't really do direct digital recording and mixing because my computer isn't that great (P-100, 64 megs ram) and would frustrate me by being too clumsy and slow, but I'll keep all that stuff in mind when I upgrade. Really, I can't stand virtual knob twiddling. I love the ability to do that kind of tweaking in a real-time, hands-on way. I think its part of the craft element for me.

I think what I might do is find a retailer that will sell me the minidisc and let me trade it in for the casette deck if it doesn't work out for me. Can anyone suggest a good retailer that sells both and will let me exchange for cash or store credit?

virtual.ray - do you have a model name for the unit you mentioned that has those song reorganization editing tools?

Again, thanks a lot.

[K-wey]

Dolph, Ray J and Rusty - Thanks for a very good discussion topic.

I have a Sony MDM X4 4-tracker, and I've also been wondering what else I could use for mixdown. You see, I too bought a cheap twin-cassette deck, and I hate the flutter and varying tape speeds it has.

I had to laugh at myself... I read Dolph's post and said, Hmmm, that problem sounds familiar... sure enough, I checked my deck's model number and I too own a Sony TC-WE405. It's a complete piece of garbage.

So I'm looking for something else to mix to, and this discussion was very helpful. I'll be back with more questions, or perhaps start a new thread.

[Ray J]

Hey guys, this may help. I just bought a Sony MDS JE510 off of e-bay for 124 bucks. They were about $360 brand new. I think this would do the trick. If I'm not mistaken they all have 4th generation ATRAC, and digital out, to go to CD after you're through mixing. There's also 520's for a little more that feature 4.5 ATRAC. I've been checking for about a month, and there are always at least a few up on the auction. This would probably be better than any cassette deck you can afford to mix to.

[LongWaveStudio]

Get the Sony MDS-JE530. I would strongly reccomend it. But if you want a more pro machine, i favour the tascam decks out now. You should see the benefits of DAT though, i can't see it leaving the studios for a while. Minidiscs uses data reduction which is never good for mastering. If you're using Minidisc just for archiving, that's allright, but for mastering, DAT or CD would be better. DAT has a higher frequency range as you know (48000). and i have a tascam machine which records atdouble speed to record in 24bit. It makes a difference.
-Rox.

[virtual.ray]

Dolf,if you're still out there the machine I was talking about is the Sony JE-510.