Stand-alone digital recorder to replace my minidisc recorder?

  • Thread starter Thread starter El Baroda
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El Baroda

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Years back, I had a Sony MiniDisc recorder as part of my home hi fi system. The MD recordings that I made at the time were very clean since I had the speakers muted and monitored the job via a headphone. My biggest problem then was converting the MD files to CD. I had to upload the MD file to my PC using a portable MD player and then convert the file to WAV or MP3, and then burn to CD. Now that the MD is dead, I would like to know if there's an SD-based stand-alone unit that will simply take its place in my set up. I do my recordings now live either with a Zoom H2 or a videocam but the results are far behind in quality (lots of background noise) since neither can record by line input from my stereo system. I have tried recording via computer but it does not work for me. Your comments and suggestions will be most appreciated.
 
El Baroda said:
Years back, I had a Sony MiniDisc recorder as part of my home hi fi system. The MD recordings that I made at the time were very clean since I had the speakers muted and monitored the job via a headphone. My biggest problem then was converting the MD files to CD. I had to upload the MD file to my PC using a portable MD player and then convert the file to WAV or MP3, and then burn to CD. Now that the MD is dead, I would like to know if there's an SD-based stand-alone unit that will simply take its place in my set up. I do my recordings now live either with a Zoom H2 or a videocam but the results are far behind in quality (lots of background noise) since neither can record by line input from my stereo system. I have tried recording via computer but it does not work for me. Your comments and suggestions will be most appreciated.
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There are quite a few at varying price levels.

The Olympus units are very nice - I have and old LS-10 but all the LS range are good. The LS-100 is the top model, The LS-20M also includes an HD camera (sells for around £250), and two new models (LS-12 and LS-14) are just coming to the market now.

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The small Roland and Tascam units are also very nice.

Top of the tree of the portable units is the Sony PCM-D50, Nagra SD and Nagra LINO - the Nagra SD is better and more flexible than the LINO.

If you want to go very high quality at a later date, the Tascan DR100II and Sony PCM-D50 both also have digital inputs (S-PDIF on the Tascam - optical on the Sony) so you can use them as a "bit bucket" with a very high quality mini mixer with digital outputs like the AETA MIXY as all the quality is in the mixer as you are only using the recorder to store the digits.

I hope this helps.
 
I used to use an older Boss digital recorder. I believe it was a br-112 or something like that, had a slot for an SD card so transferring was painless! If you have the time and patience, I would consider PC based recording. I am in the process now of getting over the learning curve and I can tell you the quality is 2nd to none compared to a stand alone digital recorder. I still use my Korg D-12 to sketch things out for the time being and that works well, but those do not have a SD card slot, so its bounce and burn when I do that. Check out some lower end Boss/Roland units and that should suit you well.

Edit: as I read the title, I realized it was a stand alone recorder, not a digital multitracker. Palm to face!
 
TexMex Mustache said:
I used to use an older Boss digital recorder. I believe it was a br-112 or something like that, had a slot for an SD card so transferring was painless! If you have the time and patience, I would consider PC based recording. I am in the process now of getting over the learning curve and I can tell you the quality is 2nd to none compared to a stand alone digital recorder. I still use my Korg D-12 to sketch things out for the time being and that works well, but those do not have a SD card slot, so its bounce and burn when I do that. Check out some lower end Boss/Roland units and that should suit you well.

Edit: as I read the title, I realized it was a stand alone recorder, not a digital multitracker. Palm to face!
Click to expand...

You have an awesome username. :thumbs up:
 
I too use a PC but I run Linux and for basic recording there is almost zero learning curve if you use the proper distribution and everything is 100% free. I use a usb audio input that cost me $8.00 shipped to my door to get the sounds into the computer. I can run my free Rackarrak Guitar effects, DAW, Drum Machines, Sequencers, Synthesizers and just about anything else at the same time. I use Audacity (it is freeware) on both Windows and Linux for a lot of the multitrack recording. It is really nice having the visual representation onscreen. Running a backing track or drum loop as you play. It also has an array of effects. It is a good and inexpensive way to get started. In Windows I would suggest Asio4all to minimize latency to practically zero.
My thoughts ...
Kevin
 
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