[Trombone-l] Advice on Minidisk Recorders

[John Cather]

Some good advise so far. I love this forum. I have a couple things to  
add.

1. Make sure whatever you buy, you can adjust the mic level. So many  
recorders are automatic gain control so that everything is recorded  
to playback at the same volume. Usually the ones with manual gain  
control also have the automatic available as well.

2. If you want good recording capability, for similar price, you can  
use your existing laptop, as someone already alluded to.

They now make a couple USB plug in mics that I hear work pretty well.  
They are designed for podcasting. But musicians report good results  
with instruments. It removes the need for breakout boxes or mixers or  
AD converters. I hope to get one or two for my birthday so I can try  
them out.

I have a little Sharp minidisk recorder. A little tiny stereo mic  
plugged in works very well for rehearsals. I have also plugged it  
into a sound board and made startlingly good recordings. It may not  
be the latest technology, but has worked very well for me. Simple,  
fast, easy and very very compact. The newer units without disk, I'm  
sure, work at least as well. But I wonder what you do when you run  
out of memory and don't have your computer handy to upload to. With  
the disk machine, you just pop in another disk for another 70+  
minutes. They are completely re recordable and relatively cheap.

Hope this helps a little.

John Caher



On Oct 16, 2006, at 10:00 AM, trombone-l- 
request at maillists.samford.edu wrote:

> From: Nick Mahon <nickmahon at rogers.com>
> Date: October 15, 2006 3:23:43 PM PDT
> To: Trombone-l at server5.samford.edu
> Subject: [Trombone-l] Advice on Minidisk Recorders
>
>
> I'm looking to buy a minidisk recorder but don't know where to  
> start my research.  What is the baseline model with recording  
> capabilities?  Which mic should I buy?
>
> Additionally, if anyone wants to sell theirs, I'd be willing to buy.
>
> Thanks,
> Nick Mahon