In looking at recorders, I was wondering which is the best option for home recording, or is there even any difference in the first place?
I'd think not since its all digital, but I am not technical enough to know.
Thanks in advance
Posted Feb 22, 2022, 2:20 PM UTC
I can't really tell a difference between a portable or deck on digital recordings but analog will no doubt be better on a deck. There's an old Marlene Dietrich blog post where she argues decks are also better on digital based on measurements but hard to say whether it's even something you could hear. The ATRAC chip I believe is the same in both devices so theoretically it should be pretty close on a digital recording.
Sound wise has already been covered so I won't touch on that but for ease of use Net-MD and Web Minidisc is vastly superior.
You can title the MD's you already have with a keyboard. You can use the mp3/flac's you have on your computer and transfer them to MD directly, transferring the titles as you go. And the transfer is quite a bit faster than real time recording.
Most of the Net-MD recorders are portables and the few decks that are Net-MD are very expensive. So in my opinion Net-MD portable for the win.
I like to think that the permanently powered decks have better written discs since they are less concerned with power saving. Just a hunch though, no actual data to back that up.
In terms of quadio quality they should be nearly identical.
The most important factors in recording with MD is what ATRAC generation it's in, and usability/features.
General rule of thumb is that anything with ATRAC 4 or later is "CD quality", so any device you use for recording that's newer than ~1996 will produce good results regardless if it's portable or a deck.
That being said, I'd say a deck is better for recording with. You can control the gain (most portables have auto-levels which doesn't always produce the best results), and they're generally less fussy to record with than a portable.
I say get a deck with ATRAC 4 or later and get a portable player.
So theres no difference copying music via pc/cd player/whatever via the input but decks offer more control.
Get a ATRAC 4 or newer portable or deck. Right, thats what I'll look for.
In general, yes.
But if you really want to get in to the weeds...
In the digital realm, some decks offer "wide bit stream" which allows for input of up to 96khz / 24-bit hi-res audio via an optical connection. Note, however that what's actually written to the disc will be 44.1khz 20-bit - that being said, allowing for a higher quality input gives the deck more data to work with, and in theory should provide for better compression / quality on-disc.
You'll have to refer to the specific decks manual for more info about this, because it's only present on some decks, and even then some decks need it to be manually enabled whereas other decks will do it automatically upon sensing a hi-res optical input. Also note that this doesn't work on NetMD - all NetMD data is converted to 44.1khz / 16-bit.
In the analog realm, all audio is 44.1khz / 16-bit - however, most people would agree that the analog to digital converter in most decks is better than what's in the portables, and in general a pair of RCA jacks are more robust than a single 3.5mm jack. Plus there's the ability to easily adjust levels as needed (some portables allow you to do this but it's a pain).
Right, thats a bit to consider.
It seems like decks are the way to go, with NetMD being the simpler option, but analog allowing for a bit better quality (sorta-kinda?)
I'm in no rush, as I have a player already, so I'll have a proper look into this. Thanks for your help and info.
Interesting! Do you know which decks recognize 24/96? My MDS-JE520 is labeled as wide bit stream but recognizes only up to 48kHz. I tried 96kHz output from PC but it doesn't recognize it.
I hope you don't mind a very late reply. When talking about analog, would that be "line out"? I'm just looking at CD players and the ones I've seen have a "line out".
If so, I would connect a line out with a line in, right? You can't mix analog line out with optical line in, for example.
Yeah, “line-out” and “line-in” are analog input/output.
And yes, you are correct about mixing analog and digital in/out. However, most portables have a combined analog/optical input so in those cases you’d just use the appropriate cable for the type of recording you want to do.
I was under the impression that wide bit stream decks have an ADC that also takes advantage of 20 or 24-bit technology so you can get really good recordings from cassettes or vinyl.
No, wide bit stream only works over optical. It doesn’t work on the analog inputs.
Starting from ATRAC 4.5 good quality!