Re: [microsound] md field rec

[Derek Holzer <derek@xxxxxx>]

one portable MD of choice for sound artists seems to be the sony MZ-R35, or any 
close cousins. has mike (lo/hi input switch) and line (variable level) inputs, 
line and headphone out. all pretty standard. the REALLY nice feature is the 
scroll-wheel! if you label your samples, you can find them incredibly quickly 
just by rolling with your thumb. no loop feature, however. sounds handy, but i 
have only ever seen it on fullsize decks. this MZ-R35 is by no means a new 
machine. i bought mine at a prague pawnshop two years ago, and it was already 
not-so-fresh. janek schaefer uses one of these in his live sets, and voicecrack 
use something like three or four. try ebay and see what turns up....

for mikes, i usually use a sony ecm-ms907. it's the standard stereo condensor 
mike. but i've never been really happy with it. it's small, yes, but it never 
quite seems to grab enough of the "far away" sounds (especially outdoors!), and 
always seems to pick up too much of the "room hiss" indoors. but that's 
condensor mikes for ya....

i've had nice results close-miking things with a shure SM-57. because it's 
dynamic, there's good direct response and no "extra ambience" like the 
condensors. the [XLR--1/4" plug--mini plug] arrangement gets bulky quickly, 
however, and is not too stable in an MD player's tiny little jacks. and this is 
without the impedence transformer which is supposed to remove noise, but often 
just picks up more RF interference than it elminates! i have seen beautiful 
frames with built in XLR jacks and pre-amps, designed to house the MD unit, 
marketed to journalists and priced to stay on the shelf. 

one other thing to consider.... there are so few ways to get digital out from 
an MD player. maybe more fullsize decks do this, but not enough, it seems. i 
always associated this with some corperate copy-protection scheme. anyway, if 
anyone can recall, there was a nice desktop MD drive that looked a bit like an 
external disk drive or a CB burner, obviously made to be part of someone's 
computer music setup. it was cheap (250 bucks or so) and had two flavors of 
digital out! i would love to track one of these down. any clues appreciated.

best,
derek