Podcast
Features
Comments
May 9th, 2001
Sony DAT decks (including the PCM-M1 that I have) and some mini-disk players have this 7 pin rectangular plug. There are cables that covert this to digital COAX, and to Sony i-link which I believe to be IEEE 1394 or firewire. But the cable itself looks differnt than the connector for firwire on the macintosh. Even more confusing I don’t see why any of this needs to go through a sound card is there a way to connect it to a parrellel port, serial port or usb?
So
1) What audio cards do people reccomend for using with the digital COAX (such as SONY Part number RK-DA10P) ?
pc/windows?
pc/linux?
macintosh?
2) How do you connect the i-link cable (such as SONY part number RK-DA10P) to a
pc/windows?
pc/linux?
macintosh?
I have a Sony MiniDisk which I connect from the headphone socket to the analogue inputs on my Audiophile 2496 soundcard. I record in Bias Peak 4. The problem is that although the sound seems fine on the MiniDisk, the levels on the computer are very low. The level was hovering at the fifth segment of the levels display on the MiniDisk when I was recording and it sounded fine on the headphones. Am I doing something wrong during transfer to the Mac?
It looks like you’re doing it right, try adjusting your headhpone output levels and see if you get any improvement. Does it sound OK when you listen to the minidisc. or does it seem low there too? The headphone out should give plenty of level to a line-in, maybe too much!
Thanks for that Jeff.
Greetings–
I am more than green in regards to recording and editing. I was hoping to buy a md recorder (sony mz n707 came recomended from this site)– and then I was hoping to down load the sound into my i-movie…
HOWEVER— when I talk to sony –they tell me their mini disc recorders aren’t mac compatible– and to be frank– when I read the few posts before this one– I didn’t understand what you were talking about….can anyone help?
-Leah
I use a Sony MZ-N707 and a PC. But the uploading process should be the same with a MAC. First go to radio shack and buy either one cable that will plug into the headphone jack of your MD player and the other end will plug into your line in on your computer, if you have no line in, then you would plug into the jack that is the input for your microphone on your MAC. If Radio Shack does not have a cable with two plugs, but only a plug on one end and an input on the other, then buy two cables and piece them together.
What you are doing is running the sound out from a digital recording, converting it to analog, and then converting it back to digital when it enters the computer. Amazingly the sound is not really distorted or quality lessened in doing this, at least not to the human ear.
Once you have the cable running out of the MD recorder and into a line in jack of your computer you need some software to tell your computer to record. Can your imovie do this? If not the editing software for the MAC that most people choose is protools, you can download it free. I use a program on the PC called soundforge, and it has a record function which I use to record the sound from the MD recorder into my computer. Be aware that sound files can be really big especially if they are in an uncompressed format like a .wav file. Good luck. -Barbara
I am trying to import audio from a Sony MZ-N707 minidisc to my power mac G4. First I used a mini to mini analog cable to connect the headphone jack of the MD to the mic jack on the G4, and recorded using Audacity (open source) but got only hiss. Then I read on the audacity website that I should use the line in port on my computer, not the mic jack. Line in? what does this mean? Does it mean one of the USB ports, or the firewire ports? There’s no input marked line in on my hard drive. Do I need to get a separate device? Please help, someone.
I’m not absolutely positive about the newer Macs, but on old ("beige") Mac equipment, there’s only one input jack that can either be line-level or mic level.
If you use a regular mini plug in the jack, it acts as a line input. (Because of that, an "ordinary" PC headset microphone with a standard plug requires a preamp to work on a Mac.) Apple made a "PlainTalk" microphone with an elongated plug, so if you see one of those and need to use it on a newer Mac, you might GENTLY see if it fits all the way into the input jack of your newer Mac. The PlainTalk mics (as the name implies) were intended to use with voice recognition software.
SO, just use the standard-size mini plug and adjust your output volume on the MD and your input level on the Mac until you get acceptable results.
I’m about to buy a Protools editing system and am debating between getting the Mbox 2 or the mini Mbox that just came out. I’m being told that the only difference is that the Mini has only one mic input as opposed to two.
I’m pretty new to sound editing and wonder whether this difference is as signifcant as the price difference– $150….
What do you think?