Driven by necessity, this week was the first time I brought my Hi-MD recorder to the radio station to record the radioshow and it worked out pretty well, as I’ll detail in a moment.
Typically I just record the show with the aircheck MD deck that’s in the studio, but the input to that deck has been screwed up for the last few weeks. To make up for this I’ve been recording off the air at home, but last week I wasn’t able to make it home before the show and got caught at the station finding the studio deck to be unuseable. Luckily, some kind soul left cables that will patch an 1/8″ plug into our studio patch bay so I tried it out with my cheap-o portable MD that I use as a walkman and I was able to patch it directly into the broadcast board output and record to regular MD.
So I was thus emboldened to give it a shot with the Hi-MD yesterday, which allows me to record in full uncompressed CD quality PCM to a Hi-MD disc, and then upload it directly to my PC in faster than real time. Then I use the Sony WAV Converter program to make it editable in any audio application.
Aside from some slight clipping due to my not setting levels correctly, this first experiment went flawlessly. The feed to the MD deck in our studio actually comes off our air monitors, so the direct board feed I found yields bettter sound quality, too.
Being able to work with pure uncompressed PCM and upload directly to PC saves some time and effort in getting the show ready to be uploaded to the website. It’s nice to finally have some recording technology work as promised.
I don’t know anybody else who also took the plunge into trying Hi-MD, and at least a couple of other radio folks I know were waiting to hear what my experiences would be like. I can say now that I’m pretty confident that Hi-MD makes recording and editing digital audio easier than any other piece of equipment in its price range, and can recommend Hi-MD to anyone who is already familiar with MD equipment.