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DIY-WEBLOG: Monday, January 21, 2002Minidisc.org uncovers two contrasting reviews of Sony's newest minidisc recorder aimed at the business and radio user, the BZ-B50. Both are from RadioWorld. The first, by Carl Lindemann, gives a positive review, but the second, by Frank Beacham, is not so enthusiastic. The BZ-B50 is an update of the MZ-B3, a unit which has been around a few years, and for the longest time was the only portable minidisc recorder with a built-in microphone and speaker. We use one of these recorders at community radio WEFT because of the built-in features and because it's larger form-factor and durability makes it a good candidate to lend out to radio production newbies. Although the sound quality isn't as good as the newest recorders when using a good external microphone, it far surpasses the quality from a handheld cassette recorder which many radio journalists still use. Even with it's reported weaknesses, I'd like to get my hands on a B50 and see how much better it is.
Tuesday, January 15, 2002More digital audio -- Tom's Hardware has an in-depth comparison review of the Terratec DMX 6Fire 24/96 and the Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum sound cards. While the Terratec gets the nod for higher overall recording and playback fidelity it's a lot harder to find in the US, and my research shows that its street price is around $299, whereas the Audigy Platinum is easy to find for as low as $199. I'm still going to wait for the end of the month when the Sound Blaster Extigy gets here.
Wednesday, January 09, 2002Good Digital Audio on the Cheap? Gadzooks! Creative answers some of my wishes with its new Sound Blaster Extigy, a 24-bit external USB sound-"card" with full optical and coaxial/SPDIF digital inputs and outputs. But what really revs me up is its "expected street price" of only $149! I'm a much bigger fan of external audio devices for computers because the inside of the case is an RF nightmare that makes it very difficult to maintain a low noise floor much below -60 db or so, which is about what you can achieve with a good cassette deck using Dolby C or S noise reduction. Digital should be better than that. That's why for serious audio production--but at reasonably low cost--at work I use the Digidesign Digi001, which for a street price of around $800 provides amazingly good 24-bit studio-quality sound. But I can't really justify a $800 sound card for my home production applications. But compare the Extigy with Roland/Edirol's USB interface that costs more like $249, and isn't 24-bit, and it looks like a great deal. I also like the fact that the Extigy is priced almost $100 less than the Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum EX which offers similar quality and features, but is still an internal PCI card -- though it does offer a firewire port. However, I do have some concerns with the user interface you have to use with the Sound Blaster cards. We're trying to use a previous generation Sound Blaster with the breakout box and full digital I/O at our IMC and are finding it frustrating. The sound quality is fine, but the way to select a particular input for recording is amazingly unintuitive, especially for a novice user. And as far as I can tell, there's no reason why it has to be that way. If it's a card that one person will use day-in and day-out you can get used to the quirks. But if you're trying to teach basic audio production to newbies it can be a real impediment. That said, I may have to get my hands on an Extigy and try it out for myself. And Wired reports on a "Pillow Fight in the Living Room" between Microsoft and Real battling for dominance over home entertainment.
Tuesday, January 08, 2002As a corollary to news that DVD players will soon support WindowsMedia, MSNBC reports that TiVo will soon support Real Media. But TiVo still costs $10.00 a month, and the WindowsMedia on DVD will presumably be free. Microsoft is like a crack dealer, no?
Monday, January 07, 2002An update on the DVD/Windows Media story -- The Seattle PI reports that four manufacturers have announced that their DVD players will play back Windows Media files this year: Toshiba, Panasonic, Apex Digital Inc. and Shinco, a Chinese manufacturer. Again, anything that makes DVD players multi-purpose machines capable of playing back almost anything you can burn on a CD-R seems good to me, although I loathe the expansion of the Microsoft hegemony into my video gear. I just hope Windows Media support doesn't come at the expense of mp3 or VCD (MPEG1) support. Maybe they could just round it out and add Quicktime and RealVideo support?
Thursday, January 03, 2002Brian Y. Youn has written this extremely thorough review of the new Sony MZ-1 NetMD minidisc recorder. This is the first MD recorder that allows high-speed PC to MD recording in the digital domain. Unfortunately, the system is utterly crippled by so-called "digital rights management," so as to render it relatively useless to anyone who uses MD for anything besides listening to mp3s. The biggest limitation is that the system does not allow you to transfer recordings made with the MD recorder to the PC at high-speed -- you can only record from the PC to the MD. This would have been the biggest advantage for radio journalists and other sound recordists who typically have difficulty transferring their recordings to their PC, since most portable MD recorders don't have digital outputs, and no MD deck will do it in faster than real-time. This is indicative of the whole disempowering trajectory of "digital rights management" which assumes that a digital recorder user's main application is to duplicate copyrighted material, leaving creative artists, journalists and others who create their own material out in the cold. The recording and electronics industries are truly not very interested in enabling people to create their own material unless they can directly profit from it and control it. If that creative technology also allows for (but isn't exlusively enabled for) piracy, well then they'd just assume cut you off. Camcorders allow you as much creative freedom as they do because they are not very well suited for copying existing programming -- who wants to copy a 2-hour DVD onto a 1-hour DV tape that already costs $9? But that means that DV VCRs are expensive and hard to come by, since they make piracy so much easier -- never mind that they would take wear-and-tear off your camcorder and make editing simpler. It's truly a shame that Sony has crippled a piece of technology that really would make Minidisc the format of choice for most digital recording, especially for those who prefer to use it creatively. Sure, the Net-MD recorder is still useful for making your own recordings, it just doesn't offer any additional advantage over a cheaper unit. Maybe Sony really believes that playing back mp3s really is what MD is best for, but I think that making this bet is going to hurt Sony and MD.
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The DIY files is a storehouse of information to help the do-it-yourself media maker. The DIY-blog will feature the newest entries -- news and info for the media DIYer.
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