I haven''t really done much of my own sampling, as I don''t have a decent mic, though I can get quite a clean sound with my £8 multimedia mic, but I am sure it''s lacking in frequency response! I need something that I can record sounds that doesn''t pick up too much background noise. I guess in this case I would be needing a directional mic of some sort? Budget is not a problem, though I don''t really want to blow £100+ on a mic until I know what I am doing. I will mainly be sampling with a Sony MZ-R700PC minidisc (on normal mode, not LP). Though I am open to buying something that has a digital output to transfer sounds without noise to a laptop through perhaps a USB audio recorder? Any Ideas? Thanks "Music is not just something you do, it''s a part of who you are!"

HA!

Well, I thought of a new way to get Audio into my PC without worrying about noise from an analogue output on a Minidisc.

Have a MiniDV Camcorder with firewire Plug mic into camcorder, plug camcorder into PC, and capture audio from firewire! Plus I can choose between 12 and 16 bit audio on the mini DV!

When there''s a will there''s a way!

apparently there''s a few "HACKS" out there too to mod your Minidisc to provide SPDIF output, but since I have a laptop with no SPDIF input it''s pretty useless to me.

Y.

quote: Well, I thought of a new way to get Audio into my PC without worrying about noise from an analogue output on a Minidisc.

Have a MiniDV Camcorder with firewire Plug mic into camcorder, plug camcorder into PC, and capture audio from firewire! Plus I can choose between 12 and 16 bit audio on the mini DV!

I''d just like to point out that if the noise was coming from your analogue output on your MD then this wouldn''t solve it, all it does is adds an extra couple of AD conversions. Minidisc players *usually* have fairly good AD units, whereas most sound cards you get are quite noisy. What the firewire card will do is mean that the noisy soundcard isn''t involved in the recording.

One thing to note - a soundcard with an optical input would be much better. Firstly, you could keep the signal digital throughout the whole transfer from MD to PC (this way, you MD does a DA, the camera does an AD). Secondly, I think ATRAC (the compression used when not in LP mode) is 24bit. Thus either of the choices between 12 and 16 are considerably less than what you have to start with.

quote: apparently there''s a few "HACKS" out there too to mod your Minidisc to provide SPDIF output, but since I have a laptop with no SPDIF input it''s pretty useless to me.

Yeah, it shouldn''t be too hard since SPDIF is just the electrical equivalent of TOSLINK (electric pulse = light pulse type thing). It wouldn''t even need to be a hack, you can buy TOSLINK->SPDIF converters. Though as you said, it is useless anyway

Final thoughts: After rereading your post, I''ve realised that I misinterpreted it. I''ll leave what I said there, because it is all correct (to my knowledge ), but if you are straight out recording on the camera then no MD is involved, thus there are the same number of AD conversions etc. Sound quality will *probably* be less, I haven''t heard any sound from them, but I do have great faith in ATRAC

Trying is the first step towards failure.

Yeah, mis-interperated..

The camcorder is a Digital variety (Mini-DV) so it records audio in Digital, and it''s PCM 12 or 16 bit. Minidisc compresses the audio apparently so it''s not so good. Not only that I can get the audio into my laptop via Firewire in Digital, so the only thing I need is a decent mic for sampling..

any ideas? I''ve heard about a Audio Technica AT822 but $340 for a mic just starting out??