Went out to dinner at the Barnaby’s on West Gray with my friend Laura last night, and she brought the Sony MZ-R700 minidisc recorder I gave her ages ago, as she doesn’t need it anymore.
I managed to print out the manual last night, and I’ve been using the MD to record the John Peel [RealAudio: feed] show from a RealAudio feed on the UKs BBC Radio 1. The MD recorder is a MZ-R700. Features include :
- Line in / Mic in / Optical in
- Easy play/review
- Manual record level control
- Track naming
- Track editing and deletion
- Long play (LP2) recording (160 min)
Took me a few minutes to learn how the menu system works, but when recording from a potentially flaky source (like RealAudio feeds) the easy reverse play/review feature really helps to go back and be able to recue up at the right spot for recording. This type of thing is a nightmare with cassette, which is how I used to do this.
Feed quality on RealAudio is ranging from about 11KBps – 32 KBps which not too much breaking up, which is pretty good for a dialup connection. But I think I need DSL !!!!
