HHD MDP500-mini disc field recorder

It's a point. But MD and DAT are digital formats so it's not quite the same as an analog transfer. DAT is essentially self resolved and will drift as a rule no more than a Flash recorder will. It all depends on the clock. If DAT is locked to the same time base as the video it won't drift at all. MD is also clocked but the compression could cause problems. MD was used a bunch on small films at one point. I would guess that a box in good shape is probably at least as stable as crystal locked analog, which was the gold standard up till fairly recently. A lot of your experience will depend on what your trying to do. If you want to do the modern video doc - LONG take (one hour or so) then you will probably have some problems with sync (with any of the above) if your not locked to the camera by at least word clock. If your doing traditional, less than three minute, takes you probably wont.
 
Chadfish said:
Steve I did not know that files could drift more due to the capture process of MD. That's good to know.
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They won't. Well they could IF your going out analog and re-digitizing AND one of your clocks is off. If your transferring digitally your moving a sample at a time over and your file is a clone of the original.

Where MD might give you more problems is the format conversion from FLAC to PCM. Once it's converted it's a regular digital stream and will be clocked over sample accurate. In general the biggest problem with MD is the consumer nature (and quality control) of most of the recorders.
 
Noiz2 said:
They won't. Well they could IF your going out analog and re-digitizing AND one of your clocks is off. If your transferring digitally your moving a sample at a time over and your file is a clone of the original.

Where MD might give you more problems is the format conversion from FLAC to PCM. Once it's converted it's a regular digital stream and will be clocked over sample accurate. In general the biggest problem with MD is the consumer nature (and quality control) of most of the recorders.
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IF you can actually capture the recordings digitally and transcode them in to some useful file format. IIRC, that was one of the major turn-offs for MD: Sony's Draconian DRM implementation that all but eliminated direct digital transfer.
 
Richard Crowley said:
IF you can actually capture the recordings digitally and transcode them in to some useful file format. IIRC, that was one of the major turn-offs for MD: Sony's Draconian DRM implementation that all but eliminated direct digital transfer.
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Exactly - I've been reviewing the HHB manual for the particular unit the OP is purchaasing. According to the manual, there are essentially three ways to get one's audio from its disk into a file that would be usable for editing into a video, all of which involve real-time playback and capture ...
1: play it back through the unbalanced RCA line level analog outputs into an audio interface and re-record it as an analog source;
2: play it back through the SPDIF digital outputs into an audio interface with a SPDIF input and re-record it as a digital source (conversion from 44.1 to 48 kHz then necessary to use it with video); or
3: play it back as streaming audio through its USB port directly into the computer with the HHB acting as a USB audio device and re-record it.

The actual files on the disk are never made visible to a host PC even when the recorder is connected to a computer via USB, thus direct digital file transfer with subsequent conversion to wav is just not in the cards.
 
How soon we forget. Yes in general transfer is a REAL TIME thing. So is DAT and all non file based systems. You can't drag a file off a miniDV tape either. There has been a way with some recorders to transcode off the disk to a file on the computer but it was not a common work flow. You don't want a "file transfer" anyway because the ATRAC file isn't going to do you any good in post. You are always going to transcode the file.

Richard, that may be an issue IF you were using a consumer Sony MD player. I used one and never had any trouble at all digitally transferring sound I recorded. So YMMV, however we are talking about a HHB field recorder here not a Sony consumer player. He should have no problem at all transferring sounds. Especially since the box has two digital transfer options built in.

Dr. Dave, read the thread this box is better than a $150 flash recorder.

Steve, ? You seem to think that digitally transferring a file is the same as going through an analog tape generation. It's not. A digital transfer is a bit by bit copy of the information on tape/disk (in this case if it's ATRAC encoded it would be transcoded first and then transfered). You are NOT rerecording when you transfer a digital stream, at least not in the way you are implying. You are making a digital copy.
And your last point is??? Why would you want to do it in software when the decoder that is optimized for the format is built in? If it is that transfers are going to be real time, yes that is true. If it's that somehow your not going to be able to get a WAV or AIFF file out of your recordings your wrong. THe digital transfer is sending the audio data straight into your computer. WAV, AIFF, SD2F, etc are all the same data with different headers and in some cases a swap in MSB VS LSB. THe point is it doesn't mater if your pulling a stream off the disk or a file except in transfer time.

You made me do a search for the recorder because some MD recorders could actually record WAV files directly on the disk. The HHB can't, but I did find a good review of the unit by the LA FCP Users group. THey tested it as a double system recorder and liked it a lot.
 
Noiz2 said:
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Steve, ? You seem to think that digitally transferring a file is the same as going through an analog tape generation. It's not. A digital transfer is a bit by bit copy of the information on tape/disk (in this case if it's ATRAC encoded it would be transcoded first and then transfered). You are NOT rerecording when you transfer a digital stream, at least not in the way you are implying. You are making a digital copy.
And your last point is??? Why would you want to do it in software when the decoder that is optimized for the format is built in? If it is that transfers are going to be real time, yes that is true. If it's that somehow your not going to be able to get a WAV or AIFF file out of your recordings your wrong. THe digital transfer is sending the audio data straight into your computer. WAV, AIFF, SD2F, etc are all the same data with different headers and in some cases a swap in MSB VS LSB. THe point is it doesn't mater if your pulling a stream off the disk or a file except in transfer time....
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No, I'm well aware that a digital stream is not the same thing as an analog generation and would not have a similar quality loss. If all we're concerned with is the quality of the reproduction there would be no issue. But not everyone is aware that a digital transfer is not the same thing as a direct file copy such as in moving a BWF file off of a CF card and dropping it into an editor. And yes, I'm aware that when we do a digital transfer the clock of the receiving device is locked to the clock of the transmitting device. But we still ultimately have to get the file from the ATRAC format into a format that is can be dropped onto an NLE timeline and married to a video file, hopefully with frame-accurate sync. The 292kb/sec compressed ATRAC file recorded at a 44.1kHz sample rate ultimately has to be procssed into a 48kHz uncompressed PCM file in order to use it with video and there's a lot of places where the clock variances between the various devices can affect the outcome. The further we get from using the shared common timebase for the original audio recording device and the video recording device that's necessary for frame-accurate sync, the more 'drift' will enter the picture when the files are combined in the editor.
 
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The HHB MD is one of the best recorders I've ever had, and I have had plenty. Big, chunky and the sound quality is extremely good. I have no issues at all with MD quality, unlike mp3s. They are pretty bomb proof and when I broke my first, I reordered another the same day.

The only thing I don't like is that the usb output is ignored by some computers - a common issue, I'm told - but one firmly in the computer, not the HHB.

Domestic MD is pretty dead, and in pro circles they're on the way out - however, Tascam still find sales sufficient to maintain the production.

I've got plenty her still in use, and I use them in theatres a lot where visiting artistes still have their show tracks as MD or CD, and MD, simply because of the track naming wins every single time. Far more CDs don't read than MDs.

When people moan about MD quality, I discount it simply because we're talking very small differences that the benefits MD offers easily outweigh. I'm currently recording audio at 96KHz, 24 bit and very often I realise what I've been working on actually came of MD, and I didn't notice!
 
No, I'm well aware that a digital stream is not the same thing as an analog generation and would not have a similar quality loss. If all we're concerned with is the quality of the reproduction there would be no issue.
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It also doesn't have any more of a sync issue than a file. Both are compleatly clock dependent.

But not everyone is aware that a digital transfer is not the same thing as a direct file copy such as in moving a BWF file off of a CF card and dropping it into an editor.
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Actually it is almost the same thing. Both are digital bit accurate transfers. The bigest difference is that the real time transfer is recording at 1:1 and the file is coming over in faster and using checksums and such to verify that the two match.

And yes, I'm aware that when we do a digital transfer the clock of the receiving device is locked to the clock of the transmitting device. But we still ultimately have to get the file from the ATRAC format into a format that is can be dropped onto an NLE timeline and married to a video file, hopefully with frame-accurate sync. The 292kb/sec compressed ATRAC file recorded at a 44.1kHz sample rate ultimately has to be procssed into a 48kHz uncompressed PCM file in order to use it with video and there's a lot of places where the clock variances between the various devices can affect the outcome.
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Actually the conversion happens inside the MD player, so yes it could break, just as anything can but there are no user screwupable places for the path to break. And SR conversion is done all the time. Dolby Digital is 44.1, pretty much all music is done at 44.1, film sound libraries are at all kinds of sample rates and all production sound up until the early 90's was done analog. You can always screw things up, there is no way around that. I would trust the clock on a $1000+ ($1200 - $1400 are the new prices I could find for the HHB) box over a consumer $150 flash recorder. Odds are your going to be trying to sync to video that was recorded on tape. If you want to worry about sync that is the far more likely problem spot.


The further we get from using the shared common timebase for the original audio recording device and the video recording device that's necessary for frame-accurate sync, the more 'drift' will enter the picture when the files are combined in the editor.
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That is a possibility not a given. It takes a LOT of drift before you get down to "frame" accurate problems. Reading your post one would think that sync sound wasn't even possible till file based recorders. And you have this assumption that file based is inherently more stable. Files are clocked by computers (in your DAW) and that has been one of the weakest links. When we were all tape based and using TC (about 1/16 the resolution) we almost never had drift problems. With files the video playback is dependent on what Quick Time "thinks" the frame rate is and Quick Time gets it wrong some times, not often but a lot more often than a video deck locked to house black does.

But lets look at a typical late 90's post flow. Production would be recorded on a Nagra using Crystal sync. Those tapes are digitized at 48 and then pulled down so editors can work off video. THey are then pulled back up for premixes and recorded to mag (analog magnetic film), those are played back on stage and mixed to another mag master. That print master is piped off to a DolbyDigital recorder box where it is digitized at 44.1 in a compressed format (much like MP3). and that is how you see it in the theatre. It gets shifted again to get back to video speed and put on DVD's.

It gets jerked around a little less now but not that much. It's just not that big a deal. And if you feel real bad about it it's important to remember that there is about 3.5 frames of sync difference between the first and last rows in a theatre, that's about 7,000 samples.
 
They say nothing ever dies on the Internet. Just found a review still online of the HHB MDP-500 recorder by Dan Brockett (puredrifting) dating from 2001. As he has had some experience with it recording double system sound, perhaps he'll weigh-in on the thread with any updates/impressions of its suitability. Your comments not withstanding, Noiz, I'm still concerned about its ability to maintain sync from one end to the other of the long takes such as often found in many event and concert shoots. Because of the need to decompress from MPEG-like compression, and then having to further convert that to a 48kHz sample rate before using it incorporating it in the project in the NLE, I would expect it to have similar problems with drift to those many people experience trying to use a file-based recorder set to record in MP3 as as the master device for double-system sound. I would expect no problem at all for wild sound, and little problem for short takes, but signifigant loss of sync by the end of a take lasting, say, 10 minutes or more. I would expect the same wisdom that says MP3 is not a suitable mastering format would also apply to ATRAC and for all the same reasons. But I haven't tried it so I could be wrong. That being said, I've spotted some of the more professional units on the market lately at good prices and they certainly look to me to be more usable than the popular Zooms, etc. I'm intrigued with the possibilities so I'm thinking I might just pick one up to play around with if I find it at a steal.
 
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Steve,

For Extra long takes (over 10 min) I would be concerned with sync also, but with out a locking sync to the camera I would be concerned with sync on any recorder. Even if the recorder is like a rock the camera might be drifting.

Speculation/ assumptions on my part (somewhat based on experience) is that the big difference is the clock and that consumer products are all about playing back music and doing the odd recording. It doesn't mater much if their clock is not stable (with reason), people are not going to hear it. Moving into the realm of (semi)professional recorders the clocks get a lot more stable. I wouldn't expect long take (3 -10 min)stability from the Zoom H2, but I would from the HD-P2. I have seen surprising stability in some cheap recorders, but I think it was probably that particular box. If your loose on your clock specs every once in a while your going to get one dead on.

My experience is that conversions (SR and format) are not the usual suspects in a drift situation but it is certainly another spot in the chain where you could have a problem.

Chadfish, add some more posts, we are aiming for at least 25 pages!
 
I just picked up this phonautograph from a yard sale for like .75 cents. It's got some issues with drift when I do the conversion to the computer, but still, it was cheap enough to justify the added time spent getting the clips digitized.

Here's an example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7Gi6j4w3DY

In your face Edison!
 
Phonogram is a dead technology. Your never going to find lamp black!

I smiled at the "never made a profit" part. He had a recorder with no player, how was that going to sell? THe irony is that this is essentially how sound is recorded optically on to film. So in away it ended up really "in his face" ;~)
 
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