Fantastic performance, features, size, price
Written: Nov 17 '01 (Updated Nov 17 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Small, light, comes with NiMh battery, charger, optical cable and more!
Cons: LCD not backlit, not supposed to use dynamic microphones, no optical output jack.
The Bottom Line: An amazing combination of features, included accessories, size and price. If it had an optical output, it would be perfect.
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| dkadc's Full Review: Sharp MD MT90 MiniDisc Recorder |
I always saw the MiniDisk as a device looking for a reason to exist. Why buy yet another recording device? Heck, I can put anything onto CD-R and play it on any CD deck! Portable tape decks are available, but the audio quality is pretty sad. What CD owner listens to tapes anymore?
When I wanted to record our local high school marching band, a mini-disk recorder was the only logical solution.
The MD-MT90 is tiny, the entire unit can be hidden under a 3.5" floppy disk. It comes with folding "earbud" headphones of decent sound quality, a small "wall brick" AC adapter that also charges the internal battery, a 1/8" stereo headphone to double RCA cable, an optical cable, felt carrying bag, a remote control that goes inline between the headphones and the MD unit, and a pretty comprehensive 48 page instruction manual. An included "quick start" manual had me making my first recording about 3 minutes after I opened the box!
The MD-MT90 can name your tracks, move them, split, edit, delete, and more. Your record level is adjustable for both analog and digital inputs, button presses are accompanied by a beep which can be turned off.
The MD-MT90 has jacks for DC IN, a single jack that performs both LINE IN and OPTICAL IN, a MIC IN jack, and a HEADPHONE jack. The remote plugs into the HEADPHONE jack and has additional connections that go in special slots to the side of the HEADPHONE jack, you can use the headphones without the remote if you desire.
Note there is NO OPTICAL OUTPUT jack. There is also no LINE OUT jack, you use the HEADPHONE jack. Surprising enough, it works great!
The microphone jack is designed for condensor mikes and provides the 1.5 volts DC that these microphones need. While there are good condensor mics available, your best quality full audio spectrum microphones are dynamic. A dynamic mic works like a reversed speaker, sound waves wiggle a small diagphram attached to a voice coil suspended in a magnet. This makes a tiny bit of electricity which represents your audio. When a dynamic mic is plugged into a jack made for a condensor mic, 1.5 volts goes to this coil, moving the coil and possibly reducing the sensitivity of the microphones and quality of the recording. The manual recommends you do not use dynamic mics in the MD-MT90 as it might not work and could cause unpredictable results and possible malfunction.
Great.
Owning several very high quality dynamic microphones I decided to try them anyway. The results were excellent, but Ill have to get a condensor microphone and give it a try also.
In operation the MD90 is silent, I have to hold it to my ear to (barely...) hear the disk spinning inside. It has 40 seconds of memory anti-skip protection, which partly explains the huge battery life on playback: If the player is not being jiggled it will spin the MD for perhaps 10 seconds and read music into its buffer, then stop for spinning for 40 seconds...spin for 10, stop for 40.
The more vibration the player is subjected to, the more the disk spins and I suspect battery life would be reduced a little.
When recording, the MD spins much more than during playback, keeping buffer memory free and helping prevent lost audio.
The MD-MT90 includes a AA NiMh battery, good for 12 hours of playback and about 7 hours of record. Its pretty amazing to play and record for a full day and still have power left over! Just in case, I carry an alkaline AA battery with me, but I have never needed it. A fully depleted NiMh charges to 90% in just 3 1/2 hours, 100% in five hours. Very impressive.
One alkaline AA is also good for 12 hours of playback but "only" 3 hours of record.
The sound is astounding. I was recording a high school marching band during practice, monitoring the recording with the headphones on. I accidentaly bumped the play button and thought they had begun practice again and ran back to record it! LAUGH, but its true. No noise, no hiss, no distortion. Stunning. The algorithm used to compress audio to a minidisk is not, in my opinion, "almost" CD quality. I think it may surpass it!
My only question is durability. Mind you, there is nothing on the MD-MT90 that looks "cheap," I am thinking of all the electronics and mechanics of playing and recording a minidisk, jammed into a box less than 3.5 inches on a side and under 1" thick. If you drop it 10 feet onto a good carpet while recording I doubt it would miss a beat...three feet on concrete and you can probably kiss it goodbye.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
dkadc
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Reviews written: 1
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