Re: Mini-discs: To the point...(OT)

["american qabalah" <american@qabalah.com>]

> I'm going to give him source material on MD that he's going to add to.  
>In a
> past life, we've worked together before.  Now, he lives in Texas, i live 
>in
> Denver.  I'm going to send him discs.  Obviously, i want to back up my 
>work
> before trusting it to snail-mail.  I'm working with the portable Sharp MD
> MS-702.  The problem is:  How to best backup the discs?  Clearly, it 
>seems
> that its BEST (in terms of the quality of the backup) to copy the discs 
>to
> another MD player.  The problem is that i don't have a second unit, funds
> are tight, blah blah, blah.  The inability to make backups could delay 
>the
> project anywhere from weeks to a couple of months (when my piggy-bank 
>fills
> back up).

How about this plan:

1) keep your minidisc as a track master.  copy the minidisc to tape, then 
use
the same tape recorder (to preserve tempo) to copy it another minidisc, and
send the new minidisc to your collaborator.

2) your collaborator copies your minidisc to tape, then using the same tape
player (again, to preserve tempo), he monitors what you've done and records
his tracks, without your sounds, independently to his minidisc, then sends 
you
the minidisc of his isolated sounds.  Since all he's using the tape for is 
to
monitor you the quality doesn't have to be sterling.

So by this step you will have two minidiscs:  your track master and his 
track
master.

3) provided you have a four-track or computer mixing software you can then
record to it first from your track master, then from his track master, and
then mix down
the resulting four tracks to a final mixed master recording.

(The only difficulty is time-synchronizing the two recordings, but if you 
put
some tempo
clicks at the beginning of the recording in step (1) and then have him 
emulate
those clicks
when he records in step (2) it's not insurmountable, especially if you are
using a
computer.  You could do 8 clicks of the same tempo on your recording, then
have him click along to the last 4 in his recording.  It's cheap but
effective.  They don't have to be in time with the song, they just have to 
be
in synch with each other for the purposes of synchronizing the tracks in 
the
final mixdown.)

If you don't have a 4-track or a good enough computer to do step (3) above,
you could try this:

1)  copy the minidisc to tape and send him the tape
2)  he monitors you with the tape and records his isolated sounds to a
minidisc and sends you his minidisc
3)  you play back his sounds and re-record your own sounds "live", then 
catch
both your and his sounds on tape.

All this requires is that each of you have both a minidisc recorder and a 
tape
recorder.  In either case, your collaborator is only using your sounds to
monitor so the quality doesn't have to be perfect.

Good luck!
Tim