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[sjzeil]

Not sure if this is a bug, a wish list item, or just my own poor grasp of the interface: when using the recorder with LPs I'd like to take advantage of auto-track splitting. Even with the minimal level set to 1 or 2%, I find that MJ reliably detects the end of tracks (particularly if I enter the track times), but all too often it loses several seconds of the intro for the next track. (This may be because I listen to a lot of acoustic folk music where a common intro is a picking pattern on a single stringed instrument.)

For the first track, the solution is simple. Turn off the "wait for sound to start". But MJ drops back into the "wait for sound" mode in between tracks. This does not seem to be the logical way for the "auto-split" and "wait for sound" controls to interact. Is this an accident or by design? Is there any way to get the auto track splitting to actually just split the tracks instead of stop-wait-restart each time?

Failing that, if I use the media editor to split the tracks manually, is there any easy way to get the CDDB info to properly label the tracks? Right now, I'm just going to GraceNote's web site, looking up the album, and copy-and-pasting each track title in the Media Editor's "Save as" box. That's kind of frustrating when I know that the recorder's track lookup feature can supply that info automatically if I were able to use auto-split.

[Mr_X]

Doubt it's a bug. Don't have a good answer, but if you're able to set the min level to 1%, then maybe you need to record at a higher level. Unfortunately, it'll take some test recordings to get the level right by raising the level and playing back and listening to hear if you're getting distortion. Raise it as high as you can without getting distortion, and then the noise level of the LP will hopefully be higher than 1%, so you can set the threshold higher. The beginnings of the songs of course would need to be louder than the background noise of the LP...

[JohnT]

Use the "Auto volume" setting button in the recording settings dialog. Make sure you're running the turntable output through a "phono" pre-amp. Place the needle at one of the louder sections of the LP and then press the "start test" button. It will automatically set an optimum volume level which avoids excessive clipping. I agree with MR_X that your input level must be pretty low if you can use 1 or 2% for a threshold, either that or you have a VERY good turntable/cartridge and very clean LP's. A low input level will make it difficult for MJ to distinguish between "true" silence and the quiet music sections.

[sjzeil]

Thanks for the responses.

I do use a phono preamp. I can't entirely discount the possibility that my input levels are too low, though I've tried to compensate for that. I've tried recording the output of a variety of devices (LP's, cassettes, and minidiscs) with different software and had the impression that they all seemed a bit low even with the recording levels set high (a property of my SB Live soundcard's aux in?), though the overall quality was quite satisfactory.

I find that the MJ auto volume level control goes all over the place (60%-95%) even on repeated trials on the same section of music. I've currently set the volume at about 70% because when the autovolume control stayed much higher it would subsequently warn about distortion. Also, recording at that level, if I later use the Media Editor to normalize the volume level to, say, 95%, there's actually not a very dramatic change in volume, which I took as an indicator that I'm already somewhere in that neighborhood.

I'll give it a try at higher levels, listening for distortion "by ear".

I still wonder, though, whether it would not be a useful option to split tracks without entering the "waiting for sound" process. When recording from most sources, the inter-track gap isn't really that large that it would be distracting if it were preserved (and I suspect that, if the tracks were trimmed of all that separating material, I would then wind up burning my CD's with the "insert silence between tracks" box checked).