using a hi-md
 

I have an at897, and a beachtek dxa8 and a sony mz-rh10 hi-md. I'm wondering if it would be better for the beachtek plug to go into the "line in" or "mic in" of the hi-md. I have to use the beachtek since the at897 goes from a mini 3 pin to a xlr. ANy ideas?

It seems that whenever i'm in the "mic in" recording mode, i'm picking up some hiss, as opposed to line in, which has no hiss, but the volume levels are low despite anything else i try... what kind of a hi-md setup do you guys use?

I'm surprised that line in works at all. You should be using mic in.

yeah, found that out. Line in actually does work, i've noticed significantly less hiss in that, but the audio levels are extremely low.
Mic in is, (as we found out thru trial and tests) the best bet. The sound after a lot of tweaking is actually working out really really well. It seems like the perfect audio solution for us where its nearly impossible for the soundguy to be tethered to the camera man, especially when the camera man is using a glidecam setup. I'm wondering why people dont' use this sort of a sound configuration, or are they?

They are. I'm personally reluctant to consider mindisc because of the limitation that you can make only 1 (!) digital transfer of your own recordings, fer cryin' out loud, so if something happens to your file in post and you want to capture a fresh digital copy from your original disc you're just out of luck - I understand it even erases the original! I was wondering, does this particular model allow you to disable AGC when recording from the mic and set the levels manually?

I agree Steve that the 1time digital transfer is a bit risky. I have a few back up measures though. I plan to capture all the audio on my 24 bit sound card before i transfer it. That way i will have my secondary copy on top of the 1 tmie only transfer. On top of that, as a last measure, our cameras will have decent AT shotgun mics mounted on the hot shoe ports, so if we really need to resort to using the audio from that we can..

This model lets you turn of AGC and then set it to either of the 2 modes which are quiet and super loud, or something close to that. Its limited, i know, but having a mixer that allows you to set your own levels bypasses that limitation, in my opinion.

I understand you can get around the one-time transfer issue by getting a professional level player like the HHB deck to use for your transfers. According to some of the things I've read, the consumer minidisk players actually delete the file if you inadvertently attempt to do a second transfer from the consumer player!!!! That seems really bizarre to me.