I have a Powerbook with the audio line-in port and a HI-MD minidisc recorder...If you capture audio through that line-in using Audacity, are you seeing an appreciable loss of quality from the file transfer you use with Sony's software (on PCs only, which I also have access to)?

I used to capture through the line out on my MZ-N10 and the results were pretty good, but obviously you're losing quality. It's certainly good enough to use, and probably still better than recording to camera. Jay Rose over at DVMag has written that in his tests he was able to do an analog transfer (using regular minidisc) that only dropped the signal to noise ratio by 3db. However, I'm sure he's got a hell of a soundcard. At the very least, I would use a portable unit that had a line out.

Thanks! As per my reply in that other thread, I'll be transferring digitally initially, but I guess the line out is the only way to use the archived discs after your one allowable transfer...Maybe worth the risk as a backup if the quality loss isn't too shocking.

You should look into that third party hack I referred to. It's supposed to be pretty reliable. I don't know if it will still work if you've already made a transfer using Sonic Stage, but I believe it will allow unlimited transfers. It shouldn't be too hard to find at minidisc.org.

Cool, I'll look into it...Do you know where I can find Jay Rose's article exactly? I looked on DV's website but couldn't find that one...

The Jay Rose comment was from an old post in their forum archives. I did some searches and couldn't find it, or maybe I misremembered. Here's some links to posts in which he discusses analog transfers that resulted in a s/n loss of 9 db to 12 db. It varies a lot depending on the gear. He does state that even an analog transfer is better than recording to camera.

http://www.forums.dv.com/jive3/thread.jspa;jsessionid=IJBBD1IFLRWGGQSNDBCSKHSCJUMEKJVN?untiRecursion=true&threadID=300053575

http://www.forums.dv.com/jive3/thread.jspa;jsessionid=IJBBD1IFLRWGGQSNDBCSKHSCJUMEKJVN?untiRecursion=true&threadID=93800014

http://www.forums.dv.com/jive3/thread.jspa;jsessionid=IJBBD1IFLRWGGQSNDBCSKHSCJUMEKJVN?untiRecursion=true&threadID=34100008

Article on minidisc.

http://www.dv.com/news/news_item.jhtml?LookupId=/xml/feature/2000/rose1200

You may have already seen this article, but if you haven't it's a must read. He compares the audio performance of a variety of cameras and recorders.

http://www.dv.com/news/news_item.jhtml?LookupId=/xml/feature/2002/rose_feature1102