For many years it's been common practice for musicians to use a MiniDisc Walkman to record rehearsals, live performances, etc. When my old MD recorder died a few years ago I bought a new one. Which turned out to be a Hi-MD variant and consequently a veritable DRM nightmare.
First of all, despite being a USB device I could not transfer the recordings off of the MD player digitally. Yes, that's right. I recorded something using the analog microphone input and our friends at Sony still would not allow me to transfer my own performance off of the device digitally.
This obviously let to an outcry and eventually Sony laxed the DRM fascism and allowed analog recordings to be uploaded. Alas, their proprietary SonicStage Windows crapplication is required to do so. No Linux or Mac support. Wonderful. So I've been transferring my recordings to computer by way of sampling analog playback. Welcome to the digital media lifestyle!
The analog, realtime transfer means that I have a lot of recorded material from old shows lying around. Yesterday, I finally got around to transferring the recordings from Vanessa's CD release party. Those are two years old!
So I decided that the time had come to ritually sacrifice the Sony Hi-MD Walkman and get a digital recorder that didn't try to enforce braindead DRM schemes on my music. And obviously ease of use and Linux support would be great.
I read up on the various models on the market and ended up getting the Roland R-09 because:
But here comes the good part: There's no DRM crap. It looks like a standard USB drive. I can plug it into my Linux box using a regular USB cable (or insert the SD card in a reader). I can copy MP3 and WAV files off of it using standard commands. No proprietary protocols or tools needed. And here's what blew my mind: I could upgrade the firmware by putting a new firmware image on the SD card. No special upgrade application needed. That is fantastic!!!
I wish more manufacturers would make OS-agnostic devices like this. Yay, intelligent design! (Quite possibly the only time you'll ever hear me use that phrase).
Thanks to Roland for doing the right thing. And don't buy anything Sony. But you already knew that...
PS. My only gripe with this device is the lack of a Kensington security slot. It would be fantabulous if I could lock the recorder to the organ during the set breaks...
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