Comments on: MR-1 and MR-1000: New Portable Digital 1-Bit Hard Drive Recorders from Korg

By: Mike Johnson

Mike Johnson — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 07:33:26 +0000

Gentlemen, please let me end this debate. I own the MR-1 and I intend to purchase the MR-1000. First up. It’s the TaSCAM DV-RA1000 that is a disingenuous recording device. Forcing you to write to DVD+RW discs. I owned one of these last year. The Discwelder Bronze software was a major pain in the behind to use as well. The Tascam DV-RA1000 & MR-1 both sound better when recording DSD than they do when recording PCM at 24-bit/192kHz. The only torture test acceptable to me is this: Taking my MR-1 to my local Audio Dealer to record high end vinyl Lp’s, and then playing back on the MR-1 against the original Lp. On Mobile Fidelity’s Patricia Barber 45rpm box set, the MR-1 captured perhaps 80% of the original information to it’s internal HD. The first attempt at playback revealed a nasty harsh sound with little natural decay of the acoustic instruments. Out with the generic silver cables, and in went the Audioquest Sky w/72v dbs battery bias packs. The 2nd attempt at recording the 45rpm mo-fi discs now had a smoother balance with the natural decay the vinyl possesses. A problem with the MR-1 soon became evident. It struggles to achieve dynamic peaks and that extra punch when you record with the internal lithium-ion battery. The unit pulls 2.4 amps at 5vdc, a serious amount of current for such a small recording device. I’m going to build a custom high end regulated PSU for the MR-1, and a massive vacuum tube rectified & regulated PSU for the MR-1000. The MR-1000 PSU will be a John Broskie Aikido shunt regulated design for excellent performance. I have never been able to capture sounds like I have with the MR-1. I have finally turned my back on all CDR recorders due to the problems with almost all optical media. The only good sounding cdr’s that exist are the mobile fidelity Ultra disc & Apogee Gold CDR-74. I loved the clean sounding Taiyo Yuden CDR-74 that Microboards offered, but all of the currently available 80 minute cdr’s are unacceptable sounding! The extra 6 minutes of recording time results in massive anomalies in the lower bass & midrange compared to the best of the 74 minute cdr’s..enough said. It’s DSD fro me from now on!

By: bengo

bengo — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 15:30:39 +0000

so whats the story on the MR1 preamps?

i want a small pocket recorder (eg r09) and a high quality one (eg fostex fr2le)

will this do the job of both?

there’s a real problem, the real high end pocket recorders have no reports from users, this and the nagra there is no word on the web about the quality of the preamps.

By: David Hamilton

David Hamilton — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 18:42:23 +0000

Does anyone have any insight into the differences between the DSD formats? (DSDIFF, DSF, and WSD)

By: Daniel Atkinson

Daniel Atkinson — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 02:55:13 +0000

Does anyone have an idea of the quality of preamps??

By: Stephen Burkett

Stephen Burkett — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 03:53:08 +0000

I find it a bit odd that even the 1000 model only has two inputs. Mobile recorders a quarter of its price have at least four inputs and FireWire out, which it doesn’t have either. I wanna know though how a 1 bit/5.6 mHz recorder handles the distortion that skeptics of DSD point out. Would it be significantly better since it can reach a max of 110 kHz and could put it up in that range?

And kudos to David Anderson for his insightful comments!

By: RichardL

RichardL — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 06:38:07 +0000

The idea is that you can archive your original recordings and your mixed down masters.

For now you will have to convert your DSD tracks to WAV before you can mix or edit.

It will be interesting to see if or how DSD support gets incorporated into the project workflow.

It maybe helpful to think of DSD files as analogous to Camera RAW files from a digital SLR camera. Using Camera RAW allows the photographer more flexibility and to defer decisions until post processing.

The history of Camera RAW workflow may provide some clues about how DSD might get added to workflows.

The first phase, which is where we are with prosumer DSD, was when camera manufacturers supplied RAW file conversion programs with their cameras that supported RAW. These programs could manipulate RAW files and create TIFF or JPEG files that could then be further processed in other programs. These tools (eg Nikon View and Capture) usually work inefficiently and are flaky compared to mainstream tools like Photoshop.

The next stage was when the mainstream tools like Photoshop and iPhoto added import support for Camera RAW. But that proved not particularly efficient. (Even though Photoshop added support for Camera RAW it used to take me all day to process a shoot. As a result I only used Camera RAW on projects that I could afford to invest that extra time.)

The final phase was when sophisticated software solutions specifically designed for RAW processing workflows emerged like Adobe Bridge, Apple Aperture and Adobe Lightroom. With Adobe Lightroom I can process an entire photo shoot in a couple hours or less and it works better too. As a result I can get the advantages of Camera RAW for any shoot.

Now the question that this analogy begs is, does using DSD for source recordings really confer advantages over using high def PCM? I know professionals who have been using DSD technology for five years and swear by it. But there are also a lot of nay-sayers. And the DVD-A vs SACD format war was particularly dirty with all of DSD’s dirty laundry being laid out for all to see.

By: AlecEifel

AlecEifel — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 01:46:37 +0000

OK cool, let’s say that this results in better capturing and storring of audio. Can someone please tell me how this can be used with current mixer apps such as ProTools & Logic?

…Or, this is more like for archiving hi-res “original recordings”?

Until ProTools & Plugins understands this format, I can’t justify purchasing this.

By: Doktorfuture

Doktorfuture — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 01:43:17 +0000

If DSD is supposed to be ‘future proofed’ then why do we suddenly have a 2.something and a 5.something Mhz version?

I’m sure we’ll see a 10.something Mhz version, and special multi-channel time aligned versions, yada yada.

I mean, cummon. It’s obvious.

By: Jaymis Loveday

Jaymis Loveday — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 01:18:17 +0000

You do make a good point about conversion though Augmentalist. Hopefully as time goes past more developers will include this kind of high quality format in their workflow, but until that time people are lumped with the included software to do their conversions.

In my experience, included software is almost always absolute crap. Who knows how horrible the workflow on Korg’s software is?

By: Augmentalist

Augmentalist — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 00:57:11 +0000

duh i just read the sheet.
sorry all.