First appeared: Language Learning for Language Learners #31

I was surprised when I got more feedback on last issue's "Why I Just Ordered A Minidisc Player/Recorder" than I ever had for any other article. Here are some excerpts from e-mails I received, with my comments thrown in:

> I too am sold on mini-disc recording. I recently received my 
> Sony MZ-R37 player/recorder. It also allows you to download 
> MP3 files from your computer using a special cable hooked up 
> to the USB port ... so you get the best of both worlds!!! It 
> sells for $139, but you have to pay $20 extra for the cable.
> Bob

Hi Bob. I remember your MD and MP3 comments from a post in the now-defunct Language Learning Communities. Thanks for contributing both times! Your recommendation of MD was one of the first things that got me looking at them.

Keep reading to get to my "Both minidisc AND (not 'or') MP3" comments.

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Here is a series of messages I had with Ellen, a language learning guru in a large international NGO. Ellen's original message is first, and then mine are embedded, and then her response to that is embedded yet again.

> Hi Reid,

> I smiled when I read the title of your latest newsletter 
> article, "Why I just ordered a minidisc player/recorder". 
> The stampede is all in the same direction.

I hope it's a large stampede!

> I too just ordered a minidisc player/recorder from 
> minidisco.com and have been using it a week with my 
> Hebrew language teacher. It's an Aiwa AM-C80, 
> recommended to me by a colleague.

[[ Over a couple e-mails we discussed the merits of Aiwa vs. Sharp vs. Sony. I'll spare you the details other than to say I hadn't read much about the Aiwa, and that it seems similar to the Sharp MD-722 except the Aiwa has a back-light and needs more batteries. Neither of us seriously considered getting a Sony after things we had read about them. (If you have one, the main thing we didn't like was the whole deal surrounding the need to push the "end search" button before recording something new. Just be careful!) ]]

> Really, I'm thinking a Minidisc and Cool Edit are all you 
> need for language learning. The minidisc can do everything
> an MP3 player can do for playback (I think).

Here's one advantage of having an MP3 player:

I have well over 100 different MP3 files in Arabic, ranging in length from 15 seconds to 30 minutes with the typical one being between two and three minutes long. I'm hoping to do something along the lines of Greg Thomson's 50-hour comprehensible corpus, meaning that I want to learn to understand all of these files and then want to listen to them a lot and then eventually just review them every once in a while. Let's say I'm going to go for a long walk and I want to listen to Arabic while I walk. For one thing, my MP3 player is about 1/3 the size and 1/4 the weight of my minidisc player. Even though my minidisc player is small, my MP3 player is downright tiny. Our impression is that our minidisc recorder, while sturdy, is more fragile than our MP3  player (no moving parts), and a combination of size, weight, and relative fragileness means that a minidisc player is more likely to get damaged by using it while walking, washing dishes, riding the bus, etc. My wife Liz put it this way, "Getting an MP3 player is making an investment in your minidisc recorder."

> I just heard second hand of one guy who 
> arrived in Asia with a minidisc and it 
> promptly broke. Not a good sign. I didn't 
> hear if it was the heat and humidity or 
> the fragile case. Only time will tell how 
> well this equipment will stand up to the 
> tropics. Your wife is probably right... 
> Still, for new people just starting out it 
> might be hard to convince them to buy both. 
> Since minidisc provides the necessary 
> recording function as well as playback, it
> will probably be my recommendation for the
> time being.

But more importantly than that, before my walk I can choose what files I want to listen to and then transfer them in a minute or two into my MP3 player, which at 32 MB can hold more than two hours of my files. (A friend of mine here records his at lower quality settings and can put four hours on his 32 MB MP3 player.) And then the next day I can reshuffle those files any way I want before I go out on another walk.

In addition to this, for you to build up a collection of language you'll need to keep many playback minidiscs around, whereas I can put 40 hours of recorded stuff on one CD. (Not to mention that minidiscs are still somewhat expensive.) And you won't have the option of easily listening to any combination of your recordings in any order that you might want, as you would have to find a recording on one minidisc, listen to it, and then take out that minidisc, find the one of the next recording you want to hear, insert that one, etc. I have all of my MP3 files in one directory and can listen to any two of them back-to-back that I want. (I can do this on my computer too, without having to have a portable MP3 player, by using a program like MusicMatch Jukebox. This program allows you to make playlists of any order and size that you want.)

          > You've convinced me MP3 offers superior storage and playback 
          > options. I've just started experimenting with storing my edited 
          > minidisc files on CDs--and downloading selections for review. 
          > So can't really say yet how it compares.

> I record my session on one minidisc labeled a data disc. 
> Then I upload the data to the computer with a jack (the 
> same one I used for my tape recorder) and edit with Cool 
> Edit--move things around, chop out English explanations, 
> etc, then download to another disc which is labeled a 
> playback, review disc. With the minidisc you can modify 
> tracks several ways and program it to playback different 
> ways.

Great! Cool Edit is cool, isn't it?

> For one useful dialogue I wanted to learn I used the
> Cool Edit repeat function to download each sentence three 
> times. So that one track plays with three repeats for each 
> sentence. But I could just as well have downloaded each 
> sentence as a separate track (with 254 tracks per disc you 
> might eventually run out), and then used the minidisc repeat 
> function.

> Minidisc is a less compressed format than MP3. So one 
> advantage is that recorded data can still be uploaded 
> on the computer and opened in speech analysis software 
> that lets you look at the wave forms and spectrograms for
> study the sounds of a language.

True, but if I had anything I wanted to analyze, I would just transfer my original minidisc recording into Cool Edit and save it as a .wav file. (.wav files are huge, so I would only do this for those I wanted to analyze, with everything else going to MP3.)

> As for making language files available to others, I am 
> guessing I could take my uploaded, edited .wav file and
> condense with Cool Edit to an MP3 file for posting on the 
> internet. 

This whole notion of sharing is what wins the MP3 debate for me. Traditionally in immersion situations people have not shared the language resources they've developed. Greg Thomson's articles are a great example of this--he has you develop a fifty-hour corpus but, if I remember right, never even mentions the possibility of sharing developed materials with others.

We, on the other hand, are currently learning a language that many, many people are also learning as we learn it. This takes the whole concept of sharing to a new level. We've gone beyond "should we?" to "how can we best?" And by far the best way, the only really feasible way with today's technology, is to create and share MP3 files, and encourage others to do so as well.

And, once we're all creating and sharing MP3 files, having a portable MP3 player only makes sense--and several around here are now using them.

> And I should also be able to download MP3 files, convert 
> with Cool Edit to .wav and download to my minidisc.

Actually, you wouldn't even have to convert. Just play the MP3 file on your computer while recording it onto your minidisc.

> You have probably played with your new toy and found most of 
this out yourself! I look forward to the next newsletter.

> Keep up the good inspiration. Ellen

Thanks for the encouragement! Reid

Here's a follow-up e-mail I received from Ellen:

> Amazingly my Aiwa has already malfunctioned. Did you notice 
> that Minidisco has only a 7 day return policy? They tell you 
> to depend on the warranty and refer you to the 1-800-
> Buy-Aiwa number. Aiwa kindly referred me to their nearest 
> service center in Ft Worth....which turned into 75+ 
> miles round trip yesterday morning. Customer service 
> was great, though not a single technician around to 
> interpret the "No ADJ!" message frozen on the screen. 
> (also missing from the user's guide)

> One obvious lesson ....never put all your eggs in one 
> technology basket. Have two or three backup devices... 
> computer, cassette recorder, minidisc and MP3 player. 
> And know how to use them all interchangeably.

> The evaluations at www.epinions.com give Aiwa (70) high 
> ratings, 4 or 5 star, better than most models. That makes 
> this failure all the more unexpected.

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> Hi Reid,

> What's the deal with not being able to record direct from a 
> MD to a PC? I don't understand what the problem is if they 
> are both digital media.

> We were thinking about coupling an MD with CoolEdit2000 
> and a CDRW. Stephen

Hi Stephen. 
What do you mean by "not being able to record direct"? If you mean go from your MD to your PC and keep everything digital but have to transfer the information in "real time", you can do that with a MD player that has a digital out and a PC that has a digital in sound card. Alas, no portable MD recorder/player has digital out; they only have digital in. However, "desk top" MD players/recorders do have digital out.

One day we'll probably do it that way, but for now we get really good stuff recording it on our MD but then going analog from the MD player's headphone jack to our PC's line in.

I like your idea of coupling an MD with CoolEdit 2000 and a CD-RW. (But ask for an MP3 player for your birthday!)

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> Hello Reid, Thanks a lot for your articles on MP3 and 
> Minidisk. I was thrilled with the MP3 article, and hope to 
> soon get up and running with it. I've had a Minidisk 
> Recorder (Sony) for awhile now. Just a couple comments. 
> First, using a regular stereo jack, I was able to record 
> directly from the MDR to the computer, simply recording into 
> Windows Sound Recorder. Not being a techie, I'm not sure if 
> it was being transferred digitally or analog, but the 
> quality was good, and it was through a jack. Secondly, while 
> I found the MDR helpful, and certainly better than a 
> cassette recorder, I think it doesn't come close to what you 
> described as being possible with MP3 files. Since I'm not 
> yet set up with MP3, I just used Windows Sound Recorder 
> (memory hog!), and put my files on zip disks. I typed in 
> phrases and put the sound icon next to the phrase. I also 
> did this with, for example, verb charts. Thus, anything I 
> read, I can just double-click the sound icon next to it, and 
> hear it. Using the Microsoft Word outliner, I jury rigged 
> audio "flash cards". I collapsed everything but the sound 
> icons, so I just had a column of sound icons. I would 
> double-click the first sound icon to hear the phrase. Then 
> I would click on the outliner symbol next to the sound icon 
> to see the English translation. If I got it right, I could 
> highlight the whole thing with a click of the mouse and 
> delete it. I'd keep going through them till all were 
> deleted. I would then close the file WITHOUT saving the 
> changes! So for what it's worth. Thanks again for all your
> great info! Sincerely, Ed

Hi Ed. I've only got two things to say to you:

1. May you be rewarded for your diligence!

2. You are going to love using Cool Edit 2000 and GreekFlash Pro!!! They will save you hours upon hours of time and effort.