How can I make use of some of these new formats like MiniDisc and MP3s in my home recording studio?
Both MiniDisc and MP3 formats use a digital signal processing technology known as audio compression to reduce the amount of information that is needed to be recorded. The good thing about this is that more audio can be recorded onto any given size of digital media. MiniDisc recorders have processors inside of them that can determine what digital information can be deleted from an audio signal and still have it sound good to the human ear. The MiniDisc processor will throw out about 80% of the information in the signal and just record the remaining 20% of the signal. An MP3 processor will throw out about 90% of the information in the signal and just record 10% of the signal (and MP3 usually sounds inferior to the MiniDisc). The problem is that once this audio material is thrown out, it can never be recovered. This is called lossy compression. For this reason, I recommend that MiniDisc and MP3 not be used for multi-track recording or mastering (the final stereo recording that is used for
