Sometimes fate just slaps you in the face like a cold, wet fish. I was at the range last week, and just as I was leaving, a guy came in with this and asked what it was worth:

The honest answer was, "not much." It was dirty, only had one magazine, and it lacked case or papers. Selling a used gun is always a losing proposition, even when it's in mint condition. Selling one like this, well…don't bother.

That is, unless there's a guy in the room who's been looking for one of these …

On to the torture test: the local shooting range. I've found that this is the absolute worst acoustic environment I've ever run across. The average gunshot is ~155db at ten feet. You've got a situation where the ambient sound level goes from 10db to 155db and back in less than a second, and since you're in a concrete building, there are echoes and splashes everywhere.

I set up with an AT9841 single-point and started recording. The automatic level control obviously struggled with the dynamic changes, but still did much better than expected. I made a second recording by attenutating to a …

I've been a fan of MiniDisc for awhile. My primary recording unit is my DR7, bought back in 2003, and as is typical, it still serves me fine to this day.

I had a Nomad Jukebox 3 that worked well as a recorder, but it didn't have the onboard editing features of MiniDisc, and let's face it, plastic HDD-based players just don't stand up to abuse. Aluminum and magnesium MiniDiscs do, and it's not uncommon to see people using 10-year-old units at shows.

The only real hassle with MD has been the issue of how to get the recordings onto a …