Yep, Stanron, that was the way to bypass Sonic Stage. It just took ages, that's all, and the received wisdom was that using the earphone socket lost some sound quality. Dunno how true that was.

With both minidisc and my Zoom recorder I'm always a bit scared of setting the mic input too high and getting digital clipping on the loudest bits. It means that my recordings tend to be on the quiet side, so I always need to boost the volume a fair bit in the editing. I also find that boosting "loudness" or compression adds a lot, to my ear at least, as long as I don't overdo it. I understand that most commercial CDs are treated similarly (but a damn sight more competently) in the mastering. But I'm out of my depth here! Discuss...