Oh my goodness, I loved my MiniDisc deck. I didn't even mind crouching in front of it laboriously pecking out the song titles in T9. It was such a gas to see them scroll. It felt like The Future.
The miniidisc was tremendous production tool. I taught a college level radio production course and asked students to record some assignments on a minidisc (which I provided). That way, when they produced commercials, they could delete the duds and I wouldn't have to sort through tracks that weren't good such as via a burned CD.
I had several MD recorder/players while living in Japan, but never bought prerecorded disks, only blanks to record from rental CDs, which were common since sales prices were kept high by the copyright laws in Japan. I think the main reason MD didn’t succeed against CDR was the DRM and Atrac was inferior to MP3 compression. Sony had a music business to protect, but since Audio CDs could be easily copied to CDR (or recordable MD) that purpose was mooted.
Mini disk is well alive in the retro Hifi world. Just sold an ES deck with a non-recording laser for over 350 euros.
A working and recording ES deck is in the four-digit territory.
Good working walkmans are like gold.
I bought my first deck four years ago and they only appreciate in value.
I’m still recording and listening to disks. Recording quality is great. On my last trip to Japan stocked on new disks, Sony was still producing them last year and Yodobashi and Bic Camera had them.
This is my preferred format to record music from 2000s. I’m a firm believer that music should be listened on a format it was recorded for, not all on hi-res formats.
Oh my goodness, I loved my MiniDisc deck. I didn't even mind crouching in front of it laboriously pecking out the song titles in T9. It was such a gas to see them scroll. It felt like The Future.
The miniidisc was tremendous production tool. I taught a college level radio production course and asked students to record some assignments on a minidisc (which I provided). That way, when they produced commercials, they could delete the duds and I wouldn't have to sort through tracks that weren't good such as via a burned CD.
I had a single friend with a minidisc player and used to marvel looking at the discs wondering how they worked. Thanks!
I had several MD recorder/players while living in Japan, but never bought prerecorded disks, only blanks to record from rental CDs, which were common since sales prices were kept high by the copyright laws in Japan. I think the main reason MD didn’t succeed against CDR was the DRM and Atrac was inferior to MP3 compression. Sony had a music business to protect, but since Audio CDs could be easily copied to CDR (or recordable MD) that purpose was mooted.
Is the MiniDisc getting a reboot? cause I thought it was...
I likely tossed my machine twenty years ago. Wish I hung on to it
This is fascinating. It is one example of how innovative and ahead of its time Sony could be.
Mini disk is well alive in the retro Hifi world. Just sold an ES deck with a non-recording laser for over 350 euros.
A working and recording ES deck is in the four-digit territory.
Good working walkmans are like gold.
I bought my first deck four years ago and they only appreciate in value.
I’m still recording and listening to disks. Recording quality is great. On my last trip to Japan stocked on new disks, Sony was still producing them last year and Yodobashi and Bic Camera had them.
This is my preferred format to record music from 2000s. I’m a firm believer that music should be listened on a format it was recorded for, not all on hi-res formats.