i meant the functionality in use. it had the potential to be the first "mp3" player, but sony kicked itself in the teeth by reducing functionality to that of an analog cassette player/recorder.



yea but what matters was that for the longest time it recorded at 1x!!! so recording 4 80 minute cds into minidiscs would have taken you at the very least if you had every cd stacked and ready 5 and a half hours.

and i guess you are thinking of the extra long play compression that came along later on ...and that came at a cost of sound quality. nothings free. and of course even after they allowed pc connection it was sonic stage crippled. any improvements came too late.

sony had the chance to make it pc compatible and then play mp3s from day one. but they just couldn't,they were just too scared and they blew it. perhaps md hung on longer in the uk, but by the time they started netmd stuff they were long dead in the states from all the stupid restrictions.

and well now that flash players are out with 32gb...theres really no point to md anymore. and thats fine.


i doubt you'd pass a high bitrate lame encoded vs attrac blind test. and of course there are even lossless formats for mp3 players these days so the gripes are really without merit. if you complain about ipods sound quality, other makes such as cowin samsung creative...and yes sony walkman have better output. i have a 728 walkman myself. judging mp3 sound with an ipod is not a good idea to say the least.

theres no snobbery, just a massive lost opportunity, they had a window of a decade that they could have owned and they turned it down. i didn't buy into minidisc because i didn't approve of their mentality of crippling products out of fear of piracy. and they really really crippled their early md units.

i didn't buy a walkman until they ditched sonic stage, and they have with the 72x/82x units.

I had minidisc way back in the mid 90's (around 96) and it was a great alternative to tape...but never again. (Mine was also Sony)

Having spent literally hundereds on minidiscs to retrieve my collection within a 2-3 year gap, a friend of mine who also had minidisc said he was having problems with them not playing. This started alarm bells ringing because i (at the time) didn't experience any problems with minidiscs. My other half decided to buy a minidisc all-in-one system and after just a few weeks, she had the same problem with discs not playing.

Within a few weeks after that, i started having the same problems with discs not playing, and/or error messages and having flicked through about 100 discs, i found around 20+ didn't play so i stopped buying them although i kept the player and as the months went by it seemed more discs would not play so i eventually gave this up as a bad job and stuck to good old CD. I binned the player and gave the discs away in the end.

The amount of money i have wasted on this format is beyond belief!

Minidiscs are just unreliable and not worth the hassle to be honest and i would never go back to it.

Minidisc isnt dead , far from it , the new 1gb discs you can get in Japan are superb. Nothing beats minidisc for recording vinyl. I have a ipod & its has its uses.

Minidisc saves me a fortune in albums by borrowing them form the library & then minidiscing them, only thing is that my minidisc deck only has the optic connection , whereas my micromega cd player only has a coax! , so i do it via analogue & gets around the anti copying software forund on some albums & does a superb job , never had any problems with minidisc. I have thought baout upgrading to a deck with a coax , but it doesnt seem worth it. Managed to get loads of minidisc albums for 99p-£2 off ebay.

My portable player is getting a bit battered , but it is 6 years old & gets plenty of use. Minisdisc via analogue is very good for lifting tracks off music DVD's & laserdiscs.

Can still get blank discs from Sainsburys 5 for £2.99 , those con merchants at HMV still want £5.99, no wonder they've got loads in stock. Again ebay is useful for tracking down the premium Sony gold discs.

Minidisc will nevr fully be killed off as it is still a indusrty tool in studios etc.

Minidisc is certainly not obsolete.

For digital recording on the go with manual control of levels you would struggle to find any solid-state device as cheap or as good.

In terms of music on the go for listening when fidelity is not crucial then "MP3" players (all types) are perfectly fine. For ages all the "MP3" players I had were quite average as regards sound quality, even with good headphones.

My old Sony Minidisc was still the best portable device I had as regards sound quality until I got a Sony MP3/AAC device recently, I forget the model number - NWA816 I think.

A big part of audio fidelity for portable devices is the amplifier stage anyway and not the actual compression format.

Very, very, wrong - compression is what makes the difference, an excellent amplifier in a Walkman/MP3/Minidisc is trivial to make.

Hey Sheepdog I have got a portable minidisc player/recorder hardly used if you want to buy a replacement.Leave a reply if you are and I will get you the details of the player

All this minidisc love makes me wish I'd kept my decks and discs.

I got rid about 2000, after Sony seemed to screw up big time with their PC only (I was on a Mac at the time) pile of crap software. If they'd made MD drag and drop simple, and allowed better than 1x record it might have still had a place in the wider consumer world.

The format never really got beyond the early adopter's

i use mini disc quite a bit for transferring audio from my studio to a freinds across the pond, as the players we have are old but fantastic, and he finds it easier to mix down from because of his software he uses. otherwise i use DAT.
I m not a big fan of MP3s as ihate ipods andything with an i infront of the name (ok i know you can get other brands) But i find MP3s souless i need a physical thing, ie a tape, vynal, cd etc.

One reason the look like floppy disks

this thread is laughable... people just dismissing ipods as rubbish or md as the best..

i had a hi-md player (mznh900 - sad i even remember the model numver and a nhr10 i think it ws)

Pros of md

record from multi sources, optical (ie direct from cd via cd player) analog in, SO versatile.
edit recordings in player, no real need for a computer
1gb cost about £4

Negs

Sonic stage software very poor - not user freindly
Slow to transfer filles to md
limit to 1gb per disc, so effetively have to carry loads of discs around
can only play music files - no video, and was/is crippled by sonys obsession with copyright - use of atrac

MD is still used in media to record on the road - hi quality recordings and editing on a cheap player is a great selling point.

When I did my stint as a mobile DJ I had a MiniDisc player and used it quite a bit. I found it very handy as a back-up, and for recording as well. I remember when I invested in one having high hopes about the Net MD function, but alas, found the already discussed limitations and in some cases problems with SonicStage and copyright controls just ever so slightly tedious.

I sometimes wish that I had had the mp3 players I have now when I was DJing. I still have most of my equipment, and the other week I plugged the mp3 player into my mixer and listened to the output through the speakers I used to use when I did gigs. To be honest, I can't notice any major differences in sound quality at all, and dare I say it, I wouldn't think many people at a gig would either for various reasons, including being blind drunk.

The other thing I would have really valued, other than the storage on an mp3 player, is of course the ability to scan through the library so quickly. MiniDiscs were sort of ok for finding a track quickly, but to be honest, searching for a track on an mp3 player is far more efficient, in my opinion of course.
Last edited by tortfeasor : 31-08-2008 at 21:28

Try Tesco my local still sell them.

£6.99 for a 5 pack

Tesco could sell a 50 pack for £6.99 - I wouldn't touch them with a stick.