Ok, well I bought one 2 days ago. I’d been planning on buying some music device for quite some time now. It was only AUD$92, and I love it. It’s basically just like a small, non-skipping, greater capacity discman. And since 128mb mp3 plasyers down here are still in the $200 range, I snapped it up. It’s got good quality, it’s not bulky, doesn’t skip, and the discs are re-usable.
Sure, I have to record stuff on there in real time, but I can just put a playlist on, go out, come back and it’ll be done.
And it has up to 5 hours 20 minutes capacity as mentioned. Basically as useful as a cd player, but with more space, and smaller.
Good for you, Go! I’m resigned to changing to something computer-based eventually but for now I love my little minidisc player. I found an all-in-one system that records cds to md at 5x speed, so in less than 10 mins in the morning I can record the album of choice for that day onto the same disc as I used the day before and listen on the way to work/back: The Dream!
We use the minidisc for audio recordings for multimedia projects. Absolutely great for voice recordings, but some things (try recording the sound of a chainsaw on MD) just don’t work.
That said, we picked up one of the first MDs available in North America, and are now on our 5th unit. Great for portable recording, but I wouldn’t use it for portable music.
Many units sold in Japan have optical connections, it’s too bad yours doesn’t. To be really nitpicky, you’re not going to get an identical copy on your computer, though, as the data is uncompressed before being sent down the optical cable.
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- Minidiscs are inherently lossy, but that loss is usually rather small. There is no way to digitally-transfer audio data off a minidisc and export it to any other format, there never has been. The only devices that could EVER make a direct-bitwise minidisc copy were the studio-level decks that Sony sold. If you record onto a portable minidisc, the ONLY way to get that audio recording into your computer is to use some form of analog audio-out, either headphones or line-out connection, you can’t export the ATRAC format data at all. The “NetMD” system is only for copying music FROM your computer TO your minidisc recorder–not the other way around. …BUT STILL, the end result of minidisc-to-computer still sounds far better than anything else you can get for the price; the quality loss from just one transfer is very, very small. The S/N ratio is 92dB where CD’s are 96dB; if you can hear any noise added, the source of that is probably your PC sound card.
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-I never heard the chainsaw one; “rain on a metal roof” was another sound they don’t record well. They sample once every 1/64th or something of a second, and if a sound repeatedly hits on that frequency, the resulting recording sounds really lousy. Sony stated at one point that the minidisc compression system was optimized to record popular music.
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- Minidiscs are inherently lossy, but that loss is usually rather small. There is no way to digitally-transfer audio data off a minidisc and export it to any other format, there never has been. The only devices that could EVER make a direct-bitwise minidisc copy were the studio-level decks that Sony sold. If you record onto a portable minidisc, the ONLY way to get that audio recording into your computer is to use some form of analog audio-out, either headphones or line-out connection, you can’t export the ATRAC format data at all. The “NetMD” system is only for copying music FROM your computer TO your minidisc recorder–not the other way around. …BUT STILL, the end result of minidisc-to-computer still sounds far better than anything else you can get for the price; the quality loss from just one transfer is very, very small. The S/N ratio is 92dB where CD’s are 96dB; if you can hear any noise added, the source of that is probably your PC sound card.
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Another MD user here. I use them because:
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[li]The unit is small. I can fit it in my pocket. (It’s not much bigger than my wallet.)[/li][li]Related to the above, the size makes it more portable. I can stick it in my center console in my Miata, have plenty of room left over, and lock the unit in the console when I leave the car. I can also stick it in the console under my radio. (In the future, I plan on either adding a MD player to my Miata, or putting in a radio that will accept input from the MD player.) [/li][li]With the one I have, I can fit 2-3 hours of music on one MD. More if I’m willing to compress the music more. (Using NetMD.)[/li][li]It’s very sparing on the battery power. I use the rechargeable AA battery Sony included with my unit, and under typical use it’ll last at least a month. Under very heavy usage (listening to it almost constantly for 8-13 hours on road trips) it’ll last about three days, give or take.[/li][li](Can’t comment much on the optical connection, as I haven’t had cause to use it even though I do have an optical connection on my on-board soundcard in my computer.)[/li][li]I can loan a MD to a friend as easily as I can lend a CD or tape. Not quite as easy to loan music on a typical MP3 player.[/li][/ul]
I see them for sale not only in places like Best Buy, etc., but Wal-Mart and Target. (In fact, I saw one of the local Wal-Marts had a previous generation on clearance because they were making room for the next generation units.)
Now, if I had a MD drive in my computer… Last I heard, the new generation will store 1G of data on one MD. Not bad for something so small. See here for some of the details..
<< Manual? We’ve just been pushing buttons until it works. >>
The NetMD connector is optical, but it’s an input, not an output. So, as several of us have said, it’s not possible to export an original MD recording to PC digitally. (Interesting sidelight: they engineered the input jack so that it takes both an optical cable and a mini-phone plug. Neat trick.)
Nightsong: Thanks for the info on the Hi-MD format. Sounds like it’s just what we all were looking for. The Hi-LP recording format can put 34 hours on a single 1 GB Hi-MD disk!!! I’d only need one to cover a week-long conference. And if they cost $10 each, they’re still a good value!
I have been using MD’s for quite a while now (3+ years) and for my situation they are perfect, I work offshore and I don’t like/won’t listen to most “popular” music and I don’t watch TV, I prefer to be “off in my own world” listening to my own stuff and MD allows me to carry a lot of music in a very small package. I have tried several MP3 devices, but the quality of MP3’s is so bad that they are unlistenable (they are fine for “loud, noisy” stuff like Metal or Rap/Hip Hop, but if your music has quiet passages they just won’t do).
If you can’t hear the difference get better headphones
Unclviny
Many MD decks have optical outs. I make digital copies of MDs to my computer almost daily. However, like I wrote above it’s not a bit-for-bit copy of the ATRAC data, uncompressed PCM audio is what is being sent down the fiber.
Okay, well, obviously I was talking about the portable recoders, none of which (here in the U.S.) to my knowledge, have optical or digital outputs. I had forgotten that some decks had optical outs. Thanks for clearing that up, Jovan, and my apologies for appearing to contradict you.
One of my friends has a MiniDisc player that she uses when she’s out walking dogs, and one of her friends has an MD player too.
Why? I have no idea. I think she’s just a technophobe. The only advantage over an MP3 player I can think of is it’s easier to get songs from a cassette onto an MD player than onto an MP3 player.
Sounds like there might be something wrong with the encoding or normalisation of your MP3s, or the output stages of the device(s) on which you’ve tried listining to them.
Sounds like MP3 to me. The sound quality is pretty bad. Of course, many people don’t care, and that’s okay. That being said, “noisy” music, i.e. with very thick timbres, like metal is what comes out worse in MP3, along with music that has broad dynamic ranges like late romantic.
That’s really strange; I listen to a very broad range of music and I have been quite impressed with MP3 - specifically with the clarity, tone and ‘presence’ - playing out on a Sony Clié PDA (with the Supplied headphones, whihc were actually quite good). I don’t try to economise on bitrate though, which might make a difference.
I’d love to see some blind trial results.
I have one of the new Sony models with USB for transfer down. It’s nice for when I want something small, virtually unskippable, and not easily damaged. For example, I wouldn’t want to go jogging with an iPod thanks to the hard drive. I think the failure of the minidisc can be placed at several areas:
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Difficulty of getting music onto previous models. Unless you had an optical connection (which I don’t think many Americans have ever had), you were stuck with the line-in. In either case, you were also limited to real-time encoding, so that it would take an hour to get a 60 minute CD encoded.
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Inability now to upload. Sony solved the download problem with the USB, but it’s only one way. Very frustrating for anyone who wants to use it to record their own music, use it to take audio notes, or the like and then get it back onto the computer.
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DRM. Sony, to me, is a company at war with itself. There are ways around the DRM now present on new models, either by copying your CDs directly to minidisc using SimpleBurner (thus avoiding the conversion from MP3 to ATRAC) which is a good idea anyway as it avoids double compression and using two lossy formats instead of one, or by another method which I won’t bring up here as it could theoretically be used to copy illegal MP3s while also avoiding the DRM of SonicStage.
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Storage space. Remember all those ads years ago that you could fit “10 CDs on 1” (assuming, of course, you use low-end encoding)? Well, the best you can do with minidisc is about 5:1, which is what I can get on an actual CD when I’ve encoded everything at a static 320 (which most people would agree is absurdly high.) I can do even better at 192, with no or virtually no difference to me in sound quality.
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Along the storage space lines, character storage space. You’re currently limited to about 1000 characters on a single disc. At times, there is nowhere near enough character availability.
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Lack of usable peripherals. This is probably circular with lack of adoption of minidisc in the first place. I think the only company that makes minidisc peripherals is Case Logic. While my little minidisc player carrying case is very nice, there is only one binder available for minidiscs. It holds 24 discs (at the previously mentioned 5:1 compression, that’s about 120 CDs) and is really large compared to the size of the player itself.
All that said, I still am happy with my purchase. Limitations aside, it takes up far less room in my bag, making it much better for traveling than my MP3 CD player (which honestly is not a very good one).
As for the MD-HD, I don’t know if I’ll get one or not. It will depend on price, availabilty, and DRM. It’s more likely that I’ll get an iPod instead and hang onto my minidisc for what I do now.
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- Well nuts–I had not heard or seen anything of Hi-MD at all. So everything I said only applied before that. Locally the MD Walkmans I have seen in stores appeared to be the regular older types.
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- Well nuts–I had not heard or seen anything of Hi-MD at all. So everything I said only applied before that. Locally the MD Walkmans I have seen in stores appeared to be the regular older types.
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