Anyone Familiar With Minidiscs? - Page 2

The way I see it, you would make your mixes and record your CD at home and use the player outside.

Personally, I would rip all my CDs and LPs on a computer at home and then copy the files on an iPod or a similar DAP. Recording LPs with a dedicated soundcard offers a greater quality than using the converter onboard a minidisc player. If by mixes, you mean mashups and MD player wouldn't help you much, but if you mean personalized compilations, a 160 GB iPod represents 20,000 high quality songs playable in whatever order you prefer.

Besides rechargeable batteries aren't really a problem today, depending on the DAP, they last 10 to 100 hours and you can recharge it even the battery is inly half emptied. The iPod Classic's battery lasts 30 hours if my memory's correct, enough for the longest fligths and then some, just remember to bring the battery charger and your done, it's even more convenient than having to pack more batteries.

Of course, an MD player could grant your the same possibilities without the opportunity to manage all your music with the same ease of management, but what I worry about is that there has been no new player for at least 2 years and when you current play fails in 2- or even 5 years, unless you can hunt down a used player, all your current MDs would essentially become useless forcing your to re-record everything for portable use.

I used MDs and Hi-MDs for several years, had several (Hi-)MD recorders (even unused spares to keep me running in the post-MD-apocalyptic future), but ended up selling everything off and going with DAPs and digital recorders instead.

Having my whole music collection on a hard drive (well, several, for backups) gives some peace of mind, and makes it easy to distribute the music to portable devices. The recorders themselves may be slightly clunky as players compared to DAPs, but actually I feel they compare favourably to MD-devices, which were not so good at navigating large numbers of files. Of course, as you plan to use PCM, you are looking at the equivalent of at most two albums on a single Hi-MD, and you also say that you don't care about titling, so all this will be very very basic browsing anyway. Even the clunkier digital recorders can usually handle this fine - put all files in one folder and done.

There is the problem of media: Hi-MDs are pretty much a necessity if you want PCM, but they are expensive and difficult to find. MicroSD-cards on the other hand are already cheaper than Hi-MD per Gigabyte, and their price is still dropping. Maybe it would make sense to emulate the "feel of MD" rather than using actual MDs - you could have a digital recorder to record on microSD-cards, just one album per card, and then use a decent DAP with a card slot to play the cards (the Sansa Clip+ comes to mind). A 1GB-card costs a fraction of a 1GB-Hi-MD, and you could have a dozen of them in the space one Hi-MD occupies. (And after a while you might start enjoying larger capacity cards... :))

I share your feelings about the integrated batteries of modern DAPs. However, Minidisc's Golden Age of Batteries was before Hi-MD, in my opinion. Battery life dropped significantly with Hi-MD (and improved again slightly with the later models, but never to the extremes of normal MD). This was exacerbated by Sony switching to weak proprietary Li-Ion-batteries for the high end models (or even integrated batteries for some player-only devices, if I remember correctly), and often no longer offering the option to add an external AA-battery case. Sometimes there are workarounds using external batteries over USB, but that works for some current DAPs as well.

There are two things I miss about Minidisc: One is the build quality of the high end models. The MZ-NH1 for example (the last Japan-made MD-device, I think) was a beautiful magnesium machine, and I have yet to see a DAP that does not look and feel like cheap trash in comparison. Digital recorders fare better, but they are usually bigger as well. The other thing I miss are the remote controls on headphone cables, you could control almost everything about the device with that, and often blindly. Current DAPs and digital recorders have nothing comparable, though arguably some DAPs are as small as the remote control. :)

With all the money you'll be spending on blank MD discs for recording, you could just get a new DAP in 5 years when the built in battery loses charge

Modern rechargeable batteries are good for 4-500 complete cycles, or 4-5 years whichever comes first.

Quote:

Originally Posted by OutlandMetro 

 

This is an interesting point, and probably one of the most important ones.

 

I've also read that Minidisc media are notoriously unreliable. Is there any truth to that? This doesn't fill me full of hope.

Not sure about others but my MDs bought and recorded back in 1996 still plays well today.

Quote:

Originally Posted by OutlandMetro 

This is an interesting point, and probably one of the most important ones.

 

I've also read that Minidisc media are notoriously unreliable. Is there any truth to that? This doesn't fill me full of hope.

Having looked through and read the majority of your link, doesn't the problem seem to be the players and not the discs? Those players seem to be very old mid 1990's MD players. I wouldn't know whether the Hi-MD players of the mid 2000's had these problems, but its worth looking it up if your still interested in Hi-MD.

Quote:

Originally Posted by OutlandMetro 

You're right, I was rather thinking that if the players are as unreliable as that, I can't see the media faring much better.

 

However, I'm still not that sure. I'd love to hear from someone who uses one regularly (if such a person exists). I can't help thinking that such a complex mechanism would have some kind of problems, especially down the line.

I don’t know if you’ll find anyone who uses them regularly but I dug out my old kenwood MD player/recorder that I got in around 1998 (and used daily till around 2002). discs still work, player still works. the rechargeable, replaceable battery is dying but that’s understandable - it still works but holds less charge.

So there’s one bit of anecdotal evidence. the stuff can still work (reviewing my playlists from 2000 was another frightening experience for me. yikes, what was I thinking)

the thing with minidiscs that makes it so hard to recommend is all the work required to get music onto it and to have a large collection of music on your person. Back in ’98, it made sense for me to get one when MP3 players topped out at around 64 MB. but nowadays the hassle of dealing with multiple discs and the risk of moving parts breaking down on a dead technology just doesn’t seem worth the hassle just cause you’re worried about battery life on newer devices.

get an iPod that runs 40 hours, then one of those power blocks from monoprice that can recharge the iPod to full capacity - that thing is about the size of 3 or 4 AAA batteries. So you can be on an 80 hour bus ride and not worry about battery After 5 or so years when the iPod battery lasts 20 hours instead of 40, you can worry about getting a new battery. 

I really think battery is a non issue these days

Hi OutlandMetro,

I know that you already have decided to pass on Minidiscs but I juste wanted to give you my experience of it.

I used to own a Sony MZ-R900 a few years ago (actually I still have it), I bought it brand new in a serious shop. So I spent over 200€ for this top of the line player/recorder.

Everything went perfect during about 8 month and it then began to stop reading my MD's or it just kept on searching for the tracks during a long time, 5 and more minutes.

I loved it because of its compact size, its good sound quality, the possibility to record, and the fact that MD where just cool because not many people were using them.

Let me tell you a story which I found really cool after it happened:

I was sitting in the bus, listening to Supertramp on my MD player. After a while, 4 guys came near me after I had taken it out of my pocket. Actually its little size and the blue color of the Mg housing made it clear that it was a highend music player. I knew straight that these guys were interested in this thing, but not in a kind way if you know what I mean. Their behaviour was a bit agressive and strange. So I showed them the thing and one of them asked me if it was a MP3 player and if he could take it in his hands.

Shaking like crazy i just told him: "ok, have a look if you want" and at the same time I let him know that it was a MD player.

They all looked surprised, he put his hand away because at this moment he wasn't interested anymore because it wasn't an MP3 player, LOL.

They went away and got off the bus at the next station.

I was just like: "WOW, that was close and I'm glad to own a MD player instead of a crapy MP3 player which I wouldn't own anymore right now!!"

That's why despite the fact that these players are, in my mind, very fragile because of their complexity, I still find that they are really cool because of their little size and the fact that few people know about them and are interested in them.

I would just say that if I were you, I would also have passed on Minidiscs because of the price and their fragility.

After having thinking about buying another one, I eventualy bought a used Sony D-NE10 Discman, because I thought that it would be a pitty to leave my CD's unused at home as backups. I don't need to record so I don't have the same needs as you.

PS: the MZ-R900 had a separate battery holder for one AA and I used it a lot. Like you I hate to feel traped with those special batteries (gumsticks and whatever...). I love the fact that you can go in any shop to by AA's and just listen to your favorite music almost anywhere in the World. The D-NE10 also has a AA battery holder and it's already plugged in!!! :-)