My goodness ... the Holy Grail of Minidisc

[gegs]

I know, disc-based music systems have gone the way of the Dodo (and Mitt Romney ... hee! hee!) but I just bought something I've wanted for ages and now I'm torn...

I've just bought a Sony MZ-RH1 Minidisc player/recorder; Probably the best little field recorder ever (at least for its size). The sad thing is that having sought one for so long, I'll probably sell it to help fund my daughter's gap year in Malaysia with Project Trust next year. Family comes first.

Anyway, I thought I'd post an image of one up here for all you gadget freaks. This isn't a "for sale" post but an invite for others to share any reminiscences about Minidisc in general, this model in particular or indeed any other technology which didn't reach its full potential in the marketplace.

The following image comes with a salivation warning:

[pukington]

I had the original blue Sony minidisc recorder when I was at secondary school. It was a great bit of kit, anodised blue, had an extra battery pack that took AA batteries which made life easier. 24 anti shock seconds, pure class.

I used it extensively for riding to college, school and evening work. I loved it, although it use to be a bit of a pain to record songs initially, but optical input made life a lot easier.

I resurrected it about five years later, for using to record live music with an amplified stereo microphone, was handy for my band rehearsals. It's a shame it never really took off, was always deemed too expensive at the time and then came along mp3s and everything changed. Good times though.

[hawsey]

Yes loved mini disc and it was my main source of music listening for a good few years , I had a solid aliuminium Sharp one to start with then got a Sony freebie with a credit card application
I love the way you can tag up say speech between songs or what you want and you are just left with what you want , I don't think anything beats that function even today

Sent from my BlackBerry Runtime for Android Apps using Tapatalk 2 Beta-5

[gegs]

I have a Sony MZ-NH600 Hi-MD Minidisc player that I still use for listening to music in the car. I can't believe that the battery lasts for so long on these things because they are mechanical and need juice to spin the discs (albeit periodically due to buffer memory); one rechargeable AA can last for a couple of weeks with between an hour or two of use each day. MP3 players drain the juice quite dramatically by comparison, especially those with colour touch screens. And, most importantly, the Minidisc sound is superb.

[pete]

Very nice Gegs

Here I totally missed the mini-disk era. Honestly last legacy thing I have is a JVC VHS audio/video recorder. I don't recall where I was but do recall having to read Time magazine written on parchment paper of sorts.

The device was made for the audiofile and less for video. That said I still have a CDRom portable for video player that I used to use a lot for VCDs.

[roobarb!]

I used to do a bit of radio work back when there was a move from cart to minidisc, so I've always liked the format. What's really clever about it, quite apart from the hard wearing media and the ridiculous life you got from one AA battery on the portables, is the compression.

Minidisc has no more storage density than a CD, so audio is compressed using Sony's own ATRAC compression system. It still sounds great today - and this is when MP3 was turning CD audio into a jangly sounding mush. (Psychoacoustics was my dissertation topic, so I can still witter on about this stuff for ages.)

[gegs]

I'm no Luddite when it comes to new technology but I do like things that work well. I still like Minidisc because the machines are well engineered, the sound is superb and if you don't like what's on it, change the disc. No need to wait till you're home to sync with iTunes. The Hi-MD players effectively double the density of even old non-HiMD discs, if you format them first, and the sound is amazing. Classical music on Minidisc sounds so much better than MP3 but digital is catching up so I'm not surprised that disc-based players have bitten the dust.

There may be a "How could they be so stupid?" museum in the future where people will wonder how their primitive forebears could overlook technological masterpieces of their age. Perhaps the Squeezebox Touch, the Sony MZ-RH1 and the Joggler will share a display cabinet and school kids will tut and shake their heads.

Also, I cannot say how much it pleases me to have a bit of tech that pete_c doesn't. It's petty, I know, but I never thought it possible.

roobarb - this litte beauty also records uncompressed linear PCM; i.e. CD quality.

[roobarb!]

roobarb - this litte beauty also records uncompressed linear PCM; i.e. CD quality.

Ooh, snazzy!

[Mevi]

Back in the 90s, my band used a portable Phillips DCC to mix down our tracks. They were 20bit/44,1khz digital recorders that were backwards compatible with analogue cassettes. The compression ratio was less than minidisk's ATRAC. It still works now although I have to use the optical out as the line out is busted. We replaced it with a proper DAT machine later on until recording on a PC was affordable.

[pete]

Neato stuff there gegs...

Nah; had a mini disk player in some automobile I had a few years back...but never got to play with it or a portable mini disk player...missed out.

Do recall a conversation with an audiophile sometime in the late 70's/early 80's relating to the benefits of listening to an LP album and its harmonics being way more beneficial than a digital capture (compressed et all) for real music. The rage then was what LP playback needle you used and what "platter" you used to play back your music.

In the 70's had a friend who worked for an "rock band" production event company..that said he would give me press passes to concerts here in Chicago. It was enjoyable.

I do recall my then friend college roommate (now brother in law - geez married my sister after going out with her some 10 years or so)...would listen to music lulling him to sleep; Koss headphones...except I could here the music almost full volume at the time (in another room)....today he is partially deaf....so much that at family events he tends to play music very loud with a house full of family...sister is always telling him to turn it down these days....bad here though cuz sometimes I tend to turn up the car music when I don't want to "hear" my wife...(much less these days as I get old...)

A few years back I had my Marantz SD9000 fixed up (although I hadn't used it for like 30 years). While it still looked like new the drive system in it had somewhat crumbled away. Will post some pictures of it. I have a very old Akai reel to reel recorder somewhere here...think it had the stacked amplifiers on it...kind of big...did keep an old day recording of a radio station here in Chicago from the early 60's...

[gegs]

Do recall a conversation with an audiophile sometime in the late 70's/early 80's relating to the benefits of listening to an LP album and its harmonics being way more beneficial than a digital capture (compressed et all) for real music.

Still true today I think. A well recorded, full frequency analogue recording played back on the best equipment will knock the socks off digital even now.

One of my favourite albums is Muddy Waters' "Folk Singer", of which I had an old '60's vinyl copy. The power and depth of this acoustic album blew me away the first time I heard it. The bass was like a minor earthquake, but smoother.

A few years ago I was glad to see it reissued. I bought the CD because it was the only format I could find locally. The sleeve notes made interesting reading; the album had been remastered from the original tapes using analogue equipment, specifically for a premium vinyl re-release. The notes were all about the vinyl version and at the end stated, dismissively, that it was also available on CD and that the CD version guaranteed about 90% of the dynamic range of the premium vinyl release.

It's now been rereleased on SACD (and vinyl) and a review from The Absolute Sound - http://www.theabsolutesound.com/article ... lk-singer/ - says "It’s by far the best sounding and most engaging version yet. The SACD, while certainly excellent, sounds somewhat glossed over, not as dynamically explosive or rhythmically driving. Compare the brushed snare thwacks during “My Home Is In The Delta.” On SACD they sound pretty much the same; on vinyl each one is clearly hit with a different amount of impact. Digital fans won’t be disappointed, but analog lovers will be in hog heaven."

To maximise the dynamic range, a lot of audiophile vinyl albums are now released at 45rpm rather than 33 and a third.

[pete]

Yes; that was it; dynamic range stuff and how compressed it is these days. Still have a few LP's here that I hold on to for whatever reason.

I do see that some folks listen to music for the sake of what it contains (words, music and such) while others listen to the music for the realism presented by the author and him or her or them present an aura of sound; similiar to how a painting is presented.

Here my wife cannot tell the difference between SD and HD video. She watches television for the content only. Sound coming from one speaker for her is fine...even though now I have added 7.1 sound to the family room. Then again though we have had various voice fonts speaking now for over 10 years; yet watching a TV show recently presenting TTS ("The View"?) she thought it was something new?

[QuackingPlums]

Oh dear some of you are going to want to kill me. I just (two weeks ago, over half term!) skipped boxloads of old players, discs and decks! I was a stalwart MD fan from the day they were commercially viable and I went through an astonishing amount of kit! Car, home, portable, you name it. I even took to getting relatives from HK and JPN to ship over models that were rare or unavailable in the UK because I just *had* to have the latest kit! Oh well...

[gegs]

Gulp! Skipped them???

You could have sold 'em on ebay, especially the NetMD and Hi-MD ones, and there's still a reasonable demand for decks and discs although the prices aren't as high as they were.

[QuackingPlums]

Yeah, most of the batteries were dead (some still had the orange NiCd chewing-gum batteries!) and some had developed that annoying skipping error so I didn't think I could sell them as 'working'.

I remember laying out the players (I seemed to have a particularly large collection of players) before chucking them in the 'to the skip' crate, to show my wife how they went from pretty chunky (MZ-E30/35) to pretty thin (E90/95/10) - the last few were thinner than two discs stacked on top of each other. I wish I'd taken a photo now that I know I'm not the only MD geek...

[gegs]

Nope! You're not the only MD geek. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or bad...

I've got 3 MZ-NH600 HiMD players; one in the car, one attached to my hi-fi and another to use as a portable. I've also got maybe another four players or player/recorders. The HiMD and NetMD ones are the most convenient because you can rip CDs or encode MP3 to minidisc fairly fast. The older ones had to be recorded in real time, just like recording a cassette tape. I've also got a small suitcase full of discs (and then some)...

I'm still torn on the sale of the model that started this thread though (the MZ-RH1). I might hold off to see how my daughter's fundraising is going before deciding to part with it. If I do finally sell, it will be with a tear in my eye.

[gegs]

Another thing that raises Minidisc's geek status...
An image of Neo from The Matrix...


...copied from this short, but amusing, blog post - http://www.junkopia.net/index.php/archi ... discovery/

[gegs]

Back in the 90s, my band used a portable Phillips DCC to mix down our tracks.

I remember a friend at college had one of these and I thought it was amazing. It's weird how (seemingly) quickly tech now becomes obsolete, redundant or even old-fashioned and quaint. Kids now look at this stuff in the same way I used to look at Bakelite radios.

[QuackingPlums]

I'm still amazed to find out that studios don't use ADAT any more. It only seems like yesterday that it was the de facto standard for multi-track digital recording...

[roobarb!]

I'm still amazed to find out that studios don't use ADAT any more. It only seems like yesterday that it was the de facto standard for multi-track digital recording...

Hehe - in the 'skipping' vein, I had to dispose of an ADAT machine just a few weeks ago. It had alignment problems and a dodgy PSU, which were not helped when someone dropped it. (Not guilty!)

Think we may have another one somewhere, but they've seen a lot of use. I know we've got a nice Revox B77 hiding in a flight case, and a big Studer A... an A80, I think.

None of them can play a minidisc.