Truly loved the cassette player teardown and how far the tech came along - Wondering what device might qualify as *the* best portable cassette player and thinking this one was likely a contender - Thanks for sharing!
Still love to record and listen to my md's. I've amassed a good 30 or so portables and a deck, along with hundreds of discs over the years by buying as is lots and fixing them up. The higher end units and himd recorders are made so well. I too wish the format was more successful.
Just picked up a boxed like new one with battery corrosion, going to see if I can clean it up from the inside ASAP, or even try a little 3v DC supply to see if it powers up :)
Sony where always good at the “3D envelope design”, it’s impressive how much they could fit in such a small enclose, especially considering the delicate mechanical parts of the minidisc drive. How cool would it have been if minidisc had become a floppy disc successor? It would have been ideal for laptops in particular.
I love the minidisc it`s a great editing tool for making up cds,from various sources..so flexible of divding,,combining,moving tracks,and up to 160 mins of good quality sound with an 80min disc..and text of course,which I use a keyboard,pluggied in at the front of the main machine. for ease of use.I have a SONY portable md,which still works,but in my hifi I use a Pro TASCAM model,and it`s just so good..did MP3 kill off MD,with a poorer quality sound,because of compression?..I also have 2 SONY DAT recorders,and a portable DAT.and the quality that comes from those machines is amazing,and up to 6 hrs on long play,with a 3hr tape,because there is a long play facility,doubling the record time on a tape..,although,like casettes, and the 120min lengths, not really recommended.I had forgotten about the mini cassette,why did that not take off,was it an updated version of the small dictaphone recorders,that just didnt tick the right boxes?..The first time I have seen inside these players, quite amazing,and good quality construction for the size..
I still have and use my NetMD, fortunately I have a laptop where the SonicStage software still works - but support for it also now works under a web browser, and linux anyway :D the sound quality's great.
From what I've read, Sony severely hobbled the MiniDisc format under pressure from its music publishing department. Definitely a shame, they still look cool and futurustuc to me (although that might be nostalgia talking at this point).
Well, no. Minidiscs could store about 175MB - much less than a cd. The audio format was a lossy "MP3-like format". HI-MD - which came later - was a new format - not compatible - with different players and different discs.
Sadly Sony killed the MD system by having too many interests in copy protection and crippling features. I loved my MD, but when second generation machines appeared and i saw how crippled the features in combination of a computer were, i switched to a harddrive-based MP3-player.
NetMD could've been cool and useful, but nope - it takes only slightly less time to write SP audio over USB (to be honest, probably not NetMD's fault directly, but then audio goes through LP2 compression anyway internally or something?), and it only goes one way from computer to recorder; couldn't read back anything regardless of copy protection on tracks on a disc, this is just "haha we'll screw you because we can" level evil.
meh - digital , no vacuum tubes . if it was a wax cylinder it would at least be cool . (dont leave this type of comment please ... this type of attitude sucks)
Truly loved the cassette player teardown and how far the tech came along - Wondering what device might qualify as *the* best portable cassette player and thinking this one was likely a contender - Thanks for sharing!
MDs in 1992 were limited to 120MB, the 1GB HiMD didnt come until 2000 I think
Still love to record and listen to my md's. I've amassed a good 30 or so portables and a deck, along with hundreds of discs over the years by buying as is lots and fixing them up. The higher end units and himd recorders are made so well. I too wish the format was more successful.
Just picked up a boxed like new one with battery corrosion, going to see if I can clean it up from the inside ASAP, or even try a little 3v DC supply to see if it powers up :)
Sony where always good at the “3D envelope design”, it’s impressive how much they could fit in such a small enclose, especially considering the delicate mechanical parts of the minidisc drive. How cool would it have been if minidisc had become a floppy disc successor? It would have been ideal for laptops in particular.
I love the minidisc it`s a great editing tool for making up cds,from various sources..so flexible of divding,,combining,moving tracks,and up to 160 mins of good quality sound with an 80min disc..and text of course,which I use a keyboard,pluggied in at the front of the main machine. for ease of use.I have a SONY portable md,which still works,but in my hifi I use a Pro TASCAM model,and it`s just so good..did MP3 kill off MD,with a poorer quality sound,because of compression?..I also have 2 SONY DAT recorders,and a portable DAT.and the quality that comes from those machines is amazing,and up to 6 hrs on long play,with a 3hr tape,because there is a long play facility,doubling the record time on a tape..,although,like casettes, and the 120min lengths, not really recommended.I had forgotten about the mini cassette,why did that not take off,was it an updated version of the small dictaphone recorders,that just didnt tick the right boxes?..The first time I have seen inside these players, quite amazing,and good quality construction for the size..
I still have and use my NetMD, fortunately I have a laptop where the SonicStage software still works - but support for it also now works under a web browser, and linux anyway :D the sound quality's great.
From what I've read, Sony severely hobbled the MiniDisc format under pressure from its music publishing department. Definitely a shame, they still look cool and futurustuc to me (although that might be nostalgia talking at this point).
I enjoy that video i had mini disk and have all ways thought it died to early.
Well, no. Minidiscs could store about 175MB - much less than a cd. The audio format was a lossy "MP3-like format". HI-MD - which came later - was a new format - not compatible - with different players and different discs.
ATRAC compared to the DCC which used PASC.
Sadly Sony killed the MD system by having too many interests in copy protection and crippling features. I loved my MD, but when second generation machines appeared and i saw how crippled the features in combination of a computer were, i switched to a harddrive-based MP3-player.
NetMD could've been cool and useful, but nope - it takes only slightly less time to write SP audio over USB (to be honest, probably not NetMD's fault directly, but then audio goes through LP2 compression anyway internally or something?), and it only goes one way from computer to recorder; couldn't read back anything regardless of copy protection on tracks on a disc, this is just "haha we'll screw you because we can" level evil.
I have a MD Mz R410 , but not reading , is new MD ... rotation disc , one disc imagine rotation with display ..
meh - digital , no vacuum tubes . if it was a wax cylinder it would at least be cool . (dont leave this type of comment please ... this type of attitude sucks)
I have a brand new in box EX631 in a very fetching blue.