I am amazed this portable still works. I've used it daily for almost 10 years. As you can seen, the housing is cracked on one corner and the "chrome" finish is wearing off along all of the edges. This is the portable I use when walking and listening to books-on-tape and/or music, and because I log about 36 miles per week, with the player stuffed in my jeans pocket, the finish is rubbing off. The bottom half of the housing, once a brilliant white, is now yellowed. But it still works fine. I have two other Sony portable players, purchased new and still sealed in their original boxes, on deck and waiting for whenever this one dies on me, but that could be a while....
Just picked up my Minidisc player from back home, MDS-JB920, found at a garage sale for $10 a year ago. Have a disc by The Verve I found at a local record store for $8.
That's a nice deck. I wore one out. I've found blank HHB Minidiscs on Amazon for $5 easch, in packs of five. They come in Jewel Boxes.
I got a pretty penny for my two JB-920 decks earlier this year on Ebay. VERY nice decks. I used to use one as an analog-to-digital converter for needle drops. On "Pause" with no disc it would send a very nice clean 20 bit signal out of the digital outs processed from the analog inputs. My sound card was the cheapest one I could get with an optical input. Those needle drops still hold up they still sound great.
I had a portable Panasonic MD player I bought when in Japan around 98. I used to record my mixes on it (line out of dj mixer) . It was super convenient and sounded great. Somehow I lost it over the years when I started to use laptops. I recently bought a Sony Net MD MZ S1 for $5 but I dont use it.
Yeah sadly the technology didnt develop. I remember that scene in the Matrix where Neo gave the goths a minidisc I thought it was a clever easter egg. Edit* found it on youtube
jump back. Around 2000 the SONY prerecorded minidiscs were expensive I thought, they still collect some coin on eBay.
Honestly I never bought any of the prerecorded music back then. I mainly used it to make recordings and listen to them while out around town. I was kind of caught up in vinyl at that time. I wish I would have collected some albums however, Im curious how they compare to CD and other formats... Maybe I'll check ebay or discogs.
It was hooked into the tape loop on my receiver that had a Phono input. I just hit rec/pause and it monitored a nice clean digital stream out the optical output. Most of the Sony MiniDisc decks did this.
I thought my Sony portable (MZ-E60) had died, but managed to het it to creak back into life a few months ago. I still have my Sharp (I think) deck too, stored away. Have sold most of my pre-recorded discs on Discogs lately for decent prices.
I got around to watching that movie and it stands the test of time. Juliette Lewis was great in it. Apparently she isnt doing much acting anymore since starting a music career.
I'm still using MiniDiscs and have at least 300 recorded MDs, with probably at least 50 blank MDs remaining (I can't see myself using them all but will hold onto them just in case). I've always done all my CD recording on a Sony DHC-MD373 and have owned over six throughout the years (wanted to keep the recording quality consistent). I still have three of them, with two having had the MD recording function serviced, a few years back, and still recording (pricey but worth it). Walkman-wise, I started with a Sony MZ-R500. At the time, I was strapped for cash and it was the cheapest one available (£125). Initially, I hated it because it didn't have all the bells and whistles, such as a digital display remote. Also, the design wasn't to my tastes (something Sony rectified, a year later, with the MZ-R501). However, over time, I grew to love the simplicity of the MZ-R500 - easily reachable/identifiable buttons (even when in your jeans pocket), a single AA battery (as opposed to those short-lived Sony branded rechargeable batteries, which cost a ton to replace), and a mains outlet and adaptor that powers the MZ-R500 (something you surprisingly can't do with most (if not all) of the rechargeable models). That MZ-R500 lasted me almost ten years. By the time it was on its last legs, everyone was dumping all their unwanted MiniDisc gear on ebay (this was probably between 2008 and 2010). So, I took the initiative and bought everything I could find at low prices - sealed blank media, used DHC-MD373 systems and some of the MD walkmans I always wanted to own (all of which were quickly sold off, after realising their downsides in comparison to the MZ-R500). To insure that I always have something to play my MDs on, especially after my DHC-MD373s finally give up the ghost, I also invested in six brand new silver MZ-R501s - all obtained for an average price of... £10 each. One is currently being used as an occasional MD walkman and checking device (when the DHC-MD373 is in use). The other five have been stored away and probably won't be touched for a very long time. Provided nothing unexpectedly fails on me, before expected, I should have everything I need for life. Me, I'm in it for the long haul...
Still have my Sony Mini-Disc MDS JB-920 deck but I haven't used it in eons! Got 30 unopened blank discs just sitting there.
You know, there's something to be said about the term "good enough", which too many of us don't use. It's really quite a good format. I used it to master some albums when I owned a recording studio in the late 80's/early 90's. But, with a trained ear it just sounded too cold to my ears. However, it's perfectly fine for recording and playing back regular music and it's nice to hear that someone is stocked up with software/hardware that they feel will last a lifetime. So many of us are still in pursuit of "the best" and let's be honest...most of us always will be. And that's fun too I suppose, but my checkbook doesn't like it much! I have a nice deck and finally it gave out. It would take in a disc and then simply make a clicking sound. I bought a used one off of eBay and of course it didn't work. Same with my DAT player, which is what we ended up mastering with after mini disc. Funny, both Sony formats...both players died on me. And I also used Hi-8 video, arguably the worst video format anyone (in this case Sony) ever came up with. So, now I have unplayable Hi-8 tapes (one with two hours of unedited interviews with my long gone grandmother), mini discs of mastered albums, and mastered DATs I can't play. Thanks Sony!
Yeah, the limited lifespan of MiniDisc hardware (especially the recording function) didn't really do any favours for MiniDisc's popularity. Based on that alone, I've tried to be realistic about what I want to gain from my collection and how I want it to grow. One thing I decided was to not bother recording any albums, released after 2010, on MD format. It just makes my life simpler and reserves whatever blank media I have left for the odd pre-2011 album, which I feel would complement my MD collection. Anything post-2010 is now in MP3 format... As for 'good enough', from a very early age, I knew that becoming an audiophile would result in opening a Pandora's box. So, I went out of my way to avoid falling down the rabbit hole. For me, it's always been about the musical ideas themselves - not the different editions of the same release, not the expensive gear, not the technicalities nor the nuances in sound. Besides, having grown up listening to crackly vinyl and tape cassettes with dubious/deteriorating sound quality, having a decent (or even entry-level) hi-fi system to listen to various digital formats is good enough for me. I mean, I could have said 'sod it' and sold all my MiniDisc gear, but that would have required re-obtaining or transferring everything recorded on MD (and some of the albums I have on MD are impossible to get now). But I already did this when I transferred everything from cassette to MD, after buying my first MD system. For how long can anyone keep running around, chasing after that pot of gold at the end of a rainbow? The process of tracking down the same CDs once again to record to MD was enjoyable but hard work, and I'm really not prepared to do the same thing again every 10-15 years. But, hey, everyone's different.
Are you sure you were using minidiscs in the late 80s to early 90s? The first minidisc recorder didn't hit the market till 1992. MiniDisc - Wikipedia
Must dust mine off, still own a full size Sony MD Deck(needs attention?) and at least 3 working MD Walkmans + 100 plus Mixtapes I made..back in tha day..still got tha PC Software somewhere..
I've still got a huge stack of MDs that I recorded way back in the mid-90s. I pulled these out of storage recently but didn't have a functioning MD player, so I picked up a Sony MDS-E12 off of eBay. The old MDs still sounded pretty good, but here's the weird thing: I wondered what the newer version of ATRAC sounded like, so I hooked a coax up to the thing and recorded from some hi-res sources. I was pleasantly shocked at how good the recording sounded! Pretty impressive.
