Nope. No one manufactures new players anymore. Not even Sony. That's why the prices on new-old-stock players are sky high now. And they will only go higher...
Unfortunately no. The last portable MD recorder was the MZ-RH1, which was discontinued in 2010 I think. And the last MD stereo system was released this past March. I believe TEAC is still making a MiniDisc deck, but they are expensive. Ebay has plenty of good MD units for under $100, look for one that has ATRAC Type-R or Type-S. ATRAC Type-R is the latest ATRAC SP (292kbps) codec and Type-S contains Type-R and provides superior playback of ATRAC3 (132kbps, 64kbps).
That's too bad because my Very nice Sony JB92ES is finally showing signs of age. It functions flawlessly electronically but the drawer is starting to sputter when I either open it or close it. Probably could use a belt replacement but I'm not going to spend over $100 for a shop, if they can even find the proper belt, to look at it. Great recording format though, had a lot of fun on it. The Beave
The Sharp portable unit that I have used for years now is MD-DR480H (1Bit). I really like the use of an external mic and how small it is. I am not looking forward to the day that it "kicks the bucket".
I have around 100 Hi-MD compilation discs (around 32 hours each) that I use for commuting to and from work on the bus. (Noisy environment, so a higher bit rate wouldn't really benefit , tho I listen with Grado headphones, which does make a difference.) When Sony discontinued minidiscs, I bought 5 Hi-MD portables for $50 each on eBay. I still have 4 of them, with 3 still unused. So I'll probably be listening to minidiscs for the rest of my life. Nowadays, I make new compilations with 320 kbps mp3s for my iPod Touch, but see no reason to "start over" with what's already on minidisc. I also have an Onkyo Hi-MD home deck, since Sony never made one. I'd originally gotten it for its lossless PCM recordability, when Sony had stopped supporting DAT. Little did I know the same fate was in store for minidisc.
I should put you in my will, to have any of the MD players are still working, go to you, when I no longer have a physical body to listen to them. (They're my replacements. After one stops working - usually the buffer starts malfunctioning - I open up one of the remaining players.) My parents are both still living, and in their 80s, so you'll have to be patient, since I'll probably be around a few more decades.
I use MiniDisc every single day. I have MiniDisc in my Mini (proper Mini of course, not BMW imposter), in my VW Camper, I have 12 or more MD and Hi-MD portables, two component decks, 2 bookshelf systems and a MD drive linked to my laptop and 1000 plus discs. It’s fair to say that since I started using MiniDisc in 1998, I’ve come to really, really love the format. I have never had a disc or player/recorder fail and I’ve taken them to many places that have really tested their endurance. It’s just such a shame that more people haven’t adopted this marvelous invention and it’s sad to see it killed off by ipods and the like. I know people enjoy being able to carry around their whole music collection on one small unit but it is sadly at the expense of sound quality most of the time. Mind you, if I wanted to drop the quality and go for quantity I could fit 45 hours of music on one Hi-MD disc anyway, but I think I’ll stick to high quality sp and one album per disc. I don’t think most people really know what they are missing out on. I also DJ dance music from vinyl and I record my mixes to MiniDisc which sound fantastic. They later get transfered to CDs for sale at parties and clubs. I will continue to use MiniDisc for the forseeable future. It just does everything I need and more. I recently gave my eight year old nephew and five year old niece a MD Walkman each for their birthdays. They absolutely adores them and their friends have never seen anything like it. It’s great fun making discs for them and they love listening to new music. Anyway that’s enough of my gushing, you get the idea.
You've never had a unit die on you in 15 years of regular use? Wow. I've gone through at least five portables (four Sonys and one Sharp). The portables seemed to last about four years and then they started acting up. The first sign of failure seemed to be an inability to advance to the next track... followed by an inability to even recognize any tracks on a disc. My first component deck died after about six years of very heavy use, but the two I purchased after that, about 10 years ago, are still going strong. On a related note, I've been burned on every single "refurbished" portable Minidisc player I have purchased via ebay. I tried four. None last more than a month -- which makes me wonder how "refurbished" they realkly were. The new-old-stock units that I stockpiled several years ago are what I rely on, but I only have two more still in their original package, and the two I now have in use are showing the first signs of trouble...
That's awesome!!! I heard that a MiniDisc user had his car broken into and his expensive Hi-MD recorder was right there in the front seat and crooks didn't take it. Why? Because it wasn't an iPod or something else they're familiar with. That's a great thing about MiniDisc, people won't steal it if they don't know what it is or how to use it.
I still have tucked away in a closet somewhere, an old Sony MDMx-4 multi-track mini disc. It needs a battery, which is apparently hidden between PC boards like it's a nuclear code.
I still use a Net-MD portable player (with Sennheiser PX200 headphones) on the days that I commute to work by mass transit. I also purchase the occasional pre-recorded MD as well. Btw, anyone knows where I can get some of the pre-recorded MD jewel cases? I will need to get a spare portable MD player one of these days.
That's probably a good idea since recording with flash memory is bound to be cheaper...but I did get a kick out of your plan to "up the quality to redbook" for recording FM radio!
No, I spent years looking for an outfit that sold those. And even during Mindisc's brief, shining moment in the sun, I never found one. Even in Japan! Minidisc Access told me they got a LOT of requests for that style of jewel case, but for some reason they couldn't ever find a manufacturer wiling to supply them.
----------------- I love my Tascam units and you can buy the 2496 DR-07 mkII for $99 and the 2496 DR-2d for about $150. I would buy the AC adaptor as they can be battery eaters, or use rechargeable.
I started to do Needle drops to CD as soon as I possibly could in the late 90s. Some time about 1998 I got the cheapest sound card I could find that had a digital optical in on it. I put my Sony MDS-JE510 MiniDisc player on REC/PAUSE and a clean 16/44.1 signal flowed into my $12 sound card and into my PC. I'm listening to a needle drop I made with that setup right now and it sounds great. Compared to running analog to my PC sound card the MD Analog to Digital conversion was worlds better. I have two MDS-JB920s in different systems in my house, a recording portable R30 which is a beast and a cheapo portable play only model. I don't use MiniDisc much any more but remember it very fondly.
Does anyone know what the little "slider" on the minidisc is called, the part that exposes the actually disc surface? Thanks.
A few more custom MD labels... These are part of a 5-disc "Wings Over America" Minidisc-box I created using the new album remaster (on discs 1 and 2), the audio from the new "Rockshow" DVD (on discs 3 and 4), and the new "Wings Over San Francisco" CD, along with radio news reports from 1976 about the tour (on disc 5). The MDs fit nicely in one of those 5-disc boxes from Sony, with custom artwork, modeled after the tour program, on a folded slipsheet that slides in the front of the box... The labels are all hand-cut to resemble torn ticket stubs from various stops on the tour.
Teac is not making a MD Recorder, their Tascam professional market division still offers a deck and a CD/MD combo deck.
My remaining portables are all MZ-NH600's, so it's not surprising they all seem to fail in the same way. The first sign seems to be buffer-related, as they will start occasionally "going silent" for 30 seconds or so. The next sign is that when I turn the player off, it will jump to the beginning of the next track. The next sign is that it will start at the beginning of the disc, each time I start the player again. That's when I replace it with one of my remaining unopened portables. But the "broken" portables still work with SonicStage (tho it's been ages since I transferred files), as well as occasionally use for analog-out copying, so I tend to keep them in a box I call my "Minidisc Casket".
