I feel that way because I have made so many MD's. I don't want to convert them to something else. That's L-I-K-E work. I want all play and I like having a recorder around that does annie-log.
I still have 2 Sony MD players(about 15 years old) with the in line remote and about 15 disc with my recorded music on them and a couple of pre-recorded factory disc. Still works great and the sound still rivals CD and MP3. I had a Sony AM/FM minidisc car player in 99. It worked great for 10 months then quit. Took it in to Best Buy and they said Sony wouldn't authorize repair because too expensive. They quit carrying them and Sony gave me a full refund. My home component Sony recorder/player I lost or it was stolen when I moved. From what I understand the tech is still reasonably popular in Europe and Asia. MP3 players have only 2 advantages over MD recorder players. One is size and the other is speed downloading. Unfortunately Sony quit supporting PC software a few years ago. I heard the sonicstage 4.3 ultimate still works with Windows XP but not any Windows OS after that.
I'm listening to Minidisc right now... A stack of Christmas discs, including a few Goodyear discs sourced from LPs that, of course, have never been released (and never will be released) on CD. The Goodyear albums include a LOT of tracks that never saw release even on the various artists' own albums. Great stuff...
I still have a Sony portable and a Sony CD/MD deck, the MXD-D400. I have dozens of MD 80s with CD or torrent tracks ripped to them from around 2000-2002. Whenever listening to MDs, I always notice how "listenable" they are. Whatever research went into the psychoacoustics involved in ATRAC compression was well worth it. Many times, a CD ripped to MD sounds better on MD. It just has a smoother, more inviting sound. I use the MXD-D400 mostly as my CD deck now, with an optical out to my Emotiva DC1, which works well for CD playback. I don't often listen to MD now; my preferred listening is about 95% LPs these days, a few CDs and a few downloads when records are spinning.
I totally agree. In fact, if you take a CD that is mastered loud and has a lot of dynamic compression, when you do a CD->MD recording using the optical digital output and you lower the recording volume on the MD recorder (default is 23) to 21, you will notice a difference in the sound quality. For ATRAC SP Type-R, when you lower the recording volume you eliminate the distortion and clipping that occurs at compression. It makes me think that a lot of the complaints about loud CDs with dynamic compression are probably only noticeable when the signal travels through an D/A converter and is outputed to earphones or stereo sound systems and speakers, but when it goes from Digital to Digital (and the second digital copy is recorded at a lower volume) the dynamic compression, distortion and clipping seems to be eliminated. To put it in simple terms the highs sound more crisp and the lows are not distorted.
Nope, just regular blanks, but with the original album artwork (slightly modified) inserted into Minidisc jewel cases that are still sold by Minidisc Access. Labels are blanks from Fellowes.
What did you use to record on those MiniDiscs (portable or home deck recorder)? What was the source (CD digital, analogue, vinyl, tapes)?
I recorded them all with a Sony home deck connected to my turntable. The two Goodyear albums and the Robert Goulet disc are almost entirely sourced from the original vinyl LPs, but I was able to track down about a half dozen of the Goodyear tracks (Doris Day, Steve & Eydie, Dinah Shore, Diahann Carroll, Maurice Chevalier, Andy Williams) on various CDs with superior sound, so I swapped out those particular LP cuts with the CD source and EQ'd them to match. Most of the Goodyear tracks -- including those by Anna Maria Alberghetti, Danny Kaye and tenor Jan Peerce -- can only by found on these almost-50-year-old LPs, so the real trick is finding unplayed stereo copies of the LPs. The Julie Andrews Firestone album was reissued a year or two later as an 'official' album on RCA called "The Julie Andrews Christmas Album," and that album has been reissued on CD -- so it was easy to reconstruct the original running order of the Firestone album while using high-quality CD sources for each track. (I supplemented the Mindisc with some bonus tracks Andrews recorded for the Goodyear series that have yet to be released on CD.)
I too am a minidisc fan, always have been. I'm very familiar with those Goodyear and Firestone Christmas LPs, I own Goodyear/Columbia volumes 7 & 8. I've recorded them onto a music CD-R, then processed them through Adobe Audition (click/pop removal, equalization applied, etc), then recorded onto a CD-R blank. They sound great!
I got my first MiniDisc recorder in 1997 and I've never stopped using it. I now have two Sony machines (one for recording, one for playback) and I used to compile all the tracks I wanted onto MD first, then a digital copy onto CD. In all the time I've been using MD, I've only had one faulty disc (which didn't record, so I didn't lose any material); every disc I've used still plays with no problems, unlike CD-R; God knows how many CDs I've lost since the late '90s (all brands, btw). It's almost got to the point where if I play a CD-R and it plays all the way through, it's a bonus.
I still have my very first MD recorder, a Sony MZ-1 It works perfectly! I also have an Alpine CD/MD player in my car that I use daily. I just recently sold my MDS-JA50ES. What a beast! I also had a Sony PC with a MD recorder. I never did use the MD that much because the software was a pain in the ass to use. Very nice PC in its day though....
This is incorrect. Clipping is clipping, and you can't get rid of distortion merely by lowering the level. I wish it were that simple. You could get the same result by just turning the volume down for playback: quieter signals don't sound as distorted because you can't hear them. Obfuscation is not a valid solution.
Clipping and distortion can be eliminated. I've ripped CDs to MP3s and I use volume gain software to lower the loudness of the MP3 and when the software measures the file afterwards, the clipping is removed. It's the same when doing MD recordings from CD. Lower the recording volume eliminates clipping and distortion.
I'm not so sure that recording these overly hot CD's to MD gets rid of all the distortion. It might reduce it or make it more tolerable...? That's what it seems like to me.
You are mistaken. I wish you were were right, and I wish eliminating clipping was this easy. You can eliminate clipping with Clip-Reduction software like iZotope RX3: It cushions the blow, but doesn't really eliminate it so much as it improves it. Even iZotope -- a company that makes very sophisticated software -- admits that it's just a bandaid. But it can take marginal tracks and make them tolerable. That's a big difference from taking clipped tracks and making them good.
Adobe Audition and Cool Edit Pro also has a clip restoration tool built into it. I've used it a couple times and it works decent enough. The key is to always watch the levels beforehand.
Here's a look at what will likely be my last Minidisc players... Purchased (along with two others) four years ago for about $40 each. They now sell for $160 to $200 each. The other two are still working, but starting to act up a bit.
And here are some new discs I recorded a few weeks ago. (I posted a similar photo in a Beatles thread in the Music Forum. Apologies for the cross-post.)
These look like something that would have been in "Clockwork Orange"! Now they're delightfully retro-90s, 60s-future along with nostalgia.
Professional! They look better! The professionals are always getting the order of songs or the spellings W-R-O-N-G. At least he used those on ugly Neige MD's! How sweat labels like that would look on my Bit Club or Hello Kitty MD's!
