Hi, first post, so please know I am not trolling nor looking for a thorough flaming, but...this thread caught my eye because I fear my once treasured MD player may in fact now be a useless gadget. Help me figure out why it isn't? I bought a Sony MZ-R700 back in 2001 for a trip to India, knowing I would want to record a lot and also to have as much music with me in as compact a space...it was without question *the* best solution to these issues on the market at that time. Well, I found my minidisc player tonight and I'm listening to some old music and recordings I made and I'm so happy to have recovered these things...even the LP2 (what 132kb/s?) sounds really clean. Things I recorded with a simple Sony mic sound great, too. I still have the bundled toslink, so I can record optical out of, say, my laptop, but how is this any more convenient than ripping a CD to FLAC or high bitrate MP3 and putting it on my DAP? Also my DAP (Cowon D2) has a built-in mic and line-in for external mic that records up to 256 WMA. The only thing I've figured out is that my DAP does not support gapless playback, so I could record (say, Dark Side of the Moon) to minidisc (even as a single file!) and be able to hear it gaplessly. Again, I would love to rekindle the enthusiasm I had for this player when I first got it. I remember running around my apartment listening to music and trying to get it to skip or cut out by jumping up and down, shaking it, etc. Amazing, really. I'm looking around the boards here...but any help...what are y'all using these things for now? Thanks, LG