Tamino

A fried who lived in Indonesia for 2 long periods ( 1 year each) pretended that MD were not sold there because humidity is too high for the sensistive equipment. Could it be so that there also in Australia are some areas with a very high humidity?

When MD was introduced, this medium could be used to store/archive music and reproduce music that sounded in almost CD quality when reproduced using a high quality sereo system ( or very good (not Sony) ear phones). Still I remember the advertisments showing von Karajan with the MZ-R30. I think Sony has made a misstake when Sony already some years ago abandommed the idea of producing MD as to mobile tool for high quality music recording, reproduction and archiving. The first visible signs was the simplied design of recording inputs and the absence of rcording level controllers, later on mediocre ear phones and the introduction of 2 formats of MDLP were other signs Another misstake is to present and introduve 3 different variants of the same format (Normal speed ATRAC, MDLP, Hi MD) within the short tine span of 15 years , if a medium is expected to be used for archiving When the MP3-race started, Sony and other companies felt pushed to meet this threat by introducing MDLP resulting in increased storage capacity but with reduced sound quality. I think that was a misstake because on one side less quality is not in the interest of music lovers, and on the other side MD:s might be too clumpsy or sensitive to rough handling (or just too expensive) to the large group of people that are content with intermediate sound quality adequate for listening the music of the day in noisy environements such as streets, trains or busses. For daily use on transportation to and from work mobiles or MP3 players with an radio seem to be OK and for that reason it is reaonable to stop development of new md models for that marked. But for the specialized market of music lovers who want a mobile tool of the kind mentioned above there is probaly still a (sleeping) market Still I am looking forward to a small new MD recorder with an integrard radiotuner - FM and AM (DAB might be introduced in a future but there are rumors from people that had a chance to compare tell that high quality FM-transmissions sound better than DAB 250 MHz corresponding to MP3 190 Mbits) Hover, if MD:s are going to dispperar in the shops, I have avoided a potentional problem of not beeing able to listen to my 350 MD:s by bying some extra R90 änd R50 that now are sold very cheap secaon hand. My favorates for life recordings are still MZ-R35 and MZ-R50.