MikeyV80

I was pretty late when I got involved into MD: 2005! Altough I knew for a long time MD existed, I didn't see any pro's buying such. I'm a keyboard-player and sometimes I record something for family and friends. Until I bought my NH-600, I used my pc for recording my stuff. One friend of mine told me my recordings could get cleaner AND better if I should switch to MD. I didn't believe him, until I went to his home-studio with my gear. Then he recorded my playing and imported those tracks into his pc. After comparing these tracks with previous recordings I made on a pc, I still wasn't convinced. Until I heard his recordings of my playing! Awesome! So I bought myself a NH600, first for recording my own songs but secondly for bringing music with me whenever I'm roaming. January this year I bought a second-hand Yamaha MD8 multitrack-recorder for recording my own music-sessions as well as complete jam sessions with other musicians. And of course, the MD8 uses MiniDisc-technology. I still use the NH600 as a recorder, but only to record finalized sessions, just to keep the quality as high as possible. And I hardly need to perform editing the tracks on my pc, most of the time, I can put those immediately on cd.

I think your damn right, Sirius. But I think governments are willing to do strange things when money comes in account and that's why EU got the tremendous idea to do something which looks like enforcing DRM. With every CD sold, there will be an amount for vat, importtaxes and more. It even can get worse: in The Netherlands when I buy an empty CD-Writable for instance, I have to pay € 0,12 for copyright infringement, no matter the use of that CD Writable; audio or just data. The same goes for almost every medium which might be able to carry data or audio: DVD-writables, minidiscs, audio cassette tapes. But when you think every penny goes to artists, uh-uh. I'm a singer/songwriter but never saw a penny from sales of media. Never proven it happens anyhow. Where does all that money go? Nobody knows. Is it traceable? No way, because the organisation who handles all this is a private institute working for the Dutch government, instead of a governmental unit. Does the EU take care of this? No, it doesn't. To me: yes. Cashflow within the EU is something normal civilians do not understand and there is a lack of information AND control of the EU. Dutch government sometimes is as harsh as the EU; should take care of protection of the Dutch but doesn't either...

I hate to say this, but EU is US' little child. US is against piracy while there are many other problems the US should head 'cause hese are far worse. But it's business, talking money so it's important enough... Here you do have a good point. CD's have to meet the Red Book standard if they want to be called Audio CD's. Otherwise they have to meet the Yellow Book which describes everything for data CD's. Please take a glance at those DRM'd CD's: do they read Audio CD or CD-ROM? If it reads Audio CD it means it has to meet the Red Book and expected to be readable in ANY device. If it doesn't: return to your dealer, you'll get your money back. If you buy an CD which reads CD-ROM (or even no logo at all!) you can be sure you can get trouble when reading it in whatever device. Don't worry: giant labels like Sony and EMI have tried this using several ways of copy protection. Sony got involved in course, and has paid a lot. I'm sure Sony won't try his second time. This is going to be a dead end street even before it has been laid down, and both EU and US know that. I tend to see this more like bad dog behaviour: growling badly but when it comes into account: running away with the tail between the legs.

I'm not for sure to say MD is nearing its end. Why not? I'm a musician myself, and I've used a MD-recorder (a MZ-NH600) for recording my own stuff. To me it was good, but recently i bought myself an 8-track MD-recorder. MD again, because I'm still convinced of the advantages MD offers me. But that's leveling to semi-pro. When I look at the pro's within the music scene, it isn't surprising they use MD a lot, even for recording at their home-studio's! I've spend a lot of time comparing harddisk-, flash- en MD-based multitrackers. Pro's and con's for each: Harddisk-based multi-trackerspro's: unlimited tracks, different sample-rates and bit-rates as far as OS of multi-tracker can handle con's: portability, sound of spinning disk (annoying!) and price. Memory-based multi-trackerspro's: speed, silent, portability, different sample-rates as far as OS of multi-tracker can handle con's: limited in tracks and bit-rates (amount of memory is the limiting factor), different forms of carriers! MD-based multi-trackerspro's: portability, silent (only in extreme cases you hear MD working!) con's: limited in tracks, sample- and bitrates. When I'm honoust, there were two things why I chose for MD: at first because I'm familiar with MD, secondly the price. A third pro to me is the availability of new discs; I can get those easily and fairly cheap. When I take a closer look to players, hmmmm, hard to say. MD has the accessibility as its disadvantage. Flash-memory players work as convenient as cd-rom's or diskettes: drag 'n' drop. That's one of the reasons why Apple's iPod became so popular. Most people aren't techies and want a quick way to load their players. Conclusively I think MD might get a future within the low-end consumermarket if Sony starts writing a more convenient program. For the pro's I think MD will last for a long time because of its quality. But in both cases Sony has a lot of work to do!

Perhaps it's amazing, but I bought myself a second hand Sony MDM-X4, a digital 4 track Minidisc recorder. Pretty old, but I'm sure it suits my needs for my own recordings. I'm surprised there's nothing about the MDM-X4 on this forum but I think it's old (first release in 1996) and not really related to Minidisc Audio (it uses both Minidisc Data and Audio)? Oh, I've payed € 90,-- (about $ 117,--) which is a bargain! New where those things $ 1250,- and nowadays I've seen them for sale for at least $ 300,-!

Pretty long story... I heard of MD from the beginning in '92 or nearby, but at that moment I wasn't able to buy one (poor student!), but got hooked to it in 2005 because of a recommendation from one of my friends. He recommended me MD to improve my keyboard playing. I bought he NH-600 which suited my needs, and nowadays I take it everywhere I go: lightweight, easy to use and a darn good sound quality, both when recording and when playing.

I have 1 1 Gb HiMD which carries the music from my most favorite musician, further I have 20 74/80 min MD's, from which I use 2 for recording my own music, I use he others for putting complete albums or compilaion, which I recycle from time to time. It depends on my mood how often I recycle my MD's.