Just curious: what is your "MiniDisc conversion" story?

[FTS2090]

Mine goes like this...Back in 1999 i had a friend and he had minidisc (MZ-R70) and he tried for months to get me to get a player of my own, i kept saying "no, i'll get me a CD recorder" or "what about that HUGE creative Nomad" (this is the "dark age" of my life!!), until a guy we knew that worked at Sony HQ in california said to us "we are having a sale, for employees, 70% off from employee price" to make a long story short, this guy could get a MZ-R37 for $99 US, this is at the time retail at ciruit city was $250, so i said "why not? if i dont like it, ill sell it!!" so then i bought something like 30 blank discs in two weeks (and filled them too!), and the rest is history

[sebastianbf]

two guys went to my home and knock the door. They asked me if I had listen to the word of minidisc... They were dressing black suits

[sonic_rage]

lol

did they hand you literature and ask you if you're aware of the "truth"?

i got hooked to the MD format after a friend introduced me to the format in 2002.

i later got my first unit, the N1.

[Sparky191]

My cassette walkman died, and a guy at work was selling a Old Sharp Sr75 MD unit. He practically gave it to me. So I tried it and loved the sound. It has fantastic BASS. That was about 4yrs ago and the unit is still working. I'm don't use it now, as I have a HiMD.

[Poodle]

Got given a Sharp MD-MT290 for birthday present a couple of years ago - use that for copying and listening to language tapes mostly.

Sony MZ-RH910 is my latest HiMD 'baby', which is great for music since I now have Sonicstage 3.3 installed on my home laptop.

I'm obviously a bit of a Sony gadget fan as I also have an HD5.

[Sunny]

My parents heard about the MD format, and bought a ZS-M7 about 5 years ago. I ended up being the one using it all the time, creating a large collection of discs which I played on my MZ-70. (Used to use cassette players, but MD was SUCH an improvement and so easy to use!)

Both units collapsed within a couple of months of each other at the beginning of this year, and I found it very uncomfortable without them. (Running without music when you're used to running with it was very boring...) Read about Hi-MD on the internet and it sounded perfect! A 1st generation player could play my old discs, but also upload any new recordings, and I don't have any MP3s.

Saw the MZ-NH600 on special offer (in Dixons, who've now stopped selling MD units in the branches I've been to) and after some initial issues with SS3.2 (thanks so much to all those on the forum who helped me out) am up and running again! And am talking up Hi-MD to anyone who'll listen, mainly the people who haven't succumbed to "i-product" marketing.

[sebastianbf]

lol

did they hand you literature and ask you if you're aware of the "truth"?

exactly! lol

[MDGB2]

1997, saw rave reviews of the MDS JE-510 deck in What Hi-Fi magazine.

Bought as a replacement for my trusty Aiwa AD-F450 tape deck.

Blew my mind for both sound quality and incredible editing and re-writing features (remember, this is before CD-RW had hit the market!)

Upgraded to the JB920 in 1999, awaiting replacement in form of a Hi-MD deck...

[Jacques]

Introduced worldwide by Philips in the fall of 1992, the DCC900 was Philips’ top-of-the-line DCC deck, part of Philips’ high-end “900 series” audio components. The DCC 900 can digitally record music in 16-bit resolution and supports sampling frequencies of 32, 44.1, and 48 kHz. Philips included connectors to allow easy connection to any consumer-grade digital equipment. Digital inputs and outputs, all conforming to the SP/DIF standard, were included to facilitate easy digital recording.

Minidisc was (is) the perfect compliment to my Philips DCC900 Series

[daremo]

I was an exchange student in Japan in 2000 and kept wondering what these little square recorders were. I picked up a cheap R-91 that was on sale, and have been hooked ever since.

[FTS2090]

lol

did they hand you literature and ask you if you're aware of the "truth"?

i got hooked to the MD format after a friend introduced me to the format in 2002.

i later got my first unit, the N1.

Well, he did show me a skiing magazine that featured the MZ-R70 as the best accessory to go sking ... along with the manual of his MZ-R70

[KrazyIvan]

I actually followed MD since the beginning and bought a deck in 93 or 94. I got married in 96 and sold it. The MD bug did not bite me again until I saw my cousin with a R70. That is when I decided to get back into MD about 2-3 years ago.

[sonic_rage]

man, just shows you how poor of a job sony did in marketing this great format.

MD, outside of east asia, basically spread from word of mouth or as an experiment purchase.

[FTS2090]

man, just shows you how poor of a job sony did in marketing this great format.

MD, outside of east asia, basically spread from word of mouth or as an experiment purchase.

Dude! that is so true, just thinking of what MD would have been if sony would had advertised like apple for the iPod.... we might not even have iPods!

[Syrius]

Saw a leaflet in 93, back when I was living in Mexico. (Yeah, back when Sony cared about latin america). Fell in love with the format, and decided I had to have one. Had the chance to first play with it in 1995, and was enthralled. Got my first unit in 2000, an R-37. Got sick of MD when NetMD (LP2 is crap and you know it. ) came, with all the stupid restrictions. Stuck to my Sharp SR60 until it started to die on me last year, got some players, and now Hi-MD. And I love the NH900.

That's it.

[dex Otaku]

I started recording sounds with portable cassette recorders as a child. Some of my earliest experimentation was with home dubbing machines and cassettes of the Muppet Show, bits of audio taken from TV, chunks from CD [which had only been around about 2 years at that time], and anything else we could catch bites of with quick use of the pause buttons on my friend's cheapish home stereo. That friend has since gone on to be a DJ of some reknown here in Canada, having been a part of keeping the Winnipeg hiphop scene going through the 90s. [search for "DJ Hunnicut"]

My first "portable" recorder was a Technics SV-100 digital audio processor, which matched the size and design of a hip-pack VHS recorder Technics made to go with one of their video cameras. This unit converted analogue audio to 14-bit digital, and then fit that into a standard 29.97fps video signal for recording on any VTR with a composite input. I still have my VHS-based digital recordings, including the first live recordings I made in high school with $4,000 microphones on loan from the local uni's music department. They still play, and the quality, while not astounding, is still quite good.

Around the same time I came across articles in my favourite magazines at that point - Stereo Review, Audio, and Stereophile - about DCC and MD. The debate in these and other trade publications about lossy compression encouraged enough heat under my collar that I actually wrote at least one research essay for english class back then about the evils of data reduction, and how the careless use of it would become the wave of the future.

MD equipment was seldom-seen in rural Canada back then. There was no marketing for it, but if you dropped in to a Sony Store you could gave at the tiny recorders under the glass that were priced between $1,000-1,500CAD, not that much less than consumer DAT recorders.

The first person I met who owned an MD recorder of any kind was back in broadcast college [1994]. I remember asking him what he thought about the data reduction it used - he said, "What data reduction? It records just like CD." I remember getting into a jovial drunken debate about whether it did or not at the student pub, which ended with his running over to the residence and grabbing the manual, and eventually his digressing because, well, I was right.

The next time I saw MD was during a contract job for CTV at the 1995 Nordic Games, where CTV hired a number of students from the school I went to. In the radio rooms at school, and even in the TV studio, everything that used sound clips was still using cart tapes. CTV had these nice, professional Sony units that were the same size as a cart machine but used MD - the editor I set up some of that equipment for loved them, since you could cue things so easily, title them clearly, and the sound quality was so far beyond cart tapes that they bought into the format and never looked back.

Since then I met a number of others who had home or car decks, but portables were rare beasts, taking until after about 1997 to fall below the $1,000CAD mark for basic recorder units. I had a few friends [such as one of the people I use to work for and with doing live sound, who taught me a great deal of what I know] with recorders, but as I said, they were extremely rare to see.

When I attended a private audio engineering college in Vancouver, BC in early 1996, the basics of editing were still taught with 1/4" open-reel tape, though they had one large studio with a Sony 24-track DASH recorder and a few dedicated ProTools stations for advanced editing. No one in the audio eng department used MD, though it was used in embedded applications in the radio and TV departments in the same way that CTV had earlier replaced all their cart equipment.

It wasn't until about 1998 or 99 that one of my closest friends bought a portable to use for stringer recording of interviews for CBC. She put it in my hands and let me play with it. I experimented a bit and found that the sound quality was indeed far, far better than my expectations had been [even after having been experimenting with software mp3 encoding since about 1993 - back when it took a day to encode a single 4-minute song]. Her first unit didn't last long, thanks to an incident involving her nephew and a bottle of root beer, and her replacement was a venerable MZ-R37 which I would use a few times over the next several years.

In 2003 I worked on an audio presentation for an art gallery installation that meant having to track down or record a number of sound effects [thank goodness for the BBC royalty-free library and R. Murray Schafer]. My producer's contribution to the equipment manifest was his friend's MD recorder [not sure what model it was, possibly something with a 70 in it, the most basic recorder of that model year] and a Sony MS-907 microphone. We spent many an evening tramping around in the grass or waiting for trains to drive by. The quality of every recording I made, despite the bottom-end recorder and the cheap microphone, blew my socks off. Again, my expectations were exceeded every time I brought home footage to log, even having to copy everything via analogue means.

In 2003 my ex-lover gave me a lump sum payment for a job we did together at the same time as my tax return came in, and several other friends threw in cash at my birthday party so I could finally get a portable recorder. That was the summer I pre-ordered my NH700 from Minidisc Canada.

My decision to go with HiMD was based mostly on the fact that recordings were uploadable, and that it did PCM. Or.. actually, my decision was based mostly on cost. I was aware even then of alternative formats for recording, but the cost of all other formats was so high compared to HiMD that any possible hassles of being an early adopter were easily set aside.

I now have both my NH700 and an RH10, thanks to Kurisu. I am extremely happy with HiMD's performance, portability, and usability in terms of recording. I plan to use both units until they die a dignified death, having been well-appreciated.

I do however doubt that my next recording equipment purchase will be HiMD-based, whether they continue with the line or not. I fully expect that someone will market an affordable, and more importantly usable, sufficiently-high-quality portable that uses either a hard disc or flash memory to record 24/96 digital audio with no DRM restrictions.

Chances are, whatever I buy into next will be professional equipment with XLR inputs, decent mic preamps, and the like.

I have absolutely no regrets about having gone with HiMD, or having used MD in the past, though. For the sake of recordists everywhere, I hope the format sticks around for a few years yet, because its affordability more than offsets the potential hassles of DRM or being restricted to using Sony's software.

[Sparky191]

You could make a movie from that story...

[ynos]

Looking forward for this movie, Great story dex Otaku!

[Toddz]

What an excellent piece of writing,where else would you get a apost written like that superb.....

ps.. i think you are in love with mini disc..... i know i am..

regards

toddz

[tekdroid]

bought first MD recorder in 95ish, the MZ-R3. Paid around AU$950 for it. Discs back then were around AU$13 bucks, from memory. Less than a year after I bought it, it was sold. Just wasn't for me, though the editing on disc was unlike anything on the planet. The format was remarkable in that sense. It also made recording easy and portable. I just lost interest in lossy compression. Totally. And I still don't use it to this day.

What I miss:

the build of the old units. They were simply built to last. Today's units just don't match up (even the MZ-NH1 doesn't come close).

CD and DVD recorders:

Bought a CD recorder in September '97 (Yamaha 400t - which I still have and still works) for AU$750-ish and a DVD recorder a few years back. No compromises on the linear PCM front, and great open-source lossless formats like FLAC and so on are at my disposal for archival. The rest was history.

NetMD/Hi-MD

Heard about NetMD when it came out, also heard about the crappy software and what a pain in the arse it was to use (a friend bought one). Ignored all units, but then - all of a sudden - news hits the net that Sony would extend the MD format to a new format called Hi-MD. At last, data storage and linear PCM (yay!) on the same disc. There were delays releasing them. And more delays. Then, they were selling.

Waited until people started using them. Heard about all the DRM restrictions and crappy software. No chance in hell I would bite at those restrictions, let alone those prices.

Uploading restrictions lifted

When DRM restrictions were lifted for uploads in SonicStage 3.2 a few months back, I seriously started to get interested. I simply would not buy one without official DRM upload restrictions lifted. That restriction was one of the most unbelievably arrogant things I've ever seen a corporation get away with, and I was surprised anyone could live with it, even with third-party tools to get around things, they would not get a cent from me for that. So you can imagine how surprised I was they did something about that (quite speechless, I was).

Price reductions and pulling out of the market

The price reductions here recently just sealed the deal; I returned to MD after a decade's absence (just before they drop it in this country, lol).

It's hard to imagine MD kicking butt (even for just recording in linear pcm) in 5 years from now in its current form. I think something better is definitely gonna replace it in short order, even if that something is an enhanced Hi-MD.

Edited November 12, 2005 by tekdroid

[EnglishRob]

I started using MD back in 95. I'd seen the adverts on TV (the one where a band record some music onto MD, take it to a music exec's office, he listens to it and then chucks the disc out of the window where someone picks it up and plays it!).

I've been a fan of Sony kit since I was about 4 when my parents got a Sony Betamax video :-)

Anyway... around 1995 (September ish) I'd started a proper job earning about £45 a week. I used to occasionally go in the local Sony Centre store. I saw the MD players and recorders in there and had a demonstration. I couldn't afford a recorder at the time, I think they were pretty expensive, around £300 or so, but they did have a player, the MZ-E2. I saved up for weeks until I could afford one. They had a special offer going at the time, they were selling the MZ-E2 for £149 which included 5 free pre-recorded discs (although you had to send off for them). I did have a problem when I bought the player, I couldn't find many pre-recorded discs. I managed to get Mariah Carey's Music Box album.

Unfourtunately I lost the MZ-E2 about a year after buying it.

After that I got an MD5 midi system. I thought it was great, being able to transfer my music CDs onto MD, edit the discs etc. I bought an MZ-E40 player (which I still have, although it doesn't work I don't think) to take my MD's out of the house with me.

When I started learning how to drive, I biught a cheap old car. I then decided I wanted MD in the car too. I stumped up about £400 for an MDX-C650. The car was only worth £200! I got quite a bit of flack from my parents about it.

I also still have the MDX-C650, again it doesn't work. I had to sell it a few years back, along with a Sony CD changer to pay for some car repairs. Funny thing is, my best mate bought it back from the guy I sold it to, and eventually gave it back to me.

I did have a break from MD's up until about 2001 when I got a MZR-900 recorder for a wedding aniversary present. Since then I've built up my collection a bit more. Not sure how many discs I have in total now, must be a fair few.

I bought an MZN-400 (I think) last year from a guy in the US from ebay. I really liked the idea of being able to transfer my music from the PC to MD, although I must admit, I couldn't stand the sonic stage software!

I still have the MZN-400 somewhere. The kids tend to use it now as I have an MZ-NH600 HiMD recorder which I bought earlier on this year.

I just wish Sony would release an in-car HiMD player now. I'm not really a fan of MP3 CD players, I find the CD's take far too much room for my liking. I guess the only alternative is getting a in-car stereo with line-inputs and using my portable HiMD?

Rob

[rei-gouki]

Prior to MD, I went through 2 generations of Sony walkman of the cassette variety. None of that spring button stuff. Just electronic buttons and servos.

Then in 1999-2000, I got fed up with the warping the cassettes were doing under what I thought were reasonably normal conditions. I looked to flash (as HDD tech was rudimentary and I think it was before the 6GB Nomad) and CD. Flash was looking very expensive for very little. CD was looking a little on the large side. Then I came across the MD. Small size. As good as CD. I couldn't afford the R90, though it looked spiffy. A friend showed me an R91 he got in the US. Cosmetic differences.

Anyway, the R70 came in a really nice blue and the battery life was pretty good compared to older units. I got it with the intention to keep it... but the salesman offered to take it back if I didn't like it. I was in there the next week getting a protective pouch for it in place of the pull string thing that came with it. So I got that and retired the walkman. Only thing I missed was the radio which came in handy now and then. Recently got an NH900 to replace the N707 as the main unit, though I may split the duties to NH900 for making MDs and recording lectures and the N707 for pure playing. One other thing I miss is the double line out the R70 had...

Grr. All my portables have strengths and weaknesses! I can't part with any... >.<

[metooshelah]

i saw a guy with a small thingy in my school. i asked what it was and he said its a minidisc. so weh talked abit on minidiscs and he explained things to me- talking about the size, the quality and so forth. from that moment i was locked on minidiscs. went into sony's webpage and looked for minidiscs. finally i found mz-r90 which came to be my first minidisc and served me very well from 2000 - 2005 when i bought the mzn-h1. (i am happy to say that the mz-r90 is still works like a charm).

[garyc]

I first came across MiniDisc way back when the whole MD vs DCC "war" was going on. I had used Walkmans for years and had a pretty big collection of compilation tapes. Always loved recording stuff from the radio & vinyl.

I bought my first separates system in '94 - And wanted to get a tape deck, got the Sony TCK-611S, loved the adjustable recording levels, calibration, the quality of the recordings on chrome or metal tapes was incredible! Much as I wanted to I couldn't afford MiniDisc.. it was cheaper than any of the MD decks at the time.

The price of the units here in Ireland was way too expensive for me until around '99 when I got an MDS-JE530.. straight away I was converted, loved the editability of the recordings, the sound quality was great too.. as soon as I ditched the freebie cables that came with it!.

A few months later I got an MZE-33, it still works now except for the battery door being a bit dodgy, it got some amount of use. I was on the road working as an IT engineer for almost 3 years, had the 33 connected to the tape head unit with one of those cassette adapters, went through 5 of them! Never a moment of bother with the MD player!.

about 3 years ago my brother went to the US and brought back an Ipod, so he'd no more use for his R91, gave it to me for my birthday. This was around the time I discovered ebay too! ouch! I wanted to get an MD head unit for my car, loved the JVC KD-MX series, just the idea of having a single din, single slot CD?MD player was amazing! Finally got a 2900R for €150, unfortunately the lens packed in after less than a year of heavy use. Pricey to get replaced - €130!.. That replacement lens has since packed in so my girlfriend has it in her car, she would only listen to the radio anyway.

So, through browsing this incredible resource, reading the excellent advice on offer I've bought an E10 & N10 in the last year or so. I've also started collecting Prerecorded MD's, normally around £4 on ebay.. I now have 65 of them!

[akijikan]

My first encounter with MD happened I think in 2000. I was 14 at the time. My cousin came from Birmingham, AL to my house in Chattanooga, TN for thanksgiving and the one thing we loved to do was share music. At this point the gold standard, as defined by middle school peers, was the portable CD players. They weren't as cheap like they are now and not everyone had one.

Anyway. My cousin brought her MZ-R37 along with her. I'll try to explain my infatuation to you. It basically comes down to this: I am a gadget freak! I had used plenty of tape walkmans before (going back to those all metal servo-button things), and at that point I had been dreaming of eventually getting a portable CD player. But the from the moment I saw her MD-unit and the words "what is that?!" popped out of my young mouth, I was in love (with the MD recorder, NOT MY COUSIN!).

I think it was 2001 christmas that I demanded one. The one that fell with in my parent's presents budget happened to be the same R37. At this point it was out of production (I think) and was only available on places like ebay and yahoo auctions. I won one on yahoo auctions for christmas.

Later the unit arrived and to my utter disapointment, it didn't work. I couldn't beleive it. I had spent all december looking at minidisc.org and reading up on the unit til I knew it inside and out, before I even had it I had read the entire manual and knew how to do what with it. Anyway I got my money back, after threatening the seller with legal action.

I think my music needs were taken care of by a portable CD player for the next year, that is until christmas 2002 when, unable to think of what I wanted for christmas, my mind stumbled back across minidisc. I quickly came running back to minidisc.org to educate myself on the latest and greatest in portable MD recorders. At that point I couldn't really afford the latest and greatest, but I atleast wanted all the inputs and NetMD had just hit earlier that year. I settled on an MZ-N707, turning to ebay to find a good deal. Fortunately I did and it was awesome! I also ran across people selling 36 capacity MS wallets, filled with MDs! I had all the discs I could want at the time and was very happy with my blue/silver unit. I had even purchased a aftermarket back-lit remote. Pure MD heaven! I impressed everyone at school with it, as out of the 1200 high school kids I was the only one who had even heard of MD (except for this one kid who recorded the sermons at church on their MD deck). I impressed some guy so much he went out and bought an MZ-N505 (from circuit city, he got ripped off).

I think it was fall of 2003 when disaster struck and my MD unit was stolen at school. Apparently I had flashed it around a little too much, and then made the second mistake of leaving it unattended in my backpack when I guess someone was going through bags looking for stuff to take and ran across my gem. Bastard! I had high hopes of recovering it though, because anyone who brought the same MD unit with the aftermarket remote to school would stickout like a sore thumb, and just how smart are theives usually? This one was smart enough though, and I never heard of it showing up on anyone. At this point I gave my discs away to my friend with the N505 and gave up my dreams MD yet again. I did recover some joy in life, being able to forget about sonicstage and its painful usage.

That christmas, I was in need yet again of something to play music on, but at this point, MP3 HD units were in vouge, I thought for sure that MD would soon pass. I turned my attention to the Neuros. I got a 20GB unit for 200 dollars and it had a built in mic, a line in, headphone and line out. The only thing it lacked was optical. It also had a built in FM broadcaster to use with car stereos and such. All these features built in, I couldn't figure out why it wasn't kicking the ipod's butt at 200 dollars. Soon I learned. It was like a brick in your pocket because the harddrive wasn't the ipod size, but actual laptop-sized harddrives. The software side of things rivaled sonicstage for peice of crap of the decade too. They did make the software (as well as the firmware) opensource though, so I found a better user made software to live with. I was happy with it, til the harddrive went to crap. I sold it on ebay earlier this year.

Here we are again looking at another christmas and I've returned again to the MD community to find MS alive and well with yet another format revolution in HI-MD. I'm getting an MZ-RH910 for christmas and I am so excited. Uploading my own PCM recordings and 1GB discs! This format has come so far and I can't wait to get mine in hand! Oh well, I always have the manual to read until Dec 25 (20 days!). I'm so glad I'm coming back to minidisc.

Although MD kicks like nothing else, I still believe that it will someday be beaten by HD recorders, but I believe the time is still a ways off before the HS units are affordable and reliable enough to knock everything else out. Until then, I'll enjoy my RH910!

[raintheory]

Since '93 for me. Got one of the first MZ-1's.

Still works great too, not too great for jogging unless you like carrying weights.

[acidboy84]

I've been using an MD since late 1998 when my cousins bought me an MZ-R55. I was like wow when I found out the price of the unit. The sleekness of the unit(at least at that time) and the clarity of the sound compared to my old cassete player(still using anologue recording for MD at that time). The best was seeking the songs as one need to press next instead forwarding the tape. Lol...! Used it till 2000 when I bought myself an MZ-E900 due to it's longer playback time. Four years later 'treated' myself an MZ-NH1 and has been using this till now.

[brian10161]

just lookin at all the forums and saw this and ill give a bit of info. my bro got an md player last year. he used it for maybe 3 days, then it just went into the drawer. about maybe a month ago i came across it, so i got the cable for it and the discs, then downloaded the software and have been using it solid since then. im gettin an ipod soon, so i will be switching, but i really like the idea of removable media, it just makes sence. i always loved vinyl and tapes so MD's just make a ton of sence. its a great idea, i really wish they had advertised these things more, then i would probably stay with it forever. cds combined with the ease of a tape. nuff said lol.

[dex Otaku]

I must say .. this has got to be one of my favourite threads since coming here. It's great to hear everyone's stories.

[Christopher]

I'm a late bloomer.

Before 2001, my portable music device experience was limited to a rather poor Aiwa CD player and various handheld radios. Around the time of 2000/2001, there was no iPod and MD was really starting to take off with the introduction of MDLP. I begged my Mum for a MZ-R700 for Christmas, and I got my wish. I remember having just one Sony 80 minute MD that I would burn all kinds of random stuff onto via male/male stereo cable -- nothing was better than feeling of accomplishment from spending the time to complete a realtime recording.

I remember dabbling in live recording, using a cheap PC mic to record myself playing bass or experiences with my friends (I'll be uploading those sometime soon). It was the most interesting device I had ever owned in my life up to that point. I bought myself a MZ-E505 a bit later to compliment the recorder, as I felt very strong about preserving the recording head on the R700. A few units later, I still use a NH900 from time to time for live recording, something which I have alot of interest in doing next year.

Edited December 6, 2005 by kurisu

[Prof.OND]

I didn't really know anything about MD untill about '98.

My Toy Story:

I had always been recording music with plain tapes, since the age of 12.

I recorded radiotransmissions, cd's and other tapes with my philips all in one.

I loved it. My own music collection!

As I grew up I made more recordings and noticed that tape recordings had it's flaws in quality and durability.

But it was still kind of sufficient for me at that time.

In '95 hiphop was growing popular in France.

As I'm from Belgium (a small country @ the north border of France) I got interested too.

I started mixing vinyl on somebody else's gear(gemini).

At about the same time I "borrowed" my parents somewhat more professional tapedeck (with adjustable record volume) permanently and switched from normal audio tapes to metal. Improved quality and durability.

The first tape we made sucked. The records were great, but the mixing was poor.

Nevertheless I was often listening to the tape for the records (KRS one, show & ag, wu tang,...the classics)

After some time the tape got stuck in my recorder. At the end I had two pieces of tape (so far for durability).

So I didn't know what else to do the to make two tapes of it. Don't know if you have experience with this, but it's funny cause the pitch gets all messed up.

A few months later I started buying vinyl as a hobbyist dj. Soon followed by my own Technics.

The need for good recordings grew stronger, but the availabity of metal tapes decreased.

Discovering the world of mixing, scratching and yes even a bit of beatjugglin' I soon realised that taperecorders weren't the solution for me.

Since my cd player broke down a few months earlier (lens) and my first home-written cd's started to deteriorate, I didn't feel the need to buy a stand alone cd recorder, which in addition was still quite expensive.

Especially the type of CD recorder I was interested in (recorder with cinch audio-in).

Figuring out a way of saving my best recordings with the best quality for a long time my eye fell on a little device used by a friend.

An MD recorder. I borrowed it from him to make a mix tape. 90 minutes of pure joy (written on two disk that still work like a charm).

I was really surprised that such a small device could do all.

Recording (only sp back then, great quality and durability compared to tape) with volume adjustment.

Editing was real easy (2X45 minutes mix tape recorded in different takes, put together)

Listening (easy to use, small and shockproof walkman) .

At that time I was already writing CD's with music I created op the PC and found it inconvient at least always having to move my gear from my room to the computer downstairs so I could sample my records.

Earlier "investments" in records and other audio gear, made it impossible to buy a MD recorder, so I continued borrowing MD recorders from friends (sometimes for months :-) ). Any of them reading this. Thanks again.

Finally last year, with one of my first pay checks I bought the MZ-NH900.

PCM quality recording (interesting for sampling music), Uploading (thanks 2 Marc), editing on the move (or on PC), listening and of course the slow but well apreciated data transfer possibility (I love convergence in media).

Edited December 10, 2005 by Prof.OND

[drikme]

As long as i remember , from very young always was amazed of music and sound in general.

I had to record all my favorite tracks most of the times from the Greek radio as the music i was listening to (greek rock n punk)wasn't very easy to find or buy,tape recorder was my tool for that and i was absolutely amazed that i could record my favorite radio programm and then listen to it again and again and again(13yo-1991). Many years later about 2000 i started my course in sound engineering and recording in film and TV studies in Athens,our final course and presentation was a short film in 16mm film with the sound seperated recorded on Marantz PMD670 (a black huge and heavy md unit with fantastic options though, and very very good sound quality in combination with a pair of good mic's)This was love at first sight (HA HA HA).As most of the people that ever used a mini disc recorder or player i was absolutely amazed from this tiny medium with this fantastic sound quality, and the ability to upload digital on an audio Hardware (digidesign Pro Tools) your personal recordings.

Everything was perfect to me about this thing called mini disc(!!!), what i didnt thought about (silly boy) was that all this good shit(oops) that i was using wasn't consumer based products but pure professional equipment. So when i had my first go with the Mzr-410 mini disc recorder i lost quite a lot of my first excitement,but have to admitt that i still was very happy with the sound quality this little portable unit was offering(even with compressed sound atrac 3) even compared with the sound of a Cd player ,mp3 player etc,no comparsion !!!

These days(the last 2 months or something) i am using my mzr-h10 hi md unit,despite the fact that i read on this forum quite a lot of complaints(which are absolutely rigt and true) md etc players,despite some restriction that sony decided to put to us poor mini disc users,and the fact some options could be much more better designed... i really still admire and feel very excited about this legendary machine that was builted about 1992(wasnt it?))).I use my mzrh 10 hi md unit with ss 3.2 on a Pentium2!!! 256 mb of ram!!! with windows xp pro(ha ha ha), except the fact thati have to smoke al ot of cigarettes while waiting to upload or download my music on the puter/player everything works fine for me till now,never lost any of my tracks ,never saw anyproble occured message while transfering and the most important sound is till fantastic and louder (because of hat trick for volume and eq on the mzrh10,thanks kurisu) comparing to my very first md players recorders.

*Record

*Upload

*Listen

*Enjoy Music with your MDs!!

PS:I m not working for Sony

[Hombre]

I had a roomate that had a MD player. We shared a big loft and we would have bands play there he would make soundboard records of the shows for the bands. I have always had alot of music and spent alot of money for 4ad releases some which where very hard to come by in rural midwest. Before CD-R's I wanted to preserve a Dif Juz recording and used an MD to do it for posterity. Back then disc were about the same price as a CD itself. In 1994 I had saved enough money to buy my first MD player. In the mid 90's it seemed MD was taking off the prices of disc came down and you could buy pre-recorded disc. I thought this was the future. I'd at that time have amassed over 1,500 cassettes from records I had owned at the time. I've always been a very mobile person and chosen cassettes to use in my mobile lifestyle. MD made so much more sense so I dived even further into the MD lifestyle. By 2000? Net MD came out and I got sucked in further and a few years after that HiMD.

Right now I am on the road and listen to a HiMD recording and loving it. I get bored with music styles very easily and MD' flexabilty to meet those needs.

In short it was a roomate who doesn't even use MD's anymore. I saw what a great medium it was and latched on.

[Tiesto]

I read about this new technology in a tech magazine (I think it was Popular Mechanic) sometime early in the 90's. There was an article about some sort of war between a digital cassette againts optical disc, I didnt pay much of the attention though. Next time I've ever seen a minidisc was in the movie "Last Action Hero", it was cool to see a gadget like that but I said that is one of those things that never will come to my country. The next time was (by the middle of the 90's) in a music store where there were prerecorded minidiscs of Michael Jackson and Maraih Carey among few others, once again I didnt pay much of the attention because I was very happy with my tapes and a couple of cds, I remember they were way expensive than their cd counterparts. But the first real encounter with a minidisc device was when I visited a friend whose father is an electrical technician and he had some amazing electronic devices; like an optical disc player, you know, the big ones like a vinyl but optical; an electronic microscope; a dual tape deck with optical output among other stuffs he had a minidisc deck and in that very moment he was recording a minidisc from a cd, he began to talk to me how he plugged one end of fiber optic cable to the back of the cd deck and the other end to the md deck and how he entered the song names with the remote however it seemed very complicated and it was out of my league. The next time was (2004) when a friend who has a md car player told me that his cousin just brought from US a minidisc walkman (mz-r700) which can record from the computer through the usb port, that was what rang the bell to switch myself to the format. No more low quality audio (tapes) and no more bulky portable players (cds), once made into MD there's no return.

[littlefox]

It all started when my little brother's cassette tape Walkman started to chew up tapes. For a hobby band that enjoys recording how they play just to be able to laugh at how sucky they sound, this was an unacceptable state of affairs. This was when I started looking around for a new recorder.

I'd known for a while that some MP3 flash players could actually record, so I first looked at that. A combination of lousy test recordings from built-in mics, dearth of line-in equipped players, memory space and cost of SD cards dissuaded me from buying them at first, but it was something that was pretty much needed.

Then I learnt from an anime, BECK: Mongolian Chop Squad, that you could actually record stuff onto Minidiscs. It was a surprise; my only memory of Minidiscs were a couple of pre-recorded discs spotted in stores that made me scratch my head as to what the hell they were back in 2001.

I decided to do some research first, which is how I stumbled upon this site. A lot of the Minidisc vs MP3 web pages and discussion faqs were basically fanboy jobbies where the opposing format was usually attributed, among others, everything from poor recording/playback quality right down to blame for the depletion of the ozone layer. So I posted questions here and a couple other objective forums to see what would best suit my needs according to them.

In the end, Minidisc won hands down. Better cost per media and better recording sound quality pushed me in favour of HiMD, and I went and bought my MZ-NH900.

[Rasuogen]

Lets see...well It was about a year ago at college when I saw my friend with his MD player(he had three all together) and at the end of the day I started thinking about them a lot, then look them up on the internet and got more and more interested in the format. I asked him why he liked it and said "the sound is fantastic" and I keep talking to him about it for another hour or so getting more wide eyed every minute at this audioplayer he praised.

In the end he sold me one of his units,(for $30!! and gave me a bunch of discs!) I picked the MZ-N505 and since then I have fallen for these little discs, and have spent a lot of time looking into them and reading what I could find about the latest models and such.

Since then the only other player I have bought is the MZ-N420D "aka one of the lame looking and featureless psyc players that sony is trying to pass off as a good buy". All in all they are not bad but I need something better, and for the moment its just there if my MZ-N505 desides to die on me

So far so good.

Right now I am thinking about getting into the Hi-MD sceen once I get money.

Also if there is anyone out their that has a car unit (single Din) could they tell my where to buy one, and I have looked everywhere and all what I found was...

Sonys Explode MD unit is sold in europe and not here for something like 270$

or they are over 1,000$ and thats to much for me.

Any help would be great thanks

[atrain]

better than getting a dediated md car unit would be getting one with a line in, then just use a portable, be it minidisc, himd or hdd player.

[mercury_in_flames]

I couldnt see my story here, although if it is, i appologize. I bought my mz-r909 back in 2000 i think it was. My reason for getting one was to er..listen to music off the radio whenever i chose, make my own compilations etc. I bought a net md ms-n910 second hand on ebay. The net capability is a bit glitchy at times as i think the unit isnt that fresh anymore. I then got an md deck last year, MDS-JB980, with net capability. Since then I've been using it with my audio technica headphones,using md as a cd-rw sort of medium. My hd5 hasnt got a real line out, so i just put any new tracks i acquire onto md and listen through my hifi with it. It has also served me when I wanted to transfer a concert dvd to a portable format. At the moment my hifi system is at repair, and I have connected my deck to my television and am listening through that.

[Kardon]

I remember seeing the price of the minidisc units compared to some other mp3 players, so i went for it. I dont think i will ever go back to MD now that I have an iPod. I do however REALLY like the look of the older sharp units. Absolutly beautiful.

[xravexboix]

It started years and years ago... when I didn't have any purchasing power (lol)! My cousin got one and I always wanted one but couldn't afford it (It was 97 or so and I was a freshman in high school). Since it seemed the format was declining, I held off purchasing one... then the NetMD came along and it started getting to me... "buy it! buy it!" but, once again, I couldn't justify the purchase. Once I heard about Hi-MD (sadly just heard about it about 3 weeks ago LOL) I decided to get a unit. I got it from Amazon and bought a bunch of himds from the sonystyle store (I had a giftcard that would've gone to waste...). I just received my unit a few days ago and enjoy it every bit... I haven't listened to music using headphones in quite a while and it's definitely a different experience than hearing it over my speaker system.

Now I"m hooked and want a deck for the car... I may just head over to Japan to get the MD Lexus unit TOo bad we can't order it over here =\ I don't even know if that unit is HiMD... I hope it is...

and BTW, I'm hooked on Hi-SP256 =]

Edited February 3, 2006 by the strategist