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

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FTS2090

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My history of MiniDisc began before the first machine was realized... I follow the statements from Sony, that was a direct answer on Philips silly DCC system and imagine that MiniDisc might be the perfect way for me... In one of the first statement from Sony, did they confess that they still had 3 major innovation left to do, before they could realize a recorder and they did also declare that a MiniDisc recorder, need the same processor power as a normal PC at that time!!

But they did manage that incredible objective and I was one of the first in Sweden who bought a MZ1 at the exceptional low prize of 987 usd (as a fine used car) and a 74 minutes disc cost 21 usd, but I made a deal with a shop that order 20 directly from Sony and sold them to me for the buy price plus 30 usd, reducing the price to 16 usd...

But I mainly wanted a home deck, so I bought the first really fine home deck... A Sony MDS-102 you missed to list in this site, that has a jog dial and still is the most delicious designed deck Sony ever made (in black, bronze and grey silver) at "just" 900 usd at Canaria Islands and that was almost half the Swedish prize BUT it was only midsize... So when I got a deal on a Sony MDS-302 at buy price, did I change to that one and sold my exclusive 102 to a slightly higher price... After that did I get a Sony MDS-JE500 as payment for a job and I got just surprises, when I realized that it has worked about 4 hours every day (in average) since ten years back!!!!

Yes I bought also a cute Sharp MD-MS701E because everyone said that Sony did sound much worse, but I almost never use it and the expensive Lithium-Ion batteries (have two) died years ago... I did loan it to an excellent composer that made 55 minute with music for me, in the same style and class as Enigmas first CD so I did have great value for it, anyhow.

Now have I no job since 4 years back, so it took me serval years to save to my Sony MZ-RH1 that I will get next week... And at the same time will I buy a used Sony MDS-JE530 to replace and backup my old deck, because I will get it for just 50 usd!

How I use my MiniDisc machines, can you find here... http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showt...17966&st=15

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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.

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When I first started work, as 18 yeard old, in 1986, I had a walkman of some description. My first memory is seeing a commercial on MTV, i think, where a guy at a party/club, is doing the music, by playing a tape, but has it keep untangaling it every five seconds, until he gets a mini-disc recorder. I could relate to that, and was excited about mini-disc recorders. In 1999, just after getting married, me and the wife, went to Currys Electorical superstore in London, and picked up my first unit, plus 10 black discs, for 200ish pounds. I have an ipod now, but I can't make my mind up which i prefer. I like the ipods, take all your music with you, but prefer the sound of my NH1!

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I bought my first MD to record all my vinyl. That was an Aiwa F65 in 1998. It broke just before the one year warranty was up and the store swapped it for a JVC XM-R70, which I still have and it's still in use most days. I think it was the same year that I ended up with one of the first MP3 players - a Rio PMP300 with 32 meg of memory. Expensive and a pain to use as MP3's were transferred using the parallel port. I also bought two CD MP3 players, one of which was a small one and took the 3 inch CD's. About 2002, I needed a new micro hi-fi to connect to the computer and was lucky enough to find an Aiwa with minidisc. That was pretty much it until last year when I spotted a Sharp MT280H that was practically being given away, so I bought it simply to get LP2. 3 months ago I found out about Hi-MD, which shows how long it had been since I last visited minidisc.org, and went straight to ebay looking for an Hi-MD unit. I ended up with an NHF800 and have since bought an N710 for the wife as she needs one with mic input, plus I bought a JE480 deck. As I don't use the radio on the remote for the NHF800, I bought a much more useful 35ELK backlit remote off ebay this week. I already have an MP3 player with FM radio that isn't much bigger than the NHF800's remote.

Hopefully that will be it for the time being, except possibly for a mic. I wouldn't mind recording some nature sounds, or something along those lines, but I've been put off a bit by the price of good microphones. I do have a cheapish Sony stereo clip-on mic, but the seperation is practically non-existent.

All in all, I'm basically a sucker for small electrical/electronic 'gadgets' for music, or anything else for that matter, which is probably the *real* reason I bought my first MD. :)

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  • 2 weeks later...

Back in the days of cassette tape walkmans and early mp3s, the fields were over there... I digress... :blum:

I was starting at college (1998) and was fed up with the quality of cassette tapes and the non-linear searching. Also the fact that Winamp was deciding to literally splice mp3s itself (only after I got MD did I realise about 'write-protect' :closedeyes: ). Anyway I wanted a decent portable music system and MD fitted the bill and have been enjoying it ever since. :yahoo:

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I knew about the quality of MD basically from the very beginning but the price was just too high for me or probably more like it I was just in to spending my money elsewhere. I got into the cassette type walkman scene which seemed to work ok for me but I always wanted to get a MD or a DAT but I just never made the effort to come up with the cash to get one.

Then I walked into a Sony outlet store in Jeffersonville, Ohio and they had a R70 for the ridiculously low price (for that time) of $70. It was refurbished but it worked and they gave me a fairly decent warranty so I just couldn't leave that store without my first MD. This was about 5 years ago I guess. My cassette walkman had just died because I had played it to death and I knew it would cost me more to get a really good cassette walkman. I couldn't believe my luck on that deal. Those R70's were selling for around $200 at the time and they only had the one in the outlet store.

I bought a NetMD when they came out so I could get more audio on a disc to listen to and because it was much easier to load music onto a disc through a USB cable. I waited a while after HIMD came out before I bought one. I really bought it to use with my video business because of the uncompressed recording.

I've certainly gotten my use from my MD equipment. I did a lot of recording with the R70 too. I bought the ECM-MS907 mic not long after getting the R70 because people on this board said it was a really good mic to use with a MD recorder. I still use that mic sometimes even though I have much better mics now.

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I actually fell in love with the LOOK and IDEA of the format back in like 1994/95 when I was considering a method to store my band recordings digitally. I really really WANTED to get MD because I loved how cool it looked, but due to fear of obsolesence and how DAT was the standard for professional submissions be it Radio or CD plants, I went with DAT.

Then just over two years ago (Fall 2004).... gosh I can't even remember what got me to look at minidisc again to be honest. But I stumbled across the new Hi-MD format, and saw a reason to reconsider the format based on the "new" release of the 1-gig discs, etc... so I bought an MZ-NH900. Grrr... I'm so mad that I can't even remember how I revisited this format to put me where I am now... a fanatic w/ multiple units lol

Edited by theblueraja
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  • 2 weeks later...

Back in 1994 our high school had a sister school in Japan and one of my mates who was learning Japanese went there as an international exchange student. To cut a long story short, he came back with an MD player and a bunch of minidiscs and I was simply blown away.

The slimline cassette walkman's were the rage back then and I really wanted one. But then the MD bombshell hit me and I haven't stopped since.

I've had various players/recorders during that time until now. The MZ-R37 was my fondest unit. I since left the format until last year whereby my faith was re-instilled with the RH1. In between that I never really got into the whole LP, NetMD era... I've always stuck with MP3's and vowed I wouldn't get another Minidisc unit until Sony saw the light. The rest is history...

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I'm definitely a late bloomer. A friend of my brother's worked in Japan for a couple of years, and when he brought over his ancient Sony MD player it was so that I could rip a Muslimgauze album (which was released only on MD) to my computer as WAV. I thought the format was interesting, but since he told me to be very, very careful with it in case it should break (sitting on a table?) I remember thinking it was "fragile" technology.

FF a couple of years to my travelling...starting in Syria, meeting my then-girlfriend in Damascus (who is German) and hiking through a bit of Germany/Switzerland and circling around to Morocco...Tunisia....sitting in minivans where the first thing they ask is "what country you from?" AND, when you tell them, having the Arabic music taken off and one of two things being played: Bryan Adams or Celine Dion, both of whom I despise! ("nono, good Canadian music, yes?")... :scratchhead:

After those six months and I went back to Canada I vowed not to travel anymore without a reserve of Western tunes at hand! Portable CD players weren't gonna cut it, and since I had seen a couple of people with MD (even saw someone with an NH900 in Singapore!) I thought I'd check it out. Bought my first unit (Sharp IM-MT880), remembering how worried I was that - oh no! - everything needs the remote to work properly! After testing it, recording with it, etc. I've never looked back.

My Sharp sat around for a little while the next time I returned to Canada, though, until I heard of Hi-MD...what's this? NOW I can store LOTS more music on discs as WELL as data (which is very useful for me) AND play my old MDs....but once I get back some of the old guard here have convinced me to go back to my Sharp and do some listening comparisons.

As for my travels.....my MDs have fared fairly well: lost one MD in Gansbaai, ZA, had an RH10 stolen in Mongolia (had to buy a replacement - an NH700 for CAD400!!!!), dropped a remote into a Moroccan toilet (no....you......DON'T....want....to...know - suffice it to say it still works! :D) and bought more mics than I can shake a stick at. I use Hi-MD for recording street/ambient sounds, spoken-word journals, archiving computer files and for listening to music/spoken-word albums.

There's more I could say, but blablabla...that's basically my story.

peace

WaywardTraveller

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