Remember your 1st love... with MiniDiscs?

[ohmrah]

Does anyone still remember their 1st love with MiniDiscs?

 

Mine was the MZ-R30 which I still have today and still working!

 

I still remember how blown away I was with the sound coming out of this over 20 years ago. No other portable device could come close to it including Sony's own Walkman Portable Cassette Player.

Gone were the tape hiss

Gone were the problems with left-right balance.

Gone were the distortion in higher frequency.

Gone were the headache caused with prolong use.

 

The MiniDisc was such a pleasure to listen to.

[bluecrab]

Also gone was the issue of CD-Rs going awry and becoming rather expensive "coasters."

[BearBoy]

I bought an MZ-E30 and an MDS-JE500 in 1997. Was totally blown away by them. The MZ-E30 got stolen around 2001 IIRC but the MDS-JE500 is still going strong. 

[freddyjollo]

not my first love  but a MZ-B10 I bought off Ebay a couple of  years ago. It is really meant as a dictophone  type  device I think. It has in built speakers  that are fine for speech playback. Not Hi-MD ( a shame ) takes 2 AA batteries has a decent display unlike most  Sony portables, has a built in mic. As close to a portable  deck you can get. It has an optical-in also

 

[bennu]

I don't know which model it was but it was on display in a record store (Tolmies, Pacific Fair) along with a whole bunch of prerecorded discs (I think it was about 10 or 20 - Thriller was there). It would have been when minidisc was first released. It was love at first sight. There was no way I could afford it (or justify the expense).

Years later my brother was in SE Asia somewhere and picked up an MZ-R900 for himself and an MZ-R700 for me. Man I loved that thing, such a great colour. I used to sit on the grass at uni titling up the songs manually.

I've owned a few over the years. Here are some of them including my first which I sold thinking I only wanted HiMD for now. (Sad face)

[iGlad]

My first machine was the MZ-R30 bought 20 years ago which I still use but early this year (thanks to Technomoan)  I bought a couple of decks (920 and 940: the keyboard input  is the dealmaker here) and have been getting my vinyl collection onto MD before I downsize my vinyl.

I have a couple of portables  such as the  MZ-E25, which are so small and light and can run off  one AA battery with great sound quality via some decent headphones such as Sennheissers. 

I found some sheet address labels in my cupboard and managed to download a template for it from Avery and I can now print my labels, which is so cool. 

I really do love MD but more so the second time around it seems. 

[Another MD fanatic]

Looking back I was probably spoilt, my first minidisc was a Sony D-D40 deck. Oh the joy and convenience of being able to copy tracks from CD's at 4x the speed. Sheer bliss. Although that wasn't what I used it for in the beginning. I had a fair bit of music on singles that I didn't have on album, so my first job was to record all my singles to MD's. Then I could sit and listen to 20 or so singles in one go.

Strangely enough, almost from day one, I always felt the MD part of the deck was better quality than the CD part. No particular reason, just a feeling. Lo and behold a few years down the line and the CD player packed up (wouldn't read a disc). I carried on using the MD section for quite a while afterwards, that never packed up yet it had probably had far more use.