Mini disc is not dead!

[Guest Anonymous]

I was just reading some of the posts from the mini disc is dead thread, and had another angle.

I'm someone who used to listen to music on cassette tapes -- hundreds of them. Obviously, mini disc is far superiour in sound and features, hence I've been estatic with this format and have about 800 mini-discs.

And here are two points:

1) for me, I would never want to have my whole collection of music on an i pod or any mp3 player -- how many of those would I have to buy?

2) Right now, I back up my minidics to cdr's -- what would I do with mp3 players -- buy 7 external hard drives to have all my music on?

3) Some people mention that mini-disc don't have much room for more innovation. Personally, I don't even use any of the "computer" features of mini-disc. I have a dual processor Mac G4 and lots of intense software and am very computer literate. It just has nothing to do with music for me. I borrow cds from friends and burn them to mini disc and that's the end of it for me. I could care less about more computer innovation. The only complaint I have is with portables -- see my thread called "portables"

Thanks!

Kevs

[Reni]

Hi Kevs,

1) Well, assuming that each of your 800 MDs contained 74 minutes of music they'd probably all fit on 1 60 gig jukebox zen.

2) Why would you have to back up your mp3s any differently than the way you back up your MDs?

3) Since I'm one of the people who brought up the innovation point, I guess I'll reply here. My point wasn't really to ask what kind of gadgets or doodads they're going to add to MD in the future. I was more trying to ask what MD is going to do to stay competive with MP3 player/recorders. In a couple of years, I think you'll have an mp3 device that can do everything a portable MD recorder can do -- with the added benefit of being able to hold all of your music. If the two were roughly the same size and price (with the additional benefit of being able to record uncompressed audio), then which one would you pick?

Just as a point of curiousity, why don't you want your whole collection of music in one place? I'm not trying to be antagonistic in asking this question, I'm just wondering why you wouldn't want to store your music this way.

Just my $.02,

--Matt

[Guest Anonymous]

Reni:

thanks for reply. I'm sure there is something I don't know, but if 74 minutes is about 700mb, (more than 1/2 gig), then 800 md's would need 500 Gigs. Let me know what I'm screwing up.

On second point, maybe I'm just used to removable media. You grab 5 minidisc and you're set for your car, jog etc. And it seems easier to deal with, edit songs on single disc than a player with thousands of songs on it.

But maybe I'm wrong and don't know all mp3 facts. I"ve never owned one, honesty it's hard to be authoritative on a medium you have never owned. I've been so estactic with difference between minidisc and cassettes tapes (which was a change of only 4 years ago for me! -- when mini disc prices came down to earth) -- that I have not considered moving my humungous music collection over to another, new format.

To me mini-disc is the best format for someone who likes to make his own mixes for editability sound etc, and if I had to change, I would think that cdr's would be the best alternative, givin their acceptance in the market. But I'd love to hear what you think, I'm totally open to hear all viewpoints!

Kevs.

[Guest Anonymous]

I also have a number of MDs, but I view it differently...

Computer music (CDs as well as MP3s) are future-proofed, being not dependent of the medium they're stored on. When I get the latest computer audio player, with a 100 gig hard drive the size of a nickle, it isn't a problem to copy my old music onto the new audio player. If I want to put audio on my friend's Palm Pilot, no problem. 20 years from now, if I want to access my computer collection, CD players, and computers which can play MP3s, won't be a problem to find. When the next digital music format comes along, you can be sure the players will continue to support MP3.

MDs, on the other hand, aren't easily digitally transferrable to other mediums (or even, other MDs). 20 years from now, to get an MD player and play my recordings, I'll probably have to special order it as a collector's item from Japan. Buying MD now, is like buying 8-track in 1979.

For that reason, I'd really try to avoid having a large MD collection, and if there was an MP3 player which could record as well as Sharp MD recorders do, I'd buy it in a New York minute. I think Net MD doesn't allow uploading, because Sony knows many serious music listeners would copy their recordings to their PCs, then be done with the MD format.

[Reni]

Hi Kevs,

1) Well the thing about mp3 is that it is a compressed lossy format. Just like ATRAC for MD. So 500 gigs of raw .wav files (or CD data) would compress down to roughly 60 gigs of .mp3 files. Probably a little bit more, actually if you used higher bitrates.

2) This is actually one of the best things about mp3 players. You don't have to decide what 5 minidiscs you're going to grab for the day. You always have all of your music with you.

As for editing songs on the player -- well, this is currently impossible to do on an ipod. You have to hook it up to a computer if you want to add or delete songs. Making a custom mix is very easy though -- you either just make a playlist on your computer and copy it to the ipod or you can just make the playist on the ipod itself. I also used to make a lot of mixes on MD but I find I mix it up (sorry, bad pun) a lot more with my ipod because it literally takes less than a minute to make the actual playlist whereas when I would make an MD mix I would have to dig up the CDs and re-rip the tracks to my recorder.

3) I had the same fear about navigating through 2000 songs on one device but this is surprisingly easy on an ipod. You can browse by artist, album, genre, or individual songs. If you want to hear a particular album you just navigate to the album and hit play. If you want to hear all albums by, say the Beatles, you just navigate to "Beatles" and hit play. If you want the ipod to shuffle between all 40 (in my case) jazz cd's you just turn on shuffle, navigate to "Jazz" and hit play. I have to warn you though, that not all mp3 players have such a clean interface.

Having said that, I still use my MD recorder for a variety of things, mainly recording live music. Like I said in another post, I'm still worried about the ipod being more 'fragile' than my N707 and the idea of the hard drive crashing someday definitely scares me. Plus if you ever go from MD --> mp3 it's going to be a definite pain to rip 800 CDs to mp3 format. I was really into MD before I saw an ipod. But after having both for a while now I just find the ipod to be more convenient. When it comes to just listening to music nowadays I always grab my ipod rather than my MD recorder.

--Matt

[Guest Anonymous]

I do a lot of walking and like to listen to music when I walk. I also like to listen to music while I work out at the gym.

I have a Sony MD deck and a Sony MD portable. When I first bought the deck, I was really happy with the sound quality. The MDs sounded better than the cassettes I made on my cheap deck, and the discs were more stable. MD seemed like a good replacement for my cassette portable.

Then I bought an iMac with iTunes. This enabled me to record tracks from CD in AIFF format (no compression) and make CD-R compilations. I bought a CD portable, and guess what? My CD-Rs sound way better than my MDs. I really notice the shortcomings of ATRAC compression now.

Yes, my CD portable is bigger than my MD portable. But the discs are cheaper, making a compilation is less time consuming, the output is louder and the sound quality is better.

I'm not saying MD doesn't have its strengths. But two of them---a mic input and stereo system connectivity---are slowly but surely being dropped (by Sony at least).

If I wanted to listen to compressed music on the go, I would choose an iPod over MD. Why? I have an iMac, the synching is a snap, the player is small and light, and it holds tons of music. iTunes is so much better than NetMD. Night and day.

If the iPod catches on in Japan, it is, I'm afraid, curtains for MD. :cry:

[Guest Anonymous]

iPod already is big in Japan - like yesterday's article on minidisc.org was implying. When I was recently in Tokyo, the portable audio section gave their best display space to the iPod, they're selling quite well. I have to believe iPod is just a harbinger for more (and better) to come.

The thing is, when people already have a large amount of non-transferrable MD's, they're not in such a rush to buy a 50K yen iPod to replace it. But I do think it's a matter of time.

[Guest Anonymous]

Thanks for replies.

Reni: great info on i pod. I'm a Mac user, of course if I ever go to mp3's, i pod would be it. Doesn't Apple do everything better? But I'm really happy with minidisc. I just don't see need after 4years or so to jump to a new medium. If I have to one day I'll do it -- even though it would take a year or two. But personally, I hope mini-disc are around as long as possible. Becasue I have a large collection, I'm not into finding the next great medium -- unless the differences are night and day -- as is the case of cassettes vs. mini disc or cdrs, or mp3's. Would I go mp3 route today over mini-disc? not sure -- maybe.

Jeffrey k: I don't hear, on my home unit , any difference between a mini-disc or a cdr. And I run many test and have very good ears. I do find on Sony portables, however, mini-disc lack volume, but I think that's more a fault of the portable players. (see my thread "portables")

Mini-disc are much bigger in Japan and Europe than US from what I've heard. I hope both formats stay healthy.

Kevs

[Guest Anonymous]

Curious:

How do people think the sound of mp3's are compared to mini-discs?

Also, if mini-disc or cdr is 700MB, how much space would that take up on a hardrive if you then converted over to mp3.

How hard is converting?

thanks

Kevs

[Guest Anonymous]

Wow, I thought everybody knew about MP3s! Anyway look on Google for an encoder. I think you'll find it's very easy and quick to encode music from a CD. But, recording off an MD player is a pain, you have to play it at real time, and get an analog cable between the player and the computer, and have a good sound card, and so forth.

MP3 encoders allow for a great variety of encoding qualities (and hence, how much space they take), but I think you'll find that high-quality MP3s sound about the same as SP MD's (that is to say, not a good as a CD or LP, but better than a cassette tape)

And, MD's store 140 megs, not the 700 megs that a CD has.