Sony Minidisc

[KGB1]

With most people parading their iPods and mini Mp3 players. It got me thinking. What happened to Sony's small portable audio player? I've seen some really cheap at J&R (in nyc) and it looked like a pretty good deal.

Any reason why it failed? Or are people looking only to MP3's. I own mostly cassettes and it would be great if I can transfer it to a Minidisc player. Any comments?

 

[iamme]

there are NetMD's now, which allow for high speed copying. (before it was all in real-time, like making a cassette mix from CD's)

if you have a large MP3 collection, they will be re-encoded to Sony's proprietary format (ATRAC) before they are transferred to the player. supposedly, Sony's format is pretty good, maybe better than MP3's.

MD's are popular in Asia, I believe.

 

[iamme]

some MD links:

http://www.minidisco.com

http://www.minidisc.org/

also, search the archives here for "minidisc". there have been lots of threads discussing it.

 

[NutBucket]

They're really neat. Too bad I really don't use a portable much so mine collects dust more then anything. I can say that the quality is better then MP3. In fact, I can't tell the difference between a MD and a CD. They do have different compression levels now, tho. At higher compression levels the differences become more apparent. I haven't tried out NetMD tho. I hear Sony's software sucks so you use a serperate work-around to make transferring music easier.

 

[kami333]

They are coming out with a higher density MD too. I still use mine, media is cheap, I get good battery time, and it's smaller than most mp3 players. Sony definately could have made it better, aka release the internal MD drive and make it easier to copy music but I don't have any issues with it.

 

[NutBucket]

Originally posted by: kami333
They are coming out with a higher density MD too. I still use mine, media is cheap, I get good battery time, and it's smaller than most mp3 players. Sony definately could have made it better, aka release the internal MD drive and make it easier to copy music but I don't have any issues with it.

I thought they have internal MD drives but they are for data only.

 

[Koing]

Originally posted by: NutBucket

Originally posted by: kami333
They are coming out with a higher density MD too. I still use mine, media is cheap, I get good battery time, and it's smaller than most mp3 players. Sony definately could have made it better, aka release the internal MD drive and make it easier to copy music but I don't have any issues with it.

I thought they have internal MD drives but they are for data only.

Yeah but they got killed as the speed was real time or slow for data and this was years ago.

The reason you can get 2x faster or 4x faster is the compression allows you to get more music across so faster times but the quality is less.

I've listened to 2x compression and it does sound pretty good on my decent sony in ear headphones. Not sure how it would stack up to a 'real' sound system with decent speakers. But for portable music it rocks.

Love my Sony MD's (I have 3 lol). The remote is great. Nice screen and very good controls.

Battery life is OUTSTANDING. The battery will go for 20hrs and you have a battery attachment that you can use in 'emergencies'. I leave that in my bag incase my battery runs out. The battery that also goes in to the MD itself is cheap £15 or so and is easily replaced. Very niffy.

Media is cheap also.

Very big in asia.

I just want an MD sized mp3 player with a sweet remote and faster transfer. But I'm happy listening to what I have.

Koing

 

[Imdmn04]

It hasnt failed, at least not yet.
MD player are still one of the smallest portables on the market right next to flash memory based players. Even ipod looks pretty fat compared to them. MDs are really cheap, you can store 160mins of decent quality music on a MD with the newer netMD, which costs about 1 to 2 dollars, compared to at least 50 bucks for a 256mb flash card.

But wait, there is even a newer version thats coming out, that has 1gb of space. and at 105kbps Atrac(which the quality is comparable to 160kbps of mp3) , you can store 300 plus songs on a 2 dolla disk. The price/storage ratio is unbeatable by any other type of players.

 

[MaxDSP]

I love my MD player that I picked up for $80 used (MZ-N505). I get GREAT battery life out of it, almost 35-40 hours just from 1 AA battery. That probably beats even flash-based mp3 players in that respect.

Even though there are probably sh!tloads of moving parts in there, I've been using it at the gym for 7 months or so, and it has yet to malfunction or even skip once. I can only remember 1 time that it skipped, and that was when I had it hooked up to my car's speakers and I was going over some bad roadways.

I might get a HI-MD player when they come out, depending on how the reviews go.

 

[dpm]

I had a pre-netMD minidisc, until I replaced it with an Ipod.

In many ways the MD rocked - the battery life was superb - about 20 hours with one bog standard AA battery - no worries about it failing and not being able to charge another one. The quality was pretty good, and the 5 hours you could get on a md at 4x was superb compared to my old tape walkman. The radio was good as well.

But it was an absolute ah heck inputing the names of the songs, and recording songs onto it (sorting out the trackmarks) was a fiddly pain as well, especially with messing around with TOSlink cables. The killer was that carrying round a bunch of discs all the time in case i wanted to listen to a different album.

But with the NetMD players, and if the capacity of a disk went up to 1gb, then I think they'd be a damn good buy. I'll still stick with my 20gb ipod, mind

 

[NutBucket]

Originally posted by: dpm
I had a pre-netMD minidisc, until I replaced it with an Ipod.

In many ways the MD rocked - the battery life was superb - about 20 hours with one bog standard AA battery - no worries about it failing and not being able to charge another one. The quality was pretty good, and the 5 hours you could get on a md at 4x was superb compared to my old tape walkman. The radio was good as well.

But it was an absolute ah heck inputing the names of the songs, and recording songs onto it (sorting out the trackmarks) was a fiddly pain as well, especially with messing around with TOSlink cables. The killer was that carrying round a bunch of discs all the time in case i wanted to listen to a different album.

But with the NetMD players, and if the capacity of a disk went up to 1gb, then I think they'd be a damn good buy. I'll still stick with my 20gb ipod, mind

I think with Net-MD it transfers file info and what not. I know that some of the component MD units had a keyboard jack for titling and such.

 

[WinkOsmosis]

Wait.. Why doesn't the NetMD play mp3s? Why do you have to convert them to freaking Sony's standard? That's going to be a quality hit.

 

[bleeb]

Some of the mp3 players these days are SO SMALL, and they handle like 256 MB of memory.. that's plenty. MDs are just too big, and it sucks that you have to carry around extra discs.

 

[slpaulson]

Originally posted by: WinkOsmosis
Wait.. Why doesn't the NetMD play mp3s? Why do you have to convert them to freaking Sony's standard? That's going to be a quality hit.

Sony's Atrac format sounds as good as an mp3 to me.
You don't have to do the converting, the software does it before it transfers it automatically.
But I would also rather be able to just put on an mp3.

BTW, their software is horrible. You are only allowed to put a song on 3 minidiscs before it won't let you anymore because of some stupid
copy protection thing. I actually transfer my music through real player (YUCK) just because it doesn't have those stupid restrictions sony
gives you.

 

[MaxDSP]

Originally posted by: bleeb
Some of the mp3 players these days are SO SMALL, and they handle like 256 MB of memory.. that's plenty. MDs are just too big, and it sucks that you have to carry around extra discs.

You're contradicting yourself there...256 MB of memory will give you about 256 minutes of 128K quality mp3's, yet only 1 minidisc will give you the same, if not more than that, negating your argument of carrying around extra minidiscs. At least with a mindisc, you can make different discs and such and carry them with you, but everytime you want to change the tracks on your flash-player, you need to use a PC to go about it.

 

[MaxDSP]

Originally posted by: WinkOsmosis
Wait.. Why doesn't the NetMD play mp3s? Why do you have to convert them to freaking Sony's standard? That's going to be a quality hit.

The converting process is done automatically when you transfer a song to the MD unit. Takes just slightly longer than if you were to transfer straight mp3's to a flash player or something.

As far as the Checkout thing, like cRAZYdOOD said, you can circumvent it a number of ways (it's just a PITA), but the new Hi-MD format coming out this summer will get rid of the checkout restrictions, as far as I know.

I've said it numerous times, and I'll say it again, it just sucks that Sony can make such a GREAT item like the Minidisc and have the most bloated, crappy, buggy, etc software to support it. Hopefully, they completely revamp their current software when they release the Hi-MD players.

MiniDiscT
MiniDiscT Forums

 

[xospec1alk]

Originally posted by: MaxDSP

Originally posted by: bleeb
Some of the mp3 players these days are SO SMALL, and they handle like 256 MB of memory.. that's plenty. MDs are just too big, and it sucks that you have to carry around extra discs.

You're contradicting yourself there...256 MB of memory will give you about 256 minutes of 128K quality mp3's, yet only 1 minidisc will give you the same, if not more than that, negating your argument of carrying around extra minidiscs. At least with a mindisc, you can make different discs and such and carry them with you, but everytime you want to change the tracks on your flash-player, you need to use a PC to go about it.

and this is exactly why i love my md...i can carry around a few discs w/o ever having to go back to my computer for more when i get sick of it.

 

[xospec1alk]

Originally posted by: MaxDSP

Originally posted by: bleeb
Some of the mp3 players these days are SO SMALL, and they handle like 256 MB of memory.. that's plenty. MDs are just too big, and it sucks that you have to carry around extra discs.

You're contradicting yourself there...256 MB of memory will give you about 256 minutes of 128K quality mp3's, yet only 1 minidisc will give you the same, if not more than that, negating your argument of carrying around extra minidiscs. At least with a mindisc, you can make different discs and such and carry them with you, but everytime you want to change the tracks on your flash-player, you need to use a PC to go about it.

and this is exactly why i love my md...i can carry around a few discs w/o ever having to go back to my computer for more when i get sick of it.

 

[thomsbrain]

i never saw the point when CD-R's cost pennies. whether you have a normal CD player or a MP3 CD player, it's still way more cost effective to stick with CD's. probably better battery life, too.

 

[NutBucket]

Originally posted by: thomsbrain
i never saw the point when CD-R's cost pennies. whether you have a normal CD player or a MP3 CD player, it's still way more cost effective to stick with CD's. probably better battery life, too.

Smaller for sure. Not sure about battery life tho. I know current portables are really good on batteries; MD used to have a huge advantage in that department. Not so sure anymore.

 

[WobbleWobble]

I still use MDs. I currently use a NetMD unit and can't wait for the HiMD oens to come out. NetMD converts MP3s and such to ATRAC format. It also copies the ID3 tags as well. Blank MDs are much cheaper than flash memory and HDD-based MP3 players are very expensive, IMO.

I like to carry lots of music around, but I don't want to spend that kind of money on an iPod or such. With HiMD coming out, it'll be even better as you can use your MD recorder as a removable drive!

 

[0roo0roo]

sony/sony music are the man. they put stupid restrictions on their md that killed its potential. reencode everything to attrac for md? not allowing people to just copy files? all paranoia, apple should thank sonys stupidity. i'm not supporting a proprietary format and its bullsh*t copy protection. sony made some flash memory playersearly on too, they could have had potential, but they could only use attrac for sony bullsh*t reasons.

 

[BCYL]

I love my Sony NetMD... The only down side is you have to convert your songs to ATRAC format before you can copy them onto MDs, which takes a while... But you only have to do that once...

Otherwise it's great! It's light and small, great battery life, and MDs are cheap compared to the current prices of flash memory...

 

[WobbleWobble]

It takes barely anytime to convert to ATRAC format, only minutes on my PC. OpenMG is one of the worst pieces of software I've ever used though. RealOne with a plugin works much better (I'd never though I'd ever say that). RealOne also doesn't have the Check In/Check Out system.

 

[GoSharks]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
i'm not supporting a proprietary format

i've said it before in this forum and i'll say it again - MD is just as "proprietary" as CD.