Minidisc

I was bored and decided to waste some time getting in touch with my inner hipster. Dug out my Minidisc player. The compression sounds surprisingly good. Even LP2 sounds decent enough. Not very practical to use today, but the discs still look cool.

Anyone else still got a MD player? In working condition? Do you still use it?

Have 2 working units, use one occasionally when heading out somewhere a fancier unit might be at a risk of getting smashed or nicked. Should've stocked up on those HiMD disks while they still were available. Funnily enough I did see normal MD blanks for sale a couple of years ago but have not seen HiMD ones.

I have a Sony MZ-R55, it's still working but the battery is gone.

I have an MZ-R35

Same issue, but the player came with an addon so you could use AAA batteries.

that's the one I had before I got the R55, I lost the first one.

i have always wanted these little things
tiny little discs that have cute little plastic floppy protectors
i saw a sony minidisc player
the fucking disc was stuck up in the drive
Fug

I think I still have my Sony MZ-N707, but the record function was starting to malfunction.
Also have a MZ-NF610 which didn't get a whole lot of use since I think I soon moved to an iPod.

Prior I had a Casio XG-3 which was dirt cheap and pretty decent, until the charging mechanism stopped working. Out of frustration I whacked the player and managed to misalign the door hinge. Still worked since the battery was a AA, but the player would be slightly open.

Also go this guy, MZ-E10, found at a thrift store without the charger. So I don't know if it works, but it's damn slim.

LP2 mode is pretty good. On LP4 even my tone deaf ears could detect a difference. But since the main goal was to fill my ears while out & about, it was doable.

the sophistication of this "old tech" is impressive

the pre-recorded ones looked so cool.

I had a sharp netMD (yeah it was tech licensed from sony).

I still maintain that it has been the best music player I ever had. Got me through the tough times, and the good times.

MD's were every budding musician's friend.

Plus the external lightshow it produced whilst playing and charging made it fun to look at. That odd, mirrored protuberance where the cables connected? It would flash different colours depending on play mode, recording mode etc.

One thing I fucking miss:
REMOTES

I miss clipping a remote to my shirt and having the player remain in my pocket, instead of having to palm some awkward block every time I want to change song or micromanage volume.

Almost considered one of those fucking smartwatches tethered to a phone because I thought it might emulate this function.

I miss that device, like I miss those days.
Hold me, Sup Forums.

Another thing:
That feeling when you hold its cool, weighty metallic body in your hand, turn it on and feel that delightful whirring of all those moving parts inside.

>bueno.jpg

Similar feeling could be had with the ipod classic and their HD's, but these days I guess everything's flash based.

These devices felt good.
Smaller than CD players.
Could record shit.

They felt fucking right, Sup Forums. Then came the cheap and soulless solid state plastic.

You know you can get ear buds with a remote control and use them with your phone, right?

This thing (sony MZ-RH1) was the holy grail for me.
Long past any heyday MD could've been said to have; deep into MP3 DAC era.

Fucking things got discontinued.
I fantasized about storing shit on those Hi-MD's for secure storage.

>You know you can get ear buds
They are all invariably shit afterthoughts that come pre-packaged with the phone.
I've got several hanging around somewhere.

All they have is a volume rocker and maybe play/pause button and shitty little mic.

I want a real remote showing just song info, playlist selection and all the useful shit those remotes of old could do, plus a input for your own headphones/buds.

I always hoped that we'd get Minidisc as a data medium. I still think even today would be a game changer, from appearence alone, I get the impression that it would be a more long lasting medium for backup and data archiving.

Sounds like you would more want a clip zip (whole thing is size of remote) but sadly those are also discontinued and replaced with trash. RIP electronics.

It was called hi-md.

What could have been?

I seen himd on wikipedia just now, but it wasnt even required to have been 1GB.

If we have had the 650MB or 700MB minidisc just like a CD. The fact that it was smaller and more durable than a CD could have made it the absolute perfect replacement of floppy disks, it also came at the right time to have been that replacement. But it was so fucking expensive that no one bought it. I mean A virgin minidisc back then was around $4 if I remember correctly, my brother would buy he was much into it. So the discs were expensive, the players were expensive and there was no data player or recorder on the market. I still have not found the hi-md drive online.

>that scene in Men in Black 1 where Tommy Lee Jones shows Will Smith something that "will replace cd's in a few years"

So much for that crap.
I waited and waited.
Then bought a creative Nomad II Mg.

What country are you from??

It didn't take long for blank MDs to drop in price, It wasn't hard to find them for $2 each. CDs may have gotten super cheap, but you could reuse an MD. Also compare to Zip discs, which remained expensive to the end.

thats what i wanted to buy but its so expensive. mainly because its the thinnest player available, that i could find anyway.

purely for aesthetic reasons too, just like the sony wm-10, the thinnest portable cassette player, although i've given up on that one since i would want it to be A = 440 hz accurate but i don't know how i would be able to calibrate it.

My brothers minidisc player at the time was $450 I think. So it was a lot of money and like I said it wasn't as if there was a computer drive available for anyone to buy.

Later on I bought a netmd on eBay after the format was dead already and I was disappointed with the data transfer. It was basically written on the disc like a CD or a tape and the transfer had to be proprietary which meant they would control what you could store on your device which is just ridiculous

now that i think about it, if one were to get the sony MZ-RH1, isn't the software for it discontinued/not compatible beyond windows 8 and up so how would one go about transferring music into a hi md?

I believe I still have pic related laying around somewhere. The battery is dead though. I'll have to dig it up now for some good old nostalgia and to see how shit my music taste was back then.

I remember loving the remote. That tiny display was just perfect.