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What Is The Deal With The New Mini Disc Players
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Lang Nunnally
Dec 28, 2023, 8:24:58 AM12/28/23
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In 1983, just a year after the introduction of the compact disc, Kees Schouhamer Immink and Joseph Braat presented the first experiments with erasable magneto-optical compact discs during the 73rd AES Convention in Eindhoven.[8] It took almost 10 years, however, before their idea was commercialized.
Despite having a loyal customer base largely of musicians and audio enthusiasts,[citation needed] the MiniDisc met with only limited success in the United States. It was very popular in Japan and parts of Asia, and relatively so in Europe during the 1990s and into the 2000s, but did not enjoy comparable sales success in other markets. Since then, recordable CDs, flash memory and HDD and solid-state-based digital audio players such as iPods have become increasingly popular as playback devices.
What is the deal with the new mini disc players
DOWNLOAD https://t.co/zmDl8mQqUA
The biggest competition for MiniDisc came with the emergence of MP3 players. With the Diamond Rio player in 1998 and the Apple iPod in 2001, the mass market began to eschew physical media in favor of more convenient file-based systems.
By 2007, because of the waning popularity of the format and the increasing popularity of solid-state MP3 players, Sony was producing only one model, the Hi-MD MZ-RH1, available as the MZ-M200 in North America packaged with a Sony microphone and limited macOS software support.[9][10][11]
The MZ-RH1 allowed users to freely move uncompressed digital recordings back and forth from the MiniDisc to a computer without the copyright protection limitations previously imposed upon the NetMD series. This allowed the MiniDisc to better compete with HD recorders and MP3 players. However, most pro users like broadcasters and news reporters had already abandoned MiniDisc in favor of solid-state recorders, because of their extended recording time, open digital content sharing, high-quality digital recording capabilities and reliable, lightweight design.
On 1 February 2013, Sony issued a press release on the Nikkei stock exchange that it would cease shipment of all MD devices, with last of the players to be sold in March 2013. However, it would continue to sell blank discs and offer repair services.[2] Other manufacturers continued to release MiniDisc players long after Sony stopped, with TEAC & TASCAM producing new decks up until 2020 when both its consumer and professional products, TEAC MD-70CD and TASCAM MD-CD1MKIII, were discontinued.[14]
The disc is fixed in a cartridge (68725 mm) with a sliding door, similar to the casing of a 3.5" floppy disk. This shutter is opened automatically when inserted into a drive. MiniDiscs can either be blank or prerecorded. Recordable MiniDiscs use a magneto-optical system to write data: a laser below the disc heats a spot to its Curie point, making the material in the disc susceptible to a magnetic field. A magnetic head above the disc then alters the polarity of the heated area, recording the digital data onto the disk. Playback is accomplished with the laser alone: taking advantage of the magneto-optic Kerr effect, the player senses the polarization of the reflected light as a 1 or a 0. Recordable MDs can be rerecorded repeatedly, with Sony claiming up to one million times. By May 2005, there were 60-minute, 74-minute and 80-minute discs available. 60-minute blanks, which were widely available in the early years of the format's introduction, were phased out.
All consumer-grade MiniDisc devices have a copy-protection scheme called the Serial Copy Management System. An unprotected disc or song can be copied without limit, but the copies can no longer be digitally copied. However, as a concession, the last Hi-MD players can upload to PC a digitally recorded file which can be resaved as a WAV (PCM) file and thus replicated.
The latest versions of Sony's ATRAC are ATRAC3 and ATRAC3plus. Original ATRAC3 at 132 kbit/s (also known as ATRAC-LP2 mode) was the format that was used by Sony's defunct Connect audio download store. ATRAC3plus was not used in order to retain backwards compatibility with earlier NetMD players.
MiniDisc has a feature that prevents disc skipping under all but the most extreme conditions. Older CD players had been a source of annoyance to users as they were prone to mistracking from vibration and shock. MiniDisc solved this problem by reading the data into a memory buffer at a higher speed than was required before being read out to the digital-to-analog converter at the standard rate of the format. The size of the buffer varies by model.
The data structure and operation of a MiniDisc is similar to that of a computer's hard disk drive. The bulk of the disc contains audio data, and a small section contains the table of contents (TOC), providing the playback device with vital information about the number and location of tracks on the disc. Tracks and discs can be named. Tracks may easily be added, erased, combined and divided, and their preferred order of playback modified. Erased tracks are not physically erased, but are only marked as deleted. When a disc becomes full, the recorder can simply direct the data into sections where erased tracks reside. This can lead to fragmentation but unless many erasures and replacements are performed, the only likely problem is excessive searching, reducing battery life.
Recording from an analogue source resulted in a disc marked "protected" and "original" allowing one further copy to be made (this contrasts with the SCMS on the Digital Compact Cassette where analogue recording was marked as "unprotected").
MD Data, a format for storing computer data, was announced by Sony in 1993 but never gained significant ground. Its media were incompatible with standard audio MiniDiscs, which has been cited as one of the main reasons behind the format's failure.[citation needed] MD Data can not write to audio MDs, but only the considerably more expensive data blanks. It did see some success in a small number of multi-track recorders such as Sony's MDM-X4, Tascam's 564 (which could also record using standard audio MD discs, albeit only two tracks), and Yamaha's MD8, MD4, & MD4S.
The bitrate of the standard SP mode is 292 kbit/s, and it uses separate stereo coding with discrete left and right channels. LP2 mode uses a bitrate of 132 kbit/s and also uses separate stereo coding. The third mode, LP4, has a bitrate of 66 kbit/s and uses joint stereo coding. The sound quality is noticeably degraded compared to the other two modes, but is sufficient for many uses.
NetMD is a proprietary protocol that initially required proprietary software such as SonicStage. A free *nix based implementation, libnetmd, has been developed. The library allows the user to upload SP files in full quality. In 2019, a programmer named Stefano Brilli compiled the linux-minidisc CLI into a web browser-based application,[17] allowing users to transfer music via USB on modern devices.[18]
I really want to try using minidiscs for the first time, but everywhere I look the minidisc players are all pretty expensive. Does anyone have any tips that I could use in order to get a better deal on some portable minidisc player that I could try out? Thank you for any help you may be able to give!
I ask not to be critical, but out of pure curiosity. I only found my way to this Reddit while searching mic capsules to make binaural microphone setups and some of the old school guys were using minidisc to record in their old posts. I then searched on ebay and the prices are extremely high.
Was thinking about adding my full sized Sony Mini Disc player/recorder into my system. Never met another person in the US that owned a mini disc but I understand they were fairly popular in Europe and extremely popular in Japan. So anybody here have experience with and/or love for this obsolete format? Anybody still using one? When will Naim hop on the Mini Disc train to the recent past?
Forgot about Blueray vs HD DVD score one for Sony! I sold off all my Mini disc stuff close to 25 years ago. When iPod hit I knew MD was done and then Sonos came along with true simple multi source multi zone plus streaming!
At that time regular people had really just started using cds over cassettes. Other than recording bootleg concerts, the consumer use case for DAT felt limited. Same with MD. Even though I had 3 md players, I only ever made about half a dozen mix discs.
I have a Technics MD disc deck at home and JVC MD player in my Peugeot 605 old timer.
Very nice sound and options to play with.
In car system is JVC legacy system with 5 amplifiers and a crossover.
MiniDisc is a recordable format, and most (but not all!) equipment sold outside of Japan was capable of recording to discs. In Japan (the largest market for MD) players were very common as they were cheaper and smaller than recorders.
A recorder is strongly recommended, at least as a first purchase. Players are a good secondary device, or in the (rare) case that you only want to listen to discs recorded by someone else, such as record label. But not being able to record does severely limit your capabilities (and fun) with the format.
NetMD was announced by Sony in September 2001 and made available with the MZ-N1 in December. NetMD did not change the MD(LP) format, but added USB connectivity to allow writing to discs from a PC over USB with Sony's SonicStage software. Although SonicStage was considered clunky and annoying even during its lifespan, new reverse-engineered software such as Web MiniDisc Pro and Platinum-MD are much more convenient and make NetMD the most convenient way to copy audio to discs, even today.
NetMD recorders competed with flash-memory based MP3 players and did see an uptick in commercial success in North America and Europe. Rewritable MiniDiscs were less expensive than flash memory cards such as CompactFlash and MMC.
NetMD was extended to include Hi-MD, and Hi-MD modes (whether on Hi-MD formatted original MDs or newer 1GB Hi-MD discs) are now compatible with Web MiniDisc Pro, albeit with some extra setup steps. Platinum MD and Minidisc-FFWD support Hi-MD mode discs. In original MD mode, the new software is compatible.
0aad45d008
Despite having a loyal customer base largely of musicians and audio enthusiasts,[citation needed] the MiniDisc met with only limited success in the United States. It was very popular in Japan and parts of Asia, and relatively so in Europe during the 1990s and into the 2000s, but did not enjoy comparable sales success in other markets. Since then, recordable CDs, flash memory and HDD and solid-state-based digital audio players such as iPods have become increasingly popular as playback devices.
What is the deal with the new mini disc players
DOWNLOAD https://t.co/zmDl8mQqUA
The biggest competition for MiniDisc came with the emergence of MP3 players. With the Diamond Rio player in 1998 and the Apple iPod in 2001, the mass market began to eschew physical media in favor of more convenient file-based systems.
By 2007, because of the waning popularity of the format and the increasing popularity of solid-state MP3 players, Sony was producing only one model, the Hi-MD MZ-RH1, available as the MZ-M200 in North America packaged with a Sony microphone and limited macOS software support.[9][10][11]
The MZ-RH1 allowed users to freely move uncompressed digital recordings back and forth from the MiniDisc to a computer without the copyright protection limitations previously imposed upon the NetMD series. This allowed the MiniDisc to better compete with HD recorders and MP3 players. However, most pro users like broadcasters and news reporters had already abandoned MiniDisc in favor of solid-state recorders, because of their extended recording time, open digital content sharing, high-quality digital recording capabilities and reliable, lightweight design.
On 1 February 2013, Sony issued a press release on the Nikkei stock exchange that it would cease shipment of all MD devices, with last of the players to be sold in March 2013. However, it would continue to sell blank discs and offer repair services.[2] Other manufacturers continued to release MiniDisc players long after Sony stopped, with TEAC & TASCAM producing new decks up until 2020 when both its consumer and professional products, TEAC MD-70CD and TASCAM MD-CD1MKIII, were discontinued.[14]
The disc is fixed in a cartridge (68725 mm) with a sliding door, similar to the casing of a 3.5" floppy disk. This shutter is opened automatically when inserted into a drive. MiniDiscs can either be blank or prerecorded. Recordable MiniDiscs use a magneto-optical system to write data: a laser below the disc heats a spot to its Curie point, making the material in the disc susceptible to a magnetic field. A magnetic head above the disc then alters the polarity of the heated area, recording the digital data onto the disk. Playback is accomplished with the laser alone: taking advantage of the magneto-optic Kerr effect, the player senses the polarization of the reflected light as a 1 or a 0. Recordable MDs can be rerecorded repeatedly, with Sony claiming up to one million times. By May 2005, there were 60-minute, 74-minute and 80-minute discs available. 60-minute blanks, which were widely available in the early years of the format's introduction, were phased out.
All consumer-grade MiniDisc devices have a copy-protection scheme called the Serial Copy Management System. An unprotected disc or song can be copied without limit, but the copies can no longer be digitally copied. However, as a concession, the last Hi-MD players can upload to PC a digitally recorded file which can be resaved as a WAV (PCM) file and thus replicated.
The latest versions of Sony's ATRAC are ATRAC3 and ATRAC3plus. Original ATRAC3 at 132 kbit/s (also known as ATRAC-LP2 mode) was the format that was used by Sony's defunct Connect audio download store. ATRAC3plus was not used in order to retain backwards compatibility with earlier NetMD players.
MiniDisc has a feature that prevents disc skipping under all but the most extreme conditions. Older CD players had been a source of annoyance to users as they were prone to mistracking from vibration and shock. MiniDisc solved this problem by reading the data into a memory buffer at a higher speed than was required before being read out to the digital-to-analog converter at the standard rate of the format. The size of the buffer varies by model.
The data structure and operation of a MiniDisc is similar to that of a computer's hard disk drive. The bulk of the disc contains audio data, and a small section contains the table of contents (TOC), providing the playback device with vital information about the number and location of tracks on the disc. Tracks and discs can be named. Tracks may easily be added, erased, combined and divided, and their preferred order of playback modified. Erased tracks are not physically erased, but are only marked as deleted. When a disc becomes full, the recorder can simply direct the data into sections where erased tracks reside. This can lead to fragmentation but unless many erasures and replacements are performed, the only likely problem is excessive searching, reducing battery life.
Recording from an analogue source resulted in a disc marked "protected" and "original" allowing one further copy to be made (this contrasts with the SCMS on the Digital Compact Cassette where analogue recording was marked as "unprotected").
MD Data, a format for storing computer data, was announced by Sony in 1993 but never gained significant ground. Its media were incompatible with standard audio MiniDiscs, which has been cited as one of the main reasons behind the format's failure.[citation needed] MD Data can not write to audio MDs, but only the considerably more expensive data blanks. It did see some success in a small number of multi-track recorders such as Sony's MDM-X4, Tascam's 564 (which could also record using standard audio MD discs, albeit only two tracks), and Yamaha's MD8, MD4, & MD4S.
The bitrate of the standard SP mode is 292 kbit/s, and it uses separate stereo coding with discrete left and right channels. LP2 mode uses a bitrate of 132 kbit/s and also uses separate stereo coding. The third mode, LP4, has a bitrate of 66 kbit/s and uses joint stereo coding. The sound quality is noticeably degraded compared to the other two modes, but is sufficient for many uses.
NetMD is a proprietary protocol that initially required proprietary software such as SonicStage. A free *nix based implementation, libnetmd, has been developed. The library allows the user to upload SP files in full quality. In 2019, a programmer named Stefano Brilli compiled the linux-minidisc CLI into a web browser-based application,[17] allowing users to transfer music via USB on modern devices.[18]
I really want to try using minidiscs for the first time, but everywhere I look the minidisc players are all pretty expensive. Does anyone have any tips that I could use in order to get a better deal on some portable minidisc player that I could try out? Thank you for any help you may be able to give!
I ask not to be critical, but out of pure curiosity. I only found my way to this Reddit while searching mic capsules to make binaural microphone setups and some of the old school guys were using minidisc to record in their old posts. I then searched on ebay and the prices are extremely high.
Was thinking about adding my full sized Sony Mini Disc player/recorder into my system. Never met another person in the US that owned a mini disc but I understand they were fairly popular in Europe and extremely popular in Japan. So anybody here have experience with and/or love for this obsolete format? Anybody still using one? When will Naim hop on the Mini Disc train to the recent past?
Forgot about Blueray vs HD DVD score one for Sony! I sold off all my Mini disc stuff close to 25 years ago. When iPod hit I knew MD was done and then Sonos came along with true simple multi source multi zone plus streaming!
At that time regular people had really just started using cds over cassettes. Other than recording bootleg concerts, the consumer use case for DAT felt limited. Same with MD. Even though I had 3 md players, I only ever made about half a dozen mix discs.
I have a Technics MD disc deck at home and JVC MD player in my Peugeot 605 old timer.
Very nice sound and options to play with.
In car system is JVC legacy system with 5 amplifiers and a crossover.
MiniDisc is a recordable format, and most (but not all!) equipment sold outside of Japan was capable of recording to discs. In Japan (the largest market for MD) players were very common as they were cheaper and smaller than recorders.
A recorder is strongly recommended, at least as a first purchase. Players are a good secondary device, or in the (rare) case that you only want to listen to discs recorded by someone else, such as record label. But not being able to record does severely limit your capabilities (and fun) with the format.
NetMD was announced by Sony in September 2001 and made available with the MZ-N1 in December. NetMD did not change the MD(LP) format, but added USB connectivity to allow writing to discs from a PC over USB with Sony's SonicStage software. Although SonicStage was considered clunky and annoying even during its lifespan, new reverse-engineered software such as Web MiniDisc Pro and Platinum-MD are much more convenient and make NetMD the most convenient way to copy audio to discs, even today.
NetMD recorders competed with flash-memory based MP3 players and did see an uptick in commercial success in North America and Europe. Rewritable MiniDiscs were less expensive than flash memory cards such as CompactFlash and MMC.
NetMD was extended to include Hi-MD, and Hi-MD modes (whether on Hi-MD formatted original MDs or newer 1GB Hi-MD discs) are now compatible with Web MiniDisc Pro, albeit with some extra setup steps. Platinum MD and Minidisc-FFWD support Hi-MD mode discs. In original MD mode, the new software is compatible.
0aad45d008
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