Any opinions, experiences with Sony MD?

THOR

Fearless Prophet
I noticed tonight they are quite reasonable in price, you can record 400 or so MP3's to a MD and the Player/Recorder is about $100. Seems pretty neat to me. Anyone have any thoughts or heard anything about them? Ease of use, speed, audio quality etc.???
 
Minidisc

They are excellent. Probably not quite up to CD quality, but very, very close.
What I like best is the ability to separate tracks when recording an LP. Not easy to do on a CD burner. I then burn a CD from the minidisc.
Just be careful inserting discs, the transport is kind of fragile.
Very popular in the rest of the world, just not here.

BTW, get any nice smallmouths on your last trip??

Lee
 
Do they transfer the files fairly quickly? I would just want to dump a bunch of MP3's on a MD and let it do random play and skip tracks when a song comes on I don't wanna hear. They have a MD player/recorder with all the accessories and the accessories to play it in your car, remote etc. For $127 at Wal-Mart seems like a good deal. What do you think?

No smallies I been trying to go one more time before it gets too cold but..............I start thinking of all the work involved, load the boat and gear etc. and then I lookit my couch and I just can't seem to get up the gumption to go ;)
 
I see a trend here...

Let's see...

hundreds of MP3's on one disc, playing randomly, laying on the couch instead of going fishing, man, it's not even cold yet!

I've never used the minidisc for MP3 files, I'm not sure if it would mark the separate tracks or want to play them in order. That's a big problem with DVD players, most of them will not play MP3's randomly, but it's worth a try.

My first Sony MD cost me almost 300, used the hell out of it for a year or so and then the transport took a dump. My next one cost less than half that, but now I take it real easy loading the discs. I also bought an extended warranty so I'm good for five years. I don't think the machines will disappear, they're very poular in Japan. It's interesting that MallWart has picked up on them again.

I'd say go for it. I like mine a lot.

Lee
 
I first owned a MD deck, then the transport broke (surprise!). Then I got a MD/CDP combo deck, it's in storage right now but I'm very careful when I load MD's into it. Both Sony, BTW. I loved the format for making recordings at gigs, and for compilation discs to play in my MD walkman, easier to carry when out walking.

Not as much crap in the treble as WMA or MP3...but still not as transparent as linear PCM. For portable apps, however, it's a neat format.

TP
 
I ended up getting a 20gig Nomad 2 Jukebox NIB off ebay for $160 + like $5 shipping. I am very happy with it, especially for what I paid ;)
 
Ease of use, especially editing, convenience and high portability are the big factors of MD.

Sound quality is nowhere near good CD replay but good enough for portable or background listening.

Recording MP3's onto MD uses what they call Net MD.
This allows high speed file transfer from your computer to the MD using a USB connection. Compatible with MP3, WMA and WAV files.

Sony sez 320min of files can be transferred in ~5 minutes.

What model are they selling at WalMart ?

Stick to the big name brands as MD recorder/players can get cranky as can the discs.

For more info;

http://www.minidisc.org/NetMD_faq.html


cheers
 
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I used to use MD for live theater applications. The compressions they used on the early units sounded like crap but they were fine for sound effects and the direct access was a big plus. I haven't really heard them for about 4-5 years but I understand they've gotten better.
But if you're talking about burning mp3's onto MD, you're squashing the sound twice. I can't imagine that sounding good at all?????

:confused:
 
I used to do that with files 192kb and over only. It sounds ok on a portable but be careful what you're downloading as some stuff is 320kb recorded from a cassette and some stuff is 128kb from cd so try to sample the stuff before you download. I own a JVC cd/md deck that is ok, a sony MZE91 player only that is pretty good, I have owned an MZR-51 portable recorder(very glitchy), and an MZE-75 (the best portable Ive ever owned.) MD has great editing capabilities and decent sound if you stick to portable apps. The gear is getting cheaper and a little better, so go ahead and take the plunge.
 
MD

I've had one for about 4-5 years, bought it to archive vinyl. Quality is/was fair, very convenient, recordable. Was designed to replace cassette but it didn't happen like Sony thought it would in the US (prices were way too high). The price drop is a reflection of CD-R acceptance.
But they do fit in your pocket! I don't use it much anymore.
 
I have TWO md players

A sony(98 model, home deck), and a sharp (2001 model, portable)
I have used them to record music from cd's, lp's, streaming, and
off the air radio. the sound is quite good, and the convenience factor is a plus. I no longer record anything on cassete tape anymore, all is on cd-r, HI-fi video, or MD. As for the delicate transport, YOU KNOW IT! My home sony md player, which I payed around $200 for, jammed a couple of years ago, when i tried to load a disc too quiclky to record some electronic music off of fm. the disc hung, and I had to disassemble the unit, and put the slider mech(with its "heavy duty" construction(HA!) back into alignment. I suceeded, and it still does work fine. , but all in all, I am quite pleased with MD.
 
Just like this thread revived, MD appears to be staging it's own revival. Now you can buy a Sony portable recorder/player with five hour capability, runs on a single AA for days for about 75.00. They're all over eBay.

I guess their appeal is mostly to anybody that likes to "tape" things. The editing capabilities are unmatched. When I want to burn a CD, I put it on MD first, do my track arranging, dividing, etc., insert a four second blank spot between cuts and let the auto tracking feature of my CD recorder mark the tracks.

Picked up the Sony "bundle"- home player and portable for 45.00 on eBay the other day. How can you beat it??

As far as the sound goes, I'm as fussy as anyone and MDs sound great to me. I live recorded a church choir the other day and it sounds fantastic.

And they're a hell of a lot less finicky than the CD recorder I've got.

Lee
 
Net MD

I have the Sony Net MD.

The sound quality is definitely below CD (you have two choices of file quality) but not bad at all, perfectly OK for use in the car. It doesn't have a "line out" jack which probably hurts it a bit.

The software that came with it is buggy as hell, at least on my computer, but The "Simple Burner" program works OK and that is all you need to copy tracks from a CD or MP3 files.

It runs forever on a single aa battery.
 
I've had an old sony mz-r37 for a few years, it works great to record shows or acoustic guitars. A small stereo mic is a great inestment and can be found on ebay for around 50$ or so. Camcorder mics are the way to go for cheap.

I few months ago I bought a sony net md 505 from a friend for 60$ along with some blank discs. Best investment I've made in a while, as far as portable audio goes. Yes, sound quality does suffer. I listened much too critically when first listening to favorite music. It has been smooth sailing since then though.

Pros: Records cds from your computer very fast, and when you are connected to the net you can query CDDB and it will title all of the songs for you. I fit on average three albums per mini disc in lp2 mode. Lp4 mode allows for much more music but I'd rather stick with quality over quantity. Also, the software supports drag and drop of mp3 files onto the player, and it records fairly quickly and decently. It converts the mp3s to artac (sp?) on the fly, which is sony's proprietary compression tech they use. And it all goes over usb (1.1) but it really isn't very slow to transfer. Battery life is great, I've owned my net md for probably 4 months and have changed the single AA battery a total of twice, and I've listened to it quite a bit. It allows random playback of songs and all the songs are titled. Also, it allows for sorting songs by album which is nice. So far, the player has been very durable, surviving a few drops and has taken a beating when i go skateboarding with it. Its small enough to fit in a pocket, and the media themselves are much more durable than cds. I feel much safer with a 60$ player when I do active things than I would if I had an mp3 player with a hard drive in it. seems like there would be much more chance of things getting ruined easier. also, it has an optical input so it can be connected easily to newer receivers/cdp (though i haven't tried this yet)

cons:software can be a pain in the ass. headphones that come with it are not worth a *#*%. some net md versions (such as mine) will not record with a microphone so bootlegging of shows can only be done with my older minidisc :p
 
MD use

Thor, my oldest son had one first,the ability to compress alot of music on to one small disc was awesome.So much so that I put a player in my Desert Runner with an auxiliary input for a portable cd player.I was tearing up my cd's taking them back and forth from work.No matter how careful I was they were taking a beating.These minidiscs do have limitations but its my 2000 version of a really clear cassette with nice clarity.Fry's had the MZ-S1 portable on sale for 119.00 a while back,now my truck player will only read at a 142 kbp and that works out to an 80 minute disc.I like it,Sony style had a nice generic home player MDS-JE-480 with no shipping awhile back and its in the front room.Digital out from that player to digital in on the MZ-S1 - it's impressive.
 
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