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What Ever Happened To Mini Disc?

Theophilus Punoval

Theophilus Punoval

The Queen says it's OK...
I have several mini disc players in use, mostly because I'm a bird brain who got fished in by the hype. The bulk of the collection came from other people shedding decks cheaply.

What I don't understand is why the format faded away. MDs were as convenient as CDs, re-recordable like tape but with the ability to access, rearrange, drop and add tracks. The ATRAC compression was better sounding than cassettes and not very far behind CDs (at least in my opinion....I listen to a lot of crap).

Was it a question of too many competing formats, like with Beta and VHS. DAT seems to have faded away as well.
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So did mini diwsc die because it was inferior or was it a case of bad timing?
 
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I thought it was a great format. It just didn't catch on here. However, it was very popular in Japan. Sony was producing MD devices until 2013.
 
It was also popular in Europe. I think the problem was that it was relatively expensive, and at the time it came out, you could burn your own CDs on much cheaper media.
 
I've given away 2 cheap models, sold a mint top end Sony, and still have 2 other top of the line Sony models.

They're just.........freaking cool.

Still cannot say I use them much, but I adore the little devils.
 
When CD-R and CD-RW media and drives became cheap and ubiquitous, no one cared. Everyone was already all-in on the CD format, and when you could start recording and playing back your own discs on the CD players you already owned (home and car), there was really no point to adopt MiniDisc. The utter lack of pre-recored albums (at least in the States) didn't help matters.
 
I had a little portable one for years, I used it for work up until I got a smart phone now I just use that and Bluetooth headphones. I still have it somewhere with dozens of discs. It was a great format, it just came out right as digital streaming was on the horizon and never really took off.
 
The lossyness of the format wasn't as bad as the lossyness of my ears. After 25 your high frequency hearing is in the toilet. It's as inevitable as rot on foam surrounds.
 
I’d suspect, much like Beta, MiniDisc was a victim of Sony’s hubris and their marketing with obsolescence in mind.
 
benricci said:
When CD-R and CD-RW media and drives became cheap and ubiquitous, no one cared. Everyone was already all-in on the CD format, and when you could start recording and playing back your own discs on the CD players you already owned (home and car), there was really no point to adopt MiniDisc. The utter lack of pre-recored albums (at least in the States) didn't help matters.
Click to expand...
There were at least some commercially recorded MDs sold in the states. I have a selection of around 15 of them I got for free (someone was giving them away, and I took them to test a couple of MD players I had that had been tossed in e-cycling). They were all fairly popular albums; some older than the format was around.
 
Guy I know loved them. Had a nice portable and would sneak into concerts and, if the audience wasn't tooo rowdy,
he'd leave with a nice print of the show he'd attended.
Not sure why they went away, but I think people just lost interest in recording mixtapes and such ...

Theophilus Punoval said:
I have several mini disc players in use, mostly because I'm a bird brain who got fished in by the hype. The bulk of the collection came from other people shedding decks cheaply.

What I don't understand is why the format faded away. MDs were as convenient as CDs, re-recordable like tape but with the ability to access, rearrange, drop and add tracks. The ATRAC compression was better sounding than cassettes and not very far behind CDs (at least in my opinion....I listen to a lot of crap).
Click to expand...
 
Theophilus Punoval said:
I have several mini disc players in use, mostly because I'm a bird brain who got fished in by the hype. The bulk of the collection came from other people shedding decks cheaply.

What I don't understand is why the format faded away. MDs were as convenient as CDs, re-recordable like tape but with the ability to access, rearrange, drop and add tracks. The ATRAC compression was better sounding than cassettes and not very far behind CDs (at least in my opinion....I listen to a lot of crap).

Was it a question of too many competing formats, like with Beta and VHS. DAT seems to have faded away as well.
.
So did mini diwsc die because it was inferior or was it a case of bad timing?
Click to expand...

From what I can recall.. the minidisc format just could not establish a market niche :no:. Not sure if it had anything to do with timing, usability, technical challenges or the like. As opposed to tapes in various formats and flavor and then CDs in writing variations and then DVD which all were driven by parallel markets.., music and video productions :rockon:.

And now.. consider "streaming" which is beginning to dominate audio.. and video presentations, and that may surely again "evolutionize" the audio markets as we now know them. In effect, dictating new terms :deal:!

So, IMO (I enjoy having the chance to use these Millenial text acronyms : ).. mini disc was just one of those concepts that had its time.. and it was short-lived :bye:.
 
swechsler said:
There were at least some commercially recorded MDs sold in the states. I have a selection of around 15 of them I got for free (someone was giving them away, and I took them to test a couple of MD players I had that had been tossed in e-cycling). They were all fairly popular albums; some older than the format was around.
Click to expand...
Yeah, there were a handful of titles. But they were impossible to find, and only on Sony-owned labels. So for most of us, it was basically the same as there being no titles at all. Remember, this all started pre-internet, so you couldn’t just order the titles you wanted and have them shipped to your door next day. If your local electronics store or record store didn’t stock MiniDisc titles, they may as well not even have existed.
 
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