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What Ever Happened To Mini Disc?

Theophilus Punoval said:
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.
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I am 54 and have had my hearing tested for the job my whole life. My high frequency hearing is fine still. While your general statement is not wrong it is very individual dependent ;)
 
Actually, the incidence of age related high frequency hearing isn't very individual dependent. You may be 54 with perfect high frequency hearing but you're unique on a scale that removes it from case-by-case consideration. That being said, please keep in mind I'm generally fulla hot gas and my being right about this is iffy. At best.

I'm scheduled for a hearing test in March myself. The doctor also asked me if I'd ever had a colonoscopy and I said, "You mean officially?"
 
Theophilus Punoval said:
Actually, the incidence of age related high frequency hearing isn't very individual dependent. You may be 54 with perfect high frequency hearing but you're unique on a scale that removes it from case-by-case consideration. That being said, please keep in mind I'm generally fulla hot gas and my being right about this is iffy. At best.

I'm scheduled for a hearing test in March myself. The doctor also asked me if I'd ever had a colonoscopy and I said, "You mean officially?"
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Prefect and fine are two different things ;)
 
benricci said:
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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Capitol offered some Pre-Recorded MD releases as did the WEA labels.
 
Yet another proprietary Sony format that ended up on The Island of Misfit Toys.

Beta, MD, Elcaset, DAT (found a pro niche), even arguably SACD. Since Sony backed Blu-Ray I bet against them and bought an HD-DVD player. Can’t win ‘em all. :)
 
swechsler said:
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.
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Are you sure about that? In my memory, CD-R and CD-RW didn't exist yet, so your only two options to record digitally were DAT and MD... Why did it die? In my opinion because of bad timing. If they would've waited a couple of years before releasing CD-R and CD-RW it could/would 've been a success. Soundquality was better than MP3. With current formats, you can have digital music files that are as good as CD's, so modern technology is better. But if they'de have further developed it... Imagine that you could save e.g. more hi-res audio files on the MD-disc (Sony, you listening?) than you currently can on your hi-res portable player, and just swap discs...

Anyway, I still have my MD's and I'm not planning to get rid of them! So I hope my MD-player keeps on working!
 
Stino said:
Are you sure about that? In my memory, CD-R and CD-RW didn't exist yet, so your only two options to record digitally were DAT and MD... Why did it die? In my opinion because of bad timing. If they would've waited a couple of years before releasing CD-R and CD-RW it could/would 've been a success. Soundquality was better than MP3. With current formats, you can have digital music files that are as good as CD's, so modern technology is better. But if they'de have further developed it... Imagine that you could save e.g. more hi-res audio files on the MD-disc (Sony, you listening?) than you currently can on your hi-res portable player, and just swap discs...

Anyway, I still have my MD's and I'm not planning to get rid of them! So I hope my MD-player keeps on working!
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CD-R drives cost like $10,000 at the time. So no one had one until way, way later. Here’s a great video from Techmoan.
 
Stino said:
Are you sure about that? In my memory, CD-R and CD-RW didn't exist yet, so your only two options to record digitally were DAT and MD...
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Yeah, I was actually off by a few years; MD came out in the early 90s, IIRC, and cassette sales were still strong. But at that time, a blank MD cost about the same as buying a CD (+/- a couple of dollars) so there wasn't really much point; if you're buying media to record your buddy's albums on, if the blanks cost the same as the originals, just buy your own copy. Good blank tapes were only a couple of bucks each, so that's what most people used.
 
KentTeffeteller said:
These were USA releases, by the way. I used to have one REM title on MD, and had Bonnie Raitt/Nick Of Time.
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Interesting. The only retailer I can remember stocking pre-recorded MiniDiscs near me at the time was Circuit City. And everything they carried was from Sony artists (Columbia, Epic, etc). After about 1995 I don't think I ever saw them stocked again.
 
swechsler said:
Yeah, I was actually off by a few years; MD came out in the early 90s, IIRC, and cassette sales were still strong. But at that time, a blank MD cost about the same as buying a CD (+/- a couple of dollars) so there wasn't really much point; if you're buying media to record your buddy's albums on, if the blanks cost the same as the originals, just buy your own copy. Good blank tapes were only a couple of bucks each, so that's what most people used.
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Really? Than I think where you live they were very very expensive! Over here, let's say a CD costs +/-20 €, but I never paid/would've paid that amount of money for a blank MD, no way! That means buying a couple blanks would've been more costly than buying the recorder... Unless CD's are very very cheap where you live of course...
 
At the time when Sony released their last "flavour" of MD in 2004/2005 with Hi-MD and the "new" improved Atrac versions, MD wasn't on my radar at all, however 15 years later I'm now piling up Hi-MD recorders and discs like there's no tomorrow
- mostly because it's fun to check out the pros and cons of this format and also as a compliment to my stack of tape decks...

It's a shame though that there wasn't many true decks with Hi-MD released, especially not from Sony the "inventor".
I wouldn't be too surprised to find articles in the near future of the "comeback" of MD as we've seen earlier with Vinyl and cassette tapes :)

Prices are already climbing for good MD-decks
 
Stino said:
Really? Than I think where you live they were very very expensive! Over here, let's say a CD costs +/-20 €, but I never paid/would've paid that amount of money for a blank MD, no way! That means buying a couple blanks would've been more costly than buying the recorder... Unless CD's are very very cheap where you live of course...
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At the time, CDs were $13-$14 (on sale, but it wasn't difficult to find a sale), and blank MDs were (I believe) around $10-$12 (rarely discounted). Yes, prices for blank MDs dropped significantly, but prices for CD burners and blank CDs dropped even faster.

One other possibility: many (maybe even most) people didn't care about recording. With the CD already well established, with people having been collecting for 5+ years, why would they want to buy into another format whose only major advantage is a smaller size? Portable CD players had been out for years.
 
swechsler said:
At the time, CDs were $13-$14 (on sale, but it wasn't difficult to find a sale), and blank MDs were (I believe) around $10-$12 (rarely discounted). Yes, prices for blank MDs dropped significantly, but prices for CD burners and blank CDs dropped even faster.

One other possibility: many (maybe even most) people didn't care about recording. With the CD already well established, with people having been collecting for 5+ years, why would they want to buy into another format whose only major advantage is a smaller size? Portable CD players had been out for years.
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Wow, that's crazy... Over here, a new CD still costs around 20-25 €, I think I paid around (rough guess, it's a long time ago...) 20 € or 20 blank MD's. Could be more though, as I don't remember exactly, but no way they were 10-15 € per piece.
 
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