Tefifon media player video: ua-cam.com/video/uYGUdWpeg_w/v-deo.html Find more of Sean's work in our Tested Team channel: www.youtube.com/@TestedTeam/ and on social media at instagram.com/cworthdynamics , www.etsy.com/shop/charlesworthdynamics, and www.charlesworth-dynamics.com/
@@Me-qp8vz Knowledge of what came before is important. To me, at least. Shows what people of the past had, AND had to put up with. And what may be gained and lost now. History is never a waste of time.
As an old guy who used 78 rpm records and every audio format since, through to Spotify now, this video is quite a stroll down memory lane. Film and video formats are also very rich with history as I began my video engineering career with 2” then 1” open reel videotape where editing was achieved with a razor blade and crossed fingers when edits would pass the heads, and all subsequent analog and digital video formats from then on. I’m a fan of Techmoan’s channel for sure. Thanks for this!
I was a DJ for many years and BY FAR my favorite old media was mini disc. We had our entire catalog on 50ish mini discs. Didn't have to lug around hundreds of records or CDs. Loved the ease of use, plus I got paid to record the new music each month which helped out a poor 20 something back in the day. I miss those mini discs.
The players don't last very well but the MDs themselves are almost indestructible. I don't have any CDs from that era that still work but I have boxes full of old band rehearsal MDs that still work perfectly.
Sadly, he can't come to the States. He said a while back that he has a condition where he can't fly in airplanes. That's why he takes trains everywhere.
I arrange the sound effects for my local amateur theatre group, and they still use a fullsize hifi separate Minidisc player for all their onstage sound effects. It's amazing because you can put in the script page number / scene as the track title etc, and the tech on the night can just have the sound effect ready to go, with the security of seeing on the screen what's about to play on the system.
Lol, I just finished recounting my first/only exposure to Minidiscs growing up in a small town, in a very similar setting to what you're describing 😅 This might be a long-shot, but that sounds like quite a "classic theatre set-up", if that reference means anything to you. If not, cheers anyway for expanding on my recollections from 20 years ago!
Yes and yes! I was using the mini disk for the same purpose in the local theater and also a sort of backing tracks for the live band. It was awesome and easy to use. This was back in late 90's
I loved my mini disk players. I still have around 20 self recorded and prerecorded disks. I still have a Sony stereo deck that is plugged in and ready to listen to. I lost my portable player and had a mini disk deck in my car back in the day. Still love the MD format.
I was living in Japan in 2002 and my Sony MDLP recorder is still one of THE best engineered products I have ever owned. Everything about it was quality. The weight, the feel, the lipstick remote. It was a shame it never took off in Australia, where it was marketed as a premium product. In Japan it was seen as the successor to the cassette and pretty much every stereo system and boom box sold had a minidisc player/recorder so you could record to them, and there was massive numbers of portable players.
@@xxJOKeR75xx This was also pure "head in the sand Sony", where the insisted on proprietary batteries and using the ATRAC encoding. They steadfastedly REFUSED to move to mp3 as iPod become a behomoth because it would cut into profits, only deciding to cave and implement it much too late. They lost the market they literally pioneered, portable music, because of their obstinancy.
@@f1v3am Not going to lie. I am back in Japan now, and my old Toyota Vitz has a minidisc player and a CD player. . . tempted to buy a recorder but those real-time recording time ;)
This video really shows why I love the Tested channel so much. I love these deep dives into interesting topics and how they relate to film and culture and people's personal lives and interests. Wonderful video.
In the 90s I used DAT cartridges for computer backups at work It would replace 3 or 4 computer reel to reel large backup computer tapes (that you see in all the movies) so instead of me going in every morning and having to switch tapes for the computer backup to complete the DAT would hold all the data in one cartridge.
Ditto, and later DDS-2 to DDS-4 for higher density/capacity in the same form factor. I still have my "white elephant" tub of DDS tapes that need to be -destroyed- due to the data on them, but I'm rather hesitant to toss them in a fire pit for obvious reasons.
As I recall at the time, DAT never took off as a digital audio format because record companies were terrified people would be able to make exact digital copies of CDs so they made a huge stink about it, even having a surcharge added to blank tapes to "compensate" them for all the revenue they would lose because people were going to copy CDs. That's as far as my memory serves anyway, details may be sketchy this far on. But turns out no one wanted to use DAT to copy CDs and really couldn't because home players were scarcer than unicorn horns and twice as expensive. So the plan worked, I guess, and DAT was used mostly for recording live stuff or to transfer large audio files in professional situations, and on the data side as backup solutions for computer systems, which is what we used one for back in the 90s.
The thing I love the most about Adam Savage's videos is the way he talks. His vocabulary, his expressions feel like he's a "natural crafter" with his words too. It feels well thought out, yet natural, oddly specific and somewhat unique, especially on youtube. As a non native speaker who loves to fiddle with words, this fascinates me soo much.
My dad had a reel to reel when i was a kid. I loved feeding the tape through the rollers, and then the fast rewind at the end. I knew Bolero better than any 6 year old ever should just so i could play with the tape.
ISTR The sony tiny cassette was digital, and had a crazy scheme where instead of trying to track the head accurately, it just read everything multiple times and pieced it all together from what it managed to read.
As someone who loves discovering/collecting odd formats, I love videos like these. Thanks for the deep dive, Adam & Sean! Another very obscure audio format which is always over looked was a competing Japanese format to the CD by JVC called AHD. AHD used very large cartridges and were read by a needle like a record player. It could also display digital pictures (a la CD+G but in full color) at a time before any profession or consumer digital video formats existed. The AHD system required a monster decoder along with a separate video transport (called VHD which Japanese exclusive but was this close 🤏 to being released in the US to compete with Laserdisc). Ye' olde professional audio landscape was moderately overlooked here but is also very interesting. Y'all need to do one on "repurposed" video formats like PCM adaptors for VHS & Betamax (PCM-501ES) which has a neat visualization of the PCM data stored in the video area of the tape or the big professional U-Matic 3/4" tape (PCM-1630). There was also the (S-)VHS-based ADAT tape and the consumer camcorder Hi8 format that was used for an 8track digital system called DTRS...and on top of all this, all these formats (along with DAT) had variations that could even do hi-res 96kHz/24bit audio!
I remember being soooooo excited about 4 head hi-fi stereo VCRs being the must-have component to my home theater in 1991...ish. Lovely compliment to my Trinitron super flat super black tv.
I still use my minidisk to this day. I LOVE that thing. If Sony ever needed a cash grab, just put those back into production. I'll buy one immediately.
Oh god. I remember we had two of those magnetic wire recorders hanging around at The Hangar recording studios back in the day. Bryce, the lead engineer was convinced he was going to get one of them up and running someday, which led to many many hours of frustration and swearing as one or the other would violently unspool during testing. I don't know if they still remain as part of John's collection (which would mean they are now likely at Panoramic House), if they left with Bryce, or if they were eventually disposed of. I would recommend reaching out to Tape Op (John) or to Highland Dynamics (Bryce) if you wanted to try to track them down.
fun fact, the original toy of soundwave before the mold was reused in transforms was of a 1:1 scale mini casset player and got changed to an off scale boom box in the cartoon
Oh crap, this is a walk down memory lane. Growing up in a small town in Northern Ontario, I think I've only come across Mini-Discs once in my life - one of the tech people in the local community theatre used them for sound effects for the productions, and it was just so cool to actually get my hands on this piece of tech that was so obscure in my world. And those Data-Play discs? On our 10-foot satellite dish I watched the TechTV CES coverage when they were announced, and it blew my teenaged mind that storage media that small could hold 500mb, let alone the 1Gb I remember being shown off as well
My brother (a musician) had a Sanyo MiniDisc player - they were popular among local musicians for recording their gigs. Plug in any decent microphone with a 3.5mm cable & you're good to go. They were also popular for recording bootlegs of concerts they'd go to as fans.
Still have my Sony minidisc deck and minidisc portable player and boxes of minidisc compilations i made. I used to copy vinyl, cds and even the audio off vhs tapes of music programs. Happy days.
DATs were used in professional studios in the 90s to provide quick mixes of songs or pre-mastering. The pro models with AES-EBU connectors also supported SMPTE playback if I recall correctly. Great tool. The biggest issue for them was legal. Record companies were afraid of unlimited copies of 100% quality of copyrighted music, so the media had a hefty tax. Most analog recordings for consumer use were recorded at the edge of usability so that you lose quality with each generation. It's use got relegated to pro use because of the RIAA lobbying at the time. I had some mixes recorded to DAT while I was at Full Sail in the 90s, but never did get a player personally. By the time I had the cash, they were obsolete. Recordable CDs were the nail in the coffin for DAT.
I recently repaired an old Nakamichi RX505 cassette deck that belonged to friend's father who passed. It's a rediculous thing that physically flips the cassette over to change sides, very 80s. The thing that really surprised me is how good the sound quality is with type-II tapes (and how much they now go for on ebay!!)... I think most people's memories of analogue are ruined by the cheap equipment we had growing up :)
Back in the day, that Nakamichi 'flipping' cassette deck starred in at least 1 music video as a mark of wealth and hot-ness. Don't remember the video, but the flipping cassette was so neat and cool!
I don't see why Sony gets all the limelight, as you say there's other manufacturers with decent build quality such as Nakamichi. But yes Sony did lead the way with portables with the Walkman.
Another great thing about the MiniDisk was that it didn't skip due to impact like CD players used to. I had a great Sony unit that had a CD player built in that allowed one to copy them.
To be fair, later portable CD players included similar data buffering to reduce or (in most situations) eliminate skipping. I don't know if the MiniDisc format mandated some sort of more robust mechanism that was more resistant to skipping or they just used the same data buffering technique.
The DAT format failed primarily due to the digital copyright wars going on at the time. The music industry required hardware/software copyright protection be built into the recorders. It was complex, cumbersome and as I recall could be circumvented. Copyright killed the format in the consumer market. DAT tapes were widely used in the professional studio world because it was the relatively low cost digital tape solution.
Cool collection! I have that MZ-R37 Sony MD recorder/player. It was (still is) my favorite portable device. I still have several mixed discs and some unopened discs packed away somewhere.
I loved my MiniDisc player, it seemed bulletproof compared to WalkMan and DiscMan players, but mine died in a horrible powerwashing incident... okay, it wasn't that horrible. It was in my shorts pocket as I was powerwashing an RV, and the shorts were a little baggy, and while powerwashing it slammed into a wooden post on the deck stairs next to the RV. Hit it right on the input jack and destroyed it immediately. Still have the MiniDiscs in the garage somewhere. DATs were everywhere in the music business for a while. Every time I sent an album off to be mastered, they always wanted DATs. Burned CDs were kind of lowbrow for mastering engineers.
Back in the late 60s my parents' friend had, in his home office, a dictation machine that used a funky tape-cartridge format I've never heard of before or since. The cartridge had only had one spindle -- but not like 8-tracks that feed from the center. Rather, in use the tape would be pulled out of the cartridge and wind onto an external take-up reel. I can't recall now whether that was built into the recorder, or was a second, initially empty cartridge. What I do remember is that there was a little plastic doohickie on the end of the tape, which something in the recorder used when loading the thing. I *think* I remember that after you inserted a cartridge, there was a little projecting handle that you'd slide to load the tape. (There might actually have been a pair of them that you squeezed together, but one did the work and the other one was static, and was just there to give you something to squeeze against.)
Have a look at "Grundig Stenorette". The very old ones have been reel to reel recorders but later had the first reel in a kind of enclosure. They didn't have a capstan but direct drive, so the fixed take-up reel had a larger diameter to avoid too much speed / quality variation.
That suitcase reminds me a lot of the 007 movies! I know it's a record player, but it looks like spy equipment to me! Love the show Adam! Seeing this older audio equipment was very satisfying too!
As someone who was always trying to upgrade their audio, this was amazing. There was a time when someone I knew came back from Japan, and bought with them a tiny AM radio that blew my mind. It was the beginning of the miniaturization wars. And I can't agree with Adam more; Sony was the king at making something small that was robust and beautiful.
I got a used first gen (D5?) Sony portable CD player back in 1987. Thing was made of metal and plastic and 1/4 of the lid was transparent so you could see the CD flying around as it played. Motor eventually burned out, but for 4 years, that thing was one of my most awesome 'gets' in electronics.
The DataPlay disk reminds me a lot of the Iomega Clik! format (later renamed PocketZip because of unfortunate associations with the Click of Death class action lawsuit). I had an Iomega HipZip MP3 player that would use Clik! Disks. I remember the HipZip being one of the first MP3 players I had seen that would function as a USB mass storage device: back then it was still pretty common to load songs onto an MP3 player via clunky proprietary software. The HipZip allowed you to load songs on it just by dragging the files to the USB drive, which seemed mindblowing at the time. Also, unlike the DataPlay disks they were rewritable!
I had that exact MiniDisk player... They were SO much better than CD, no skipping when you ran or bumped it. I even had the Technics SJ-MD 150 audio rack edition, so i could make my own mix disks.
By the iPod era, the portable CDs had incorporated the MD style 'buffer.' So the skipping was eventually solved, but also by then, USB sticks and MP3 players had started replacing them. So a bit too late to matter, probably.
My favorite medium was MiniDISC! I adopted the whole eco-system! Had the home audio player (Sony MDS JE520), portable player (Sony MZ-E40), computer drive (Sony MDH-10), and even a multi-track recorder (Yamaha MD8) system recording demos! I too regret selling them off! I was already short of 100 miniDisc
Here’s a fun one, they make a mini wurlitzur jukebox with a single spool micro cassette that Ive only seen in that application. It’s probably the smallest analog cassette out there
2:15 The only surviving live recording of Woody Guthrie was done on a wire recorder and wasn't rediscovered until 2001! The restoration of it was quite a chore but it ended up sounding great.
Two formats I’ve never seen recently, when I was a kid, (late 60s early 70s) my older brother had a compact cassette player that used 1/8th inch tape in a square cassette but only one spool in a loop like an 8track! The other format was talked about in SerioReview magazine in the early 80s just before CDs came out, there were Giant Cassettes that put digital recording on 1/4 inch tape, not sure if it ever made it to market.
I've actually had two experiences with old media. Back in the 70s my Dad worked for a company owned by Philips, and a project he was tasked to find a solution for needed some large storage system that could be used in a car. There really wasn't any options back then that he was aware of... however, in a call he had with a fellow engineer at Philips corporate in the Netherlands that engineer mentioned they were working on something that they believed would be able to store around 650MB. So my Dad flew over and visited with them for a little bit... and came back with a prototype CD player with one disk. Note that this was around 1976. I, unfortunately, sold it awhile ago, but this video reminded me. The other experience I had was with a version of the Sony Walkman that played DATs some time in the 80s. I was working at a venue that held concerts, film and performance pieces. One of the performance companies was the Timothy Buckley dance group, and they brought with them "Blue" Gene Tyranny to accompany them on piano. He brought with him what I initially thought was a Sony Walkman to play with his live piano work... and I figured the sound would be okay with the regular cassettes... was I mistaken. That DAT tape sounded exquisite! Plus listening to him play, and watch the dance performance. Oh... and I actually still have a couple of the portable mini disc players and recorders, plus a mini disc deck that I used to record the audio from circus performances done by a local group where I was the technical director for awhile. It's fun to think about these again! Thank you!
Great collection of audio gear. Ah.. the MD. Also one of my favorite portable audio gear. It was my main audio player for the 4 years or so while at Academy of Art University in SF in the mid/late 90s- 2k. Making my mixes was a treat. CD quality sound without the skipping and so much more compact. I was really bummed it got killed by the MP3 players not all that long after its intro. I still have my Sony MD home recorder and player which I will never get rid of. Too many good memories and the player looks cool. The one I have is like a flat rectangular metal flask with a raised X on the surface. MZ-EP11 if I searched the model # correctly. All the controls and readout were on the included wired remote unit that connects to whatever head/ear phones you wanted.
I came in when cassettes were the primary mobile data format. CDs existed, but they were still pretty much for home use. Walkmans were still pretty much cassette only. Their CD format became affordable for middle class and practical when I was around 12-14, when PC CD-ROM burners became standard and, ahem, "questionable" forms of music acquisition was just about to become mainstream. I still have my yellow cassette/radio walkman from 1991 (I think?). It's amazing just how durable and long-lasting that was, considering all my CD walkmen are long tossed for breaking in half at some point. I still listen to my radio recordings once in a while for the nostalgia factor. XD
We used to have one of those wire recorders they talked about in the beginning. It was built into this old cabinet stereo that had been my grandfather's. I never saw it work and we ended up throwing it away because nobody wanted it and it was just taking up space in a house with limited space. Still a pretty cool looking thing.
For more Nagra content, go check out Hainbach's channel. He makes music with a ton of old equipment. He has a couple of Nagra machines and uses them regularly.
Can we PLEASE just get manufacturers to produce QUALITY portable cassette players aka Sony Walkman?? I had an old portable reel to reel that was in beautiful condition but was stolen over the years. I have no idea why, most people wouldn't know anything about it.
How much would you pay for one? Because the main reason there aren't new quality portable cassette players is that there's just not enough demand to keep them as relatively inexpensive as the original Walkman designs were (and frankly, they weren't _cheap_ exactly, but just reasonably priced). I'd be surprised if a modern equivalent that was built as robustly as a Walkman could be economically marketed for less than a few hundred dollars minimum, maybe even more.
If you are ever in the UK again, look me up and I will show you my 6ft 6in high half ton 4 track magnetic recorder and the two 4 and 6 track magnetic 7ft high three quarter ton play back machines.
Wow love this old stuff. Saved a bit from the trash over the years. I don’t know why it’s getting so expensive, most dosent work anymore or as he said you can’t find the players to play them. Thank you for the stroll down memory lane
Whenever talking about the history of the CD, gotta remind people they were the "compact" audio-only versions of the original LaserDisc video platters.
What? No IBM Executary Dictation Machine? This was a dictation recorder used by business executives to record dictation. It used a belt (tube) of magnetic media about 4" wide by 6" in diameter. The successful executive would have a pair of them. One for his desk and one for his secretary to transcribe the dictation. My dad had one at home so he could record dictation at home and then take it into work for his secretary to type up. You can see one in use at the end of the film "Thirteen days" about the Cuban missile crisis as President Kennedy dictated a letter to the parents of the U2 pilot that was shot down. I also remember he would have his secretary print out his IBM Profs email which he would read and mark up. His secretary would then reply to his email, typing out his comments. Executives did not use type writers. This was in the late 80's, early 90's.
Worked in a radio store, when I was young in the 90's. My favourite was the Sony D7 DAT Recorder. Unbeatable as a portable recorder and had that Sony feeling to it 😋
The RCA Sound tape was called CARTS. They were used at radio stations mostly for 30 second to 2 minute commercials from the 50's to 70's. My own dad covered "The White House" for CBS news and used to record on those from home to be able to play reports from "The White House" on the weekends. My dad had a box full of those when he died and since only radio stations used those and had any type of player, we threw them all out.
I still have hundreds of MiniDiscs, used to resize and print out the album covers on an inkjet. Now it all fits on a single little USB thumb drive and the covers display on my car's infotainment screen.
i have a mint Sony EL-5 Elcaset and a mostly functional stereo version of the RCA Reel cassette cartridge tube recorder. I absolutely love old unique tape media
I loved MD in the States and later moved to Japan so had many more makes and models available. I still find used MD units regularly. Here in Japan, I found a few bookshelf HI-MD units too. Lovely memories. Still use them occasionally. HI-MD portable units all use the same expensive lithium ion battery, which is a pain. I'll keep my eyes peeled for these other Sony players.
I still love using the minidisc format . I first saw it in the movie Strange Days by Kathryn Bigelow. In the movie, people stored their memories on it.
On the one hand, Techmoan has covered all of these. On the other hand, this video layed tham all out together on one table. Lovely! I own a Pioneer minidisc deck and a few Sony minidisc Walkmans. Honestly, they're fantastic to use, even now with all the solid state stuff.
I have a lot of older bootlegs (from live concerts) that were originally recorded on DAT or Minidisc. Recorders small enough to smuggle into concerts. Of course they have been converted to other formats over the years but it's always interesting to see the chain of history that comes with each bootleg, to see the original recording device.
Got one for you. I have used Robbets 990 deck, maybe made by Akai they had "X" heads, that is they moved from stereo, to 4track (simplafied). I have a box of tapes from 60s & 70s. Recorded on it. I just recently acquired an Akai 771X electronics are ok but I have a problem, maybe, I can't get into play mode, the idler does no come up to the capstan. Oh well it just something else to fix. It's a fairly loong list, maybe as long as you own. 😅😅😅 😊😊😊~~ Cris H.
I still have a cassette player in my car. Factory install in my 02 Buick. Still use it too. I was still using a DAT recorder up until about 2010 when I went full digital with a Tascam DR-2D. Used them for recording concerts I attended. Before that was a micro-cassette recorder, and a digital voice recorder. My only experience with minidisc was when I got one by accident instead of the CD I had ordered. That was back in 2000 and I had pre-ordered Iron Maiden's new album on cassette and CD.
I had the Mini Disc recorder player, and the desk rack player. The MD player was the Japanese version and not available in the USA. The battery was the big difference.
What a great tour! 😊 I have a Minidisk regret, sort-of; in the... I guess early aughts I did a bit of busking, and I befriended a couple of other buskers, in particular a scotsman (bagpiper, obviously) and an Israeli dude who had a Minidisk recorder, and the three of us did a few recordings, both some music and just some "ambience" of hanging out - I had a disk, and also some recordings on my computer that one of them had sent me, but I lost all of it... would have been fun to still have 😁
4 track tape. similar to 8 track in form factor, but has a hole on the bottom for the capstan to swing up into the cassette. I can't even find a photo online.
Especially the smaller Casette tape is rather Nostalgic for me, ( and also the micro tapes!) cause I used that technology so much during the '70's, and '80's!!
surprised not got a laser disc player Star Wars was in a laser disc looked like a album record....guess thats video and audio.....sony walkman...had orange headphone covers....oh the rewind and FW .....sony boombox on yer shoulder or swing down street in hand lol I loved late 70s 80s as a kid
In college, cough ‘95, the super mainframe guru was showing us a portable tape drive for backup that I believe was based on that micro digital tape in the Sony and it could hold 1g and the tape drive was maybe the size of a pack of cigarettes.
Back in the 90s my band tried using VHS HiFi cassettes for recording our first demos and EPs since the 'HiFi' aspect was that the audio track used more of the tape than regular VHS. Since we couldn't afford a reel to reel, it was an ok compromise. Audio quality of around a 1/4" r-t-r, way better than a cassette 4-track deck.
In the early 1909's there was a Digital audio format that recorded to VHS tape. My Band at the time would record demos on a 4 track Teac then mix down to the Digital audio VHS tape. I do not recall if it Panasonic or Philips. The VHS unit would also work as a standard VHS tape video player when not being used a digital audio recorder.
Tefifon media player video: ua-cam.com/video/uYGUdWpeg_w/v-deo.html
Find more of Sean's work in our Tested Team channel: www.youtube.com/@TestedTeam/
and on social media at instagram.com/cworthdynamics , www.etsy.com/shop/charlesworthdynamics, and www.charlesworth-dynamics.com/
Hey Adam want to do something we care about? Test the new Nvidia video card 5070. Can a $549 really do the same thing as $1599 video card?(4090)
Old tech doesn't help us.
Don't be scared because Nvidia is wealthier than Musk...
@@Me-qp8vz Knowledge of what came before is important. To me, at least. Shows what people of the past had, AND had to put up with. And what may be gained and lost now. History is never a waste of time.
Wire recorders were also used in satellites for decades - bulletproof and nearly infinitely radiation tolerant.
Glad techmoan got a shoutout right up front, everyone should check him out!
absolutely
If I ever travel that far back in time, I will care what he says but until then...
yeah this shout-out made me so happy!
Yup that's was cool, they didn't have to mention him
Well deserved. He does a great job at telling the whole story in sufficient detail.
As an old guy who used 78 rpm records and every audio format since, through to Spotify now, this video is quite a stroll down memory lane. Film and video formats are also very rich with history as I began my video engineering career with 2” then 1” open reel videotape where editing was achieved with a razor blade and crossed fingers when edits would pass the heads, and all subsequent analog and digital video formats from then on. I’m a fan of Techmoan’s channel for sure. Thanks for this!
Painting 2" Quad tape looking for Control Track timing marks to splice it! I learned on an RCA TRT1B.
I was a DJ for many years and BY FAR my favorite old media was mini disc. We had our entire catalog on 50ish mini discs. Didn't have to lug around hundreds of records or CDs. Loved the ease of use, plus I got paid to record the new music each month which helped out a poor 20 something back in the day. I miss those mini discs.
I loved the MiniDisc. I just came out a bit too late.
Sound quality was definitely subpar; you could always hear the artifacting.
@@VideoArchiveGuy there were three different compression/quality levels. At the highest quality level you had to really focus to hear any artifacts.
The players don't last very well but the MDs themselves are almost indestructible. I don't have any CDs from that era that still work but I have boxes full of old band rehearsal MDs that still work perfectly.
So... Techmoan in the cave when?
I don’t think he flies do to an inner ear thing.
Sadly, he can't come to the States. He said a while back that he has a condition where he can't fly in airplanes. That's why he takes trains everywhere.
@@BryceLynch838 Then a double-box video interview with something like FaceTime or Zoom. THAT would be neat!
@@cjc363636 Or just send Adam to the UK.
Techmoan on a boat!
I arrange the sound effects for my local amateur theatre group, and they still use a fullsize hifi separate Minidisc player for all their onstage sound effects. It's amazing because you can put in the script page number / scene as the track title etc, and the tech on the night can just have the sound effect ready to go, with the security of seeing on the screen what's about to play on the system.
Lol, I just finished recounting my first/only exposure to Minidiscs growing up in a small town, in a very similar setting to what you're describing 😅
This might be a long-shot, but that sounds like quite a "classic theatre set-up", if that reference means anything to you. If not, cheers anyway for expanding on my recollections from 20 years ago!
Yes and yes! I was using the mini disk for the same purpose in the local theater and also a sort of backing tracks for the live band. It was awesome and easy to use. This was back in late 90's
Man, I should have never ditched my Minidisc player I bought when I was stationed in Japan! Such a cool piece of audio media history.
I really miss my original one.
I loved my mini disk players. I still have around 20 self recorded and prerecorded disks. I still have a Sony stereo deck that is plugged in and ready to listen to. I lost my portable player and had a mini disk deck in my car back in the day. Still love the MD format.
it was so much better than portable CDs. Unfortunately they where too late and MP3 players took that spot.
I was living in Japan in 2002 and my Sony MDLP recorder is still one of THE best engineered products I have ever owned. Everything about it was quality. The weight, the feel, the lipstick remote. It was a shame it never took off in Australia, where it was marketed as a premium product. In Japan it was seen as the successor to the cassette and pretty much every stereo system and boom box sold had a minidisc player/recorder so you could record to them, and there was massive numbers of portable players.
@@xxJOKeR75xx This was also pure "head in the sand Sony", where the insisted on proprietary batteries and using the ATRAC encoding. They steadfastedly REFUSED to move to mp3 as iPod become a behomoth because it would cut into profits, only deciding to cave and implement it much too late. They lost the market they literally pioneered, portable music, because of their obstinancy.
minidisks were, are, amazing. they'll come back into fashion at some point. such a good medium, I've still got a stack of them
@@f1v3am Not going to lie. I am back in Japan now, and my old Toyota Vitz has a minidisc player and a CD player. . . tempted to buy a recorder but those real-time recording time ;)
This video really shows why I love the Tested channel so much. I love these deep dives into interesting topics and how they relate to film and culture and people's personal lives and interests. Wonderful video.
In the 90s I used DAT cartridges for computer backups at work It would replace 3 or 4 computer reel to reel large backup computer tapes (that you see in all the movies) so instead of me going in every morning and having to switch tapes for the computer backup to complete the DAT would hold all the data in one cartridge.
Ditto, and later DDS-2 to DDS-4 for higher density/capacity in the same form factor. I still have my "white elephant" tub of DDS tapes that need to be -destroyed- due to the data on them, but I'm rather hesitant to toss them in a fire pit for obvious reasons.
As I recall at the time, DAT never took off as a digital audio format because record companies were terrified people would be able to make exact digital copies of CDs so they made a huge stink about it, even having a surcharge added to blank tapes to "compensate" them for all the revenue they would lose because people were going to copy CDs. That's as far as my memory serves anyway, details may be sketchy this far on. But turns out no one wanted to use DAT to copy CDs and really couldn't because home players were scarcer than unicorn horns and twice as expensive. So the plan worked, I guess, and DAT was used mostly for recording live stuff or to transfer large audio files in professional situations, and on the data side as backup solutions for computer systems, which is what we used one for back in the 90s.
Same. I am lucky enough to have a SONY DAT audio rack unit as well as SCSI DAT drives for PCs. It was some awesome tech back in the day.
I used them to replace the awful, terrible, evil Zip Disks that my employer previously used for backup.
@@GeekGinger Zip Disks. Used them for backing up my home pc. LOL!
The thing I love the most about Adam Savage's videos is the way he talks. His vocabulary, his expressions feel like he's a "natural crafter" with his words too. It feels well thought out, yet natural, oddly specific and somewhat unique, especially on youtube. As a non native speaker who loves to fiddle with words, this fascinates me soo much.
My dad had a reel to reel when i was a kid. I loved feeding the tape through the rollers, and then the fast rewind at the end. I knew Bolero better than any 6 year old ever should just so i could play with the tape.
I still have that exact MD player and it's successor! One of my favorite pieces of old(!) tech. Still works!
ISTR The sony tiny cassette was digital, and had a crazy scheme where instead of trying to track the head accurately, it just read everything multiple times and pieced it all together from what it managed to read.
As someone who loves discovering/collecting odd formats, I love videos like these. Thanks for the deep dive, Adam & Sean!
Another very obscure audio format which is always over looked was a competing Japanese format to the CD by JVC called AHD. AHD used very large cartridges and were read by a needle like a record player. It could also display digital pictures (a la CD+G but in full color) at a time before any profession or consumer digital video formats existed. The AHD system required a monster decoder along with a separate video transport (called VHD which Japanese exclusive but was this close 🤏 to being released in the US to compete with Laserdisc).
Ye' olde professional audio landscape was moderately overlooked here but is also very interesting. Y'all need to do one on "repurposed" video formats like PCM adaptors for VHS & Betamax (PCM-501ES) which has a neat visualization of the PCM data stored in the video area of the tape or the big professional U-Matic 3/4" tape (PCM-1630). There was also the (S-)VHS-based ADAT tape and the consumer camcorder Hi8 format that was used for an 8track digital system called DTRS...and on top of all this, all these formats (along with DAT) had variations that could even do hi-res 96kHz/24bit audio!
Well done to the camera op . Trying to get close ups on the fly while the items are being waved around . Thank goodness for pickups and cutaways
I remember being soooooo excited about 4 head hi-fi stereo VCRs being the must-have component to my home theater in 1991...ish.
Lovely compliment to my Trinitron super flat super black tv.
I still use my minidisk to this day. I LOVE that thing. If Sony ever needed a cash grab, just put those back into production. I'll buy one immediately.
Oh god. I remember we had two of those magnetic wire recorders hanging around at The Hangar recording studios back in the day. Bryce, the lead engineer was convinced he was going to get one of them up and running someday, which led to many many hours of frustration and swearing as one or the other would violently unspool during testing. I don't know if they still remain as part of John's collection (which would mean they are now likely at Panoramic House), if they left with Bryce, or if they were eventually disposed of. I would recommend reaching out to Tape Op (John) or to Highland Dynamics (Bryce) if you wanted to try to track them down.
fun fact, the original toy of soundwave before the mold was reused in transforms was of a 1:1 scale mini casset player and got changed to an off scale boom box in the cartoon
That makes so much sense!
Oh crap, this is a walk down memory lane. Growing up in a small town in Northern Ontario, I think I've only come across Mini-Discs once in my life - one of the tech people in the local community theatre used them for sound effects for the productions, and it was just so cool to actually get my hands on this piece of tech that was so obscure in my world. And those Data-Play discs? On our 10-foot satellite dish I watched the TechTV CES coverage when they were announced, and it blew my teenaged mind that storage media that small could hold 500mb, let alone the 1Gb I remember being shown off as well
My brother (a musician) had a Sanyo MiniDisc player - they were popular among local musicians for recording their gigs. Plug in any decent microphone with a 3.5mm cable & you're good to go. They were also popular for recording bootlegs of concerts they'd go to as fans.
10:30 "My voice is my passport"
Verify me!
Still have my Sony minidisc deck and minidisc portable player and boxes of minidisc compilations i made. I used to copy vinyl, cds and even the audio off vhs tapes of music programs. Happy days.
Hell yeah, Techmoan shoutout.
Sony also had UMD, which as far as I know only appeared in the Sony PSP.
DATs were used in professional studios in the 90s to provide quick mixes of songs or pre-mastering. The pro models with AES-EBU connectors also supported SMPTE playback if I recall correctly. Great tool. The biggest issue for them was legal. Record companies were afraid of unlimited copies of 100% quality of copyrighted music, so the media had a hefty tax. Most analog recordings for consumer use were recorded at the edge of usability so that you lose quality with each generation. It's use got relegated to pro use because of the RIAA lobbying at the time. I had some mixes recorded to DAT while I was at Full Sail in the 90s, but never did get a player personally. By the time I had the cash, they were obsolete. Recordable CDs were the nail in the coffin for DAT.
a 2004 ipod classic has been one of the best purchases of 2024, really changed my approach to music. Finally ditching spotify for the best!
I recently repaired an old Nakamichi RX505 cassette deck that belonged to friend's father who passed. It's a rediculous thing that physically flips the cassette over to change sides, very 80s.
The thing that really surprised me is how good the sound quality is with type-II tapes (and how much they now go for on ebay!!)...
I think most people's memories of analogue are ruined by the cheap equipment we had growing up :)
Back in the day, that Nakamichi 'flipping' cassette deck starred in at least 1 music video as a mark of wealth and hot-ness. Don't remember the video, but the flipping cassette was so neat and cool!
I don't see why Sony gets all the limelight, as you say there's other manufacturers with decent build quality such as Nakamichi. But yes Sony did lead the way with portables with the Walkman.
Another great thing about the MiniDisk was that it didn't skip due to impact like CD players used to. I had a great Sony unit that had a CD player built in that allowed one to copy them.
To be fair, later portable CD players included similar data buffering to reduce or (in most situations) eliminate skipping.
I don't know if the MiniDisc format mandated some sort of more robust mechanism that was more resistant to skipping or they just used the same data buffering technique.
I recently sold my Nagra VI 60th Anniversary Model. It was truly a thing of beauty for recording orchestras and choirs.
I had a Yellow Sony Sports Walkman and I thought it was the coolest thing in the world.
The DAT format failed primarily due to the digital copyright wars going on at the time. The music industry required hardware/software copyright protection be built into the recorders. It was complex, cumbersome and as I recall could be circumvented. Copyright killed the format in the consumer market.
DAT tapes were widely used in the professional studio world because it was the relatively low cost digital tape solution.
Cool collection! I have that MZ-R37 Sony MD recorder/player. It was (still is) my favorite portable device. I still have several mixed discs and some unopened discs packed away somewhere.
Cool stuff, I remember a few of these formats. And yall's enthusiasm is contageous!
I loved my MiniDisc player, it seemed bulletproof compared to WalkMan and DiscMan players, but mine died in a horrible powerwashing incident... okay, it wasn't that horrible. It was in my shorts pocket as I was powerwashing an RV, and the shorts were a little baggy, and while powerwashing it slammed into a wooden post on the deck stairs next to the RV. Hit it right on the input jack and destroyed it immediately. Still have the MiniDiscs in the garage somewhere.
DATs were everywhere in the music business for a while. Every time I sent an album off to be mastered, they always wanted DATs. Burned CDs were kind of lowbrow for mastering engineers.
Back in the late 60s my parents' friend had, in his home office, a dictation machine that used a funky tape-cartridge format I've never heard of before or since. The cartridge had only had one spindle -- but not like 8-tracks that feed from the center. Rather, in use the tape would be pulled out of the cartridge and wind onto an external take-up reel. I can't recall now whether that was built into the recorder, or was a second, initially empty cartridge. What I do remember is that there was a little plastic doohickie on the end of the tape, which something in the recorder used when loading the thing.
I *think* I remember that after you inserted a cartridge, there was a little projecting handle that you'd slide to load the tape. (There might actually have been a pair of them that you squeezed together, but one did the work and the other one was static, and was just there to give you something to squeeze against.)
Have a look at "Grundig Stenorette". The very old ones have been reel to reel recorders but later had the first reel in a kind of enclosure.
They didn't have a capstan but direct drive, so the fixed take-up reel had a larger diameter to avoid too much speed / quality variation.
That suitcase reminds me a lot of the 007 movies! I know it's a record player, but it looks like spy equipment to me! Love the show Adam! Seeing this older audio equipment was very satisfying too!
As someone who was always trying to upgrade their audio, this was amazing.
There was a time when someone I knew came back from Japan, and bought with them a tiny AM radio that blew my mind. It was the beginning of the miniaturization wars.
And I can't agree with Adam more; Sony was the king at making something small that was robust and beautiful.
I got a used first gen (D5?) Sony portable CD player back in 1987. Thing was made of metal and plastic and 1/4 of the lid was transparent so you could see the CD flying around as it played. Motor eventually burned out, but for 4 years, that thing was one of my most awesome 'gets' in electronics.
@@cjc363636
Right? Sony was sexy af. Everything that they made surprised you at the fit and feel.
Its too bad that they never made a car.
Mini disc played a huge part of my field recording, interviews and radio documentary production. Used them through 2004 actually.
Thought I knew all about tape-I was wrong! This video is awesome-great work!
The DataPlay disk reminds me a lot of the Iomega Clik! format (later renamed PocketZip because of unfortunate associations with the Click of Death class action lawsuit). I had an Iomega HipZip MP3 player that would use Clik! Disks. I remember the HipZip being one of the first MP3 players I had seen that would function as a USB mass storage device: back then it was still pretty common to load songs onto an MP3 player via clunky proprietary software. The HipZip allowed you to load songs on it just by dragging the files to the USB drive, which seemed mindblowing at the time. Also, unlike the DataPlay disks they were rewritable!
We used DAT to transfer our album from our "studio" to the mastering studio back in '94. Fond memories!😊
I had that exact MiniDisk player...
They were SO much better than CD, no skipping when you ran or bumped it.
I even had the Technics SJ-MD 150 audio rack edition, so i could make my own mix disks.
By the iPod era, the portable CDs had incorporated the MD style 'buffer.' So the skipping was eventually solved, but also by then, USB sticks and MP3 players had started replacing them. So a bit too late to matter, probably.
Fyi Philips was also the inventor of the compact cassette! Actually by employee Lou Ottens who later also worked on the development of the CD.
I still have some old mini discs some unopened still.
My collection isn't nearly as complete as this but yeah Techmoan also got me to buy a sampling of weird cassette-based media, they're just neat
13:31 Someone please make a tiny boombox that will play these tapes.
My favorite medium was MiniDISC! I adopted the whole eco-system! Had the home audio player (Sony MDS JE520), portable player (Sony MZ-E40), computer drive (Sony MDH-10), and even a multi-track recorder (Yamaha MD8) system recording demos! I too regret selling them off! I was already short of 100 miniDisc
Here’s a fun one, they make a mini wurlitzur jukebox with a single spool micro cassette that Ive only seen in that application. It’s probably the smallest analog cassette out there
2:15 The only surviving live recording of Woody Guthrie was done on a wire recorder and wasn't rediscovered until 2001! The restoration of it was quite a chore but it ended up sounding great.
That's cool!
Nice video! Very informative and who doesn't love revisiting the past of vintage audio!
I absolutely lusted over a Wollensak cassette recorder‼️ In the early 60s. I was poor and they weren’t readily available. Now they are on eBay…
Two formats I’ve never seen recently, when I was a kid, (late 60s early 70s) my older brother had a compact cassette player that used 1/8th inch tape in a square cassette but only one spool in a loop like an 8track! The other format was talked about in SerioReview magazine in the early 80s just before CDs came out, there were Giant Cassettes that put digital recording on 1/4 inch tape, not sure if it ever made it to market.
8-bit guy did a HUGE break down of all media from literally the start to modern day like 2 years ago, another one to check out!
I've actually had two experiences with old media. Back in the 70s my Dad worked for a company owned by Philips, and a project he was tasked to find a solution for needed some large storage system that could be used in a car. There really wasn't any options back then that he was aware of... however, in a call he had with a fellow engineer at Philips corporate in the Netherlands that engineer mentioned they were working on something that they believed would be able to store around 650MB. So my Dad flew over and visited with them for a little bit... and came back with a prototype CD player with one disk. Note that this was around 1976. I, unfortunately, sold it awhile ago, but this video reminded me. The other experience I had was with a version of the Sony Walkman that played DATs some time in the 80s. I was working at a venue that held concerts, film and performance pieces. One of the performance companies was the Timothy Buckley dance group, and they brought with them "Blue" Gene Tyranny to accompany them on piano. He brought with him what I initially thought was a Sony Walkman to play with his live piano work... and I figured the sound would be okay with the regular cassettes... was I mistaken. That DAT tape sounded exquisite! Plus listening to him play, and watch the dance performance. Oh... and I actually still have a couple of the portable mini disc players and recorders, plus a mini disc deck that I used to record the audio from circus performances done by a local group where I was the technical director for awhile. It's fun to think about these again! Thank you!
Adam i love when you do these types of videos. It reminds me how much in common we all share. I was a member of the columbia tape club also lol
I kinda miss my Sony Minidisc player 🥴
Great collection of audio gear. Ah..
the MD. Also one of my favorite portable audio gear. It was my main audio player for the 4 years or so while at Academy of Art University in SF in the mid/late 90s- 2k. Making my mixes was a treat. CD quality sound without the skipping and so much more compact. I was really bummed it got killed by the MP3 players not all that long after its intro. I still have my Sony MD home recorder and player which I will never get rid of. Too many good memories and the player looks cool. The one I have is like a flat rectangular metal flask with a raised X on the surface. MZ-EP11 if I searched the model # correctly. All the controls and readout were on the included wired remote unit that connects to whatever head/ear phones you wanted.
For years, I've been under the assumption that the Sony UMD was the smallest compact disc. Then he shows the Data play disc! So cool :-)
I came in when cassettes were the primary mobile data format. CDs existed, but they were still pretty much for home use. Walkmans were still pretty much cassette only. Their CD format became affordable for middle class and practical when I was around 12-14, when PC CD-ROM burners became standard and, ahem, "questionable" forms of music acquisition was just about to become mainstream.
I still have my yellow cassette/radio walkman from 1991 (I think?). It's amazing just how durable and long-lasting that was, considering all my CD walkmen are long tossed for breaking in half at some point. I still listen to my radio recordings once in a while for the nostalgia factor. XD
Sneakers: Still one of the best depictions of hacking and pen testing shown in a movie. Plus, what a spectacular cast!
We used to have one of those wire recorders they talked about in the beginning. It was built into this old cabinet stereo that had been my grandfather's. I never saw it work and we ended up throwing it away because nobody wanted it and it was just taking up space in a house with limited space.
Still a pretty cool looking thing.
For more Nagra content, go check out Hainbach's channel. He makes music with a ton of old equipment. He has a couple of Nagra machines and uses them regularly.
The radio station I worked at in the mid '80s used Elcassette for editing and playback in their news department.
Can we PLEASE just get manufacturers to produce QUALITY portable cassette players aka Sony Walkman??
I had an old portable reel to reel that was in beautiful condition but was stolen over the years. I have no idea why, most people wouldn't know anything about it.
How much would you pay for one?
Because the main reason there aren't new quality portable cassette players is that there's just not enough demand to keep them as relatively inexpensive as the original Walkman designs were (and frankly, they weren't _cheap_ exactly, but just reasonably priced).
I'd be surprised if a modern equivalent that was built as robustly as a Walkman could be economically marketed for less than a few hundred dollars minimum, maybe even more.
If you are ever in the UK again, look me up and I will show you my 6ft 6in high half ton 4 track magnetic recorder and the two 4 and 6 track magnetic 7ft high three quarter ton play back machines.
Wow love this old stuff. Saved a bit from the trash over the years. I don’t know why it’s getting so expensive, most dosent work anymore or as he said you can’t find the players to play them. Thank you for the stroll down memory lane
8 track was a big deal, BUT it replaced the quickly obsolete FOUR track tape cartridges. I saw one when it was new in a Ford Mustang.
Whenever talking about the history of the CD, gotta remind people they were the "compact" audio-only versions of the original LaserDisc video platters.
What? No IBM Executary Dictation Machine? This was a dictation recorder used by business executives to record dictation. It used a belt (tube) of magnetic media about 4" wide by 6" in diameter. The successful executive would have a pair of them. One for his desk and one for his secretary to transcribe the dictation. My dad had one at home so he could record dictation at home and then take it into work for his secretary to type up. You can see one in use at the end of the film "Thirteen days" about the Cuban missile crisis as President Kennedy dictated a letter to the parents of the U2 pilot that was shot down.
I also remember he would have his secretary print out his IBM Profs email which he would read and mark up. His secretary would then reply to his email, typing out his comments. Executives did not use type writers. This was in the late 80's, early 90's.
Worked in a radio store, when I was young in the 90's. My favourite was the Sony D7 DAT Recorder. Unbeatable as a portable recorder and had that Sony feeling to it 😋
The RCA Sound tape was called CARTS. They were used at radio stations mostly for 30 second to 2 minute commercials from the 50's to 70's. My own dad covered "The White House" for CBS news and used to record on those from home to be able to play reports from "The White House" on the weekends. My dad had a box full of those when he died and since only radio stations used those and had any type of player, we threw them all out.
Really looking forward to seeing this!
Old tech outdated and obsolete?
@Me-qp8vz You say "outdated", I say "nostalgic"
I still have hundreds of MiniDiscs, used to resize and print out the album covers on an inkjet. Now it all fits on a single little USB thumb drive and the covers display on my car's infotainment screen.
i have a mint Sony EL-5 Elcaset and a mostly functional stereo version of the RCA Reel cassette cartridge tube recorder. I absolutely love old unique tape media
Had a quad 8-track back in the day. Tapes were really hard to find. But stuff like the beginning of "Slow Ride"... "Quadrophenia"... Amazing.
I loved MD in the States and later moved to Japan so had many more makes and models available. I still find used MD units regularly. Here in Japan, I found a few bookshelf HI-MD units too. Lovely memories. Still use them occasionally. HI-MD portable units all use the same expensive lithium ion battery, which is a pain. I'll keep my eyes peeled for these other Sony players.
I still love using the minidisc format . I first saw it in the movie Strange Days by Kathryn Bigelow. In the movie, people stored their memories on it.
At around 7:40, There's question of whether a digital interpreter on a DAT format can be verifiable as original: depends on the decoder🤔
On the one hand, Techmoan has covered all of these. On the other hand, this video layed tham all out together on one table. Lovely! I own a Pioneer minidisc deck and a few Sony minidisc Walkmans. Honestly, they're fantastic to use, even now with all the solid state stuff.
I have a lot of older bootlegs (from live concerts) that were originally recorded on DAT or Minidisc. Recorders small enough to smuggle into concerts. Of course they have been converted to other formats over the years but it's always interesting to see the chain of history that comes with each bootleg, to see the original recording device.
Got one for you. I have used Robbets 990 deck, maybe made by Akai they had "X" heads, that is they moved from stereo, to 4track (simplafied). I have a box of tapes from 60s & 70s. Recorded on it. I just recently acquired an Akai 771X electronics are ok but I have a problem, maybe, I can't get into play mode, the idler does no come up to the capstan. Oh well it just something else to fix. It's a fairly loong list, maybe as long as you own. 😅😅😅 😊😊😊~~ Cris H.
I still have a cassette player in my car. Factory install in my 02 Buick. Still use it too.
I was still using a DAT recorder up until about 2010 when I went full digital with a Tascam DR-2D. Used them for recording concerts I attended. Before that was a micro-cassette recorder, and a digital voice recorder.
My only experience with minidisc was when I got one by accident instead of the CD I had ordered. That was back in 2000 and I had pre-ordered Iron Maiden's new album on cassette and CD.
I just bought my Mom a Walkman style cassette player.
She has some special music she loves on cassettes.
OMG my dad has one of those wire recorders he mentioned! Haven't played around with that thing in forever.
The Techmoan shout out made me hit that thumbs up button
I had the Mini Disc recorder player, and the desk rack player. The MD player was the Japanese version and not available in the USA. The battery was the big difference.
What a great tour! 😊 I have a Minidisk regret, sort-of; in the... I guess early aughts I did a bit of busking, and I befriended a couple of other buskers, in particular a scotsman (bagpiper, obviously) and an Israeli dude who had a Minidisk recorder, and the three of us did a few recordings, both some music and just some "ambience" of hanging out - I had a disk, and also some recordings on my computer that one of them had sent me, but I lost all of it... would have been fun to still have 😁
4 track tape. similar to 8 track in form factor, but has a hole on the bottom for the capstan to swing up into the cassette. I can't even find a photo online.
Especially the smaller Casette tape is rather Nostalgic for me, ( and also the micro tapes!) cause I used that technology so much during the '70's, and '80's!!
surprised not got a laser disc player Star Wars was in a laser disc looked like a album record....guess thats video and audio.....sony walkman...had orange headphone covers....oh the rewind and FW .....sony boombox on yer shoulder or swing down street in hand lol I loved late 70s 80s as a kid
😊That's right! I forgot they were officially called "Laser Disc"... 😂 Also ; Giant CD!
What were the cartridges that radio stations used?
In college, cough ‘95, the super mainframe guru was showing us a portable tape drive for backup that I believe was based on that micro digital tape in the Sony and it could hold 1g and the tape drive was maybe the size of a pack of cigarettes.
Back in the 90s my band tried using VHS HiFi cassettes for recording our first demos and EPs since the 'HiFi' aspect was that the audio track used more of the tape than regular VHS. Since we couldn't afford a reel to reel, it was an ok compromise. Audio quality of around a 1/4" r-t-r, way better than a cassette 4-track deck.
I have that sony MZ-R37 in front of me. I love the design so much. Beautiful tech device.
In the early 1909's there was a Digital audio format that recorded to VHS tape. My Band at the time would record demos on a 4 track Teac then mix down to the Digital audio VHS tape. I do not recall if it Panasonic or Philips. The VHS unit would also work as a standard VHS tape video player when not being used a digital audio recorder.
Yes! Have used those - typically only in studios and think it held 8 tracks?
So satisfying how the casettes get progressively smaller
Hmmm the Minidisc that sean wanted to find (that he had back then) could that be a Sony MZ-R30 ?? I just saw one for sale at a very reasonable price
By the way including battery pack remote etc
I have a micro cassette that came with an old answering machine. The answering machine is long gone but I kept the cassette because it is so cute.