I appreciate the mentions and your very considered and sensible approach to MiniDisc. I guess melted loading belts are just going to become more common. I’m glad I replaced mine when I did.
I must confess after using thousands of Cassette tapes with my ZX81, C64, in multiple cars and about a dozen ghetto blasters, walkmans and players, not once did I ever experience a tape getting chewed up. Thanks for the upload.
Lucky guy! I have about 25 tapes that were eaten at one point by some player somewhere (and all different ones). They now have audio dropouts in the spots where they were eaten.
@@Cincinnatijames I still have my C64 and ZX81, I'll fire them up over the festive period, last time I did a couple of years ago 3D Monster Maze, Action Biker and Football Manager were working fine. My cassette journey has not ended, there is still time for me to join the chewed up club.
it was usually a really shitty cheap effed up mechanism that did this, and/or extremely thin or cheap longest play cassettes... that had prob been through such mechanisms plenty and/or received a bit too much heat in a car etc. to soften up just enough.....P Metal type tapes were the BOMB, and with Dolby C, you COULD get DAMN close to CD quality, at least as far as any non-cyborg could hope to honestly hear..... 😁
I was a solo musician right around the time MiniDisc made it's premiere in the market and bought the MZ-1 for recording backup tracks. I was using cassette tapes which had no random seek so I was locked into the same set list unless I recorded a new tape with the songs in a different order. CD-R technology was limited to SCSI writers which were very expensive, problematic, portable CD players were prone to skipping and there were format incompatibilities too. The MiniDisc gave me random seek, titles, shuffle (not so good for a live gig but fun when listening to music), portability and a rugged player. Eventually I got some decks and a multitrack unit for more pro sounding recordings. I still have some decks and portables that work but my multitrack has died. Great format but poorly marketed with too much proprietary nonsense and lack of foresight killed the MiniDisc. It is now relegated to instructional and repair videos, like this one. Kudos for keeping the memory alive!
Minidisc did not fail in the UK. It had good success until replaced by solid state digital record and playback systems. There were many portables and home decks sold and it also enjoyed professional use too.
I was enamored by the Sony MZ-1 usable display demo at the local Tower Records back in 1992 and the excitement has never worn off. Just a fantastic idea that made sense as a cassette replacement. Too bad people thought it was trying to replace the CD!
I have an MDS-JE330. It worked about a year ago, so I must dig it out and check those belts. Loved MD back in the day, as I used to work for Sony so had access to the staff shop. They alwats had blank MDs. Even had MD in the car for a while. Thanks for the video, and never worry about the tech bits being boring. They are always worth this time in my book.
I love old Sony equipment but their belts *always* turn to liquid tar :) So yeah I would just go ahead and replace the belt in yours even if it seems ok for now. Eventually they will all need it. I've never had a piece of Sony equipment made pre-2005 or so that didn't have belts like that. (I'm just not sure about their newer stuff, but the older stuff is all like that.)
I've used many formats over the yearsand I've always gone for the stuf that was convenient. I got on CD very early purely because I saw the benefit of using it in my DJ business. Along with 12" singles, it worked very well. But when Minidsc came out I could see it was unlikely to suceed but I kept an eye out for some shops selling their stock off cheap as I saw benfit to using it it to record my own songs. I bought a cheap Sony unit and 90 blank discs that were being sold off cheap. And since then I 've ended up using them more and more over the years. I've used them for backing up old computer casettes, but I've ended up loving the sound of Minidsc. I use it most nights to lay in bed listening to. Works for me.
I have to laugh because it seems like that's the reaction I get every time I post a video :) It just takes me too long to post. I'm going to try to change some stuff so it takes less time; the way I used to make videos clearly does not work for me anymore in terms of getting them done in any sort of reasonable timeframe.
I still have a mds-j550 in my stereo rack to this day! I own another deck for my other stereo, a few different portables and a car deck as well! I was a fan since around 1999. I admit I don’t use them daily anymore, but for about 6 years it was my most used format. What amazes me is to this day, I’ve never had a disc fail! I still have the first discs I made and they all play great still. Although I’ve been through a few decks over the years. Mostly due to the same issue yours had. But back then I knew nothing about repairing them. 😞
Awesome! I’ve got a Sony MiniDisc deck and it’s such a cool format to use. It’s great to add songs onto and have custom playlists with a physical format. Sure cassettes and CDs do the same, but everything from the way it works, to ATRAC/NetMD, and the many different designs that both the players and MDs themselves have make it fun to use. It was very interesting to see the detailed overview of the different formats. Glad that you were able to get it working, that keyboard input is also a great addition!
I bought a little Sony Net MD player in 2001. I loved that thing. Ripped all my favorite CD's to MD's and it was no problem to carry 3 or 4 of them around in addition to the one in the player. Good times.
Back in the day, the MiniDisc was locked away like they were crown jewels and priced accordingly. So I stayed with what I could afford, Ye Olde Compact cassette.
Thanks for a great video and for paying proper attention to DCC as well as MD. The DCC900 was the first DCC recorder and is the least reliable. Colin at Does Not Compute had a really bad experience with one, and unfortunately he never got it fixed. The big problem with this recorder is that it used SMD capacitors, which, being over 30 years old by now, are guaranteed to leak and destroy the circuit board. The DCC Museum doesn't even replace the caps anymore; they only repair 900's by replacing the entire circuit board. Second-generation DCC recorders are much better; they use electronic components that are much more reliable and the most likely flaw you will find in a DCC300 or DCC600 is that it needs new belts and new gears, all available from the DCC Museum of course. Third generation DCC recorders such as the DCC730 and DCC951 made huge steps forward in integration and design. You can even program your own titles on you self-recorded tapes. And I've been working for years on a project to make some more improvements to 3rd generation DCC recorders, such as a customizable VU meter and the possibility to stream to and from a PC, program titles with a normal keyboard instead of the remote control, and maybe even the possibility of making your own prerecorded DCC's. I'm also thinking of replacing the S/PDIF input and output chips, so you can record from, say, BluRay players that only output Dolby Digital or DTS (and no PCM); that should take care of the SCMS limitations too.
Okay , just starting the video, so I might be out of line. MiniDisc Did NOT fail, it was very successful in Japan. AND COMPACT CASSETTE CAN BE EXCELLENT quality , tape has a bad reputation but Cassette Tapes CAN sound Excellent,, as you say , with the right tapes and gear. Anyway buy CDs if you want the best audio
I remember getting a portable MD recorder in middle school in 96. To myself and nerdy friends, it was soace age tech and "CD" quality copying during a sleepover at friends places was amazing before the days of discovering MP3 and CD burning. A cargo shorts pocket full of MDs was amazing VS tapes/CDs in a pocket lol In 2000ish I got the diamond rio, but storage was INSANELY expensive, I couldn't afford a 64 MB CF card for like $100, so I stuck with MD for a bit longer, still with many people not knowing about MD, it was still space age for those people in 2002. It was a great format IMO. Memories
In Brazil it was an obscure technology. I was amazed when my brother installed a Sony MDX-C7900 in his car because his father in law at the time had a recorder unity
Mini disc was great for me to record my DJ sets and listen back to them in the early 2000s. I actually bought my first one when visiting the UK, finding them in the US without going to a Sony store was not easy
I was a kid when Last Action Hero came out, and there was a shot where Arnold swaps a minidisc in a player to change the music in the movie. I wanted one of those and eventually figured that it was something made for the movie. Then I watched The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, one of the episodes mentions recording a song onto minidisc. Got curious and realized they were the thing Arnold had in Last Action Hero. Eventually got a Minidisc deck and ran with it.
I suggest you buy a portable netmd recorder. The software is very easy to use. It'll record an album in 15ish minutes and no adding track titles, it'll import them automatically. I bought one on Facebook for 50 bucks. It's the most convenient method I've found for recording. Great video!
I still have a good quality Nakanichi cassette deck. It still plays & records. I use high quality cassette tapes like Maxell & never had one break or get tangled up. I have a copy of my Brother's jazz show from college in late 1979 & it still plays with no degredation.
I have a mini CD player from 1978 to 1983....by Philips and Aiwa ....it works with a full size CD... sometimes it would skip the last songs...a real classic 😊
I have lots to comment on. Firstly I love 8-Track and reel to reel, I still use them and I'm glad someone else has finaly said that cassettes sound terrible. I only used them for my 8 bit computers.
I got a portable minidisc player last year and it's been just fun to discover this old format. I made a couple "mixtape" minidisc with covers and stickers and everything for my friends. It was a bit tedious to record though, as I have an older model and I could only use the digital out/in to record via my PC. And of course with the 4 seconds pause in mind for the separate tracks.
If I do decide to get a portable player (which I probably should have started with), it'll definitely be a NetMD player that doesn't require real-time recording. Still, I guess part of the fun for me is actually recording stuff the way I used to on cassette, but then having all the benefits of CD-style controls afterwards. I can see it becoming tedious if you do a lot of it, but I remember making mix tapes for my friends in the old days and I actually enjoyed sitting there and having to actually listen to the music I was recording.
I've got both of these and in my experience: minimal. But I already can't hear the difference between MD and CD. You'll only be able to hear it if you can hear the difference between an MD and a CD. If you're not already into MD/HiMD and you're interested in the 352kbit format, grabbing an AT3CD player is a significantly cheaper way to do it. (HiMD recorders cost ~2-4x as much as MDLP/NetMD recorders.) EDIT/add: In fact, I can't hear a difference between Type-R SP and AT3+ all the way down to 192kbit, but whenever I use HiMD I often use 256 or 352 to try to get pretty close to the MD SP/LP2 runtimes. The other-other way to get 352 would be to use one of Sony's many flash/HDD-based AT3 players from the NW- series, but there's a point at which "why not just put FLACs on an SD card?" might be the easier answer, if you have very good hearing.
Hey Cory, I've got a RH1 and a EH50. I mainly do 352 on MD80s. But I'm considering going to MD SP. I wouldn't mind getting a nice Sony deck with a digital out, HiMD don't have I believe. It would be interesting what the actual difference is in sound. Or if the awesomw 352 is placebo
I used a Minidisc portable player starting in 1998. I used them to make mixes because i didn't want to use cassettes and cd burners were insanely expensive. Used them until 2005 when I bought an ipod. I liked it as a portable format. much better than using a discman.
29:50 He's sort of right, it was Oasis' previous album Definitely Maybe. Owen Morris was the third mastering engineer they had mix the album after hating the previous two, feeling that the album didn't sound loud and aggressive like their live shows, so Morris essentially created brick walling for that album to achieve that goal, and the band loved it. You can see Morris taking the blame for starting it in the Oasis Definitely Maybe documentary here on youtube ua-cam.com/video/E2oNRM8lhps/v-deo.html
I used to have a MiniDisc player from Pioneer in my stereo rack. For some reason I thru it away many many years ago. It was working so I don't know why I thru it away. I guess I didn't use it that much. It took a long time to get the music onto the disc. Same time as the CD because you were actually recording to the disc, just like a regular tape. I think that was the reason I didn't use it that much. It was easier with a CD I also had a portable MiniDisc player. I think it was a Sony. It had a "mini controller" thing on the headphone cable. It had a small display showing the song name and you could switch song with it while the player were in your pocket.
Never had or wanted a MD. They were so expensive here in the UK. By the time the prices dropped, PC CD recorders were the same price with cheaper blank discs.
Dolby C uses a technique called spectral skewing to increase headroom and high amplitude high frequency response. I have a couple of accurately calibrated decks here, one Pioneer and one Teac, that are both capable of making recordings that are flat within 1dB from 20Hz to 20kHz at 0dB even with a humble TDK FE Type I tape when recorded with Dolby HX Pro and Dolby C. Maxell UR tapes are diabolically awful by comparison to TDK FE tapes, so you may want to pick up a few of those at some stage while you still can.
Didn’t see much info on how this format did outside the US, and having a video on the topic without at least expanding benefits of NetMD vs using it as a traditional recorder is weird.
It didn't fail in Europe or Japan and wasn't really until the 4th generation iPod and iPod mini did it start to decline in the UK. Matt from the UA-cam channel Techmoan has covered it quite extensively, worth a watch to see how it's perceived this side of the pond.
When you recorded the cassette couldn't you just plug the line out of the tape deck into the line in on the PC ? It's what I do when I transfer reel to reels, 8-Tracks or records. I get perfect copies.
CC has one advantage to all digital players (except the most sophisticated ones) - this is a short analog path with no digital patterns in a signal. The rest use better or worse DACs, and that's a real issue with a digital player. I agree to use CD/SACD/streamer with only a good external DAC (like Chord or higher). That's about a serious listening. For everything else it's about tactile and visual representation, and CC and MD are great in this. LPs are even better in these terms (near mint condition + MC microline cartridge + ultrasonic bath + an MC transformer + discrete phono stage = exceptionally good sound) PS Let's skip R2R cause 99% of audiophiles do not have an access to good copies And even when you record to a CC from a digital source, these patters are muffled with a tape imperfectness. And sure, you have to use a good DAC to record from.
Well one of the reason is that MD and btw DAT tapes can make an exact copy of an CD, so some re ordlabels and artists where affraid that we the users gave our copys away to friends so they had no income........but nobody talked about tapes.....that was also a recording......not perfect but it was an recording.........but today you can still make exact copies of cd's and nobody talks about it........😅
I was 14 minutes in and then realized this wasn't about a rare minidisc videoplayer 😢 Guess I'll watch another minidisc camcorder video instead. "The MiniDisc Video"... somewhat misleading and/or confusing title dude...
Cassette tapes suck, they sucked back in the day and they still suck. FF and wait, RR and wait, tape hisssssssss, and the occasional tape getting eaten. CD was a remarkable experience, a joy. Minidisc was an excellent combination of small portability. Our American family owned a couple of players in early 2000’s, traveled throughout spurts america with them and they worked without a singe skip or malfunction, a complete joy.
"The MiniDisc Video" is clickbaity? That's not what that term means. If I wanted to make it clickbaity, I'd have titled it something like "The BEST Music Format EVER" or "You NEED to hear this NOW" or "WHY did this format FAIL???"
@@limpfishyes Ok, not sure if you're confusing the title with the thumbnail. Two very different things. But also, yes, it did fail in the US. That's where I am. That's where UA-cam is. MiniDisc absolutely was a failure in the largest market for home audio equipment. I showed documentation of that multiple times in the video. This is factual. This is not opinion. Don't accuse me of clickbait. I don't play with that. I'm being very patient with you right now.
@@ModernClassic Thanks for being so patient with me, you're so very kind. I'm so sorry, I see what's happened here. Yeah, when someone mentions the clear as day clickbait in the video... What they're actually referring to is the clear as day clickbait in the video and, you know, not the non clickbait in the video? You yourself just said "WHY did this format FAIL???" would be clickbaity but, to my unfathomable error, the video actually says "Minidisc Why did this fail?", which isn't at all clickbait, and isn't the sole reason I'm here. Apologies for my utter stupidity, I'm a raving idiot. And, yes, it was an massive failure as a format (in the US?). Again, not having ever lived in the US, I apologise.
Here's something to try with your MD deck: if you hit record without having a disc inserted it will go into monitoring mode and you can use it as a standalone DAC and ADC. I would not recommend it as a DAC but I did use it to digitize some cassette tapes. The ADC in my deck (Sony MDS-JE530) has a 95 dB dynamic range. Unimpressive by today's standards, but more than enough for a transparant capture of any cassette tape content. Also, as with all digital devices, frequency response and distortion are orders of magnitude better than those of cassette tape. And do note that ATRAC compression is being bypassed in monitoring mode.
@ModernClassic There is a very audible background noise very similar to tape hiss, ironically, whenever there is commentary but not during talking head segments..
I love hearing someone keep it real about cassettes. It's time people said the things that need saying. Cassettes were originally conceived as a dictation medium and it was never great. Thank you for the dose of reality so many confused "cassette heads" desperately need.
MiniDisc failed because CDs were selling nearly a billion copies a year in the US. People weren't going to start over, especially when MiniDisc were about $5 more than Cds.
That theoretically should have helped MiniDisc, and it did in Japan. MiniDisc was a recording medium. CD's were to vinyl as MiniDisc was to cassette. It would be interesting to look at how much CD burning was being done in the US during MiniDisc's run, but I don't know how to quantify that. I don't think it was very common in the 90's when MiniDisc was introduced.
@@ModernClassic people already had CD players and cassettes in their cars, at home and personal travel. It was a tough sell to people because: a.prerecorded Mini Disc were more expensive than CDs. b. Recordable mini disc had to compete against cassettes that still was pretty viable and a decent market share. Every already had decks and a box of tapes. c. Writable CDs were rapidly dropping in price. The window that MiniDisc could have been relevant was such a tiny sliver of time, it had no chance to be anything but a niche format.
I appreciate the mentions and your very considered and sensible approach to MiniDisc.
I guess melted loading belts are just going to become more common. I’m glad I replaced mine when I did.
I still love MiniDisc. I use the format almost every day.
I must confess after using thousands of Cassette tapes with my ZX81, C64, in multiple cars and about a dozen ghetto blasters, walkmans and players, not once did I ever experience a tape getting chewed up.
Thanks for the upload.
Lucky guy! I have about 25 tapes that were eaten at one point by some player somewhere (and all different ones). They now have audio dropouts in the spots where they were eaten.
@@ModernClassic My good fortune with tapes were offset by my "luck" with CD's I always ended getting them scratched!
Calling bs.
@@Cincinnatijames I still have my C64 and ZX81, I'll fire them up over the festive period, last time I did a couple of years ago 3D Monster Maze, Action Biker and Football Manager were working fine.
My cassette journey has not ended, there is still time for me to join the chewed up club.
it was usually a really shitty cheap effed up mechanism that did this, and/or extremely thin or cheap longest play cassettes... that had prob been through such mechanisms plenty and/or received a bit too much heat in a car etc. to soften up just enough.....P
Metal type tapes were the BOMB, and with Dolby C, you COULD get DAMN close to CD quality, at least as far as any non-cyborg could hope to honestly hear..... 😁
I was a solo musician right around the time MiniDisc made it's premiere in the market and bought the MZ-1 for recording backup tracks. I was using cassette tapes which had no random seek so I was locked into the same set list unless I recorded a new tape with the songs in a different order. CD-R technology was limited to SCSI writers which were very expensive, problematic, portable CD players were prone to skipping and there were format incompatibilities too. The MiniDisc gave me random seek, titles, shuffle (not so good for a live gig but fun when listening to music), portability and a rugged player. Eventually I got some decks and a multitrack unit for more pro sounding recordings. I still have some decks and portables that work but my multitrack has died. Great format but poorly marketed with too much proprietary nonsense and lack of foresight killed the MiniDisc. It is now relegated to instructional and repair videos, like this one. Kudos for keeping the memory alive!
Minidisc did not fail in the UK. It had good success until replaced by solid state digital record and playback systems. There were many portables and home decks sold and it also enjoyed professional use too.
I was enamored by the Sony MZ-1 usable display demo at the local Tower Records back in 1992 and the excitement has never worn off. Just a fantastic idea that made sense as a cassette replacement. Too bad people thought it was trying to replace the CD!
I have an MDS-JE330. It worked about a year ago, so I must dig it out and check those belts. Loved MD back in the day, as I used to work for Sony so had access to the staff shop. They alwats had blank MDs. Even had MD in the car for a while. Thanks for the video, and never worry about the tech bits being boring. They are always worth this time in my book.
I love old Sony equipment but their belts *always* turn to liquid tar :) So yeah I would just go ahead and replace the belt in yours even if it seems ok for now. Eventually they will all need it. I've never had a piece of Sony equipment made pre-2005 or so that didn't have belts like that. (I'm just not sure about their newer stuff, but the older stuff is all like that.)
I've used many formats over the yearsand I've always gone for the stuf that was convenient. I got on CD very early purely because I saw the benefit of using it in my DJ business. Along with 12" singles, it worked very well.
But when Minidsc came out I could see it was unlikely to suceed but I kept an eye out for some shops selling their stock off cheap as I saw benfit to using it it to record my own songs.
I bought a cheap Sony unit and 90 blank discs that were being sold off cheap.
And since then I 've ended up using them more and more over the years. I've used them for backing up old computer casettes, but I've ended up loving the sound of Minidsc. I use it most nights to lay in bed listening to. Works for me.
What good timing. I was just thinking to myself that I Modern Classic hasn't uploaded in a while. Good to have you back.
I have to laugh because it seems like that's the reaction I get every time I post a video :)
It just takes me too long to post. I'm going to try to change some stuff so it takes less time; the way I used to make videos clearly does not work for me anymore in terms of getting them done in any sort of reasonable timeframe.
Maybe a cckpit video? Or is that a no-no?
I still have a mds-j550 in my stereo rack to this day! I own another deck for my other stereo, a few different portables and a car deck as well! I was a fan since around 1999. I admit I don’t use them daily anymore, but for about 6 years it was my most used format. What amazes me is to this day, I’ve never had a disc fail! I still have the first discs I made and they all play great still. Although I’ve been through a few decks over the years. Mostly due to the same issue yours had. But back then I knew nothing about repairing them. 😞
Eurobeat! Hell yeah! Haha. I've been watching you literally forever and never would have thought.
Awesome! I’ve got a Sony MiniDisc deck and it’s such a cool format to use. It’s great to add songs onto and have custom playlists with a physical format. Sure cassettes and CDs do the same, but everything from the way it works, to ATRAC/NetMD, and the many different designs that both the players and MDs themselves have make it fun to use. It was very interesting to see the detailed overview of the different formats. Glad that you were able to get it working, that keyboard input is also a great addition!
I bought a little Sony Net MD player in 2001. I loved that thing. Ripped all my favorite CD's to MD's and it was no problem to carry 3 or 4 of them around in addition to the one in the player. Good times.
Back in the day, the MiniDisc was locked away like they were crown jewels and priced accordingly. So I stayed with what I could afford, Ye Olde Compact cassette.
Thanks for a great video and for paying proper attention to DCC as well as MD.
The DCC900 was the first DCC recorder and is the least reliable. Colin at Does Not Compute had a really bad experience with one, and unfortunately he never got it fixed. The big problem with this recorder is that it used SMD capacitors, which, being over 30 years old by now, are guaranteed to leak and destroy the circuit board. The DCC Museum doesn't even replace the caps anymore; they only repair 900's by replacing the entire circuit board.
Second-generation DCC recorders are much better; they use electronic components that are much more reliable and the most likely flaw you will find in a DCC300 or DCC600 is that it needs new belts and new gears, all available from the DCC Museum of course.
Third generation DCC recorders such as the DCC730 and DCC951 made huge steps forward in integration and design. You can even program your own titles on you self-recorded tapes. And I've been working for years on a project to make some more improvements to 3rd generation DCC recorders, such as a customizable VU meter and the possibility to stream to and from a PC, program titles with a normal keyboard instead of the remote control, and maybe even the possibility of making your own prerecorded DCC's. I'm also thinking of replacing the S/PDIF input and output chips, so you can record from, say, BluRay players that only output Dolby Digital or DTS (and no PCM); that should take care of the SCMS limitations too.
I had many cassette tape players over the years and I’ve never had them lose the tape. Idk what everyone was talking about
Okay , just starting the video, so I might be out of line. MiniDisc Did NOT fail, it was very successful in Japan. AND COMPACT CASSETTE CAN BE EXCELLENT quality , tape has a bad reputation but Cassette Tapes CAN sound Excellent,, as you say , with the right tapes and gear. Anyway buy CDs if you want the best audio
Also very successful in Europe too, sales were good up to the introduction of the 4th gen iPod/iPod mini.
I remember getting a portable MD recorder in middle school in 96. To myself and nerdy friends, it was soace age tech and "CD" quality copying during a sleepover at friends places was amazing before the days of discovering MP3 and CD burning. A cargo shorts pocket full of MDs was amazing VS tapes/CDs in a pocket lol In 2000ish I got the diamond rio, but storage was INSANELY expensive, I couldn't afford a 64 MB CF card for like $100, so I stuck with MD for a bit longer, still with many people not knowing about MD, it was still space age for those people in 2002. It was a great format IMO. Memories
In Brazil it was an obscure technology. I was amazed when my brother installed a Sony MDX-C7900 in his car because his father in law at the time had a recorder unity
Mini disc was great for me to record my DJ sets and listen back to them in the early 2000s. I actually bought my first one when visiting the UK, finding them in the US without going to a Sony store was not easy
I was a kid when Last Action Hero came out, and there was a shot where Arnold swaps a minidisc in a player to change the music in the movie. I wanted one of those and eventually figured that it was something made for the movie. Then I watched The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, one of the episodes mentions recording a song onto minidisc. Got curious and realized they were the thing Arnold had in Last Action Hero. Eventually got a Minidisc deck and ran with it.
I suggest you buy a portable netmd recorder. The software is very easy to use. It'll record an album in 15ish minutes and no adding track titles, it'll import them automatically. I bought one on Facebook for 50 bucks. It's the most convenient method I've found for recording. Great video!
Fellow Curve fan, I see you are a man of taste.
I still have a good quality Nakanichi cassette deck. It still plays & records. I use high quality cassette tapes like Maxell & never had one break or get tangled up. I have a copy of my Brother's jazz show from college in late 1979 & it still plays with no degredation.
I have a mini CD player from 1978 to 1983....by Philips and Aiwa ....it works with a full size CD... sometimes it would skip the last songs...a real classic 😊
Great video, cheers.
I have lots to comment on. Firstly I love 8-Track and reel to reel, I still use them and I'm glad someone else has finaly said that cassettes sound terrible. I only used them for my 8 bit computers.
Nice clean up and paint job.
I got a portable minidisc player last year and it's been just fun to discover this old format. I made a couple "mixtape" minidisc with covers and stickers and everything for my friends. It was a bit tedious to record though, as I have an older model and I could only use the digital out/in to record via my PC. And of course with the 4 seconds pause in mind for the separate tracks.
If I do decide to get a portable player (which I probably should have started with), it'll definitely be a NetMD player that doesn't require real-time recording. Still, I guess part of the fun for me is actually recording stuff the way I used to on cassette, but then having all the benefits of CD-style controls afterwards. I can see it becoming tedious if you do a lot of it, but I remember making mix tapes for my friends in the old days and I actually enjoyed sitting there and having to actually listen to the music I was recording.
Cassettes are not Dead! I bought a portable minidisc player/recorder when they first came out. It stopped working a few years ago.
What a great video! I would be interested in seeing the difference between MD & Hi-MD (SP Type-R VS Hi-MD AT3+ 352kb)
I've got both of these and in my experience: minimal. But I already can't hear the difference between MD and CD. You'll only be able to hear it if you can hear the difference between an MD and a CD. If you're not already into MD/HiMD and you're interested in the 352kbit format, grabbing an AT3CD player is a significantly cheaper way to do it. (HiMD recorders cost ~2-4x as much as MDLP/NetMD recorders.)
EDIT/add: In fact, I can't hear a difference between Type-R SP and AT3+ all the way down to 192kbit, but whenever I use HiMD I often use 256 or 352 to try to get pretty close to the MD SP/LP2 runtimes.
The other-other way to get 352 would be to use one of Sony's many flash/HDD-based AT3 players from the NW- series, but there's a point at which "why not just put FLACs on an SD card?" might be the easier answer, if you have very good hearing.
Hey Cory, I've got a RH1 and a EH50. I mainly do 352 on MD80s. But I'm considering going to MD SP. I wouldn't mind getting a nice Sony deck with a digital out, HiMD don't have I believe.
It would be interesting what the actual difference is in sound. Or if the awesomw 352 is placebo
I remember when those were for sale. I bought a Philips CDR-880 instead because I could record more minutes on it vs the miniDisc.
I used a Minidisc portable player starting in 1998. I used them to make mixes because i didn't want to use cassettes and cd burners were insanely expensive. Used them until 2005 when I bought an ipod. I liked it as a portable format. much better than using a discman.
29:50 He's sort of right, it was Oasis' previous album Definitely Maybe. Owen Morris was the third mastering engineer they had mix the album after hating the previous two, feeling that the album didn't sound loud and aggressive like their live shows, so Morris essentially created brick walling for that album to achieve that goal, and the band loved it. You can see Morris taking the blame for starting it in the Oasis Definitely Maybe documentary here on youtube ua-cam.com/video/E2oNRM8lhps/v-deo.html
I used to have a MiniDisc player from Pioneer in my stereo rack. For some reason I thru it away many many years ago. It was working so I don't know why I thru it away. I guess I didn't use it that much. It took a long time to get the music onto the disc. Same time as the CD because you were actually recording to the disc, just like a regular tape. I think that was the reason I didn't use it that much. It was easier with a CD
I also had a portable MiniDisc player. I think it was a Sony. It had a "mini controller" thing on the headphone cable. It had a small display showing the song name and you could switch song with it while the player were in your pocket.
Never had or wanted a MD. They were so expensive here in the UK. By the time the prices dropped, PC CD recorders were the same price with cheaper blank discs.
I repaired my loader mechanism with an orthodontic intraoral elastic band for braces. I got a pack of 100 for $4. Should last me a while :)
Dolby C uses a technique called spectral skewing to increase headroom and high amplitude high frequency response. I have a couple of accurately calibrated decks here, one Pioneer and one Teac, that are both capable of making recordings that are flat within 1dB from 20Hz to 20kHz at 0dB even with a humble TDK FE Type I tape when recorded with Dolby HX Pro and Dolby C. Maxell UR tapes are diabolically awful by comparison to TDK FE tapes, so you may want to pick up a few of those at some stage while you still can.
When you played the three clips around 41:30 I couldn't hear any difference with any of them. 45+ years of loud music will do that. 🤣
Didn’t see much info on how this format did outside the US, and having a video on the topic without at least expanding benefits of NetMD vs using it as a traditional recorder is weird.
It didn't fail in Europe or Japan and wasn't really until the 4th generation iPod and iPod mini did it start to decline in the UK. Matt from the UA-cam channel Techmoan has covered it quite extensively, worth a watch to see how it's perceived this side of the pond.
When you recorded the cassette couldn't you just plug the line out of the tape deck into the line in on the PC ?
It's what I do when I transfer reel to reels, 8-Tracks or records. I get perfect copies.
🇬🇧 👍🏽 November 2024
This is my morning coffee & breakfast entertainment sorted!
CC has one advantage to all digital players (except the most sophisticated ones) - this is a short analog path with no digital patterns in a signal. The rest use better or worse DACs, and that's a real issue with a digital player. I agree to use CD/SACD/streamer with only a good external DAC (like Chord or higher). That's about a serious listening. For everything else it's about tactile and visual representation, and CC and MD are great in this. LPs are even better in these terms (near mint condition + MC microline cartridge + ultrasonic bath + an MC transformer + discrete phono stage = exceptionally good sound)
PS Let's skip R2R cause 99% of audiophiles do not have an access to good copies
And even when you record to a CC from a digital source, these patters are muffled with a tape imperfectness. And sure, you have to use a good DAC to record from.
Due to the copy protection on CD's I had to get a new CD player, my old Technics would refuse to play the new discs. LOL.
im a simple man. i see Minidisc, i click.
I wonder how Leon the Lobster is doing (those videos use the same royalty free music so I can’t hear that song without thinking of him)
Well one of the reason is that MD and btw DAT tapes can make an exact copy of an CD, so some re ordlabels and artists where affraid that we the users gave our copys away to friends so they had no income........but nobody talked about tapes.....that was also a recording......not perfect but it was an recording.........but today you can still make exact copies of cd's and nobody talks about it........😅
I want those oasis mini discs but they’re hella expensive
Awesome! We still have a bunch of MD stuff working! ALL the best formats never get respect.....BETA!
I have cdrs with the SCMS encoded and the PC ignores it when ripping them, even windows media player!!
Isn't the MD80 a passenger jet?
If you want an extremely brickwalled CD, Tupac - All Eyez On Me
You couldn't record the SACD as it can't be played over optical/coaxial. You needed to select the cd layer via your SACD player
I was 14 minutes in and then realized this wasn't about a rare minidisc videoplayer 😢 Guess I'll watch another minidisc camcorder video instead. "The MiniDisc Video"... somewhat misleading and/or confusing title dude...
You can get a device that sits between both decks digital connection and removes the SCMS!!
the Elektor SCMS killer
Cassette tapes suck, they sucked back in the day and they still suck. FF and wait, RR and wait, tape hisssssssss, and the occasional tape getting eaten. CD was a remarkable experience, a joy. Minidisc was an excellent combination of small portability. Our American family owned a couple of players in early 2000’s, traveled throughout spurts america with them and they worked without a singe skip or malfunction, a complete joy.
SCMS is absolutely trivial to bypass. You can make infinite bit perfect copies with a DAT deck. Probably less useful in 2024 than it was in 1994.
Never failed in Japan, ;)
That title may be confusing, I guess it's to be clickbaity...
"The MiniDisc Video" is clickbaity? That's not what that term means. If I wanted to make it clickbaity, I'd have titled it something like "The BEST Music Format EVER" or "You NEED to hear this NOW" or "WHY did this format FAIL???"
@@ModernClassicEh?? the thumbnail literally has the clickbait title 'Minidisc why did this FAIL'.
It obviously didn't fail.
@@limpfishyes Ok, not sure if you're confusing the title with the thumbnail. Two very different things. But also, yes, it did fail in the US. That's where I am. That's where UA-cam is. MiniDisc absolutely was a failure in the largest market for home audio equipment. I showed documentation of that multiple times in the video. This is factual. This is not opinion.
Don't accuse me of clickbait. I don't play with that. I'm being very patient with you right now.
@@ModernClassic
Thanks for being so patient with me, you're so very kind.
I'm so sorry, I see what's happened here. Yeah, when someone mentions the clear as day clickbait in the video... What they're actually referring to is the clear as day clickbait in the video and, you know, not the non clickbait in the video?
You yourself just said "WHY did this format FAIL???" would be clickbaity but, to my unfathomable error, the video actually says "Minidisc Why did this fail?", which isn't at all clickbait, and isn't the sole reason I'm here. Apologies for my utter stupidity, I'm a raving idiot.
And, yes, it was an massive failure as a format (in the US?). Again, not having ever lived in the US, I apologise.
@@ModernClassic If not clickbaity, maybe misleading... Some people may think "Oh, there's a MiniDisc that can play video?!"
Here's something to try with your MD deck: if you hit record without having a disc inserted it will go into monitoring mode and you can use it as a standalone DAC and ADC. I would not recommend it as a DAC but I did use it to digitize some cassette tapes. The ADC in my deck (Sony MDS-JE530) has a 95 dB dynamic range. Unimpressive by today's standards, but more than enough for a transparant capture of any cassette tape content. Also, as with all digital devices, frequency response and distortion are orders of magnitude better than those of cassette tape. And do note that ATRAC compression is being bypassed in monitoring mode.
Great video but why does the commentary audio have so much noise/hiss? You may want to filter that a bit..
Not sure what you mean. Where are you seeing/hearing this, and at what frequency? (An estimate is fine.)
@ModernClassic There is a very audible background noise very similar to tape hiss, ironically, whenever there is commentary but not during talking head segments..
There is a slight buzz or hiss coming along with your voiceover. Great video otherwise. Enjoying it.
I love hearing someone keep it real about cassettes. It's time people said the things that need saying. Cassettes were originally conceived as a dictation medium and it was never great. Thank you for the dose of reality so many confused "cassette heads" desperately need.
I got my first MP3 player 2 years ago.. I hate it. Ha ha.
That 'brick walling' on CD's is so annoying. It ruins the sound completely.
Never heard of brickwalling on CD’s
@@naps3386 Luckily it was mostly on CD's by artists I wasn't into.
MiniDisc failed because CDs were selling nearly a billion copies a year in the US. People weren't going to start over, especially when MiniDisc were about $5 more than Cds.
That theoretically should have helped MiniDisc, and it did in Japan. MiniDisc was a recording medium. CD's were to vinyl as MiniDisc was to cassette. It would be interesting to look at how much CD burning was being done in the US during MiniDisc's run, but I don't know how to quantify that. I don't think it was very common in the 90's when MiniDisc was introduced.
@@ModernClassic people already had CD players and cassettes in their cars, at home and personal travel. It was a tough sell to people because:
a.prerecorded Mini Disc were more expensive than CDs.
b. Recordable mini disc had to compete against cassettes that still was pretty viable and a decent market share. Every already had decks and a box of tapes.
c. Writable CDs were rapidly dropping in price.
The window that MiniDisc could have been relevant was such a tiny sliver of time, it had no chance to be anything but a niche format.
Cassettes have one main problem, every time you play one it degrades slightly. Eventually, without proper re-tensioning it fails.