Hacker News Reader

Comment by wirthjason | Hacker News Reader

The Walkman was cool, I had several. Then the Discman. But the coolest of all was MiniDisc—-super slim, ultra portable, indestructible media, no skipping. It was popular in Japan but niche technology in the US. I really wish it caught on. One of my favorites features was the inline stick remote with an LCD display screen. Put the player in your pocket and clip the remote to your shirt, bag, etc. with full controls and a display of the current track.

View on HN

The artificial limitations around digital music kept me from being interested in minidisc. Things that made sense were blocked or intentionally slowed. Too expensive for those kinds of headaches.

The MiniDisc didn't make any sense if you were invested in CDs already. CDs have higher capacity, and 16-bit 44.1kHz sampling, which is much better than MD. MDs had more durable media, sure, but this means you have buy 2 copies of all the music you want, so you can play it both in your portable player and at home on your real stereo system. Cheaper and easier to just use a portable CD player, or dub onto cassette, or later, burn a copy onto CD-R. And CD didn't have any mechanism to prevent copying.

MiniDisc only real flaw was that it was a Sony format. The copy limitations, issues with the record labels, limited third party support, excessive price outside of Japan etc all come from there.

Otherwise outside of sampling rate (MD were ATRAC only at first), the points you raise were not an issue if you bought into the ecosystem: buying music directly in MD, playing it on your portable player and sticking it in your Sony compo would be fine. Buying blank MDs and recording, copying etc. on them was mostly fine, all of that on a format way more sturdier, stable, and convenient than CDs.

I think CDs would have "died" and get replaced with MDs if it wasn't for Sony being themselves and screwing it up.

Again, the sound quality is not the same as CD; I don't know why you're ignoring this because it's a show-stopper. Because of this, you have to buy 2 copies of everything: MD and CD. Otherwise, what's the point of having a nice home stereo system if you're going to play shitty-sounding music on it? Sure, in the car or in public you might not notice the difference, but at home on a nice system you will.

We already had a lo-fi format available: cassette. Why bother paying a lot of money to go to another format that also has lousy sound quality when you can just buy a CD?

Shitty sounding? Have you used minidisc? I honestly can’t tell the difference between CD and minidisc. I’ve even got a marantz cd/md combo that rips cds to MDs. I can play the sound sound back to back in both formats on this unit and I can’t hear the difference. This is on my Yamaha NS-200 monitors in my nice sounding room.

Mini disc sounds nothing like cassette but it has a lot of the good features like re-recording and even digital management of the tracks which is better than cassette or cd. I even have an MD head unit in my car!

I record a lot of stuff in mono as I usually don’t care for the stereo most of the time.

Yes it’s way too expensive. But I’ve got 22 year old discs that still work. It’s paying off in the long run for me.

The only issue I have is that it’s getting harder to find the gear

Sound quality was pretty high from the first versions. As you point out, not CD levels, but as a portable player it was good enough in comparison to what we had at the time. From there they improved the compression algos and had a lossless format towards the end.

Why would you buy two copies of everything? You buy a CD and dub the CD onto a blank MD. It'll still sound better than a cassette by a lot. Pre-recorded MDs were a rarity even in Japan. Part of why they were so popular in Japan is they made good quality copies from the CDs you got at rental shops.

>You buy a CD and dub the CD onto a blank MD. It'll still sound better than a cassette by a lot. Pre-recorded MDs were a rarity even in Japan.

Ah, ok, I didn't get this part. Were the blank MDs overpriced?

The minidisc was for many things right for portable music. The audio quality was great, indistinguishable from CD to me, and any minor detail gets washed out when riding on the train or walking on a street. CDs are great but not a portable media. They scratch, break etc. It can be hard to load a new disc when standing it in crowded places. Portable CD players were awful at skipping. The couple seconds buffer was fine for a small bump but that was it. MDs were bulletproof.

It was easy to copy them onto blank minidiscs (with track marks and titles) when CD+minidisc units became available, I don't know far into the lifespan of the format that was though.

I had such a thing, fond memories. I had to buy a stereo set with MD recording capabilities to be able to use the small thing on the road with my existing music, but the little remote stick and the overall form factor were very nice. I remember there was some bulge on the back for an AA battery. It was a lot of swapping batteries and discs. I used it for a couple of years in between my last Discman and my first MP3 player. Music from the 'Club 2000' cd's are forever linked in my mind to this little MiniDisc player.

Ah yes, I remember the bulge! I had one with that until getting a Japanese one which had the “gum stick” sized rechargeable battery which eliminated that and say flat.

I loved my first discman. It had incredibly good earphones. Horribly expensive, though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com