MiniDisc | An appraisal of a truly lovely format | Part two

[@proffessasvids]

I only have 4 pre recorded albums that I was given... unfortunately none of them have cases. I refused to buy them back in the day as I wanted the cd's in the full resolution rather than the more expensive early atrac compressed md albums. I listened back to one of my pre recorded Madonna md albums (ray of light) and A/B'd it against a fresh recording in atrac type R (top level short-play atrac) of the same album. I used my tidal high res version which I down scaled to 24bit 48khz for my jb-940 to record from. The difference was night and day. Early atrac versions weren't very good. Much better than tape but no where near cd. The modern type R atrac (post 1998) is very good.. almost up to cd quality. The stage on the original pre recorded md was flat sounding.. 2D.. no front to back depth. It was messy too. Blurred with ringing and artefacts. I was very surprised how far atrac had come on when compared to the early versions. Lovely vids dude. Thankyou for that xx

[@JulianDeBacker]

Thanks for your interesting info on early ATRAC, I had no idea.

[@net_news]

wow you have a ton of money there!! Some of those albums are pretty hard to find and pretty expensive too 😅

[@JulianDeBacker]

I got lucky, I guess. Only paid foolish money for Hooverphonic and Michael Jackson. Thanks for watching!

[@net_news]

@@JulianDeBacker lucky guy! 💪

[@amatorski_]

Nice story about Hooverphonic, do you know if there are alot of Belgian minidisc releases?

[@JulianDeBacker]

So there's the two Hooverphonics, at least one K's Choice one ('Paradise In Me'), and I distinctly remember seeing an ad for a Helmut Lotti album ('Out of Africa'?) with the MD logo - but it's not on Discogs and when I interviewed Lotti, he didn't have a clue. So no idea how many Belgian MiniDiscs are out there.

[@JulianDeBacker]

Found one MiniDisc where Lotti is a featured guest, cool: www.discogs.com/release/15160831-Placido-Domingo-Sarah-Brightman-Helmut-Lotti-Riccardo-Cocciante-Gumpoldskirchner-Spatzen-Wiener-Symp

[@amatorski_]

@@JulianDeBacker Interesting that not all releases are on discogs, some must be released in small quantities then. Apparently there is also a Front 242 - 06:21:03:11 Up Evil minidisc.

[@JulianDeBacker]

@@amatorski_ yeah, I once found a Spain-exclusive Soulsister vinyl record. Not on Discogs (I created the eventual entry), not a bootleg, and not even Jan Leyers knew of its existence. No source is ever truly complete.