MiniDisc - and why I love it!

[@NickMukhin]

I am music lover with 50-years experience, but have discovered minidisks for myself about 12 years ago and very happy to use it until today. Naturally, vinyl records and CD are still in my collection, also having a lot if FLAC files, but MDs is a special case.

[@chilly6470]

I still love MiniDisc. All these years later and they somehow feel futuristic?.......

[@anielrivera7977]

just reinvested in a net md because in the new york city subway tunnels you cant get an internet connection so i will now listen to music podcasts etc through minidisc which i do miss .........

[@jeffschielka7845]

Good morning Jim! Music, music, and more music. No matter what form, it's what makes the world go round! I still have an eight track player that works. Only one tape left. I have close to 500 cassettes and around 200 original albums in perfect condition. Got into cds when they came out and still my main music source. Must have over 800 cds. So much music, so little time! Have a great day my friend.🪗🎷📀🎧📯🪕💿🎻🎺📻🎈🥁🎤🎹🔥⭐️🎸👑🎙☮️👍🎵🎼🎶🔈🔉🔊😎

[@JimNewstead]

You're right..... so much music, so little time! Good to hear about your collection!

[@jeffschielka7845]

@@JimNewstead 👍😎

[@rastaman5105]

I listen to vinyl LP,s , DAT [ Digital Audio Tapes ] , audio cassettes, reel to reel tape and MD [ minidiscs ] !!

[@JimNewstead]

I never had DAT….. that was a format I read about and was off the mind it was for studios and recording. By that time I’d already invested in a MD 4 track portastudio and so never did DAT. Is it a good medium?

[@TotallyContent]

This just came up in my feed as I am on a MD journey this month. I have 222 MDs which I am slowly digitising - after purchasing a 2nd hand unit off eBay in Sept. Some are albums but most are my actual mixes of tracks usually with some sort of theme. Love, Loss, Months, Weather, Dumped Anthems...They're like little audio diaries from two decades ago. Last year it was all about my digitising my '80s/'90s mixtapes. I upload all of my mixes (CD, MD, Tape) to Mixcloud on a weekly basis. Each with a little story about it. And finally, I love The The and just picked up "Gravitate to Me" 12" last month for a fiver. It's my fave! I have the iPods, cassettes, 3 MD players (2 portable) and probably 4-6000 CDs. So we're like twins! Ha ha. All the best from the North.

[@proffessasvids]

Lovely vid Jim. Minidisc for life! Xx

[@musicisajourney]

This is the third video about MDs that’s come up in a week! I have a portable stereo for CD/MD/cassette/radio that I bought back in 2000 or 2001. I have a portable MD player, too, about 50 mixed MDs that I made between 2001 and 2008 before I got an iPod and then an iPhone.

[@JimNewstead]

Ah, the algorithm is serving you well!

[@musicisajourney]

@ A fourth one came up. I will make my own video then.

[@garysalisbury8949]

Back in the early 2000s i played in a band, and i had a Boss 8-track. We recorded the demos onto minidisc. It was great, as you could delete and rerecord and move the track order etc. The main deck packed in, but i still have a portable walkman one that works perfect.

[@JimNewstead]

Yup, I had a 4 track minidisc recorder…. It was really great for clean recording. Before that I’d had cassette Portastudios.

[@theangryhog]

I'm in the US and I was sure that MD was going to be the next big thing here...and it would've been if it weren't for recordable CD's. MD's failure was solely due to unlucky timing. But when it came out, it was the best of both worlds. You could record over and over with no loss of quality, rearrange tracks in an instant, delete or insert tracks to alter the order, have lyrics scroll on the screen with the music, they had 40-seconds of buffer for anti-shock (and I think later got even longer) so they were essentially skip proof, and things like heat and magnetism wouldn't affect them (at least not the levels normal people are exposed to). I had a 4-disc MD changer head unit in my car, another 4-disc MD changer in the dash below it, and another 6-disc MD changer in the trunk connected by fiber optic. Had a portable player (older than yours...a bit larger physical size...maybe gen 1?) and a full size home recorder in my living room. I actually still have everything except the home recorder (it quit working and I trashed it...should've kept it to try and fix). The quality was definitely lower than CD on paper (it was a lossy compression) but as you stated it was intelligently done. I honestly couldn't hear a difference and I had a high quality sound system in my car (I used to compete in sound quality competitions nationwide). But recordable CD's came out shortly after, quickly became affordable, had no loss of quality, and worked in most existing CD players. They were a bit more fragile to handle than MD's, but the public was already used to handling store-bought CD's so that wasn't much of an issue. Glad to see you are still using that format but I have largely moved on to solid state media (typically, my phone with FLAC files). Maybe I'll setup my old MD gear in my office just for the nostalgia. I could see myself having to explain to people what exactly it is like I did all the time back then. No one really knew what they were. Anyway, cheers Jim!

[@JimNewstead]

Use MD for the enjoyment of the music, not for the infinite selection of what there might be. I sometimes thing that too much choice is "too much choice!" You know what you like, commit it to disc and use that, listen to an album, a mix. Good times!

[@jolebole-yt]

Recordable CDs came after the MD. You can blame the lawyers and the record companies for MD to not be adopted in the US. They all got scared of the piracy and loosing money

[@chadwichterman7572]

I love and use these to this day. I'm into physical media and i don't stream too much unless it is free and with no ads and i don't purchase digital content to own. I do rent a movie or episodes from a series if i can't torrent it. The sound quality of a minidisc is only as good as the source material.

[@JimNewstead]

Such a great little format. There’s quite a big scene still using MD.

[@ocd001]

Thanks for your Video and your thoughts and impressions. I recently discovered Minidisc(s) and kept on asking myself why only now. Why did I not started using Minidisc so many years ago. Music always was important to me and creating and compiling mixed tapes is more than just a hobby. It all became so much easier with streaming services, unlimited access to music and this lacks physical formats for music. And that's what I am missing. Or that's what I have missed, now that I discovered Minidisc for me. Keeping a Pioneer MJ-D707 running on the HiFi system, sound is impressive. And finally it's mixed tapes again, not (only) playlists. Thanks for your efforts Jim, and keep 'em playing. Cheers!

[@mrkitewine7700]

I liked the idea of DCC (digital compact cassette) which came out about the same time as Mini-Disc. DCC players also played standard analog cassette tapes as well as DCCs which I thought was a great. The format soon died a death and I’m relieved I never made the leap and backed the wrong g horse.

[@nyrocks5580]

At 60 years old, and having experienced nearly all the formats, I'm sort of embarrassed to admit that I still love my iPod Touch! I wont give it up.

[@silversmurfer68]

Love listening to minidiscs - especially going out on a walk - just the music and no interruptions from phones etc - a great format ! cd's are now as unloved as cassettes - (which are back on the rise) so grab CD's while they are cheap :)

[@darrenwells2277]

BIg MD fan here! Still using it after all these years. It was just the perfect format! Imagine if they carried on making the format, they could use mini bluray discs in there and store hundreds of albums on the go... its such a shame, but I still love to keep the faith! Great Video!

[@JimNewstead]

Cheers man! Yeah, MD is the greatest format. So many “what ifs” and “if only” moments. It was poised to take over the world. Pesky mp3!

[@luton_gmanrock]

First record was Elvis - US Male in 1979. As a kid up to early twenties I had zillions of cassettes. Then tinkered with records again DJing, then the dawn of CD's. CD's ruled my DJing, my car listening and home listening. But, in 2017, my intrigue into records experienced a renaissance and I haven't stopped collecting wax since. Records are purer especially analogue remastered or in fact, original 70s pressings. Vinyl is more organic, realistic and undisturbed audio with no signal clipping and levelling (gain increased) you get on CD's and the compressed to hell MP3s and streaming etc. LONG LIVE VINYL RECORDS!!!

[@amduser86]

cd are actually engineered to outperform the human ear. except for the "loudness war" cd's have about the best audioquaility you can get. if you prefer the "pure" sound of vinyl, just use a good equailizer. once you add second order distortions to your cd sound the sound is about the same. p.s. if you really want the best sound, you need one of those old tape recorders (s.th. like an akai GX-77). but than you have the probleme, that there is almost no good tape avaible anymore

[@palantir135]

The only thing I know about the minidisc is it’s name. I started with a record player and a cassette deck followed soon so I could copy records from my friends and copy mine for my friends. I had loads of cassettes too but I threw them all away. The moments the cd came out, I switched to them. And I copied my friends cd’s on writable cd’s. I still have my records and some of those copied cd’s. I also downloaded music back then. I still have my almost thirty year old iPod and I still use it once and awhile. All my music is in iTunes Match and on a NAS as a backup in flac or high quality mp3 format. I can listen music from iTunes Match on my phone wherever I am. I seldom stream when I’m outside. I download the music on my phone first and delete it again when I’ve listened to it.

[@Harzurner]

The format of the gods

[@just_passing_through]

Me too. Have a minidisc player in my car, a portable NetMD recorder, and of course a recorder in my component HiFi.

[@WooBino.]

Started out with 45's listening to The Archie's "Sugar, Sugar" 😉 as a young boy, then moved on to 8 tracks, cassettes and finally albums and CD's. I remember I had a CD player with no CD's and went to Sears to buy some...they had eight CD's. lol I bought Foreigner Agent Provocator( great first CD). LP's/ My first was a Spiderman LP that had a comic in the fold that you followed along to the record, I was 10ish. MiniDisc was never big in the U.S.

[@mikewest1542]

Funnily my first single that my mum bought for me was Sugar Sugar too and the first record I bought was Rebel, Rebel, but didn’t buy any records from Duran Duran , Talk Talk ,or Jim’s favourite The The !

[@professorvoluck9311]

I love recording a CD to MD and then A/B compare to see if I can hear the compression. I can not. Atrac is very good.

[@JimNewstead]

Absolutely! The only, only thing that is a fly in the ointment with MD is that you have to record in real time. However, it’s great for archiving audio from, well, anywhere really!

[@ianz9916]

I still use the MiniDisc as my on the go format. Streaming is all very well but it doesn't work on the tube and there is just too much choice. How do you decide what to listen to when virtually the entire musical output from the last 60 years is at your fingertips. I probably have too many MiniDisc players and recorders, over 50, but it's partly to do with the buzz I get from the look and feel of all of them. I do have an iPod or 2 but they irritated me with their fixed battery and difficulty in replacing them. Apple shoved so much stuff in such a small space that the battery tended to damage the screen when it got old and expanded, as they invariably did. The MiniDisc, using mostly AA or Gumstick batteries which are easy to carry around, is always ready for action. I must admit my MZ-1, the first ever MiniDisc recorder, is really just for show. It still works but the battery life is inadequate and it is a bit of a brick, but still smaller than those portable piano key cassette recorders that I had in the 1970s.

[@JimNewstead]

Yes my friend! All of this, and more! I feel several recent posts and videos coming together for a new one: Spotify/Streaming/minidisc/infinite choice

[@williamstraub3844]

I loved Minidisc, but its time had come when the iPod arrived. Then came video, then Bluetooth and wi-fi. I keep my seven Minidisc players/recorders in perfect condition, and use them on occasion, but what's gone is gone.

[@deanwolfechannel]

I'll try out mini disc at some point. They come up used online occasionally. Nice portable size

[@JimNewstead]

They are such a good format, but not useful if you want to regularly move content from disc to computer.... they don't talk to each other very well. But if you want to record in real time and can remember recording on tape, this is fantastic!

[@merlinscat]

I love mini discs I still have a player in my stack and I do listen to mds sometimes

[@ThalassTKynn]

I love my minidisc walkman. It's great fun. My music collection is sadly very small these days, but I'm working on rebuilding it. Mostly through bandcamp. One thing I didn't think of until recently how good a minidisc is for podcasts. Audio quality isn't a concern for most podcast type audio, so LP4 is fine, and you can cram over 5 hours of them into an 80 minute disc! It's great for work.

[@mikewest1542]

Hi Jim, I loved the Minidisc, but unfortunately the recordable Cd was around via the computer and seemed to bury the lamented MD 😢

[@JimNewstead]

Too true :(

[@Zimmy_1981]

That Marvel himage opening is neat. Recently bought a home unit, loving it. Mastered the jog dial that mostly everyone complains about lol 😊

[@tonygrinney7115]

Preferred format are CDs, vinyl too fragile - hated having to set the stylus onto the vinyl and they crackled! Tapes were gopod to a point I took a tape recorder and some tapes when going to Greece by Interrail. Remember the amzing moment of passing through Vevey while Awaken was playing! The big moan for me with tapes is that the tapes get stretched. I admit I have downloaded a lot of Cds onto onto the WMP. I like the shuffle option where it will randomly select any song from anything I had put onto the WMP. Despite loving CDs I think I will have to readapt to digital as I will be downsizing and won't have the shelf space for CDs.

[@JimNewstead]

Hence you're selling off the CDs. :(

[@mireillepinzuti183]

I also love minidiscs. I have 635 of those at this time.. it's pratic and the sound is so good. I have a dozen of portables minidiscs players/recorders and two decks

[@chadwichterman7572]

Nice Marvel parody opening! LOL!

[@rudolfbecker4313]

"I don't stream as much as other people" ... made me smile ... I don't stream at all 😆 but let me tell you chronologically : at the beginning there was a simple cassette recorder, I was 11 or 12 years old, I recorded with a microphone from my little radio ... funny things happened sometimes... speaking family members who realized too late that I was recording . At that time I recorded mixtapes from the charts🤣 My older brother had a nice amplifier, turntable and great speakers. So the next thing I bought with saved + christmas money was this big Philips tape recorder, but realized pretty quick, that recording a lot cost a lot. I also started buying a handful of singles, but the real stuff for me were LPs. My older brother started his collection with Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Uriah Heep and Jethro Tull. My very first LP was Slade - Sladest ... a greatest hit collection, followed by albums of Free and UFO. It was around 1976, when my older brother bought a real good cassette recorder and my real recording career started. Since I already liked so many bands at that time but couldn't afford to buy all the LPs, I began to ask everybody who had LPs to get them to be recorded. As I had discovered a mail order LP store in Hamburg I started ordering every month and to avoid the extra costs for delivery I asked friends and schoolmates to have at least 100 deutschmarks, which quickly got more and more ... the regular order was 10 - 15 LPs, many of them were recorded right away 😄 So I finally ended up having a cassette collection of nearly 300, all with 2 LPs. Parallel I bought more and more LPs as I started working and have more money. When I moved out at the age of 22 I all of a sudden was without stereo. As I couldn't afford to buy everything at once I started with an amplifier, a cassette deck and headphones. Next was a turntable and speakers. Then I thought I needed an equalizer ... my first and last ... was too lazy to fix the sound of each record 😆 I had my first walkman in 1984, I lost it in Yugoslavia and the insurance "bought" me a better, nicer one. In 1986 I bought my first CD without having a CD player ... but that followed pretty soon .. at the end of the 80s I stopped buying LPs, I got about 600 ... in the 90s I didn't buy a lot, but I got a disc man, that I used on the way to work on my trainrides, but it "ate" the batteries too fast, so I stopped that. With the beginning of the 2000s I discovered a great store in Düsseldorf which sold the re-releases of all the LPS, my older brother used to have .. I also discovered JazzFusion and Jazz for me. In 2005 I discovered the music magazine eclipsed and with their monthly sampler I discovered many great bands , Porcupine Tree, Opeth, Riverside, RPWL ... to name only a few ... so my collection grew and grew ... nowadays approx. 1700 CDs. Parallel to this my son started buying first a small Ipod, then the big one .. later he put all his music on his mobile ... and I got the big Ipod, on which I put hundreds of CDs. Nowadays I also have lots of my music on my mobile. I never had a minidisc player, I've never streamed and the hundreds of internet radio stations are not for me either, whenever I listened to a certain prog or metal station, usually after one or two songs I had to switch, because they either played music I had heard a hundred times or they played anything I didn't like , especially the metal stations. In 2019 I "discovered" youtube ...(I had watched some music infrequently ...) as my son showed my the Jinjer - Pisces live session video .. I started watching reactions and so the story goes and here I am at the end of 2023 enjoying reaction channels with Jim's being my absolute number one for many reasons ... not only because I'm able to "work on the program" 😆🤘 Finally I can say I'm pretty old school, but I like it ..... I hope you like my story 🤘🤘🤘

[@djangosoftwaredeveloper]

I keep thinking there's room for some sort of read only sd card format/NFC capable. The ability to back up music and make your own playlists or have a digital collection of music is hard to imagine being without. I also understand companies desire to stop consumers from copying content without paying for additional licenses but I'm not sure their desire for control has really helped them that much in the long run. I can't find a MD player for my car and some MD battery packs seem obsolete otherwise I might use MD again. Bandcamp and buying albums through iTunes are my go to for purchasing mp3.

[@dazzfromaus4797]

I used to make mixed music discs from my record's that way I preserved my records.

[@anthonygee6805]

I still love my minidisc still my favourite like you say brilliant for making mix’s , I do stream also and lps and I still love cassettes there all nice memories and all sound different great video

[@IllumeEltanin]

33s and 45s to start. Cassette boom box, followed by CD boom box. Gave up all that when I separated from my husband and moved into a rented room, where I still am. Never got into streaming or MP3s. KZbin and other similar services, such as Vimeo, are my only source of music now, other than performances on tv.

[@justsomephguy]

Grew up on my dad's vinyl but i found it cumbersome and tedious to use (dad babied his records), then came portable cassette players which became the bulk of my music experience in the 80s & 90s. CDs reared their head here but it took awhile to explode as they weren't cheap (compared to cassettes) so I was a tape head well into the mid 90s. Then I remember reading a foreign magazin with a minidisc ad, and it was dreamy, like a cassette but more durable/pritected, no reel eating monstrosities involved and it was small, it looked like the future. Unfortunately it never really released here in Asia (except for where it was born) and the usd/yen prices (converted) were frankly, too much for our middle class family. So eventually CD became affordable enough, MP3/file sharing was a thing, I got CDs and an mp3 player (ipods were too expensive so I never got one till pre y2k) - fast forward, after my collection of tapes, cds and various players were stolen, I restarted with digital music (with a DAP, a Sony A35 and others after), then found out minidiscs were still available and some prices i could afford + shipping which brings me to now. It's one of my favorite forms of music playback, it's physical, finite but sturdy and portable. Few people would want to steal it here as a bonus 😂 I avoided vinyl and tapes to streamline, passively tried getting the CDs I had back and acrue more minidiscs 😂

[@JimNewstead]

Love this! As advertised, MD will last a million re-records so the discs will effectively last forever. Lets hope the machines will keep going!

[@danieladams2986]

Really interesting and cool video thanks. Can you connect a mini disc player to a laptop and transfer cds onto the mini disc please?

[@thetid8852]

I developed MS so all music listening is now via my Mac, though I've had to use audio enhancing software to make it bearable. However, if I wasn't disabled I'd still be using my Yamaha MD recorder/player - I really can't tell the difference between full quality MiniDisc and CD !

[@augusztleno7539]

MD ?????? oohhh yes 120 pieces !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[@jperezrios]

What would be the disadvantages or advantages between the Minidisc and that Fiio Flac player?

[@the_real_schopenhauer985]

I mostly listen to music now either in digital form (in FLAC format) from a hard drive using a music player (I use foobar) or on vinyl. Sometimes I stream but not often. I also have a lot of music on my phone now (also in flac) for when I'm out and about. I don't listen to CDs anymore. I have digitalized my complete CD collection a long time ago (using the Exact Audio Copy programm). And I only buy CDs now when it's older and more obscure stuff that is not available to download (e. g. not on Bandcamp) and too expensive or non-existant on vinyl. I buy a lot of vinyl though, LOL. Way too much......

[@JimNewstead]

I think we ALL but way too much vinyl!!!

[@marcelseger007]

Wat je niet heb op KZbin is Dolby geluid wel ik gebruik ook wel eens MD er landing ik hoop dat je het kan lezen 😎😎😎

[@UrbanoDagrippino]

Mini disc is cool only Japanese market they made the boombox version with mini disk

[@johnr4459]

i had an lp before any singles was a christmas present, slade - slayed its got 25/12/72 written inside the cover, i was only 10, cant remember the first single was something like blockbuster or maybe tiger feet, it was another 18 months before i got another album, in the mid 70's i used to get my dad to get k-tel 8 tracks as he had one in his sunbeam rapier, hit machine etc, diddent have hardly any shop soiled tapes, still got the first one though, book early - city boy, got more serious in that 1978 area and went gradually into a more harder rock direction, when i heard judas priest do evening star on top of the pops then saxon and iron maiden etc followed, and recorded lp's onto tapes, diddent bother much getting new releases after the mid 80's and only bought certain albums after that all on vinyl, went over to mini disc in around 99/2000 with a new mds jb930, now thats the format that tape should have been, and diddent go to cd until as late as 2006, by that time i only bought the new iron maiden release, and that year, a matter of life and death came out and i just couldent be arsed to buy the new double lp pic disc and not play it, a funny story to end, the i think 3rd lp i ever had was when bohimien rhapsody was in the charts, back end of 1975, got a little money to buy some music and that was top target, in the shop i spotted an album that had the heads on it like in the video, diddent look at it properly so bought it thinking bohimiem rhapsody has got to be on here, got back home and stuck it onto my old decca record player and thought what the hell is this, no bohimien rhapsody on here, it was queen 2, later when i went into a more hard rocking direction and re discovered it, then i thought wow this is brilliant, still have it to this day.

[@sethgauby8730]

Jim, Happy Birthday ! I believe it’s the 13th ? I have a question. I have about 100 LPs and want to get or build shelving, like what you have in the background. Did you buy or did you make your shelving ?

[@JimNewstead]

Thanks so much! Yes, 13th 👍🏼. What you’re looking for is Kallax units from IKEA. Cheap and perfect for 12” vinyl. Lots of different sizes available and can grow with you.

[@sethgauby8730]

@@JimNewstead thanks Jim

[@mellotronin54]

I was vinyl then cassette tape for portability hence most of my albums (which I still own)are only played a few times . Now I am fully CD why put up with scratches and pops and every time you play vinyl you degrading the 60 year old concept. DAT was good I used it when I had a studio better than CD quality I have all the music I recorded on that.

[@Meerlu]

Minidisc these days sure is a LOT of work to essentially listen to old MP3 quality. Modern lossy (including modern mp3) is quite good. But with storage so cheap...

[@JimNewstead]

It was never mp3 quality…. At close to CD quality at to make it indistinguishable. But if you extended the play back by much then yes, the quality suffered.

[@Meerlu]

@@JimNewstead The standard Atrac bitrate is 292kbit/s, which most 'audiophiles' use if they record to MD. A far cry from CD, and far from modern OPUS/ACC CODECs (which are amazing). I wasn't trying to start a fight tho, lol. If you enjoy it, that's radical. :D

[@vtecro1826]

Jim Sim...format no 1 c d ..format no 2 mini disk ..I have 3 no 200 Carasell machines for c d s ..and change 20 disks every 2 months ..mini disks I use to record favourite tracks and have about 500 disks .all components are Sony..with an onkio ampall machines are 30 y r s old disks very rarely get handled so are in mint condition in 30 plus y r s 2 c d s have failed out of about 1500 disks I have them on c d audio now ..and 1 mini disk failed due to exposure to window cleaner ..I have many friends with computers who have lost everything when their hard drive failed .also a computer disk only lasts for a couple of years if you are lucky.i have a big box full of see threw computer disks people gave me.not one will play ...