NetMD MiniDisc into 2022...and beyond

[@mattrobinson973]

People that make software to keep old devices working are the real heroes in our digital society

[@theeniwetoksymphonyorchest7580]

Absolutely heroic!

[@jean-pierrem34]

100% agree!

[@Bobby_Snoof]

+1 : I use them every day !

[@rosskwolfe]

Especially since it's generally unpaid work. Pure passion.

[@JG-nx3jg]

Eco warrior's

[@platpt78]

Awesome ! I’m the dev behind Platinum-MD - happy to assist with any questions, the app also does limited Hi-MD and reverse download with an RH1

[@LacayoDe]

Really !? Omggggg thanks a lot I use your software daily. I do have a question is there any setting to normalize the volume ? Or make or tracks sound as loud as possible !?

[@platpt78]

@@LacayoDe not at the moment but can be easily added with FFMPEG - WebMinidisc does have it but it sometimes results in all tracks being a little quiet I’ve heard

[@bobblum5973]

It sounds like Mat would be a good resource to have test updates and bug fixes, since he has multiple models of MD units to test with and he's knowledgeable.

[@gutterg0d]

@@bobblum5973 That's the dream for any dev, Mat might have other things to attend to though, like a KZbin channel or something. ;)

[@jb-hw9if]

Is your software compatible with the original Atrac1 files?

[@GeekDetour]

I was extremely naive when I bought my NetMD: I saw the USB interface and I assumed "Wow! That's perfect! I'll pass my live recordings to the PC super fast, digitally, instead of re-recording as analog!"... I was SO FRUSTRATED when I discovered it was exactly the other way around: Sony's software just allowed to push audio from the PC to the MD... It is AWESOME that some people invested time to make it work the way it should - a bit to late for me... I don't even have my MDs anymore 🤷‍♂ For anyone that still needs it, THIS IS GOLD! Thanks for the awesome video!

[@graealex]

Sony at its finest. Give consumers freedom to do what they want? Heck no!

[@HouseholdDog]

Yeah it was pretty common to have ports on tech that never really worked the way you thought.

[@rommee]

Same. I still think that if Sony allowed for data to be burned direct then it would have been powerful and would have given the MiniDisc more longevity - Just in the way we'd seen in the movies: 'Matrix 1' and 'End of Days'.

[@daveayerstdavies]

Yes, I made the same mistake. Evidently Sony's policy was intended to prevent music piracy which was a hot topic in the 90's and early 2000's.

[@HouseholdDog]

Wasn't just Sony other brands had very limited connectivity with pcs. Most likely because the interfaces were fairly primitive.

[@BobBell808]

Unfortunately, I'm retired and on a fixed income, otherwise you would be one of the few channels I'd support on Patrion. I so look forward to my sleepy Saturday mornings in Ohio, USA, where I can watch your weekly sojourn into Retrotech. I've always been impressed with both how well you research your topics and the quality which you produce your videos. I know that's not the same as throwing a Bob your way... but I wanted you to know I appreciate your work.

[@rnb250]

“Throwing a bob your way” 😅 I wonder how many Americans would know what that means? 🤙

[@JCWise-sf9ww]

I live in Pennsylvania, USA and I agree with the gentleman from Ohio on appreciating Techmoan' work.

[@vanwiseman]

Hello, fellow Ohioan. I'm in Columbus, a longtime subscriber of Techmoan, and a faithful MD user!

[@toucan221]

@@vanwiseman You're a faithful MD user, Fantastic, that reminds me to get mine fixed. thanks

[@Rhyminrichie]

I am a normal heterosexual man, but I love you. Lol your love of this format is so incredible. I am also retired and my wife keeps bitching at me to get rid of old equipment ..I used to DJ and I had all of my music on minidiscs. I was going to throw them all out plus all the machines but you’ve made me change my mind I think. Now I just have to deal with the divorce that I’m going through lol.. that was a joke.(for now)

[@OlenkaJoerg2003]

Hi Mat! I'm the author of the NetMD wizard. I have to thank you for your great videos. Actually you are the reason why I'm still tinkering with NetMD. Even more you are also the reason why I'm now the owner of 3 tape decks and various MD devices ... still looking for a Reel to Reel. 😂

[@Techmoan]

Great to hear this - a welcome antidote to the ones who complain I'm increasing the price of MD devices by publicising work by people like yourself. My only aim was to show how this old tech lives on in the 21st century. I'd rather people use this stuff, than it ended up in landfill. Thanks for all your work.

[@drew24x7]

I was delighted to come across this video today, I have 80 minidiscs used to record interviews and talks back in the early 2002's that I was wondering how I was going to get transferred onto computer, now with an old Net MiniDisc NZ710 I've been able to download the recordings without having to realtime record with an audio interface... Awesome!

[@nutsnproud6932]

Thanks Mat. I got my ancient NetMD player talking to my Linux computer. No more sticky labels on the box to know what the next track is.

[@PaulRiismandel]

I’ve been keeping an old Windows XP netbook just to run Sonic Stage for my RH1. It’s great to learn I can now use my Mac Mini and other modern computers now. Thanks, Mat!

[@deusexaethera]

Two words: Virtual machine.

[@ek8710]

Sonic stage works perfectly on my PC running Windows 10

[@keithlowe5871]

You can run it on windows 10/11. The drivers are the issue and the security signatures. A bit of googling will find you the solution but if this works for you then no need :)

[@katbryce]

@@keithlowe5871 If you can get 64 bit XP drivers, they will usually work, 32 bit drivers are less likely to work. I've not tried these specific ones, but generally in my experience, you have to run the installer, find where it puts the temporary files during installation, copy those to another location before exiting the installer, then locate the driver files, and install them manually.

[@petersmits6951]

It runs fine on win 11

[@mikolasstrajt3874]

I have no experience in Minidisc nor I want to fall into another rabbit hole of audio collecting thing, but I am impressed by practical use of WebUSB standard.

[@Gadgetonomy]

Absolutely thrilled to watch this video today! I gave up some time ago trying to connect my Minidisc player to my PC. You've given me everything to do this now with my vast collection of minidiscs, I can't thank you enough. Long live the Minidisc!

[@benji.B-side]

Thank God for audio and computer nerds, doing stuff like this, credit and big respect to them. Great video Techmoan, I'm going to get my NetMD Minidiscs out and have a blast.

[@jamespaddick244]

I have been using Platinum MD on my Mac for over a year now and it has been a total game changer. Brilliant piece of software

[@jean-pierrem34]

100% agree with you! I also have been using Platinum MD for years now. Love this software. Thank you very much to all People involved in the development of that excellent software!

[@platpt78]

Hey that’s me! Glad you’re enjoying it!

[@jean-pierrem34]

@@platpt78 Thank you very much Man! Great job!!

[@jmvirgfb]

Thanks Mat. I dug out my old walkman (unused for 15+ years) and am now recording via this program straight onto newly cleaned mini discs, the text copying over (scanned from artwork then put through Google OCR) is such a gift. I don't understand why it's exciting, but it really is!!

[@jimsmith2919]

I think minidiscs are highly underrated. It's too bad they didn't catch on. It's so easy to delete and reorder tracks. It's also awesome how you can add track markers and you don't have to worry about scratches. I only had one NetMD compatible minidisc player/recorder but I also had another portable minidisc and a home unit.

[@brianl4366]

I can hardly begin to describe how happy this made me, I have a number of portable MD player/recorders along with a lot of discs. I dug them up recently and found them along with about 20 still wrapped blanks. Now thanks to this video I can enjoy them again with new music as well as transfer some 'lost' music to the PC. Thanks again.

[@FatNorthernBigot]

Look at the blue LED loading mechanism!! There was never a more futuristic way of playing S Club 7.

[@phillxor]

After all, there ain't no party like an S-Club party!

[@FatNorthernBigot]

@@phillxor ...cos an S Club party ended in 2002. 👍

[@zach.0]

I'm glad there are people like you who appreciate old technology and don't just declare it obsolete and throw it in the trash can of history to be forgotten.

[@matthewrichards88]

To be able to copy from mini disc to pc is a game changer. Always wanted to be able to do this, and now it's possible!

[@johntammaro]

I found that desktop Sony model for £10 brand new in box with 2 unopened mini discs. Thought that was pretty good. I used that NetMD web app. Works a treat

[@robertjpayne]

which one?

[@johntammaro]

@@robertjpayne the one without optical in. Still it was brand new and has allowed me to extract some old MDs I've had since the late 90s.

[@LightTheUnicorn]

I'm extremely thankful to the awesome devs that not only created this, but keep it updated and continually improve it too. MiniDisc never died.

[@gentuxable]

The issue with the USB port might be power. I remember in the early 2000s some manufacturers did go out of spec with power and it worked on many PCs but some did limit the current. The issue with the last device might be a software issue, maybe you can try a "sudo dmesg" inside the Terminal application to see if it says something.

[@thinkbrowner]

Unfortunately it's probably an invalid bInterval value being provided. A number of netmd devices set that incorrectly and different OSes have different ways of handling it

[@mtaylor8682]

Thanks Mat for another Minidisc video. I have been a lover of this format from the beginning. Just holding the player and the discs are a joy, that tactile feel is what makes it for me. Keep the MD light burning Mat.

[@chilly6470]

It's great to see so many people still passionate about Minidisc. Apart from the fact that, the prices are rocketing because of the interest. I first encounterd the format around 98/99 while on hols in Gran Canaria. I bought my first MD Walkman there and it felt like the future had arrived. Then, I moved to Sony's NW-HD1 and was impressed yet again. I've recently returned to MD and I've become a bit obsessed again.... It's now my main format to listen to music on. That little LAM-1 you've got there is a thing of beauty.

[@by-fate-but-by-choice]

Glad to know it's been updated! Also good to hear that I might (finally) be able to pull some old recordings OFF my minidiscs that I no longer have in any other format. Many thanks, Mat!

[@trevfindley]

If it's of any interest, I recently accomplished this with a ESI U24xl usb sound card (~£80 iirc) that has a toslink input (actually surprisingly uncommon to find). Theoretically I think this involves the MD player converting from 32khz back to 44.1khz as it outputs in toslink - but I found the recordings sounded totally ok when saved as MP3s...

[@tookitogo]

@@trevfindley MiniDisc is, and always has been, 44.1KHz. There’s no 32KHz version.

[@trevfindley]

@@tookitogo Wow. That's interesting to know. I don't know why, or where i got it from, but i have always been completely convinced that MD has a 32khz sample rate, and have never even really questioned this belief until i read your comment! Weird. p.s. Are you sure? lol.

[@tookitogo]

@@trevfindley Yes, I’m quite certain. Most likely, you once read the specs of the very first MD recorder, whose underpowered encoder chip wasn’t really up to the task, so they put a 16KHz low pass filter on it. From that machine’s 20Hz-16KHz frequency response you probably deduced it was 32KHz. But in fact it was 44.1KHz, and every MD recorder after that offers the CD standard 20Hz-20KHz frequency range. The Type-R and Type-S encoders, when doing standard play recording, even use 24-bit ADCs (and allow 24-bit digital input), which allows better encoding. ATRAC is a sort of floating-point encoding, so the added bits somehow let it reallocate information better.

[@trevfindley]

@@tookitogo Great, thanks for such a comprehensive explaination. Although i was a pretty enthusiastic MD user in the early 2000s - had i known this then (i.e. that standard play is not actually inferior to CD) I certainly would have used it much more heavily. Probably worked out for the best that I didn't - although i would have had a lot more awesome nostalgia hardware to play with today if i had!

[@Kevin_Carlson]

Thanks so much Techmoan! I still have my Sony MZ S1 that I purchased in 2002. I can finally erase my old MiniDiscs that are track protected now that you've informed us about Web Minidisc Pro. I'm thrilled to be using my favorite portable music player. I remember people used to refer to this player as the "poor man's ipod".

[@JasonRasmussen]

WOW! Thank you for this! My MZ-N797 NetMD served me faithfully in the early 2000's on trips and was an essential college study buddy that got me through (listening to a lot of Underworld) and recording lectures but left it in the garage as I had no easy way to rip all my MiniDiscs and recorded audio. I didn't want to do it via analogue, and even forgot what software even did that. Now I can do it natively in Windows 10 with Chromium based (Brave) web browser! Amazing! I'm downloading now!

[@dwindeyer]

I've been an active member of the minidisc reddit for some time, and it's been great seeing the progress of the community. 6 months ago asivery posted a tech demo running arbitrary code on a NetMD recorder using simple animated characters to now having full blown data extraction inside WebMinidisc. And I imagine more will be coming.

[@WrenFJ]

I remember that! It's so cool to see how quickly so much progress has been made.

[@craigedgar2828]

Thank you for alerting me to the obvious fact that there is a minidisc subreddit

[@Light-DelaBlue]

i want the same for HI-MD but sonic stage is CRAP! and platinum md dont even work corectly with HI-MD

[@CBitsTech]

I've never used Reddit, but I'm quite into MD (hence my KZbin channel). Do you have a link for the MD Reddit please to help me get directly there? Thanks.

[@Greenhourglass]

im really glad theres still people working on this stuff. i hope someday i can get the money to get a player, i was worried by the time i do everyone wouldve forgotten about them again and gave up on making them work lol

[@scoobylol1987]

I’ve been using my NetMDs and SonicStage on my Mac with a virtual box copy of XP. Works flawlessly. But this looks like a fantastic alternative to look at aswell!

[@Rust_in_Time]

Wow and flutter - the feelings one experiences when a new Techmoan video is released....

[@KingHanGan]

The Web-Minidisc app also works on Android, so you can connect your NetMD to your phone or Android tablet

[@djimpulsion]

Having recorded a bunch of live material over the years with this, it's given me hope of digitally transferring these to pc without analog interference. Since my NetMD unit had failed a few years back, i've actually purchased a functioning unit today from Ebay and am looking forward to hopefully now transferring my collection to pc! Thank you for this update!

[@djimpulsion]

@@Tipo-F120b Why does it bother you that much? Call it what you will, either way I still have a plethora of material ;)

[@caddelworth]

@@Tipo-F120b I believe "a bunch of …" is a colloquialism which periodically goes in and out of fashion/popularity with USA-dwellers. I've frequently heard them use the term for all sorts of items since at least the 1960s, if not earlier. It's definitely (?) an Americanism originally, though I have heard it used form time to time by people native to some areas of England.

[@Unfinished80]

I never owned any minidisc equipment when it was popular so this has been really interesting seeing what I missed. Thanks for another great video!

[@NiGHTSaturn]

I tend to bring my MD Walkman when I travel abroad. I got weird looks while using it in the trains in Tokyo. It might have been for another reason thougn 🤔😅 Thanks for sharing the great solutions that keep this technology alive!

[@NiGHTSaturn]

@@Spearca Publically not as much. I was the only one on my Walkman. Smartphones took over. Which is sad, Japan had amazing phone designs and music players, it’s all taken over by iPhones and Android Phones.

[@am_pm.17]

@@NiGHTSaturn People do still buy Walkman players though right? At least more than in the west. Sony still update the ZX and A series of players!

[@matambale]

On top of their efforts, you just added a very clear tutorial for the process. Nicely done.

[@Sikkabrain]

i love how you are constantly showing us your proper hip hop collection, Always something classic. This stuff is really fresh. . lol

[@yukisaitou5004]

Newer versions of macOS are well known to have compatibility issues with USB 1.1 devices, sometimes connecting them to a powered USB 2.0 hub helps. It's possible the two newer devices are actually USB 2.0 which is why they work fine straight into the Mac Mini.

[@DaveFlash]

this is indeed the case, yeah/

[@furryrug5998]

I loved my old Sony MD I had it about 25 yrs ago and it was way better than CD equivalent of the day.

[@BanazirGalpsi1968]

Also one of the advantages of a dedicated music player vs a phone is the music doesn't have to act weird when you get app notifications etc. Also physical media is not subject to corporate deletion of things you paid money for. Digital purchase that are stored in the cloud can be deleted by someone other than you at any time and your just out of luck. MD, CD,Vynal records, compact cassettes etc, that is not the case. They are yours. (more or less. Obviously it's up to you to enforce copyright and between u and God and the law if not, but the copy on physical media is yours )

[@rockemsockemyall]

Minidisc videos are the best. Techmoan is the only reason I've made uk minidisc purchases to get my collection going

[@Raveheart]

Thank you for the overview. Some years ago I was looking for a way to connect my old NetMD devices again and ran into all kinds of problems. It ended up working by using some old SonicStage version in a Windows XP virtual machine and passing the USB device over from the host to the VM. The Webapp is of course way more convenient.

[@kirknelson156]

I'm running sonic stage on win 7, found a youtube video detailing how to get the drivers to install, don't know if the same method works on windows 10 or 11. I didn't even think about trying to do it with a XP vitrual machine, which is strange because thats how I still use my palm visor.

[@KS-gv8jy]

Have to agree thanks to those guys keeping MD alive this format has so much to offer by the end with hi md quality was not a question any more Sony really should have kept pushing it

[@colday74]

Morning Matt. I use my MZ-N707 to create minidiscs with the soundwaves of old 8 bit machine tape based software. This way I can still have a 'tape based' experience with my old CPC464 and others. Took a little mod of the CPC but works a treat. Same noises but now from a minidisc.

[@GiovanniBurla]

Recently I bought an MZ-N710 NetMD Walkman and in the beginning I've used the modified version of Sonic Stage but I dont' like to use old piece of software on modern Windows. Especially on Windows 11 old drivers prevent the core isolation protection to start. Web Minidisc is the perfect solution. In my case it worked perfectly with the generic USB driver and everything now runs flawlessly. Windows 11 is happy because no old unsigned drivers present, I'm happy because I can use a simple clean modern software and my MD's are happy because they can be easly managed. I'm glad you did a video about this software, I think it can be very useful and informative form may people. Thank you Mat!

[@GameSack]

Thanks for this video! Works great with my MZ-N505 on my Mac Studio and Edge Browser. USB is connected to a hub and I can't remember if that has a dongle or not, I have so much stuff connected to this machine. Man where was all of this back in the early 2000s? I would use the Sonic Stage ONLY for titling the disc as I did not trust it to deal with the audio well and I recall it having extreme limitations as well. If I can, I'm gonna rig up a computer and take it back in time and give it to myself in 1993.

[@ianlariviere]

Thank you! I've had some important personal recordings stuck on various minidiscs for close to 20 years! Basement guitar and drum recordings with my brother. The amps are sold and the drum set sits dusty since his heart attack; but the recordings are now safe.

[@lmoore3rd]

This is good news as old Sony software from the 2005 era often contained "extras" that would be frowned upon today by security experts. I have a NetMD player I'd like to get working again this weekend. Sounds like a fun project for me.

[@craigedgar2828]

My love of/with music cemented itself with MiniDisc = finally we have quality AND control

[@jdatlas4668]

I've been irrationally interested in this ever since you mentioned NetMD in your original MiniDisc history video despite the one player I own not even supporting NetMD, so this seems like a great start into the weekend.

[@enricoself2256]

Tested today both Platinum MD and Net MD Wizard and they work with all my NetMD's: two MZ-N505 (Type R) and one MZ-N510 (Type S). They also work with my deck MDS-JE780 and I used the latter to create an MD from my iTunes Library and i'm glad Platinum MD writes SP MD at 2x speed, much faster then in normal recording mode. Really great work !

[@alextirrellRI]

I have a HiMD portable that I bought for my college choir concert tour of Italy. In 2006, it was definitely the best budget way to get a good recording at the time. I need to go through my discs as I used to use the data storage feature as well.

[@hamradioop5777]

I love MiniDisc and still have a couple of mains players, one of which is NetMD and also a lovely MZ-RH1 portable. I have succeeded in getting the old Sony Software onto modern Windows operating systems, but it is a time consuming and frustrating process. I had no idea that anyone had developed newer software and I'll certainly be giving them a spin. Thank you for your most enjoyable KZbin postings

[@wal]

It’s great to know there are so many audio geeks out there…makes me feel more normal 😎

[@cfredrics]

This is really helpful! After twenty five years of wanting one, I finally got a NetMD player a couple weeks ago and have been wondering how to get my MP3s onto it! Thank you!

[@MegaTrolleybus]

I've been using Platinum MD (windows/Linux) on my N707 and it works great.

[@stuartleckie]

Loved the mini Mat popups on this one. I’m part of the very fun, active MD group on Facebook. I’m always impressed with what folks can do with the discs, both in terms of putting music on them, and printing up some awesome art. A fun way to listen and enjoy music. Great video !

[@CoolDudeClem]

In my opinion, 2002's audio tech is still modern to me. I'm still a cassette and vinyl guy. Also anything that uses a subwoofer or resembles a "surround sound home theater" system is modern to me.

[@npr1300A8]

Your channel is the best around for honest reviews of everything tech, new and retro. I have purchased dash cams on the strength of your reviews. Thank you. 👍🏻

[@flibblesan]

This brought back a lot of memories. Back in the early 2000s I had an Aiwa AM-NX9 and it was really nice to use, making my own compilations for the weekly commutes to and from Manchester. I tried a lot of MP3 devices back then but nothing was as good to use as the Aiwa, plus with it using standard AA batteries it was way more convenient to use over something that had a built-in rechargeable battery.

[@aarjaycee3601]

UPDATE:- downloaded Zadig connected Net MD player to Web MiniDisc Pro and it works (just need to work out how to get the desktop app version now) am using an Aiwa AM-NX9 and yes as I say it works FURTHER UPDATE:- finally worked out how to download desktop app, it seems to work too, Happy Bunny here

[@matbarker9208]

Thanks Matt for this video. Fed up having to use a virtual machine to emulate Windows XP just to use Sonic Stage. Can confirm this works within Vivaldi browser on Windows 11 with my Sony MZ-N710

[@Jason-Scott]

An old chap gave me a new JB930 for free about 14 years ago and after a week or so I moved house and ended up just leaving it in the cupboard with a bag of discs. About 12 months ago I took it out the moth balls and it’s a super player and all the discs I did on my original deck in late 90’s early 2000’s still play perfectly.

[@nate_river_]

Anything that empowers the archivists of this world is a good thing in my book. Who knows how many of those disks out there may have something of note on them? In particular, I've seen first-hand the joy and comfort that data retrieval can bring to those suffering the loss of a loved one.

[@Jxnxdoe]

Proud to be part of the MD community 🎉

[@tobiassaibot5417]

I love my MD Decks. Its good to have something physical in my hands. I create every year my own " Best of " Minidisc and make copys on Tape for my Carstereo Tape Deck. A lot of fun.

[@asotomayor]

You're a hero, and the developer of Web MiniDisc Pro. I used Zadig, it downloaded the correct driver for my MZ-N707 and voila! it connected immediately. I am now recording music on my MD unit :-)

[@Madjed2024]

As usual you are an audio treasure hunter Matt Thank you so much for such an informative video I now can use my blank MDs

[@am_pm.17]

Seems the only formats of note that Techmoan hasn't covered yet are UMD and CD-i.

[@THEREALDJBearfaced]

Thankyou so much for this. I can finally recover a mountain of music that was trapped on my MD's. I have 2x MZN10's with a degraded charger, Found my PSP charger works fine so a long sunday going through everything I thought was lost forever. You are a hero.

[@bens1343]

Thank you Stefano Brilli and co for rescuing minidisc from the pits of digital obsolescence! 💽

[@hermanmunster3358]

Fantastic! I have been looking for a way to rip content from old MS's to my PC. I have an MZ-N520, so hopefully, I can rediscover some of my old recordings, and transfer them on to other devices which are more convenient to use these days. Fingers crossed, I can get it all to work. Thanks Matt, much appreciated. 👍🤜🤛👏🥂

[@SilverGreen93]

Thank you for poiting out this wonderful app. I can at last save my original recordings from 15 years ago to PC without loss. You saved me 😃. I can't believe Sony locked us out so many years!

[@IanSlothieRolfe]

I really miss my portable minidisc. I loved that you could get a load of music, with exchangeable media, and listen for hours with a single AA cell. It seemed so much nicer than the cheap MP3 players that came after it (I would never have justified a iPod or similar high end device) and yet was small enough to stick in a pocket or in one of those armband holders you used to get. I lost it in a house move and only have a mains adapter to remind me of it :)

[@kirknelson156]

I still use my MD, usually when taking my dogs for a walk. I thought it was amazing how long the single battery last.

[@Uzeless]

There are loads still available to buy. The one Mat (and I for that matter) has is a 707 and is quite popular and relatively cheap to pick up. The best thing about it is it runs off one AA battery and it lasts AGES!!

[@hirprimate941]

I loved minidisc I even bought a car stereo with one. There aren’t many old gadgets that I look back fondly on and would happily go back to using if the modern phones didn’t exist. I imported a Sharp player from Japan which was the last minidisc device I bought. It is still so tiny, sleek and cool I bust it out once and a while and play old mix MDs.

[@spacedandy7553]

I really appreciate the time and effort you put into your videos!

[@n.stephan9848]

It's wonderful MiniDisc lives on in the modern age, I find it such a neat format.

[@halbmetallmensch]

Every time you post a MD video I feel like it would be cool to get a MD player again because I loved it back then and I think it was a very cool format! But then I think that I probably wont use it at all in the end and it would just collect dust 😅Thanks for the great video!

[@kennyadvocat]

Great video! I have a whole box of MD discs i had recorded of my live concerts back in the day. Glad we can finally download them directly. Yes i use to have to replay all the audio back to my computer then burn a cd. Most of them i just left on my MD disc tho.

[@fsfs555]

MDs actually had Mac support in the early years (mostly with track renames and label printing) but they dropped it with NetMD, likely because of the iPod/iTunes. But they reintroduced Mac support with HiMD, though it was just a basic upload/download manager (no SonicStage or iTunes-esque music library system). I still use an old XP-based VAIO notebook with a NetMD Bay Module for managing MDs though I do most of the recording on hi-fi decks, primarily for manual control of gain between tracks but also for occasional analog source recordings. I may have to try Platinum-MD.

[@Leonardnl]

I used this application now 2 years and i am so happy about it. Save me so much time.

[@stuartburrows8747]

Apple breaking or not bothering to implement standards properly. Should be able to plug a usb device into a usb socket and have it work. Great video as usual, just another reminder when I'm tempted by a shiny Mac that I will stick to pc

[@cromulence]

The fact that you can connect to USB devices from a web browser without any real driver headaches is MIND BLOWING. Seriously. I don't think people realise how many headaches compatible drivers caused on Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP/Vista. Being able to control such an archaic old device from a web browser is nuts. Seriously impressive stuff.

[@video99couk]

I like the idea of digital copying from MD. At the moment I do that with an optical output from MD to a digital audio recorder, but it's a bit of a faff. I also have a Mac Mini M1. It doesn't like me and the feeling is mutual. Yes Sonic Stage was awful. Just as bad as Movie Shaker from Sony which I got working again recently for copying from microMV tapes.

[@caddelworth]

It's always been fascinating to me to discover how much really terrible _software_ Sony have created down the years, given that they also manufacture very highly regarded professional broadcast-grade _hardware_ … !

[@JackosJingles]

Brilliant my MZ505 and MzN10 now play through my PC something I thought I would never see again. I need to explore further. Thanks to the people who enabled this to happen.

[@rommee]

IF ONLY they made MiniDiscs enabled for direct data burned onto them like in 'The Matrix 1' movie and 'End of Days' - it would have truly lived on longer.

[@kevinh96]

They did. MD Data was such a format, designed for PC use but it never really took off. Later consumer HI-MD minidisc models could also act as a USB storage device but again it didn't gain widespread use as by then USB sticks where a thing and more convenient.

[@rommee]

@@kevinh96 I have the HiMD but was never able to do much with them 😒 You're absolutely right they didn't catch on and if Sony made it more of an open source format/ media or plug and play they could've probably done so much better with the MD format.

[@jonathanlau1221]

Thank you for making this video Mat! On a whim after watching, I dug up my old MZ-N710 NetMD portable and tried to get it to work with my Windows 11 PC. Surprisingly, all 3 NetMD programs worked and managed to talk to my device! I didn't get too far with the MD Wizard though, as it would keep skipping over some tracks I had selected for transfer and had some issues with importing other tracks. Platinum MD seemed to work best for me as the user interface is straightforward and seems to just work well. I'd have continued to keep my NetMD recorder stashed away had you not made this video and brought these programs to my attention. The last time I recorded a disc via NetMD was a couple years back, running SonicStage on my older Windows 10 PC that took me a while to get set up and functioning.

[@cosmicrain4345]

Thnx to this video my Net MD MZ-N707 is back to life after so many years...so many memory's...thanks a lot!

[@DrumLaFlamme]

When I did radio back in the mid 2000's we had 2 rack mounted MD players that had all our ads and station call signs on different MD's. Good times.

[@Dolphination]

Thanks to the developers for providing new software.

[@labnine3362]

Like you, I found that some of my minidisc models did not work with Web MiniDisc. BUT some do and I'm a happy camper. I'm so glad I was obsessed with MiniDisc during the last recession because I bought a bunch of them and they are now too expensive to collect. Long live the MiniDisc!!!

[@alexwhite3271]

You saved me from dragging out the old Windows tower. My daughter was using our minidisc & wanted new songs. Was searching for linux solution and wanted to play some youtube video during the search. Thank goodness! Loads easier.

[@theclovercross]

This is gold content! I still use sonic stage on an old laptop that I need to boot up in a separate mode to get it to work. What I use minidisc for is mainly stuff that ain't up on Spotify.

[@moviebod]

I watched your video twice. What an amazing piece of software. I can't wait to try it out. Thanks.

[@juan-HiFi]

A few years ago I used SonicStage on my old Sony Laptop to make my minidiscs. I never liked the sound, it was metallic-scratchy. With the use of the Toslink cable the sound improved a lot in my recordings. I accidentally discovered the Web Minidisc a year ago. It was easy to use on my pc and I immediately noticed that the sound is incredibly close to the cd (if you listen to it with your eyes closed). Since then I have been re-recording all my minidiscs and only use the SP format. Thanks for the video. Greetings from California Techmoan.😉

[@GundermannSTUDIO]

Thank you so much! I always hated SonicStage and nowadays I only managed to got it working on a virtual machine running Windows XP. But my MZ-N505 runs just fine with Web Minidisc Pro as an app.

[@lightfantastik]

OMG, I've been waiting for this for decades. I've got so many live recordings that I've been too lazy to manually convert them to mp3 or .wav because I'd have to do it in real time, and it'd take forever. I really hope my unit is compatible!

[@lightfantastik]

Dude, we're talking boxes and boxes of discs, some of which I don't even have interest in, but they're one-of-a-kind recordings that *other* people may want to hear. We're not talking about some silly playlist of common music I could just download somewhere. It'd be a very time consuming archival process. If it's so f-ing simple, how 'bout you volunteer to do it for me? Thought not.

[@lightfantastik]

@@Spearca I'm not sure why you felt the need to reply at all. It's not helpful in any way. "Why are you so hostile?", lol. Hmm, IDK maybe because I just expressed joy that something that is a pain in the ass is no longer a pain in the ass, and some yahoo chimes in with "You should just do it the pain in the ass way anyhow", like I hadn't considered that in 20+ frickin' years 🙄. Just keep on scrolling next time.

[@rcajavus8141]

I truly think its a matter of months till someone makes a brand new MD format drive/player just by how much popular the format has became in last couple of years

[@chriscutress1702]

Through hardware I can still transfer from a prepared CDR (master) to a MD. Some theatre companies still use MD for background sound. Most spot sounds use either a computer or keyboard samplers. Love your videos of old tech. So much of the fantastic old tech has disappeared which is sad. The new tech isn't always better ... just different and more expensive.

[@VOByRobbins]

Great video and yes, those creators making this software are definitely keeping MD alive!!!!! Thank you Techmoan, love your videos and I love MD! have been using it ever since I saw its intro at the CES show back then--! Thanks!!

[@Uzeless]

This has made me a HAPPY HAPPY man indeed! I am now transferring all my FLAC files to MD for future listening pleasures!!

[@jamesbarry6248]

always loved the MD format ,glad to someone else who did as well.

[@guidoguloff3056]

Thank You very much for your investigations and sharing of this informations. I have an NetMD 710 since 2003 for voice- and noise-recordings. Recordings ok, but the usb-transfer-blocking was a thing, that i dont have expected. I was very frustrated, the idea of MDs was superior and is anyway.