MiniDisc (MD) - Appreciation (Video)

[StevenEleven]

What a great shot! Did you set it up just now?

I set it up for an ASR thread on vintage cassettes in February 2020. I crashed the party with a minidisc pic:

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...ur-vintage-cassettes.11286/page-2#post-323224

 

[Pluto]

IMHO MD was just about the best domestic recording format ever devised. ATRAC, certainly in its later incarnation, wasn't at all bad but the main thing was that MD was the perfect format for cars. Robust, sufficiently buffered to be immune to the rigours of automotive life, easily edited and reused, convenient in every particular.

And the best thing of all about the format was the fact that it was magneto-optical storage; quite possibly the most robust storage format yet devised, proof against more or less anything apart from mechanical destruction. You might argue that flash memory storage is more robust, but its cost per hour precludes its viability as a long term storage medium. There is no fundamental physical reason (to my knowledge) that magneto-optical disks would not remain viable for a thousand years if stored under reasonable conditions.

Had it not been for the absurd DCC, MD may well have caught on. Had it not been for the timely arrival of the first iPod, MD may well have caught on. If, if, if only…

 

[AudioSceptic]

IMHO MD was just about the best domestic recording format ever devised. ATRAC, certainly in its later incarnation, wasn't at all bad but the main thing was that MD was the perfect format for cars. Robust, sufficiently buffered to be immune to the rigours of automotive life, easily edited and reused, convenient in every particular.

And the best thing of all about the format was the fact that it was magneto-optical storage; quite possibly the most robust storage format yet devised, proof against more or less anything apart from mechanical destruction. You might argue that flash memory storage is more robust, but its cost per hour precludes its viability as a long term storage medium. There is no fundamental physical reason (to my knowledge) that magneto-optical disks would not remain viable for a thousand years if stored under reasonable conditions.

Had it not been for the absurd DCC, MD may well have caught on. Had it not been for the timely arrival of the first iPod, MD may well have caught on. If, if, if only…

Yes, especially when it became usable for lossless with the 1 GB capacity.

Your middle para makes it an even greater shame that MD didn't take over the computer market for portable/backup storage. Think of those ridiculous stacks of floppies it took for some app installs.

 

[Bullwinkle J Moose]

I have dozens of Sony Mini Discs but I have never used a minidisc

Confused yet?

The Sony mini DVD-RW is extremely reliable and came in 1.4 and 2.8GB capacity

https://www.amazon.in/Sony-plus-Spindle-Skin-Pack/dp/B000TQB8DS

I use them for operating System backups, Boot Utilities, MP3 backups etc.

The standard optical disc was always my preferred choice since 1975

In early 75, there were many articles in the audio magazines (remember them?) about whether Sony would standardize the digital audio tape or the CD-Rom for consumer use

I wanted the CD-ROM, because as the technology improved, we would expand the capacity, then create recordable discs, and lastly, create rewritable discs

I wanted the RANDOM ACCESS optical disc to be the standard and went so far as to write to the president of Sony America at their Corporate Headquarters in Buena Park California in the fall of 1975, explaining why consumers like me wanted random access and sending him designs of how a digital disc player should look and function

I knew it would be several years before home computers would be common, and we would be stuck with Non-Recordable discs for a long time, but the future is here now

I don't "normally" do compressed audio (or data)
But I do have Read Only Backups of several operating systems on a single 100GB Blue-Ray disc to prevent Ransomware or any other type of malware

When Hard drives and SSD's begin shipping with a hardware write protect switch, I may retire the optical disc format

Until then, I think I'll keep my data!

and too bad a modern SSD can only retain data (unplugged) for a year or two though, instead of the 1000 year retention of a Blu-Ray M-Disc

I've owned several PC's since DOS 3.0 and have NEVER bought a CD, DVD or Blu-Ray "player" for ANY of them!

I've always had "recordable" drives and discs from their very beginning!

Players are for those who rent the future
Recorders are for those who own the future

 

[mononoaware]

The Sony mini DVD-RW is extremely reliable and came in 1.4 and 2.8GB capacity

I remember these. Not so sure about in other countries but in Japan Sony Handycam (portable video-recorders) had some models that used these as storage.

Also remember CD singles being sold in this size (mini CD?).
A good way to reduce wasted empty space on a CD I guess. . . and environment something something.

When Hard drives and SSD's begin shipping with a hardware write protect switch, I may retire the optical disc format

Interesting point.
One format that does have the physical write protect switch is the SD card. Not exactly the last word in reliability though (you hear many stories of photographers/videographers losing data due to corruption).

 

[mononoaware]

if stored under reasonable conditions.

A few years ago I learned that the average lifespan of a CD was around 20 years.
I did not believe it at first, but then soon after I tried to play some of my oldest CD’s and they would not play.
Thinking it was odd I inspected one closely and noticed the reflective surface had started to degrade in tiny spots behind the plastic.
It almost looked like rotting or rust had formed, I opened up and inspected a few other CD’s and the degradation was even worse and obvious (visible from hand distance).
Some of the old CD’s had no noticeable deterioration but still would not play.

So it seems even with the best data retention the physical storage media is most susceptible to environment and weathering, therefore after a certain point some could assume the ultra-long data retention pointless. . .

 

[mjwin]

I got into MiniDisc right at the end of its lifespan, just as the Hi-MD format was introduced around 2004. I was getting back into sound recording after a 20 year hiatus & wanted a decent portable recording device for an art project. I'd always disregarded MD due to the compressed audio format, and I didn't want to shell out for a portable DAT recorder with all the problems of the fragile tape/mechanism, but now that there was a device which could record an hour of uncompressed PCM on a robust disk, this seemed ideal. So I bought a Sony MZ-NH1, and it was a revelation! No tape hiss / flutter, a low noise mic input & and a worthy successor to my trusty WMD6C of a generation earlier.

The downside was, as has been mentioned before, the way in which Sony decided to neuter the technology. Having moved from a technology centred company to a media centred one, they were still obsessed by the whole concept of recording, but now in an entirely negative way. The idea that anyone should be able to make a copy of anything was unthinkable. So they had to turn around and break their brilliant Hi-MD innovation by preventing any data transfer to another device without simultaneously deleting the original recording... Imagine transferring a prized recording to pc, knowing that the original would be erased. No opportunity for backup, and a huge risk with no return should there be a transfer problem! Of course, absolutely no-go for a sound recordist! This meant that recordings needed to be transferred in real time through the analog output. Quality was pretty good, fortunately, but certainly not living up to the potential of the medium. The other major issue was that the ergonomics of this tiny device were truly abysmal. Some controls were present on the machine itself, whilst others were accessible only by using a tiny and awkward module mounted in line with the headphone cable. As I recall, there were other annoying operational quirks, too.

I used it for my project & it worked. But the NH1 was soon replaced by one of the new generation Fostex solid state recorders, with XLR inputs, chunky controls and plug&play USB connectivity. The real difference being that these were designed specifically for sound recordists whereas, Sony, in their corporate mindset, had perhaps forgotten for whom HI-MD was originally intended.

I have fond memories of the MD era and the marvel of miniaturization that these portable devices were. My MZ-NH1 probably still works (battery permitting), but I've no more recordings left to transfer & time has moved on, as it does.

 

[julian_hughes]

I had a MD recording walkman and an ultra slim playback only walkman, also a full size hifi component. I still have a very nice stereo Sony portable CD/MD/FM&AM radio portable from that time. I only occasionally use the CD and radio and never the MD these days. It can record from CD to MD and you can add text and so on. I did love the little devices but that was about 20 years ago! Maybe a little more. Once I got my hands on an iRiver H140 player with 40GB storage I never really needed minidisc again. It was a huge advance over cassettes and far more convenient than CDs for walkman type players but I did find that over the years almost every disc, pre-recorded or home made, did corrupt in the end. Currently I have a Fiio M3K with a 512GB microSD card and Rockbox installed, and a nice Sony smartphone with a 1TB microSD card so all my music these days is lossless, not ATRAC, and the Fiio device is about half the size of even the smallest, slimmest MD walkman, sounds great, has 25 hours playback on a charge and shows me the cover art and metadata. I loved those MD devices at the time and spent quite a lot of money on them but time marches on.

 

[Beershaun]

I loved Minidisc! I had a player/recorder at home, a head unit in my car, and a portable walkman. I had everything I needed to create my own little music ecosystem back before streaming. I remember at the time burning CDs was becoming the popular way to copy your music or create "mix disks" Minidisc was great as I could digitally copy, erase, copy again, just like the old tape cassette days.

Now for a trip in the way back machine to the late '90's.
For discovering new music I used to play the digital radio stations from my cable box and run the output into the minidisc player at home, set a disc to record, head to work, then come home and have new music to randomly discover on the drive to work the next morning. Good times! I thought Minidisc as a fantastic format to replace the tape cassette for portability and reusability.

 

[julian_hughes]

One negative thing I do recall is how incredibly irritating I found the copy protection. I couldn't just copy a track from one MD to another but had to rip from scratch each time. Really dumb. I was *delighted* when portable large capacity hard disk players became available and all those restrictions could be left behind.

 

[Pluto]

Some of the old CD’s had no noticeable deterioration but still would not play

It is my understanding that magneto-optical recording formats are somewhat more resilient than the pit process used by pure optical systems, the core reason being that it takes a combination of physical forces (heat and an intense magnetic field) to change the state of an M-O bit cell.

It is far easier for an optical-only disc (CD, DVD and its derivatives) to degrade to the point beyond which reliable reading is no longer possible, than it is for the bit cells on an M-O disc to change at random. In other words, after an M-O cell is written (using a combination of a laser to heat the cell to the Curie Point and an intense magnetic field to flip the data state) it will remain in that state for, more or less, eternity. There are very few circumstances that would be capable of corrupting the data on an M-O disc without resulting in total destruction of the media.

 

[restorer-john]

Yes, the construction of the mechanisms was veryyy lightweight. The entire line-up of home audio car and portable where prone to bent loading assemblies. But all parts where available and one just needed to order them and they arrived. Sony support ruled and was not exceed by any other companies other than what was comparable like Denon and Lenbrook.

For parts, Sony was brilliant for sure, but Yamaha were better for audio spare parts. Pioneer weren't far behind either. Ah, the good old days.

Remember the blue boxes?

 

[mononoaware]

There are very few circumstances that would be capable of corrupting the data on an M-O disc without resulting in total destruction of the media.

Yes but I am wondering about the environmental weathering a MiniDisc could withstand.
I assume Sony would have thought of all this and designed it well to prevent humidity and moisture entering the MiniDisc etc.
I vaguely recall opening a cheap MiniDisc to see what was inside, it was a mirror finish on both sides I think. . . and it was more of a “bare” disc, without the clear plastic protection found on a CD.

And CD’s have a printable surface on one side, which I can also vaguely recall someone explaining how “printing” on this side could actually affect the CD’s longevity negatively (at least with CD-R’s - not sure about factory made CD’s).
My thoughts are with a CD the printable surface is very thin and actually can compromise the actual optical surface (data) which sits protected by clear plastic on the other side.

 

[Doodski]

For parts, Sony was brilliant for sure, but Yamaha were better for audio spare parts. Pioneer weren't far behind either. Ah, the good old days.

Remember the blue boxes?
View attachment 136121View attachment 136122

Hehe. When I saw the Sony parts box I was trying to remember the common part numbers for Sony disc motors. I replaced so many that I had the part numbers memorized.

 

[Pluto]

Yes but I am wondering about the environmental weathering a MiniDisc could withstand

MD for recording used a fundamentally different technology to commercial pre-recorded MD. The latter used a purely optical approach that was much like CD at the physical level. The former is based on the Magneto-Optical principle and is far more robust in every important respect than the latter. The quid pro quo here is that M-O writing (at least in its standard variant) was considered slow owing to the fact that writing required two revolutions, the first to heat the required cells with the laser and the second to adjust the residual magnetic field.

So an MD player actually has to be able to support two entirely different technologies.

To answer your question, a recordable MD could stand immense “environmental weathering”, having all the advantages of M-O technology, possibly the toughest recording approach yet devised by man requiring, as I said in an earlier post, a combination of thermal and magnetizing forces to corrupt the data*. Accelerated life tests suggested survival times well in excess of pure optical recording. Common sense supports this; we all have experience of optical disks (CD, DVD etc.) that become unreadable for no obvious reason. I have never encountered a subsequent read error on M-O media that has been written-to and successfully verified.

*It was Sony's boast that forces strong enough to corrupt the data would probably also destroy the medium entirely. In other words, the chances of data corruption on a disc that was essentially intact were very low indeed.

 

[vhild§]

I cherish the hipster moment these days, when I take out an MD player while commuting and notice the bewildered glances around me.

 

[mononoaware]

MD for recording used a fundamentally different technology to commercial pre-recorded MD. The latter used a purely optical approach that was much like CD at the physical level. The former is based on the Magneto-Optical principle and is far more robust in every important respect than the latter. The quid pro quo here is that M-O writing (at least in its standard variant) was considered slow owing to the fact that writing required two revolutions, the first to heat the required cells with the laser and the second to adjust the residual magnetic field.

So an MD player actually has to be able to support two entirely different technologies.

To answer your question, a recordable MD could stand immense “environmental weathering”, having all the advantages of M-O technology, possibly the toughest recording approach yet devised by man requiring, as I said in an earlier post, a combination of thermal and magnetizing forces to corrupt the data*. Accelerated life tests suggested survival times well in excess of pure optical recording. Common sense supports this; we all have experience of optical disks (CD, DVD etc.) that become unreadable for no obvious reason. I have never encountered a subsequent read error on M-O media that has been written-to and successfully verified.

*It was Sony's boast that forces strong enough to corrupt the data would probably also destroy the medium entirely. In other words, the chances of data corruption on a disc that was essentially intact were very low indeed.

Thank you for all the information.
I can rely on a quote from Sony (especially Sony back then).

Based on how immensely strong survival times I guess it was a good dying storage medium to pick (they have been sitting in a box for decade now but I can rely on them to pick up where they left off).

 

[MCH]

If I look for it, I might find my Sony MZ-R30 (the first portable recorder one I think) somewhere in my mothers place, and I bet it still works. What a piece of technology! Was such a step up from cassettes to tape live shows.... Bought it used in the early 00s and was still feeling so much better built than the more recent smaller models...

 

[mononoaware]

If I look for it, I might find my Sony MZ-R30 (the first portable recorder one I think) somewhere in my mothers place, and I bet it still works. What a piece of technology! Was such a step up from cassettes to tape live shows.... Bought it used in the early 00s and was still feeling so much better built than the more recent smaller models...
View attachment 147420

Probably the only possibility is microscopic mould/fungi growth jamming up the mechanicals if it was stored in a dark place for a long period. . .
Hopefully it is still fully functional.

I got rid of all my portable player/recorders but that’s what I would expect if I still had one stored somewhere without regular use.

 

[AudioSceptic]

I cherish the hipster moment these days, when I take out an MD player while commuting and notice the bewildered glances around me.

Perhaps the same would happen with an iPod (the "classic" ones, not the touch, which is so like an iPhone)?

It so happens that I've just replaced the 20 GB HDD in a 4th gen iPod with an iFlash adapter and 256 GB card. Filling it with music right now. ;-)