The MiniDisc Video

Let's look at the history of MiniDisc, repair my broken player, then do some tests on the format and its ATRAC compression scheme. This is probably going to be my one and only video on MiniDisc, so it's packed full of stuff - basically three videos in one. Along the way I discover that MiniDisc really was an overlooked gem of a format - probably my favorite physical format of the 1990's.

A few shoutouts/links to other channels/videos mentioned in this video:

David Mellor's Audio Masterclass: @AudioMasterclass
Techmoan: @Techmoan
This Does Not Compute: @ThisDoesNotCompute
VWestlife: @vwestlife

Music credits (from the YouTube Audio Library):
Jeremy Blake - Let's Go Home
Dan Henig - Eternal Garden

00:00 Intro/History
12:34 Repair
27:08 Audio tests
47:54 Outro

[Techmoan]

I appreciate the mentions and your very considered and sensible approach to MiniDisc.
I guess melted loading belts are just going to become more common. I’m glad I replaced mine when I did.

[vwestlife]

Mary-Chapin Carpenter's "Come On Come On" album is almost exactly as loud as that Oasis album, but doesn't get much recognition because it's a Country album from 1992, which was before the CD loudness war was even a recognized phenomenon, and it used old-fashioned analog compression to make it loud, rather than digital brickwalling. Plus it's a well-recorded and well-mixed album despite its loudness, whereas everything from Oasis sounds like distorted mush.

[truecrimescotsman]

I must confess after using thousands of Cassette tapes with my ZX81, C64, in multiple cars and about a dozen ghetto blasters, walkmans and players, not once did I ever experience a tape getting chewed up.

Thanks for the upload.

[PabSungenis]

The one industry to wholeheartedly adopt MD in the 90’s was broadcasting. Being able to record up to 8 hours on a disc instead of one hour on a reel of tape made time delaying programs so much easier. MD lasted until hard drive space became ridiculously cheap.

[crunchyfrog]

I've used many formats over the yearsand I've always gone for the stuf that was convenient. I got on CD very early purely because I saw the benefit of using it in my DJ business. Along with 12" singles, it worked very well.
But when Minidsc came out I could see it was unlikely to suceed but I kept an eye out for some shops selling their stock off cheap as I saw benfit to using it it to record my own songs.
I bought a cheap Sony unit and 90 blank discs that were being sold off cheap.
And since then I 've ended up using them more and more over the years. I've used them for backing up old computer casettes, but I've ended up loving the sound of Minidsc. I use it most nights to lay in bed listening to. Works for me.

[andraxil]

Minidisc players were available from Sony in a very compact Walkman size and it was the perfect format in the late 90’s for taking my favorite music on a run! These Minidisc players were able to read ahead and buffer multi-second segments of the music, largely as a power-saving feature so that the disc wouldn’t have to spin continually. It ran on just a single AA battery. Sony touted “G-protection”, making the mechanisms more fault-tolerant even when being jostled and bumped. All that meant it was robust enough to not skip when it was subjected to repeated shaking even in the midst of a sprint. No other format could offer that performance, with the higher quality and seekability of digital. It was definitely underrated by the public. You’ve prompted me to pull my player out of storage tonight in a bit of nostalgia. Still works! Thanks for this great video.

[proffessasvids]

Just to mention.. your player is atrac3 which means it has atrac type R dsp for SP. Type R is the pinnacle that atrac got to. LP and net-md were a step down from type R. hi-md was straight pcm so was literally 16bit 44.1khz lossless xx

[JeanKatana]

I used MiniDisc for maybe 10 years, I loved it!
Compact mobile in my pocket and in my car, was great!
(Nobody used LP2, or LP4 ;) )

[wojiaobill]

im a simple man. i see Minidisc, i click.

[jaygothard]

I remember when I was 19 and the idea of being able to record on a disc captured my imagination. I ended of finding a way to at least borrow $700 to buy a player/recorder. The SQ was VERY disappointing compared to CD even on my crappy audio system at the time.

I talked to someone about minidiscs and they wrote it off as "trim 20% of the top, trim 20% off the bottom, put is on a little disc, and charge a fortune for it. The analysis of the waveform confirms what he said and what my ears were telling me. Turns out he was right on the money.

[davidpatton]

I was a solo musician right around the time MiniDisc made it's premiere in the market and bought the MZ-1 for recording backup tracks. I was using cassette tapes which had no random seek so I was locked into the same set list unless I recorded a new tape with the songs in a different order. CD-R technology was limited to SCSI writers which were very expensive, problematic, portable CD players were prone to skipping and there were format incompatibilities too. The MiniDisc gave me random seek, titles, shuffle (not so good for a live gig but fun when listening to music), portability and a rugged player. Eventually I got some decks and a multitrack unit for more pro sounding recordings. I still have some decks and portables that work but my multitrack has died. Great format but poorly marketed with too much proprietary nonsense and lack of foresight killed the MiniDisc. It is now relegated to instructional and repair videos, like this one. Kudos for keeping the memory alive!

[kevinh]

The only major market Minidisc failed in was the US, as you say it was hugely successful in Japan but it also saw decent success in Europe and the UK. There was a time when every single major electrical retailer here had several minidisc recorders, portables and mini system on their shelves and blank discs were plentiful and relatively cheap. Pre recorded discs however were another matter, they pretty much disappeared within a few years except maybe in the largest of music stores in the the major cities.

I was a huge Minidisc fan for years, had several recorders and portables over the years. Today I still have two stand alone recorders, one from Yamaha and one from Sony as well as a Sony HiMD portable and all three still work. The most unreliable units I ever bought all came from Sharp, a three CD/minidisc combo unit that was great for a few years and then the minidisc side failed, and a portable that lasted barely two years before it couldn't read discs anymore.

I've been an early adopter for some technologies over the years but have also bought second hand equipment that I couldn't afford back in the day from Ebay etc. over the last couple of decades to play around with. My best bargain was probably a Tascam DA-20 DAT Recorder from Ebay that I bagged fully working for just £50 several years ago. One of it's interesting features was the ability to completely disable SCMS because it was a semi professional unit and it was common to be able to disable the protection on these. Considering these now go for around £250 that was an absolute bargain at the time.

[taffeylewis]

I have an MDS-JE330. It worked about a year ago, so I must dig it out and check those belts. Loved MD back in the day, as I used to work for Sony so had access to the staff shop. They alwats had blank MDs. Even had MD in the car for a while. Thanks for the video, and never worry about the tech bits being boring. They are always worth this time in my book.

[gideon]

Minidisc did not fail in the UK. It had good success until replaced by solid state digital record and playback systems. There were many portables and home decks sold and it also enjoyed professional use too.

[bwest]

I freakin love the MD. Went all in with MD in the early 2000’s with a few top end Sharp 1-Bit home systems like the SD-SG11. Still have them today and they still work and look great. It was such a media ahead of its time. Really enjoyed how robust MD is physically, and the fact you can erase and re-record on them and have CD quality was amazing.

[POEMS]

Wow. Even if you're not a professional sound engineer, your testing is masterful! You covered everything I could think of, and more. Personally, when recording a minidisc, I use a cd or wav file from one. Then run that signal through a separate dac and into the minidisc recorder.set for sp or normal recording. To my old ears the playback sound on a portable minidisc player is better than the same tracks at 320 kbps MP3s on portable MP3 players. I also have a minidisc deck in my home stereo hi-fi stacks. The difference between the minidisc and the cd is not much on my home hi-fi gear. Not much of a difference that I can hear anyway. To me, Cds, minidiscs, and CCTs are fun formats. I get a kick out of hard media. And I really like hearing an entire album from track one to track last. There's a worthwhile experience we're missing out on when we just cherry pick tracks on a streaming service. Or when we allow an algorithm to do that for us.

[thatguyontheright]

I was a kid when Last Action Hero came out, and there was a shot where Arnold swaps a minidisc in a player to change the music in the movie. I wanted one of those and eventually figured that it was something made for the movie. Then I watched The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, one of the episodes mentions recording a song onto minidisc. Got curious and realized they were the thing Arnold had in Last Action Hero. Eventually got a Minidisc deck and ran with it.

[overmused]

When I worked at a Sony Outlet store back in the late 00s, we had minidisc players and they were pretty much non-movers in the US. However, we had quite a few international travelers, and we got a lot of people who were interested in the mini disc marine head units. I had one guy come in and buy, like...5 or 6 of them for his "various boats"...which I think may have been more mini disc players that we sold for the entire rest of my time there, combined.

Mini disc seemed neat, and I was tempted to get one when we were liquidating them just for the novelty of it all. But I was in college and luxury money mostly went to stuff that I knew I'd use, rather than random dead media formats.

[notreallydaedalus]

I discovered MD in '97 or '98. I read about it in a magazine, I'm sure, but I'd found an online community that was cataloging the JDM hardware and proxy buying them that got me started. A friend at work joined me, abd we each bought a portable player/recorder. It took ages to arrive, but it was live at first sight. I think it was my first experience with pride of ownership. At the time, I was recording in analog to dodge the copy protection, and so that I could level match my mixes.

It was the cost of the blank discs, and the advent of MP3 CD-Rs that killed Minidisc for me. I could put hours of music on a 50¢ CD-R. But it's the hours spent lovingly crafting mixes on tape and MD that triggers nostalgia.

[admiralandersen]

I still love MiniDisc. I use the format almost every day.