I loved my sharp minidisc player/recorder. LP2 was good mix of size/compression. I lusted for ages over the minidisc disk drive you could put in your pc and use minidiscs as mini disks 🤣. my mate had a bookshelf minidisc player, that was really sweet. could play a cd and record to md all in the one bookshelf unit.

My car has a minidisc player (Japanese import so of course it does. 😉 ) I've never found a single minidisc for it or even seen one advertised in the local classifieds. It also has a 10-disc CD changer in the boot and a 3.5mm input so I don't really see any reason to bother. Cool tech though.

-

I'm totally with you. I got my first MD unit in '98, a portable model that i still have, specifically to record mixes onto as an upgrade from cassette. As a result i have never owned a CD Walkman. The Sony software was absolutely gash in my opinion but the SB Live! came with an awesome piece of software called Minidisc Centre that allowed me to record mixes and CDs to MD via optical out, including track breaks. I would record an entire mix into Cool Edit and chop it up beforehand.

I worked in a computer store at the time and my manager was also a DJ. Head office used to send down a Minidisc with their 'radio station' on it. Of course we never played that and instead played out our mixes instead!

The next portable music device i bought was a SmartMedia device and the rest is history but, just last month, I built an XP system with an SB Live! installed so i could mess about with it again.

I also craved the disk drive and the closest i got was when I bought what i thought was a superior player with a USB connection, thinking i could transfer music in something other than real-time. But no. It was crappy USB sound card! Took it back the very next day.

PeterLI wrote:

Nope. I do not care about music. I like LaserDisc though.

And, er, where's your portable Laserdisc player? 😉

MiniDiscs, here in Greece, were common among teenagers in the very late 90s-early 2000s. When greek-made "uplifting trance" music (in fact MadTracker module music) was in fashion, they used them to make compilations, trade unreleased tracks, even record live sets straight from the mixer, by splitting the output! Shortly afterwards, mid-2000s, portable MP3 players and the cheesy full-on psytrance craze had both replaced their ancestors...

-

I was going to buy one when they were new in the store (kept looking at them at BestBuy) but changed my mind. At the time my Alpine CD deck in my car could read CDR so I just made CDs. Also a 100 CD changer was more practical.

The only gear of that era I bothered getting later on was a Panasonic DAT player/recorder (couldn't find the Technics version but close enough). I still want a high end 3 head fully motorized tape deck for my old metal tapes.

The recordable cd to the masses is what I went with. Friend had a minidisc. I sold literally 100's of bootleg cd's and games while in highschool. Paid for a whole new system. ^.^ Then the whole mp3 on a CD was the best thing EVER. suddenly I had 100 of my songs at my fingertips.

I still have my Yamaha dual cassette deck in working condition and more than a hundred "cassettes" (from 1985-1996). 🤣

Still listen them from time to time, but unfortunately, their quality is degrading over time, as expected.

I almost purchased a MiniDisc recorder and portable unit when Sony did a combo offer on the units back in 1999ish. Right around the time I landed up with a CD-R drive and just started burning CDs as the blanks had just crashed in price. I later got one of those horribly executed MP3 CD players for the car. To its credit, it still works!

On a side note, tapes were still popular in Spain in the late 90s. A friend had an exchange student that specifically requested mix tapes even though sending him CD-Rs were cheap.

psychz wrote:

MiniDiscs, here in Greece, were common among teenagers in the very late 90s-early 2000s. When greek-made "uplifting trance" music (in fact MadTracker module music) was in fashion, they used them to make compilations, trade unreleased tracks, even record live sets straight from the mixer, by splitting the output! Shortly afterwards, mid-2000s, portable MP3 players and the cheesy full-on psytrance craze had both replaced their ancestors...

Hey, I happen to like all that stuff. Nowadays they all play that stupid big room crap.

NJRoadfan wrote:

Hey, I happen to like all that stuff. Nowadays they all play that stupid big room crap.

Me too, in fact it's what I do in my spare time when not fooling around with retro rigs <shameless plug> 😉