MiniDisc is a great format for recording your music. And I'm all for promoting the format, which is why this page exists. This page is broken up into two sections. The first is where you will get to read a lot of propaganda about why MD is such a great format. The second section will give you some pros and cons about MD vs some other formats like CD-R and MP3/Memory Stick Walkman type units.
Why Does MD kick ass? First of all, MD kicks ass because of it's small size. As you can see, the Sony MZ-R55 (pictured above) is smaller in width than the length of a cigarette. It's not even a 100, just a standard Camel Light. Please do not go into any discussions about the health hazards of smoking, because as you can see, the cigarette is not lit, so it is not creating any second hand smoke, and it is not going to start any fires. Also for comparison, I have a ruined CD-R, as well as a MiniDisc. The entire unit is smaller than a cassette tape case.
MiniDiscs are durable like cassettes, have digital sound quality like CD's, yet are more versatile than both. Cassettes are great. You can record on them, and you can even erase old stuff and record new stuff on them. And you don't have to be so careful with handling them, because they have their protective plastic covering. CD's have great sound quality, but they are easily ruined by scratches, and are hard to handle in situations like trying to juggle one while driving your car. MiniDiscs are nearly impossible to scratch due to their floppy disk-like protective covering and are re-recordable, yet even more versatile than cassettes, giving you random track access like a CD, and allowing you to delete and insert tracks anywhere you want, and re-record without loss of sound quality.
And the sound quality is excellent. Though the first generations of MD recorders did have some quality loss over CD, the current models are so good that even trained audiophile expert ears cannot tell the difference between an original music CD and a digitally copied MD of the same recording.
Lastly, MD's just plain look cool!!
Many people already own CD burners, so for them burning CD's makes a lot more sense, especially from an initial cost standpoint. However, there are some distinct disadvantages to CD-R. Note again the photo above. It shows a "ruined" CD-R. It's a coaster. My CD burner had an interrupted flow of data which ruined the whole CD. The CD is useless now, except as a coaster for my drinks. This has never happened to me with a minidisc, and I have never even heard of it happening to anyone with a minidisc.
Secondly, making CD's out of an analog source with a CD burner is quite a chore. You must first digitize your source (be it a tape, record, microphone) before you can put it on your CD. With minidisc, you can just plug in your player and hit record, it is that easy. Even copying directly from CD to CD can yield unsatisfactory results with a computer. The user is often required to first "rip" the source CD to a hard drive in order to be able to keep a steady stream of data going to the CD-R. With minidisc, again, you just plug it in and hit record.
Third, minidiscs are re-recordable, and for all intents and purposes, infinitely so. If you don't like what you put on your MD, just erase it and start all a new. If you made a mix MD and decide you don't like one of the songs anymore, you can erase just that one song, and replace it with something else. You can come back later and add a song to a MD that you've already recorded. You can even make it be the first song. Or the last song. Or the 15th song. You can put it wherever you choose. None of this is possible with CD-R.
Obviously, there are some advantages that a CD-R has over a minidisc. You cannot store data on standard music minidiscs. Secondly, you can't play MD's in a CD player, but you can play your CD-R discs in any CD player. And there is another advantage if you already own a CD-R, and that is, you already own it :)
What about CD-RW? Well, first of all, CD-RW discs are not compatible with most standard audio CD players, which kills the main advantage that recordable CDs have over the minidisc format. Secondly, CD-RW is not infinitely re-recordable, the way minidiscs are, and are not as versatile, in that you cannot just erase one song, or reorder the songs without rewriting the entire disc.
A word about being infinitely re-recordable -- minidiscs actually are not infinitely rerecordable. Sony claims that an MD can be rewritten up to one million times. So, I say that for all intents and purposes, it is infinitely re-recordable.
Portable MP3 players are all the rage these days, but there is one major shortcoming that all solid-state players have when compared to minidisc -- cheap removable media. If you want to change your selection of music, you have to connect your player to your computer and download the new songs you want to listen to. Every time you want to change your music you have to do this. With a minidisc player, it's a matter of popping out a minidisc, and putting in a new one.
Some may say that you can just keep separate memory chips (or cards or sticks or whatever your player uses)... this is true, however, they are not cheap. You may have to spend $50-$100 or more to get a 64 meg chip, which would give you approximately the same minutes of MP3 audio that you would get on a single minidisc, which would only cost you $2-$3. In other words, for the cost of just one 64 meg memory chip, you can buy 25 to 50 blank minidiscs. This downloading may not be a big deal if you are coming home every day, but on a 12 hour plane flight, you might want to have more to listen to than the same 60 minutes of MP3's you already listened to.
Finally, though MP3 often claims to be "CD Quality", it isn't really. MiniDisc has significantly better sound quality than MP3's. MP3's have a distinct "swirling" sound that comes from MPEG compression, as well as many other artifacts like clicks and squeaks. The difference in quality won't be noticible on walkman style headphones while walking down a street, but most car stereos and home theater systems are good enough to make the difference in sound quality evident.
The only advantage I can think of that a solid-state player would have over a minidisc player is that solid state players have no moving parts. This means that they won't ever skip, and will probably never break down because there is essentially no wear and tear. However, I think that the lack of cheap removable media is such a big disadvantage, that this is not really an issue, especially when you consider that virtually ALL portable minidisc players have a 40 second anti-shock memory that is good for just about anything except hard running. Besides, it's just as easy to get MP3's on a minidisc as they are to get into a portable MP3 player... and you really only have to do it once for each song you like because later on you can just switch minidiscs around instead of having to download the MP3's again.
MiniDisc is a great format. Great sound quality, and extremely versatile, and very cool. Once you get started with them, you never want to listen to your music any other way. I myself started out with just that portable MD recorder (the RZ-55). But before long, I had a minidisc deck in my car, and now I even have a CD to MD recording deck for downstairs in the home theater. I've even gotten my friends hooked, one of whom started out with an inexpensive Sharp portable recorder, but also, before long, had a head unit in his car as well. Before we got our car units, we both used cassette tape adaptors, the kind used in cars with portable CD players. There was a marked improvement in sound quality over those adaptors when we switched to dedicated head units, in both cases.
The minidisc format is still pretty obscure in the United States. But it is not going to go away. It already has an extremely large user base in Japan and Europe, so even if it dies out in the US, recorders, players, and media will continue to be made, and thanks to the wonders of the Internet, it will continue to be available. As a matter of fact, I get all of my minidisc stuff over the internet anyways, because the internet stores carry cooler stuff. Many of the items they carry are from overseas and are much cooler than the stuff you will find at The Good Guys or other electronics stores here that only sell the boring stuff that they think Americans want.
A particularly good internet site that I recommend for purchasing MD equipment and media is www.minidisco.com, they stock many foreign-market products but keep their products in a warehouse in California, and thus are able to have your products shipped promptly to you. They are great, and I deal with them all the time. If get something from there, tell 'em that bryan@twentysix.net sent you :)
For more information about the minidisc format in general (including more technical junk than you would ever want to know) check out www.minidisc.org.
-- 2 May 2000, Bryan Hong
Copyright © 2000 Bryan Hong