Having been following the TP7 talk, I was reminded that there were 4 and 8 track recorders that used Minidisc Data discs - as a big fan of the MD, I wondered if anyone here used them in the day?
For those unaware, Sony, Tascam and Yamaha made them, with all being 4 track apart from the Yamaha MD8 which could do a maximum of 8.
Units required specific MD Data discs, which had 140MB capacity, with a total record time of 37mins in 4 track mode and 18mins in 8 track.
A loooooong time ago we recorded a few basement tracks on one of those. The quality was pretty good as I remember but it was so long ago (18-20 years?) all I can tell you is that my friend who I was recording with got rid of it because the media was already so expensive at the time. I’m pretty sure it was the tascam 564, definitely not 8 tracks. I thought it was fostex but I’m looking and the closest I see to what I remember is the tascam.
Occasionally, I get GAS for a film camera again. Then I remind myself that even if I buy the cheapest possible film camera, my film costs will exceed a new Leica setup in a few years if I shoot heavily.
Minidiscs aren’t quite as bad since you should be able to reuse them over and over and over again.
I gotta say, I’m considering picking up a 4 track model as a number of them come with a data disc and as you say you can write over it.
Would be cool to run my modular into then transfer the tracks to my MPC Live one by one, save the project and wipe the disc.
The MD8 would be even better still as 18mins is plenty and would allow for a mix of stereo and mono instruments, but it’s pretty big.
But MD was the format of my teenage years, so it’s mostly nostalgia mixed in with the fact they are so cheap right now.
I have a Leica M2 with 50 Summilux and my grandfather’s Yashica Mat medium format TLR and I haven’t shot film for 10 year now due to the price.
The Summilux gets used on my Leica CL digital, and takes better pictures anyways.
Yup, used one of these a long time ago, it was a minidisc portastudio of some kind (can’t remember which, one of my band members borrowed it for a few sessions so it wasn’t mine).
I remember it was a breath of fresh air compared with DAT and ADAT because we could jump straight to cue points without endless FF/rewind. Also no anxiety about tape failure (DATs could be finicky, worse than analog tape if the machine wasn’t looked after).
Sound quality was great for the time (probably still is, it was 44kHz/16bit from memory so good enough for most purposes if you gain stage properly).
MiniDiscs were quite expensive so tended to be reused a lot. But they were also quite tough, the platter thing (like a mini CD) was inside a protective plastic case. And they were really small so easy to lose! Not as bad as a SD card but in the same zone.
They would glitch if you bashed the recorder/player just like a CD player would jump/glitch so it was important to keep the thing on a flat stable surface.
Pretty much the best option for tracking with hardware until hard disc recording became more affordable and then SD cards took over. And of course computing power increased massively so DAW multitracking broke out of the ProTools realm and became available for everyone.
I’m a huge MD fan so it’s not a hard sell. Considering picking up a little 4 track model just for recording my modular, then stemming them out to my MPC Live one by one. Looks like they often come with a MD Data disc, I’d only need one.