Erased
@Supercolor_T-120 LOL. Do you 2 still have working MD devices? I still have one of these and it works perfectly.
/off topic
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Nah my R50 fell off a chair while recording and took a permanent nap, tried to replace it with one from ebay but got sent a broken one and was too young and naĂŻve to realise I could get my money back. Kinda gave up after that.
Nice compact unit you got there with the pearl sparkle and skip protection, hang on to that one.
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I’ve got one of the earlier, boxy silver versions of what you have, with the wired remote and an extra battery pack that screws on and lets you use two AAs. $7 at a thrift shop ages ago, still works and I’ve got 3 or 4 blanks left but I moved not too long ago and it’s still packed in one of the low priority boxes in the closet, so I can’t post a photo and keep the derail going any more.
EDIT: I still use chisels and hand saws, too, now that you mention it.
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You have a laser cut machine working with 2AAs ? Cool. 
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Yeah, I definitely didn’t mean to quote that post, no idea what I did there. And now the quote button doesn’t do anything (that’s why I didn’t quote the post I’m answering, I tried!), I think the Firefox update I installed might be messing things up.
Yeah, that’s it. Blame the software.
Anyhow, since it looks like this has officially turned in to the “has MiniDisc aged well?” thread here’s mine. Only issue is that the rechargeable battery was just starting to leak when I got it, and I never got a new one and didn’t really clean up the battery contact as well as I would today so I don’t know if it would run on an internal battery anymore at all. But it works fine with the power supply.
It’s amazing how quickly gear gets dusty, I usually lay a pillowcase over that stuff but I forgot to put it back after I had practice the night before last and look at things now!
EDIT: that skip protection would be nice to have, I was using this thing to record shows for a while when I was playing out a lot with bands and solo, but it would always skip on the low bass notes if the PA system was loud. Skip protection would make it a lot more usable for that sort of thing. Also it has a digital out but only an analog in so there’s no way to record to it without getting the sound of its A/D converters, too. If it had full digital I/O I’d be a lot more liely to dump an entire mix to it jsut to get that sweet, sweet ATRAC.
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i owned the very same one, gotta love that sony jog dial remote. i was the coolest kid in grade 8 lol
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Another MiniDisc lover here, had tons of them over the years, the best being a Sony professional MDS-E12, sounds great, rackmount, ps2 keyboard port for naming and editing, etc I also have a couple of portables MZR-37 and another in the loft, I had a hi-md but did not really like it, it sounded nowhere near as punchy for some reason.
I never tried any of the 4 track MD portastudios but thought they looked interesting, could probably be abused with edits for cut-up collages and whatnot, bouncing and so forth.
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It was partly mp3 that killed it and partly Sony’s reluctance to open up the format. Wasn’t the first time they clung to proprietary standards to their own detriment.
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I still have a Sony MD somewhere and a bunch of interviews and live sets recorded on it. The only problem I had eventually was getting material off the MD onto a computer - recording the output via line in seemed to be the only way I could do so.
It was great for putting place markers into recorded tracks and then playing on random to make cut-ups.
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I think that’s when they switched from ATRAC3 to ATRAC3plus, at least that’s what the Wikipedia entry on ATRAC seems to say.
EDIT: I hadn’t checked in a few years and figured it wasn’t likely to happen, but it looks like someone is currently working on an open source, software encoder for ATRAC and ATRAC3 (not plus), which is pretty cool in my book, I would absolutely transcode drum samples in particular to ATRAC3 and back as an effect if this gets finished.
https://github.com/dcherednik/atracdenc
EDIT 2:
This might actually be ready: https://github.com/Treeki/atrac3tool
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I recorded all my CDs on Minidiscs, and finally on the best : tapes ! 
As they are getting old, maybe I should record them on Minidiscs, then Mp3 ? 
I didn’t find my Revox…
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this is the first (and only) MD i’ve ever had, bought in a second hand shop yyyears ago…it did a good job back then. i still use it for the occasional playback of old recordings, or sometimes i take it with me for field recording 
(that’s what i bought it for in the first place at the time)
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Personally I think cassette is an extremely robust format as long as you use a decent well maintained deck and good tapes, I still have tapes from 29 years ago which still play fine! MP3 is the format which I would favour least personally 
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Seconded!
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Yes, I have a copy of the minidisc somewhere. It was good fun.
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My first audio experiments when I was 15 involved two cheap tape recorders.
I’d record guitar onto one tape, and then play that tape while playing more guitar and have the second recorder going for overdub…
Next I’d do crazy stuff like take the tape apart and put the reels in backwards for reverse guitar, and then do more overdub…
Wish I knew where those tapes went…
Oh yeah, back to minidiscs
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I was jocking of course but now I’m too lazy to turn or rewind the tapes, and I can’t play them randomly. Same for vinyls, except rewind, for scratch !
I did an experience too with tapes, when I was around 15, unmounting the head, in order to mimic scratch with tapes glued on linear pieces of wood. Not very convincing results.
Now I mimic it with OT. 
To go back to the new topic MDs “were” very intesting for audio editing too !
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I remember now I did it too, don’t remember if it was with a double dec with another input or what…
Edit : ah and pressing the play button in order to slow down the recording, fast speed after. Analog glitch, I didn’t think I did it before. Thanks for REM…hem !
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