It’s been a long time since I wrote anything on the blog, but it’s definitely have been a pretty busy year. Mostly a lot of things to do at work. However, I did get into something weird this last year.
What I’m referring to is the my rediscovered interest in MiniDisc. For a lot of the world, MiniDisc was never a thing and very few people in the US have even heard about it. It was big in Japan and there was definitely quite a few users in Europe. The format was invented by Sony, so most of the devices were made by them. The first player was on the market in 1992 and the last of the Sony devices were made in 2006.
I got an Sharp-MT20 during my visiting my brother in Japan in 2000, when he was working there for a year. I bought it in a store in Akihabara and I used it when I was there to do some recordings, for example the subway, a monastary and pachinko. I used that player for about 4 years until I got an iPod from my great aunt.
I had almost forgotten that I used to use MDs until I read about Minidiscs a bit before christmas last year. I believe it was when reading about the Web MiniDisc app written by Stefano Brilli. He had managed to create a web app that can connect with WebUSB to NetMD compatible MD recorders to be able to transfer music over USB instead of recording with optical or line in.
After that I bought a few recorders and players and now I have 6 MD players/recorders!
(From left to right: MZ-M200, MZ-E620, MZ-E630, MZ-N710, MZ-N707 and the orange “Wienerdog” is a Sanyo MD-U4R
I have also helped both Stefano with some PRs for the Web MD app and also Gavin, who has created Platinum MD (a more traditional app that works for Mac, Windows and Linux), with some PRs.
I really like the format and the tactile way of enjoying albums. It also feels like a nice stress free way to enjoy music when you are out and about. You pick one or two discs and then you head out. No tapping around in Spotify when you’re out to find the “perfect” song.