They never seemed to catch on, but were they any good?
>>130165437they remain good. and they caught on. for enough of us.
>>130165437Minidiscs were pretty banging. Didn't skip like CDs, could play lossless audio, could be recorded on over and over without degrading (unless you were getting into the triple digit reuse territory) and if you just wanted a bunch of music you could convert stuff into MP3 tier quality and each minidisc held about five CDs worth of audio.The players and recorders were pretty banging with the ability to edit track positions without needing to hook them up to a computer. They could also record in real time, coupled with the lossless audio mentioned earlier it's kind of weird they didn't become the standard for master recordings storage. They were replaced by MP3s despite earlier MP3 players being objectively shittier in terms of audio quality, but having a gorillion songs on the old iPod back in the day was a helluva selling point and also having the ability to curate your music by buying individual songs instead of risking the early internet Limewire and Napster virus roulette wheel was pretty big.So, yeah, the tech and final product was absolutely banging for audiophiles and regular music fans, but Apple marketing and storefronts rightly crushed it. Really weird how Sony didn't even try to make a storefront for it until after it was already dead and didn't try to push them as outright CD replacing technology now that I think about it.
>>130165471I noticed that people who did get into them STILL use them and don't switch.
>>130165498minidisc wasnt lossless was it? it used Sony's proprietary lossy encoder which was more or less equivalent to high bitrate mp3, ie not 100% transparent but pretty good and probably indistinguishable from the original given the kind of headphones/earbuds that would be used and the auditory environment portable players are generally used in.
i encountered minidisc one time and it was at a decent time for me
>>130165498/thread
>>130165535Original minidiscs weren't lossless Hi-MD minidiscs are indeed lossless. They came out in around 2004 and you could get them pretty damn cheap on the twilight of the media.
>>130165583Oh and for some god damn reason I have never been able to figure out, the bass on minidisc players are ridiculously strong compared to modern MP3 players. Stock with all things level? They sound nice, crank up the bass to max and it will will rattle your bones provided your speakers can handle it. This was before pussy ass companies got all scared about hearing loss from headphones I guess.
>>130165437that shit was sick
>>130165437The absolute worst sound quality on a minidisc player was right there with the best quality audio from all but the highest end audio junky mp3 players (still true) and the best quality on a minidisc player is literally lossless audio which is achievable with modern MP3 players provided you don't mind dropping $400 for them.Something else worth mentioning is the fuckers ran for what seemed like forever on a standard AA battery which still seems like outright wizardry.
This is a good minidisc exclusive album.https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhZZR_kapYkZ7Nd8RM0pfPmmc5o_1fjJk
>>130165437People still make them, I can't decide if I think that's cool or just hipsterslop
>>130165661Hipsterslop is vinyl records. CDs were clearly superior to vinyls in regards to quality but hipsters swear vinyl sounds better when it objectively doesn't. I will say that what passes as quality recordings has shit the bed pretty hard these days though and studio recording used to put a bigger focus on getting the best sound possible.Minidiscs are just the best of the physical media for sound based entertainment. MP3s took over and streaming followed after MP3s, but they both relied on convenience over quality. MDs were the border media. You could get the best possible audio and you could get easily edited playlists and such all in one package.
