Is there a MiniDisc Revival?

I loved the Sony MiniDisc! In the mid-90s I had some MiniDisc gear. So when I recently heard rumor of a MiniDisc revival, I was interested.

To get started in MiniDisc, I bought a starter set known as MD Bundle 4. I bought this in the summer of 1996, at the The Sony Store at Premium Outlet Mall in Grove City, PA just north of Pittsburgh. At the time, I was working a large project at KDKA-TV2 in Pittsburgh. That project saw me driving between Toronto and Pittsburgh repeatedly over a period of several months.

The bundle included a Sony MDS-JE510 recorder and an MZ-E40 portable player. I also bought the brand new Sony MDR-NC10 noise cancelling earbuds.

I had just started a new job that saw me traveling extensively around Canada and the US. Conceptually, MiniDisc allowed me to have a compact, high-quality way to bring music on my travels, in a era long before the iPod. The noise cancelling ear buds were an effort to reduce the impact of frequent flights on noisy, turbo-prop powered, Dash 8 regional aircraft.

Abandoning Cassettes

While in high school I had been a DJ for a year or two. In the process, I accumulated a significant collection of music on high-quality cassette tapes. I made a lot of use of TDK-SA90 and Maxell UD-XLII90 blanks, using a Teac V66C cassette deck to make copies from various sources.

By the time I acquired the MiniDisc gear my library of cassettes was getting to be quite old. While a lot of the music I could source anew on CD, that which could not be found on CD, I dubbed from cassette to MiniDisc.

I acquired a used DBX 3BX expander to improve the sound of the resulting MiniDiscs. Well, at very least it minimized the tape noise.

I also experimented with using a Carver C-9 Sonic Hologram Generator as a way to process material that I knew I’d only listen to using headphones.

There was a vibrant Minidisc user community online. In the earliest days I was engaged with a MiniDisc channel on Usenet. The web site at MiniDisc.org remains online.

In the end, my large library of cassettes was transformed into a much smaller collection of MiniDiscs. Along the way, I learned a lot.

For example, MiniDiscs could have track titles added to the songs. That was initially only possible in a tedious process using a mega-button IR remote control. Later, it became possible using a program on a Windows PC that could emulate the IR codes of the remote control.

Tracks could be split and rejoined. I would usually record an entire CD as a single cut. Then go back through, splitting it into individual tracks and giving each a title. As a reformed videotape editor, this was the kind of tinkering that was familiar, even enjoyable.

Of course, I dubbed CDs to MiniDisc via TOSLINK connection. That digital connection, via optical cable, made a flawless copy. It was limited to making just one generation from a digital source. Copying CD to MD was fine. The resulting MiniDisc could not be further copied via digital means.

When I moved to Houston in 1998, all my MiniDisc gear came with me. I continued to use it for another decade. It wasn’t completely displaced until the onset of MP3 that could be played on early smart phones. I can still recall thinking how amazing it was that, while waiting to catch a flight, I could download a podcast to my Blackberry Bold (over 3G), then listen to it as I was on the flight.

Migrating to Files

The MiniDisc deck at home remained in service until streaming media players like the Logitech Squeezebox allowed me to adopt a network-based approach to whole home audio.

Early on, there was a lot of debate about compressed vs uncompressed audio. I always felt that the ATRAC compression scheme used in MiniDisc was excellent. It was vastly better than the early MP3 compression that replaced it.

It’s true that convenience trumps all else. MiniDisc was more convenient than cassette or CD. But cheap disk and (eventually) flash storage storage, and freedom from copying constraints, made files even more convenient.

I eventually used the MiniDisc deck transfer that small, irreplaceable part of my music collection to FLAC files on a computer. Thereafter, I found it a new home via E–Bay.

The article I referenced at the start portrays MiniDisc as a commercial failure. I think that’s not entirely true. MiniDisc was great and very popular with the kind of people who made their own mix tapes. It did not displace CD as a way to sell pre-recorded music. I never owned a pre-recorded MD. I never even looked for pre-recorded music on MD.

Limited Future

If there is some kind of revival of MiniDisc it’s likely to be short lived. The availability of blank media is likely to be limited. Sony stopped making the media in 2025. There appears to still be some inventory of new media. Of course, used MiniDisc media can be found on Ebay.

If there is some minor resurgence of the format, at least it makes more sense to me than revisiting the Compact Cassette. While the performance of cassettes improved over time, they were never a very good format. They were just too noisy, and limited by linear means of access.

While skilled folks, using the best gear, could make very good recordings using cassettes. MiniDisc performed better, on an average day, in the hands of an average person.

MiniDisc was an elegant technology. Sony did as they had with Betamax previously, tried to license it to create an empire. That never quite worked. If there was a failure, it was in the business plan, not the technology.