Sony

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.

MiniDisc Article on Lenovo P14S

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.

sony_mds-je320_minidisc_deck

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.

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There’s A New Headset Connector In Town

Sony TRRRS Connector MDR-NC31EMSome time ago I published a backgrounder on 3.5mm headset connectors. It detailed a bit of history of the 1/8″ (3.5mm) mini-plug, from the Sony Walkman of old to present day. That evolution could also be described as from “Tip-Ring-Sleeve”  (TRS) to Tip-Ring-Ring-Sleeve”  (TRRS.)  That post has proven surprisingly popular.

It’s been said that the universe is continually expanding. That includes the universe of mini-plug variants. Today I got my first look at the next step in the evolution of the lowly mini-plug; TRRRS!

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Flash In The News

One of the announcements coming from MWC2015 today was the release of a frightfully capacious flash memory card from SanDisk. Their new Ultra Premium Edition microSDXC card holds a whopping 200 GB of data! With class 10 performance it’s able…

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An Interesting History Of Headphones

k240studioSome time ago I stumbled upon a nice article that proposed to be something of a history of headphones. It’s a fairly good effort on the part of the author. However, I would like to add my two-cents in reference to a couple of missing items that I think are significant.

When I was in school in the mid-1980’s I was studying music recording and broadcasting. I spent a lot of time in and around various recording studios around Toronto. The single most common headset that I saw at that time was the AKG K240 Studio monitors. These were the reference grade dynamic headphones used in many facilities at that time.

The K240s are genuinely, big-ole, cans. A circumaural headphone with a semi-open design they sound great, even today. They can be cleanly driven to excessive volumes if required. Fairly efficient, they can even be powered by a cell phone or iPod.

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Did Toshiba Drop HD-DVD Too Early?

Alec Saunders (a fellow Canuck) has an interesting observation about Toshiba and HD-DVD. IMHO, Toshiba’s comment doesn’t take into consideration Blu-Ray. Not making that statement is political face-saving on their part. Alec argues that they need to move the entire…

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