[JamesG]

For years, many of us here traded on minidisc…. they’d be sent in the post, in nice jiffy bags.

I have hundreds in my collection… they were great – able to split up individual cuts easy… 254 amazing tracks as opposed to just 99 on a CD.

So wonderful to be able to join / split / move them around on the disc and erase those that didn’t make the “cut”.

My minidisc player broke in 2009 and haven’t played anything from them since that time, yet I still have hundreds of them in my collection.

It just got me thinking about the MD days. The format did well for the likes of us… the fact it managed to hang on for some 20 years is impressive.

What do you keep your jingle collection on nowadays? Is it all organised in folders on some hard disc? What if that hard disc breaks? Have you lost everything?

There was something about keeping different stations on different coloured MDs… my Red Dragon ID’s were all on Red discs! Not quite like the yellow folders of a file sharing directory are they?

Enjoy this wonderful piece – a requiem for the Mini Disc.

http://techland.time.com/2013/02/04/the-ides-of-march-farewell-sony-minidisc-player/

[c_d]

I think having all your jingles stored on a hard drive takes a lot of the excitement out of it. I have ripped everything I have ever received to hard drive since the day I started about 10 years ago and, consequently, the original CDs/MDs/showreels (some of which were very nicely presented) are in disarray and, I imagine, mostly lost!

It must be (by comparison) so gratifying to have a library of physical mementos to look through and potentially leave behind for someone in the future to remember you by. We are still finding undiscovered sheet music by classical composers hundreds of years ago, but what’s the chance of a £50 mass-produced hard disk lasting more than a century without someone continuously maintaining and migrating its contents?

[DanielTennick]

I actually have all my collection stored on 3 seperates Hard drives and also on CD’s.. Better to be safe than sorry.

[AndyWMember]

I remember those times well as I bought the first Sony Hi Fi separate that came out in the mid 90’s. The only real problem with Mini Disc, like cassette was that it sounded terrible after a few copies of copies thanks to the 5:1 ATRAC compression. I guess that’s why the music industry didn’t mind them all that much. A very versatile format and I’m sure stations other than Radio 1 used them as a replacement for carts. I’ve lost hard drives that have crashed and burned in the past but never a Mini Disc. I also know the one person who bought the Philips DCC!

[GrahamCollins]

I still use MD regularly to record live broadcasting and have always championed the features of the format. Thinking about it, I currently have 6 working machines !

The benefits of hard drive storage are too seductive to ignore these days and I have spent a lot of time digitizing the best bits of my collection. It’s a good way to sort the wheat from the chaff. Now I can locate material in seconds.

Two separate back ups seems to be the way forward and with trusted friends a remote location backup is to be recommended should the worst happen and a fire leaves you with only the clothes that you have on……

[jonnoMember]

When we bought a compact stereo for the dining room, I particularly wanted a one with minidisc so I could use it for recording airchecks. Also had a portable unit to use back in the day when the car only had a radio/cassette

[rakMember]

I’ve got quite a few MDs in the collection, and must check if the Red Dragon MD you dubbed for me many moons is on a red disc. I suspect it is! In fact, when searching for MDs I can often visualise what colour I think I remember it being.

Some of my MDs have been skipping, on more than one player as well. Think I have about 3 machines, inc a couple of Pro Denon ones (black with the rubbery lit up buttons) that I rescued from the WEEE pile at work. Must digitise the best ones while I still can, and suggest we all do the same.

The best MD toy I ever bought was a Sony car radio with MD RECORDING. It even had a few seconds’ buffer to catch jingles while I was driving. I’ve got discs labelled “Drive up the A1 – Easter 2002” or similar, which I should maybe digitise and make a snapshot montage from.

Haven’t recorded anything on MD for years, though.

The modern day equivalent of the jiffy landing on the doormat is probably the notification that “5 files have been added to your Dropbox folder”!

Agree with the others that having at least 2 copies of everything is essential. With 2TB drives costing £70/$100 – that’s got to be most people’s whole collection in .wav quality – two of those gives an offsite backup – just making time to back stuff up that is the problem.

[IainJohnstonMember]

“modern day equivalent of the jiffy landing…dropbox”

Not as much “anticipation” involved though!

A general thought on D/box – following up a discussion or two off-forum, do different users of it so far find greatly varying transfer speeds between their “boxes” to/from different other users? Its great transferring in original WAV but it does require patience I find.

I note that their “tags” don’t show where their servers are although they have offices in the USA and UK. For once must be their “own” gear rather than “rented out” as some other similar services are.

[GrahamCollins]

I have a very ordinary 10Mbps connection and a typical 20 minute full package stereo .wav downloads in only a few minutes – it often surprises me how fast it is. It all happens in the background and doesn’t seem to hog the processor at all. Best net discovery I’ve made in the last 12 months (apart from Flightradar24.com obviously).

[MarkieG]

I still have my MD in fact any recordings of jingles are still done on MD even in this age of other various recording devices

[IainJohnstonMember]

Similar theoretical rate here – but seems very “iffy” to specific individual’s PCs.
Certainly I like the unobtrusive “in the background” operation – just hope they don’t go and mess it up by being awkward, as 4S did.

Sorry to digress – flightradar24.com – some of us use a “watery” version for SHIPPING!
http://www.shipais.com/gmap2.php

And now back to whatever the topic was about in the first place!

[jonnoMember]

I won’t boast about mine then http://www.speedtest.net/result/2488789723.png

[IainJohnstonMember]

Ah, but “its not size that matters”
http://www.speedtest.net/result/2493177286.png

Not quite sure why the test is “run” from the Isle of Man…

[Spoons]

Ha! Still use my MDs and recorders. One is a bit dodgy now but the other one is OK.

I bought my MD recorder in 1997 and within hours of receiving it (via mail order) I went to a Sony shop and bought another as I knew immediately it was the perfect piece of kit for my home studio.

Having two machines made dubbing copies of things for people possible too.

I really need to dub off my MDs to hard drive but there are hundreds (not just jingles but lots of radio stuff over the years).

David, I think my dub of Red Dragon stuff from James might have been on a red MD too. James – you must have been obsessed! Ha.

[m_hodgeyMember]

I purchased my first MiniDisc recorder deck (Sony MDS-JE510) 15 years ago in January 1998 and a second one (Sony MDS-JB940) in 2001 for dubbing MD to MD.

I have around 200 MiniDiscs in my jingle collection, which range from the years 1998 to 2004. From 2004 onwards my jingle trading moved away from MiniDisc and focused on CDRs, until a few years ago when sharing over the internet using cloud storage became the prevailing way of trading.

Over the past few years I have steadily been transferring the audio from these MiniDiscs to the PC hard drive as WAV files (where applicable) using Adobe Audition; generally as other collectors have asked for stuff on them.

One of my MiniDisc recorder decks has now been decommissioned and is sat gathering dust on the top of a cupboard; one stop away from being dropped into CEX for £10 or something close! The remaining deck rarely gets any use these days, other than for recording an odd live broadcast now and then or for transferring audio to the PC.

As JamesG originally pointed out, in it’s day MiniDisc was great for recording jingles onto because of the track naming facility and 254 track range, but as the PC became the way of storing audio, the humble MiniDisc was destined to be consigned to history.

[gameswizardMember]

I purchased my first MiniDisc recorder deck (Sony MDS-JE510) 15 years ago in January 1998 and a second one (Sony MDS-JB940) in 2001 for dubbing MD to MD.

At one time, I had those 2 models and also the JE520 (originally £229.99).
The JB940 (which cost me £299.99) is a robust, solid piece of kit. A fantastic looking machine.

Unfortunately, the JE510s (purchase price £149.99) loading mechanism broke a while back, and now I just have the remaining 2.

I also have 2 portable minidisc walkman’s.

[Author]

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