I just want to play a bit with minidisc, a format which was way too expensive for me back at the time. I just bought a boxed Sony MZ-R70 from 2000 which seems a nice recorder but as a player it sounds like portable cd players of that period, flat and a bit dull. Any suggestion for a good sounding MD walkman/recorder ? as a side note, the box of the MZ-R70 still have the price tag: 539000 ITL equivalent to today's 400 EUR; it is a mid range model but it is still pretty expensive. thanks !
I experienced some time recording my favorite musics on MDs. I tried Different component from CD/DVD combo to MD walkmans. I found the best result with AIWA CSD-NS5MD, The quality of music recorded by this one is same as CD I also tried to directly record CD to minidisc with other brands Sharp& Victor boomboxes but the sound quality was not as good as CD. surprisingly recording by a walkman minidisc (Panasonic, Sony, Victor ) gave me better results compared to CD/MD combo boomboxes. A cassette walkman sounds better than a boombox since each one designed for a different purpose, So I found out the same result with Minidiscs. It is little confusing since minidisc is a digital format and shouldn't drop the quality during recording but this is what I experienced. Among the minidisc walkman units i love this MZ-B10. It is easy to use, records minidisc with excellent quality and sounds great. This is not the top of the line unit but If i have to give up all my minidisc walkman units and keep one of them i will keep this one.It is still available on Amazon for : Price: $198.00 + $4.59 shipping
I'm planning on making recording directly through the optical digital connection with no re-sampliging or ADC; the only difference between recorders should then be the ATRAC encoder, but being Sony Intellectual property I expect it to be pretty standard, isn't it ? On the playback side, the internal DAC + Amplifier come into play, and to my experience late 90's /early 2000's is not a good period for portable sound quality. A simple portable CD player from late 80's like the Sony D-2 sounds much better. The MZ-B10 is conceived as a business recorder for meetings and other events (in place of microcassette recorder), I'm surprised it is also good with music Anyway it is not available here in europe as new and i have to look for it on ebay. For small portable walkman do you have any suggestion ? thanks
I think if you are trying to get the best minidisc recorder there are some models with better reviews like : MZ-M200 or MZ-RH1..... with linear PCM recording (which means no compression recording) so the quality of recorded track is better than a compressed file. ATRAC is a compressed recording and cannot be exactly same as CD quality. It is better than MP3 but not exactly same as CD quality. So search for a minidisc recorder with linear PCM recording minidisc: this models record the music exactly the way CD sounds. But these are very expensive compare to regular minidisc walkmans like MZ-B10. and you are right , MZ-B10 was made for reporters/ business recording but it has a lot of features and easy to use and much cheaper than high end minidisc walkmans with linear PCM recording function..
I know minidisc is compressed, ATRAC actually predates MP3 and it is a contemporary of Philips PASC. All three formats are now pretty obsolete and ATRAC was specifically designed to encode in realtime with minimal power consumption (for comparison a Pentium 120 could hardly encode MP3 in real time !). Actually there are several revisions of ATRAC encoder chip and Type S seems to be considered the most refined. Hi-MD later format allows for up to 1 Gb of uncompressed audio on a disc, but both players and discs are pretty expensive to these days (and Hi-MD discs were sold for a limited period and discontinued before regular MD) But honestly I think the Audio quality of my player is mostly due to the DAC and analogue sections: walkman's and portable CD players of late 90's do sound the same. It seems audio quality was no longer a priority; with the introduction of the (useless) AVLS audio quality has gone downhill. Maybe early models have a better output section, but the ATRAC encoder/decoder is less refined.
