Minidisc Players

- Great capacity. With the maximum compression (LP4) a single MiniDisc holds 5 CDs. You don't need to carry CDs with you nor bother looking for them and the sound is still CD-quality.
- Great battery life. A single AA lasts for 56 hours.
- Skip protection. It hasn't skipped once.
- Simple to use. The bundled software, Simple Burner, allows you to copy CDs to the MiniDisc via the USB port. You can select the songs you want and group the CDs by album in the MiniDisc so you can jump easily to whatever you want to listen to. It uses temporal files in your hard disk that eventually get erased so it doesn't clutter it.
- Reusability. A MiniDisc can be rewritten over a million times. You can delete or rearrange contents any way you want.
- Price. A MiniDisc costs [relatively little].

The Simple Burner application runs fine in the background, meanwhile I'm doing something else. If you're connected to the Internet you can get the album information (artist and tracks names) for free and it gets written in the MiniDisc itself. It'll display it as is playing it. Whatever the source is, all sound is recorded into the MiniDisc with Sony's propietary format, ATRAC3. The actual transfer to the MiniDisc is real fast, but first the music has to be converted to ATRAC3 and that takes time. For some reason, when a song has been converted beyond 50% the second half goes much faster than the first. When it's done converting the song, it transfers it to the MiniDisc in a matter of seconds.

There's another application bundled to organize and copy MP3s into the MiniDisc, OpenMG Jukebox. I didn't try it yet as I'm not into it, but it'll allow you to make up to three copies of the same song. A protection system to avoid piracy.

You can also download the free RealOne player and a plug-in to copy music to the MiniDisc directly from it. Didn't try it either.

I put it in my pants left pocket, run the headphones wire inside my jacket so it doesn't tangle and enjoy the music as I commute. Some controls have marks on them so you can locate them with your fingers and every time you use them you hear a beep through the headphones. Many times I adjust the volume or select the song without even looking at it.

Bottomline, the perfect solution for a commuter. Is also great to work around the house or to exercise.

Thanks,
Juan Carlos

P.S. I tried recording in a MiniDisc from a cassette player. I had two CDs recorded in a MiniDisc from a 80's Scottish group, "Deacon Blue". I finally found a cassette I had of them with another album. I connected the MiniDisc recorder to a cassette player and recorded the whole thing. The manual says the recorder will add automatically a track mark whenever it finds silence during two seconds at least. In this case the songs were too close for that to work, so I had to add them manually later on, a very easy task which didn't take too long. The recording has to be made at 1x speed, though, as with any external source. Then, with SimpleBurner I named the album and the songs and placed the album in the correct chronological order. I like to see how a band's sound evolves through the years. Rearranging groups is as easy as dragging them up or down as they're displayed in the SimpleBurner window. Is a really fast process, I think they just change the order in which they're played rather than physically moving them around the disk. So another great feature to add: the ability of recording from different sources in a single disk and sort the groups any way one wants.

The method in which you rip CDs on to MD is Sony's Simple Burner program. It's quick, and simple. Plug your MD Player into a open USB port on your PC, plug the AC adapter in (highly reccomended: saves batteries), and you're ready to go. Put a CD in your CD-ROM drive, and the program uses the CDDB to look up the disc and track names, then hit transfer, and you're ready to go. The drawback to the program is that you can't record in SP mode, only LP2 and LP4. I've recorded all my MDs in LP2, and contrary to what all the audiophiles have been saying, it sounds really good. The average music listener will NOT be able to tell a difference between CD quality and LP2. I've even had my MD player hooked up to my 500 watt stereo reciever with Bose 301 speakers though a Mini Stereo Y cable, and I must say it sounds quite awesome (althouh the bass boost on the player is overkill).

And to the people complaining about OpenMG: just don't use it. I've burned at least 30 MP3s to my discs without using OpenMG. You can make a CD image of your MP3s with Ahead's Nero Burning Rom program, then mount the CD image to your hard drive with Nero's ImageDrive, then burn the image with Simple Burner. It's quite simple, and if anyone wants more detailed instructions, e-mail me.

Overall, I reccomend highly reccomend this player. It's the best christmas present ever...for a music fan like me. For those who like to listen to their music anywhere, anytime, it's ideal. I take the player to work in my pocket, and listen on break. And the battery life is awesome: the package says 56 hours on on the box, and that is not a lie. I've been listening to the player non stop since December 25th, and the battery indicator on the player has not budged from full power.

Go buy this player now. As in right now.