Obscure 90's formats, MiniDisc, DAT, DCC

[Stick Legs]

Hello, let me start by explaining how this all came about.

When I bought my TVR Griffith I fitted a period correct cassette player to it. Sensible enough, and bought a Separates Cassette deck (Yamaha KX-580) to record some stuff on to it, again, not too strange.

After a year I was dissatisfied with the way cassette sounded, or rather didn't sound, in the TVR and decided that a digital format with more 'punch' was required.

I was a relatively early adopter of MiniDisc as I thought it was the perfect combination of cassette and CD, but gave away all my MD stuff once iPods became an established thing.

Sourcing a MiniDisc car head unit was easy, a very nice Pioneer MEH-9000R (Pioneer fitting the TVR theme well) which turned out to be broken, so while I waited for it to be repaired I acquired a Kenwood KMD671R (which is the same MD unit I had in my cars way back when.

This led naturally to the purchase of a Yamaha MDX-596 home player to record some stuff and at current count about 200 MiniDiscs.

I now also have a Sony MDS-JE510 in the summer house and a Sony MZ-R500 Walkman.

I have been looking at DAT players on line...

I know this isn't like gambling or Heroin, but do I have a dead format problem?

[Stick Legs]

[Stick Legs]

[996owner]

DAT is a nice format, that said their a very mechanical device and if not used the mechanism(s) suffer from dried out grease, belts and pinch rollers go hard and fail spares are hard to find. With all electronic kit capacitors dry out/leak go open circuit, the electronics are easier to fix.
Get a Sony machine if you get one and bear in mind there's not many people left in the repair business who have the skills and equipment to repair them.

Edited by 996owner on Thursday 22 October 17:22

[Stick Legs]

That’s really useful actually.

I’ll investigate DAT, which appears to have been the more successful of the two formats.

[JoshSm]

Somewhere around I think I still have some first gen DDS-1 drives, which could also do DAT. Same mechs as the audio ones, digital audio output connections next to the SCSI, fold out loader instead of slot, full height 5 1/4.

They were curios when I got them and that was a good while ago, likely just paperweights by now wherever they are.

Got a portable Minidisc somewhere around too.

[Lucid_AV]

Stick Legs said:

I ll investigate DAT, which appears to have been the more successful of the two formats.

DAT was more for the pro market; musicians and journalists. MD was I think more appealing for the consumer/Hi-Fi market because of the versatility of editing. Both formats were pricy, but there was a broad choice of portable MD players, and they were smaller, lighter, and I think cheaper than the DAT alternatives.

Alpine did an in-car DAT player back in the early '90s apparently. I'd still go with MD though.

[996owner]

Get a 2 track reel-to-reel machine.

Fantastic machines (if you get the right one) I've got 2 Studer machines, tape costs a fortune.

[unzippy]

Love them!

[Stick Legs]

Lucid_AV said:

Stick Legs said:

I ll investigate DAT, which appears to have been the more successful of the two formats.

DAT was more for the pro market; musicians and journalists. MD was I think more appealing for the consumer/Hi-Fi market because of the versatility of editing. Both formats were pricy, but there was a broad choice of portable MD players, and they were smaller, lighter, and I think cheaper than the DAT alternatives.

Alpine did an in-car DAT player back in the early '90s apparently. I'd still go with MD though.

I'm fully invested in MiniDisc. Loved rediscovering it as a format, mostly because of the editability of it, and coupling it to my old MacBook Pro which has an optical output means that I can make digital copied of playlists I make in iTunes.

I'm looking at DAT mainly as a curiosity and a 'thing' to play with.

[Stick Legs]

996owner said:

Get a 2 track reel-to-reel machine.

Fantastic machines (if you get the right one) I've got 2 Studer machines, tape costs a fortune.

That's a good shout. Impractical, expensive and no qualitative advantage. Peak whimsy!

[paulguitar]

As a gigging musician in the 90s, I got through probably a dozen minidisc players. It was mega technology back then, having come from tapes, but using them for 20 or 30 hours per week, they were fragile.

[_Rodders_]

I had the Sony Minidisc player. I remember feeling properly burned when it was made obselete seemingly overnight.

Probably still have it somewhere.

[Itsallicanafford]

I’ve gone for a circa 1991 period correct Sony ES stack, so no minidisc for me, just DAT, cassette, CD and vinyl.

Main stack has most of the gubbins - sub stack in the corner (my wife let me know that although it has a house plant on it, she has noticed it!) houses the DAT player and 4 channel amp to flesh out the Sony’s prologic 5.1 capabilities, all wired through to the main stack.

On DAT, it is a great format, I copy hard to get CD’s onto it (Prince Black Album is a favourite) so to keep the original safe. I really cannot tell the difference from the CD and DAT copy…

You will notice on the remote some other formats - VDP - Video disc player, that would be a smashing thing to add, if I can find a working one…

[Sporky]

Lucid_AV said:

DAT was more for the pro market; musicians and journalists. MD was I think more appealing for the consumer/Hi-Fi market because of the versatility of editing.

Yup - DC was an even less successful Minidisc rival. I loved my Minidisc player - same blue Sony as someone posted a bit earlier in the thread.

[oldaudi]

I had a DCC DC900 from Philips in the early 90s. Pointless thing. I moved to a very expensive Sony MD-R which had an optical input which allowed me to record either from my record decks and create my own mixes or from the output from my MASH Technics CD Player. I moved on to a higher end Denon player at one stage.

Never really sure why MD didnt do a lot better. It was certainly easier to make "mix tapes" and record to than the various CD formats that became available.

I think I inherited picking the wrong formats from my father as I was the only child in my class at school with a Betamax at home.

Edited by oldaudi on Friday 23 October 14:56

[K50 DEL]

As a hi-fi obsessed teen with no money (and a What Hi-Fi magazine subscription!) I dreamed of being an adult with the funds to have every single possible format available to me..... have never achieved it, though love to see some of the models I remember still in use above.

[unzippy]

oldaudi said:

Never really sure why MD didnt do a lot better. It was certainly easier to make "mix tapes" and record to than the various CD formats that became available.

Edited by oldaudi on Friday 23 October 14:56

Making mix MDs in the late 90s involved me downloading the MP3s from limewire/napster, converting them and burning to an audio CD, then CD to MD.

So for every MD I had the CD backup.

What I'm trying to say is that it was easier to create a CD than MD.

[Sporky]

oldaudi said:

I think I inherited picking the wrong formats from my father as I was the only child in my class at school with a Betamax at home.

Snap!

Though presumably different schools.

[996owner]

I worked in the media (broadcast engineering, still do) Minidisc came along too late, tech was evolving quickly.
Our journalists preferred minisdisc because it was better than portable reel to reel (Uher for those interested) and critically much lighter to carry. As tech was evolving portable solid state recorders were coming along the way making minidisc a thing of the past within a few years.

Minidisc had a huge advantage, if a reported accidentally erased a disc it was very easy to recover, pop the "erased" disc into a machine, set it away recording and pull the mains plug out. This was because a temp index was written at the start of the recording. Then when the machine was powered back up it saw the whole disc as 1 long track.

I've never used a digital cassette (DCC) or even seen one for that matter.