Newbie Question -- What is a MD player? (1 Viewer)

[Steve Klein]

I am curious as to what a MD player is. My reciever has a Tape/MD input on it.
What is a MD player? How much do they cost? What do they do? Where can I browse some examples?
All I can think of is minidisk player, but I have never heard of anythign cept portable minidisk players...
Sorry for being such a Home Theater newb I mainly just watch DVDs and play games on my 27" TV My $550 Home Theater is just a lil' gravy

 

[David_Stein]

MD is minidisk as far as i know, and im pretty sure there are some that arent portables, i think its more for copying tracks from cds onto a md rather than playing a md on your stereo, but im sure you can do that if you want.

 

[Loring]

From what I remember from a minidisc demo many years ago at a local mall. Minidisc was suppose to replace the tape where as the CD was the vinyl/LP replacement. You would replace your tape recorder with a MiniDisc recorder. Which also could play MDs just like tape recorders could play tapes. But since the introduction of CD-Rs the minidisc is not to popular any more here in the states. But over in japan as I am told by one of my friends MDs are a lot more popular and so are mini-cds for singles (but that is a whole other topic for another day).

Hope this helps.

 

[Steve Klein]

In other words, a DVD player that supports mp3 and cd playback has my audio covered?

 

[Ted Lee]

i have one of the first generation md players. think of it as a tape-deck on steroids. some of it's advantages include:

1. near-digital quality playback: the md uses a compression scheme which cuts off some of the higher frequencies which the human ear (supposedly) can't hear anyway
2. non-linear access: you can access tracks just like a cd player
3. re-orderable songs: you can record songs in one order, then reorganize it later into a different order
4. portability: the md itself is really small, not much bigger then a couple of matchbooks put together. it's also totally durable.[/list=1]
   
   
   
   you can also label the songs and have that label displayed while the song is playing. i guess the md format is very successful in japan and i know of many people who still use it here. there are md players for your car and several models of portable md players you can use like a walkman.

 

[David_Stein]

actually one of the bigger uses of MD here in the states is by concert bootleggers. the smallest MD recorders fit easily into any pocket, and you can connect them to either soundboards or to a microphone and filter. ive got a couple friends who are big into that.

 

[Jeff Kleist]

It's also widely used in film & video production for the same reason. Small, portable, and can generate reliable sync to timecode.

 

[Michael*K]

actually one of the bigger uses of MD here in the states is by concert bootleggers.