Mighty mites - minidisc players

Men's Fitness, July, 1998 by Alison Michaels

Minidisc players are portable, provide near-perfect sound and can record exactly what you want

I'd like to think it was my lithe legs that got the attention of half the men at my health club during a recent workout, but the truth is that it was my new minidisc player, one of the coolest tech toys I've come across. If you have yet to make the MD's acquaintance, it's a recordable compact disc slightly larger than a Ritz cracker and housed in a computerfloppy-disc-type casing.

Huge in Japan and Europe, the three-year-old digital audio format has yet to make noise here, mainly because people still don't get what it is. Many music fans mistakenly assumed it was a replacement for the CD. In fact, the digital format is the ultimate successor to analog tape.

Bring tha noize

It's easy to understand the appeal of cassettes over CDs - the worn-out reels of your road trip, party and bedroom-mix tapes tell the whole story. Minidiscs let you do the same thing, permitting you to DJ 74 minutes of customized music for any occasion. The difference? Unlike tapes, MDs are digital, so you can transfer your favorite CD tracks perfectly. Another difference: You can record over a minidisc thousands of times with no sacrifice in sound quality.

The format's pluses go beyond audiophile appeal, though, as minidisc hardware is loaded with slick features. While recording, for example, the machines let you plug in the names of artists and song titles. That info - say, the Verve's Bitter Sweet Symphony - will then scroll across the MD player's LCD panel during playback. There's no need to fast-forward or rewind to get to your favorite tracks; MD players let you navigate track-by-track.

King of the road

Another big bonus of the minidisc is its portability. Though many of us have gotten used to toting our CDs around, they scratch easily and are a hassle to change. The MD is tough by comparison. The casing shields the disc from grit and grime while also protecting it from extreme temperatures. And since you never remove the minuscule MD from its case, it's easier to handle while driving.

If you're a runner or other outdoor athlete, you'll appreciate the MD's electronic buffer, which stores up to 10 seconds of a track in memory before sending it to your headphones or speakers. Thanks to this slick trick and the format's rugged nature, you can pound the turf without blowing a beat - a 10-second MD buffer provides more skip resistance than the 40-second buffer on a portable CD player.

Will it stay or will it go?

Although plenty of formats have flopped over the past two decades, I have a strong hunch that the minidisc will endure. After all, it's backed by top consumer electronics manufacturers, including Sony, Kenwood, Sharp, Sanyo/Fisher, Aiwa and Denon.

But that's nothing compared to the fact that prices for MD home, car and road gear are dropping big-time. Minidisc rack components start at about $400. Portable units, which originally sold for $600, now go as low as $200. Pick up an extra box of blank discs (five sell for about $30) and you're good to go.