and are not considered as good a sound quality by professional recording
engineers and professional musicians. (apparently they had to sacrifice the
sound quality to get it so small). The difference is not so easy to hear to
the layman but it's there. I'm a professional musician and I don't know
anyone who is professionally recording who would record onto minidisc format.
I do know other professionals who play live with backing tracks who find it a
useful format. But they're going thru a p.a. where you have lots of noise
anyway, and they are willing to trade the compactibility (sic) over true
digital reproduction. I don't know anyone who's used the 8 track home
minidisk recorder.
In the great tradition of the VHS/Beta wars, Sony is trying to flood the
market with MDs to win market share over other digital formats, so they've
slashed prices of MD equipment and are manufacturing cheap-ish MD walkmans to
make it attractive for folks to buy. But caveat emptor, probably within a
couple of years, it will be history (especially when the DVD format goes mini,
which is around the corner). It is considered an inferior digital format.
For recording professionals, DAT is still the industry standard (besides
recordable CD, which is getting more and more affordable).
Apparently this new format is going to blow away ALL of the formats we now
own, including DAT, conventional CDs, cassettes, TVs, etc. an exhilirating
but depressing thought, since it will render our current formats obsolete.
Robin Greenstein
[Alan sez: As Don Ameche said, "Things Change." DAT remains the industry
standard for professional recording, but consumer DAT has been dead for
years. "The Year of the LaserDisc" came and went several times, and nobody
but me seemed to notice. Nobody has made a beta VCR for years, but I know a
couple of folks who still buy tapes and use them. I won't be surprised if
soon audio recorders have *no* moving parts and I look forward to the
attendant decrease in size and increase in reliablity. In the meantime, I
play to get some good mileage out of my minidisc recorders for the next
several years. I'm confident I'll be using them far longer than my current
computer system.]