Affection for obsolete music technology?

[busb]

Hi

Mine's a portable MiniDisc recorder (Sony MZ-R700) that I managed to repair this morning & now working as new. I can think of several other candidates:

CD (I'm cheating here but feel they will be!)

Compact Cassette

Elcaset

DCC

DAT

8 track cartridge

Open reel tape

78s & varients

MP3 (I'm hoping!)

Wax drums

Wire recorders

I exclude vinyl because I think it will outlast nearly every other format. Valves are thriving but are an electronic component so are a different topic though related.

As for my MD recorder, it cost me about £200 & has an optical input that I connected to a pioneer DVD player to record CDs from. A friend was busy putting their entire LP collection onto MD before I bought my portable. I did have doubts at the time regarding longevity but bought one anyway. MP3 was probably the death of MD. Philips' DCC launched slightly earlier & was doomed from the start, IMO.

 

[chebby]

You forgot MW/LW radio. (And possibly FM in a few years or so.)

 

[Shanka]

Hi,

I thought minidisc was a great product, I think Sony didn't market it very well and the message on it got muddled along with other new formats that confused the public at the time.

Nearly everyone seemed against it but in a previous guise managed to get a few releases on it, they sold dismally, oh well.

I could never work 8 tracks, maybe i was too young but could never find the track you wanted.

 

[busb]

Indeed!

Though FM/AM may outlast DAB which uses MP2 in the UK. Better if DAB had gone for updatable codecs but it didn't - we are stuck with a bandwidth-hungry format that's expensive to broadcast. There are other digital radio formats.

 

[chebby]

There are other digital radio formats.

Yep. I use them all.

 

[busb]

Hi, I thought minidisc was a great product, I think Sony didn't market it very well and the message on it got muddled along with other new formats that confused the public at the time. Nearly everyone seemed against it but in a previous guise managed to get a few releases on it, they sold dismally, oh well. I could never work 8 tracks, maybe i was too young but could never find the track you wanted.

My MD portable is nicely made, does not eat batteries & only spins up for ~25% of the time, having a sufficient buffer. It was dead so I started taking it apart - didn't get that far but noticed some corrosion I missed from the NiCAD battery. Cleaned it up & away it went. I just didn't want to bin such a jewel-like device, even if it's laughable technology now. I can remember seeing a table of sound quality where Sony's ATAC codec was andwiched between MP3 & AC3 in some mag. I realised at that point that it was doomed. Better sound from an iPod Shuffle!

On a related topic, there has been some discussion on how to preserve photographs for centuries rather than mere decades. The consensus was that CDRs would become obsolete, HDD bearings whould cease & solid state memory wouldn't last long enough. Archivists considered 2 options:

Move photo files from existing technology to future tech as required but needing regular intervention

Print the photos onto archive-quality paper!!!

The last option struck me as being delightfully retro. It would be ironic if future archeologists' only record of our music were LPs! So much for the idea that digital formats preserve data perfectly (or without further degradation)!

 

[gbhsi1]

Hi

Mine's a portable MiniDisc recorder (Sony MZ-R700) that I managed to repair this morning & now working as new. I can think of several other candidates:

CD (I'm cheating here but feel they will be!)

Compact Cassette

Elcaset

DCC

DAT

8 track cartridge

Open reel tape

78s & varients

MP3 (I'm hoping!)

Wax drums

Wire recorders

I exclude vinyl because I think it will outlast nearly every other format. Valves are thriving but are an electronic component so are a different topic though related.

As for my MD recorder, it cost me about £200 & has an optical input that I connected to a pioneer DVD player to record CDs from. A friend was busy putting their entire LP collection onto MD before I bought my portable. I did have doubts at the time regarding longevity but bought one anyway. MP3 was probably the death of MD. Philips' DCC launched slightly earlier & was doomed from the start, IMO.

more of a movie player made obsolete by Blu ray - my toshiba HD DVD player and before that my pioneer laserdisc player. I still have a small collection of laserdiscs and hd DVDs...all in the cupboard gathering dust!!