Defunct audio formats

[smittims]

The recent exchange about 'thirty-three-and-a-third' reminded me of other long-gone but once popular items. Does anyone still use mini-disc or DAT mini-cassettes? We have shelves of VHS tapes and have lovingly preserved our NICAM player for their sake.

Going back further, there were 10" LPs, ideal for so many classical works lasting around 30 ro 40 minutes, especially at a time when records were expensive . Decca even called them 'medium-play' for a while. They seemed to die out around 1960. I think their limited popularity involved the difficulty of shelving them along wih 12" discs.

Less well-known are 33 1/3 Eps (7"). I have a few WERGOs from the early 1970s, excellent quality, of Webern , Nono and Hindemith. The 7" disc had quite a lifein Germany, DG issuing them in the '50s, both for popular selections ('Adagio' , with two unrelated adagios one on each side) and Archiv Produktion put out some early music 45s. I'd be interested to know if anyone still plays these.

[gradus]

I still have several 10inch LPs inc Hans Richter Haaser playing the Greig concerto and Peter Sellers' Best of Sellers, Ansermet conducting Mussorgsky and Borodin and a Schubert/Haydn song recital with Margaret Ritchie plus assorted EP's mostly of Chopin pieces. Loads of 78s and plenty of cassettes and open reel too but never got into DAT minis or mini discs. All candidates for Messrs Oxfam in the near future.

[richardfinegold]

How about 8 Tracks? I must still have my Cream Disraeli Gears album somewhere

[Retune]

Outside the classical world, the 10" format was used for EP releases (I remember art pop label 4AD using the format quite a bit in the 90s) and survives to the present day.

I liked MiniDisc - I used to have a PC sound card and a CD player with optical outputs and a pocket Sony MiniDisc player/recorder with optical input, so I could transfer recordings digitally - sound quality and battery life were excellent.

One thing I never had was DCC (Digital Compact Cassette) - an audio tape format that was incompatible with ordinary cassettes and competed with MiniDisc for a while. We did have a Betamax VCR, though...

[pastoralguy]

I still use my SONY Mini-Disc player on a weekly basis. I loved the high quality sound and the ease in editing. My machine has an input for a keyboard so it’s easy to enter detailed information about recordings. I’ve now amassed quite a collection of ‘off air’ recordings of concerts from yesteryear starting with an Andras Schiff recital from the Edinburgh Festival circa 1997.

I also have the complete Beethoven Experience’ on mini-disc. Remember Radio3 devoted the air waves for seven days and played nothing but Ludwig? I used the X4 play facility so I could get 6 hours of content on one disc. They are all in a shoe box with that week’s Radio Times. No, I’ve not heard them all but a retired friend used them on his daily walks and heard every minute! The SONY machine coped extremely well with being used 24 hours a day for a week.

A terrific medium. And they don’t deteriorate like tape does.

[Pulcinella]

I've recently bought an iPod touch to update my iPod Classic, which no longer talks to iTunes.
Apple couldn't tell me how long it would be compatible for, though.


I well remember one of my very first record purchases: a small (can't remember the size, speed, or performers) disc with Mars on one side and Jupiter on the other.

[smittims]

Many thanks for these, including a few things I'd not heard of. Owning recordings one hasn't yet listened to is a yheme for another threadl I recall someone on the old board mentioning big CD box sets he'd bought twelve months ago and still hadn't taken the cellophane off, and the video of someone's huge (roomful) CD collection, recently, made me wonder if there were some such in there.

[cloughie]

I still use my SONY Mini-Disc player on a weekly basis. I loved the high quality sound and the ease in editing. My machine has an input for a keyboard so it’s easy to enter detailed information about recordings. I’ve now amassed quite a collection of ‘off air’ recordings of concerts from yesteryear starting with an Andras Schiff recital from the Edinburgh Festival circa 1997.

I also have the complete Beethoven Experience’ on mini-disc. Remember Radio3 devoted the air waves for seven days and played nothing but Ludwig? I used the X4 play facility so I could get 6 hours of content on one disc. They are all in a shoe box with that week’s Radio Times. No, I’ve not heard them all but a retired friend used them on his daily walks and heard every minute! The SONY machine coped extremely well with being used 24 hours a day for a week.

A terrific medium. And they don’t deteriorate like tape does.

Yes The Mini-Disc is a favourite of mine for all the reasons you mention, PG. So user-friendly for real-time recording - the natural successor to the cassette recorder for off-radio recordings. Was exceedingly handy for transferring LPs.
One snag for me now is the need to replace the drive belt which having stretched no longer ejects the disc - I fear trying a cack-handed attempt to do it myself so must search out someone to do the job!

[gradus]

Many thanks for these, including a few things I'd not heard of. Owning recordings one hasn't yet listened to is a yheme for another threadl I recall someone on the old board mentioning big CD box sets he'd bought twelve months ago and still hadn't taken the cellophane off, and the video of someone's huge (roomful) CD collection, recently, made me wonder if there were some such in there.

Guilty! I still have unopened LPs and box sets. Working for a record manufacturing company made acquisition easy but its high time they were moved on and even perhaps played. Unplayed CDs also figure on my shelves rather as unread books loiter around - buying them seemed like a good idea at the time.

[Sir Velo]

One of the (many) advantages of streaming is that one no longer need entertain any feelings of guilt regarding long neglected CDs looking disapprovingly from the shelves. One can happily play a recording once and never be wracked by remorse for not playing it again. Quite aside from not feeling like a dirty old man waiting for an opportunity to smuggle CDs into the house when 'er indoors has her guard down.

[french frank]

I still use my SONY Mini-Disc player on a weekly basis. I loved the high quality sound and the ease in editing. [...]
A terrific medium. And they don’t deteriorate like tape does.

I always felt the minidisc was rather looked down on by audiophiles, but my last [sort of] hifi was bought purely because it still had a minidisc player. I have a lot of the Drama on 3 plays from (in my memory) the 'golden age' of later years - RW's time!

[richardfinegold]

I always felt the minidisc was rather looked down on by audiophiles, but my last [sort of] hifi was bought purely because it still had a minidisc player. I have a lot of the Drama on 3 plays from (in my memory) the 'golden age' of later years - RW's time!

I only heard a Minidisc once, and as you say FF the format was considered to be an abomination. I remember being impressed by it but at the time it was clearly on the way out

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

The Elcaset was probably one of the best formats that failed. The compact cassette wasn’t ideal for audio, with its often unreliable mechanism, narrow tape and slow tape transport speed. Reel to reel was much better but less convenient. By making a much larger cassette that used 1/4 inch tape and moved at 3 3/4 inches per second, the potential was considerable, but it died out in 1980, just 4 years after its launch.

[Cockney Sparrow]

I only heard a Minidisc once, and as you say FF the format was considered to be an abomination. I remember being impressed by it but at the time it was clearly on the way out

I haven't used my Minidisc Recorders or walkman style players for music listening purposes for some years now but I have lots of the discs with recordings on them. The recorder could use a timer (IIRC) and the ability to create a track reference point at the touch of a button was a great benefit.

The best quality setting for Music - certainly in relation to the quality of the source - FM or DAB radio in use at that time, was perfectly fine for my (non-Golden) ears. By that time I had largely stopped reading audio magazines and only looked at them on newsagents shelves to note the (always inflated, often outrageous) prices of the latest units the reviewers had found were the latest upgrades on the path to Sound system nirvana.

Lowering the quality setting and doubling the time capacity of a minidisc was also fine for speech recordings. Any system which used a less than bit perfect PCM standard stood to be condemned by the audiofiles. I always thought that any system which used tapes was bound to suffer deterioration from use and age.

There was a way to use a Sony program (soundforge?) to transfer files to a PC format but I never grappled with that and as I think it was last useable on Windows 7 that opportunity has probably passed. If I find any "lost" Interpretations on Record programs recorded on MD it would be worth transcribing them to a FLAC file I should think. But I can't see time being available anytime soon to launch into a MD exercise.

[french frank]

I never used a portable minidisc player, just the built-in one on the hifi. I'm wondering whether I can connect the hifi to my laptop and listen to (and record via Audio Hijack) my collection of plays (no accelerated download so they'd be recorded in real time - 60-odd plays hmm). Seems somewhat technologically antiquated but - I am where I am (I listened to Schnitzler's Dr Bernhardi the other day and I'd missed the first few minutes!).

For some people, even in 2023, the minidisc is still alive.