The MiniDisc was launched in 1992 by Sony and for some it quickly became the best format for their music consumption. It was portable, the sound quality was superb and with recording capability it felt like the next evolution of the CD.

I for one loved the designs of the MiniDisc players and to this day they have a futuristic feel about them that still manages to perfectly exemplify what portable tech looked like back in the early 1990’s.

MiniDiscs would not skip unless under extreme physical movement and the discs came with a table of contents containing metadata and other useful information. If I remember correctly, the excellent sound was produced by removing sounds that humans cannot hear and thus giving more bandwidth to what matters. However it worked, the end result was a studding format for portable and home music that deserved so much more success that it received.

The main problem was that the big record companies did not adopt the format properly and so when going into a record shop you would be presented with a small selection of pre-recorded albums from the likes of Sade and Fleetwood Mac. It was as if the MiniDisc was only built for architects or, for want of a better word, tossers.

My friend Simon (he provided the photos for this article) still uses his MiniDisc player for recording his Father-In-Law playing the piano and listening to some recorded discs of Christmases past which highlights how well these devices were built and that they can easily have a place in 2024. On a side note, Simon looks remarkably like Phil Collins but that’s not really important I guess.

I look back on the MiniDisc (MD) very fondly and much preferred it to the CD, but MP3 players arrived in 1998 and the MD had never really caught on outside of Asia and, to a lesser extent, parts of Europe. I didn’t know anyone else who used MiniDisc and the final nail came in 2001 when Apple released the iPod. Ten years later Sony officially killed the MiniDisc.

It is nice to know, however, that people like Simon are still making use of one of the best audio formats ever.

Categories: Articles, Music, Retro