MiniDisc continues to survive.. and improve!

Years ago when I first saw MiniDisc, I kind of laughed at it. "Who would want that," I thought. Today I'm the proud owner of one of Sony's latest generation MiniDisc players.

After spending a few weeks with the Sony MZ-S1, I can't help but wonder why Sony let the portable market slide right out from under them. Portable MP3 players today have a large following, even though they're expensive, have a short battery life, and don't store much. Hard Drive MP3 players such as the IPod are cool, but they too suffer from woefully poor battery life, lack of a record function, and lack of durability. The Sony MZ-S1 and the other current generation Sony MiniDisc players should be the most popular thing on the block right now. So why aren't they? Good question. Read on...

Battery Life: The Sony MZ-S1 and other current generation Sony MiniDisc players, score big points when it comes to battery life. If you're sick of changing batteries on your portable CD player or MP3 unit, then this is for you. The MZ-S1 clocks in at an amazing 54 hours on ONE AA BATTERY!!! Yep! And it's little brother the MZ-N505 clocks in at 56 hours. From what I've observed, these numbers are accurate. I've been using mine for two weeks on the same AA battery for 1-3 hours per day.... and it still shows a good amount of life in the battery. Recording time is shorter, so be sure to plug it in when you're transferring songs. Also, play time is somewhat lower (not much) depending on the mode that your music was recorded in - Standard, LP2, or LP4. More on this later.

Space:Another great feature of current generation MiniDisc players is the ability to store nearly Five and a half hours of music on one little disc. Yes, 320 minutes on a minidisc is a reality in LP4 mode. 160 minutes in LP2 mode, and 80 minutes in standard mode. Compared to portable MP3 players, the Sony wins by a wide margin. Most portable MP3 players have a paltry 32MB or 64MB of onboard RAM... enough for about an hour of music in super-low quality mode. Even upgraded to 128MB, you don't approach the storage capacity of the MiniDisc player. you can truly store the equivalent of 4-5 audio CD's on one little MiniDisc.

Compression and audio quality: The MiniDisc is capable of storing so much music on one CD by compressing the audio using Sony's proprietary ATRAC compression. LP4 is the highest compression and likewise the lower of the three modes in terms of audio quality. However, if you're using the MiniDisc player for most casual listening or listening while jogging, walking, etc., the LP4 mode is more than acceptable in my opinion. If you're going for quality, LP2 and Standard modes are the best. Honestly, I believe you'd be hard pressed to tell a difference between these two higher quality modes. LP2 mode takes advantage of better compression routines that have become available since the MiniDisc was first released. (As it stores twice the amount of music on one disc at roughly the same quality, I'd opt for the LP2 mode over the Standard mode, unless you're going to share a disc with someone who has an older MD player that doesn't support the new MDLP standards.) You'll have to listen and decide for yourself if LP4 is acceptable for your uses or not. Since I bought the MZ-S1 primarily to use while walking/jogging, I'm perfectly happy with LP4 mode, as you can't tell a difference outside when there's ambient noise, wind noise, etc. And I'm absolutely THRILLED with the amount of music I can put on one disc.

Note: Now that I've had this for awhile, I've had a chance to become more familiar with the different formats and the quality that you can expect from the three. I use LP4 most often.... with one catch. Converting MP3's to LP4 produces somewhat lower audio quality than converting a regular audio CD to LP4. The latter produces very high quality audio, given the amount of compression it's doing. Since it's doing the compression 1st generation instead of 2nd, it is noticeably better. Converting an MP3 to LP4 is lower quality because you're basically stacking compression on top of compression. Bottom line: When you can, convert standard audio CD's to LP4, not MP3's to LP4. I think you'll be very happy with the results.

PC Interface: One of the greatest features about these new generation player/recorder combos is their PC USB interface. Indeed, transferring music from your PC is really super quick - up to 32x speed. The downside to this is Sony's strange OpenMG software that you have to use.

OpenMG Software: I've read absolutely scathing comments about this software. People vehemently scream that Sony is infringing on their rights, etc. It's really not as bad as people make it sound. I found it pretty darn easy to transfer my MP3's over to MiniDisc, and really fast, too. I personally don't mind this software, as it allows me to do something I couldn't have done before. Transfer music at very high speed to my MiniDisc player. Sony has implemented a "check-in, check-out" method to "enforce copyrights". This method is kind of strange though. It allows you to "check out" songs a few times to your device. After that, you have to "check in" the song before you can "check it out" again. The songs are tracked in OpenMG using Playlists. The silly thing about all of this is that if you "check out" songs but never check them back in, all you have to do is re-import the song into a new playlist and check it out again. If you're like me, you use CDEX or some other software to RIP your CD's down to MP3's. Then you'd use the OpenMG software to create playlists and move the songs to the device. The software only allows you to "check in" songs that were "checked out" from your particular PC. So you couldn't easily take your MD player to your friends house and check songs into his computer. Big deal. Throw your MP3's on a CDR and trade away. (Just kidding) My point is that the software is rather silly in what it is trying to accomplish. There's no way it ever stopped anyone from copying a song. It just makes it a bit more cumbersome to work with your MiniDisc player.

Note: Sony has also included a NetMD Simple Burn software that allows you to easily pop a music CD into your CD-ROM drive, and transfer directly to your MiniDisc player. This software is very quick, simple to use, and makes moving your CD music over to MD a very painless process.

About the MZ-S1: I've talked a lot about the MiniDisc technology, the software, etc. The MZ-S1 is a pretty special unit though, because it's the first "Sports" MiniDisc player. This unit is VERY rugged and pretty well designed. It's made of metal and all the compartments have little orange gaskets around them, rendering the unit "splash-proof." You don't have to worry about getting caught in the rain or getting sweat on it, etc. This unit is tank-tough. All the ports are covered with rubber seals and the unit feels very solid. There's no doubt in my mind that this thing would survive drops and spills unscathed. I'm pretty sure you could even kick it across the room and it probably wouldn't even skip. This player is designed to be carried in your hand, and includes a wrist strap. There's no holster, carry pouch, or belt clip included, nor do I think you can even buy one. But this unit is pretty lightweight and fits comfortably in the palm of your left hand. With the wrist strap attached, you don't need to worry about dropping it. Even after walking several miles, it wasn't uncomfortable to hold.

Controls: I'll give Sony an E for effort on the controls. Most of the common controls are in the form of a little joystick on the very top, positioned right under your thumb. This little joystick controls FW/RW, volume + -, and play/stop. There's also a little rubber pause button. Mostly, this works very nice. But the problem is that pushing the joystick down is "stop" - This is too easy to hit accidentally when you're trying to go to the next track. I have no idea why Sony didn't just put the stop button in place of the little pause button. (You'd have to intend to hit it there.) Several times, I've stopped playback completely, which quickly turns off the unit, when I was just trying to get to the next song. After you've had it for awhile, you get used to the proper way to use the joystick, but initially, it's kind of annoying.

And finally... The feature that makes the MZ-S1 the envy of all other MD player owners is the orange backlit screen. Yes, it could be a little bigger.... But it's backlit, it looks darn cool, and you can see what tune you're playing in the dark. Most all MD players lack this simple feature. Nya Nya.

A bit about recording: I didn't buy this unit for this purpose, but based on everything I've read, this may be the ideal field recording unit, thanks to its durability. No, it doesn't have a MIC input, but many people complain about the noisy MIC inputs on other MD recorders. The solution is to buy a powered mic, or a battery-box type interface for a mic, and use the MZ-S1's line input. I've read that many people spend lots of money on MD recorders with MIC inputs, only to find themselves later using the line inputs anyway. Don't be sold on the gimmicky mic input feature. The MZ-S1 has an analog line input and an optical line input.

Minor Dislikes: It's hard to find something to dislike about this unit... But they included some tiny headphones that leave a dent in your hair, and pick up a good amount of wind noise if you're walking into the wind. While the audio quality is okay on these headphones, I think that Sony could have included a better set. I know that Sony offers some "extreme sports style" over-the-ear earphones that are much nicer than these little headphones, they'd stay put, and they wouldn't leave a dent in your hair or conflict with a helmet. On the other hand, Sony probably just figured it's an easy way to get you to shell out another $15!

Conclusion: This is a fabulous little unit. Great for people on the go. It's rugged and compact, and very easy to use. You can move songs onto it quickly from a computer, and rip CD's over to it with easy. The battery life alone is a great reason to buy it, but also consider the fact that you can store more than twice as much music as a comparably priced MP3 unit, on tiny inexpensive removable MiniDisc media. And, this unit also has the record feature. All of this in a "go anywhere" package. I believe that the MZ-S1 represents a great value, when compared to MP3 players currently on the market.