NetMD in 2022…and beyond.

Great video Matt.. I still listen to MD in my workshop almost exclusively (with the odd cassette, DCC or vinyl) - there's something about selecting music by handling physical media and inserting it into the player. I have lots of pre-recorded MDs and lots more I've recorded myself from ripped/download albums. I've used linux-minidisc for a while but after watching your video, I tried Web MD Pro & Platinum-MD and they both improve the experience. I normally use an MZ-RH1 for recording but I also have an N1 which I'd like to try, if I can ever find the dock for it..

Since I am having a binge watching old Techmoan stuff Sunday I am doing a shout-out for Part 3 of the Mission Impossible tape players!

Because my Sony Lissa system is a bit glitchy (need to open up and fix them; not an easy task), and Windows doesn't properly support Firewire any longer – so I can hook the units up, but nothing much happens – I decided to look up prices of the MDS-NT1, because that looks rather nice. Yeah, I'm probably not the only one who thinks that. Over $400, and that does not include import duties and VAT. If you can find them, that is: the Yahoo Auctions buying services come up empty.

I can confirm the software based one works in Linux consistently. I have the same portable model as your troublesome one and it also does occasionally loop off and on again just like yours did.

Well look at you guys with yer fancy Net MD recorders. ;) But seriously, here's a workaround for those of us that own MD recorders without Net MD: I've always used CD-burning software to edit CD Text and write a CD-RW that I then copy to a blank MD (I use a Sony MD373 Hi-Fi unit for this purpose). Granted, messing around with CD burning is a bit of a faff, but I only do it when I'm ripping CDs into FLAC - the creation of a CD-RW is an easy extra step from there.

Mat, I gave up on titling my minidiscs ages ago. I used sticky labels. I watched the video all the way through first. My ancient Sony NetMD player works on the PC running Linux (Windows - spit) again. Whoo Hooo!!! If I get to the UK I must come up and buy you a drink of your choice. Best wishes from France.

Very thrilled to see this one, most of my minidisc players are nerMD! So happy to have a way to use them!

1. I tried this out on the one NetMD player I still have and it worked great! Very cool to see something like this exist now, since getting SonicStage running on anything modern is a royal pain in the ass and I wouldn't wish that hell on anyone. It's very nice to see new software made to get old hardware working. 2. Since you asked for oddcast stuff and I don't know where else this would ever go, but I think you would enjoy it: I moved to Japan recently for work, and I bought a CD, not thinking my only CD player (For those interested, a Sony MXD-D400) is on a shipping container in the Pacific Ocean. I went to Yodobashi Camera to buy a CD drive, and checked out their audio section just for fun. They had tons of crap Vinyl/CD/Tape combo decks at various prices (from dirt cheap to weirdly expensive?) and every tape deck, without fail, had the same tape mech in it. I figured that would be the case, but it was very funny seeing the exact same one in every device, no matter the price. Also, there was an "Aiwa" player (Which clearly is just the brand) that was so cheap and so crap that it blew my mind someone would put that name on it. I got pictures of all of this stuff here -> https://imgur.com/a/mKYI5Ux Also, why anyone would spend 500,000 Yen (Roughly $3,500 dollars) for a CD player in 2022 when a $20 player will be exactly the same... I don't get it at all, lol.

Recently fired up my old NetMD recorder and it worked fine. Now have to find where I put the discs! Do remember the Sony software being pretty horrible, but then I got an iPhone and tried using iTunes. The Sony stuff was a dream in comparison to that. It was iTunes that drove me to other phone platforms, initially Windows Phone (which was far better than iOS), now Android.

Regarding the next Patreon update: I loved the recent “audiophile voodoo” videos. Maybe you could tell us if you’re planning to do more of these in the future? Also, will you be improving your testing methodology? Especially in the last video about the demagnetizer it didn’t really make sense to take the digital signal - if there really were any induction happening from the spinning CD then it’d only be affecting the analog path as the induced voltage would be so low that it couldn’t distort a digital signal. However, comparing analog signals is hard.

I've updated the video to incorporate information about updates and improvement that have occurred since I started shooting this. Thanks to anyone who pointed these things out - Kieran in particular has helped here.

I have the blue NetMD as well. Back in the day I waited a while for the Hi-MD recorders to drop in price and they just disappeared. I have a Hi-MD now. Thanks for the video. If I can copy recordings off old MDs with that software It will have been worth the wait.

Separate Oddcast question post, because I'm a madwoman: • How often do people recognize you in public (as Techmoan)? I remember your Dad's carers asking him if his son was Techmoan. Come to mention, how did that story end? • Will we ever be treated to 5 seconds more of young lad Mat's videos for posterity RE: Sony Video Compo (https://youtu.be/pdObeF9VHiA&t=21m38s) • Do you still have old players/machines for formats you don't have media for, and vice versa (and can I help you find them; no, I can't, but I want to)? • Did you ever figure out what the background music tapes were called in that sort of Hipac changer (https://youtu.be/sGWuVMo7ZEs) ... and the enormous Philip BGM machine (https://youtu.be/hIVN-o3qPPM)? • Did you really grow up in or near Ramsbottom, Bury, or was that a comedic bit for the Al Green vid? Have you ever climbed Harcles Hill to Peel Tower? (I learn much from Google Maps).

Awesome! I missed the MD train back in the day, having now a hifi separate and 2 portable MD devices, I might just take the time to connect my NetMD device up to the PC. Thanks Mat, another great vid

I get different error with my MZ-N707 (on Mac) but my MZ-N710, MZ-NH600 and MZ-NH700 all work fine. I’ve some music from the 90s not available on streaming/mp3 so (as per Kieran’s comment above) it’s great to be able to use the new pro version to get the music off MD with my MZ-N710.

Oh wow, Sonicstage takes me back. It was flaky enough under Windows XP at the best of times.

Hi Mat, wiki admin guy here! I have an update from asivery, the Pro developer: "Hi! At 11:00 you mentioned that the RH1 is the only device capable of getting ATRAC off of normal Minidiscs via a USB Cable. The biggest difference between the original Web Minidisc and Web Minidisc Pro is the Pro version's ability to do the same thing with all other Sony (and Aiwa) NetMD portables. Type-R NetMD devices (MZ-N1, MZ-N909, MZ-N707, MZ-N505) can retrieve the audio at the speed of ~0.35x real time, and Type-S devices (Pretty much all other portables) can do the same thing at approx. 5-6x real time. Type-R devices are this slow because the exploit which allows them to even retrieve ATRAC in the first place has been written ~4 days ago. To enable this functionality, you need to click that "Enable Homebrew Mode Ripping in Main UI" button in the overflow menu."

I was one of the guys asking if you had tried the web app. I connected my MZ-410 to my M1 MacBook Pro with great results. My MBP only has USB-C ports so I have always used one of those little converters. Sorry that I neglected to mention that. I also have Sonic Stage on a Microsoft Surface Laptop but I do prefer the web app. Here in the U.S. I was aware of Minidisc back then but I did not realize it was a writable format. I thought it was a competitor to CDs. Thanks to your channel I have a new hobby and a great collection of synthwave and vaporwave minidisc releases!

I've still not fathomed out how to connect my CD player to my ordinary non-NetMD recorder. I've only been familiar with MD a couple of years, buying all this stuff I'd missed out on, during lockdown. I'd need help getting to the back of the units anyhow. Yes, there's no real need in this day and age, but it's the satisfaction of getting something out of something old!

HTG, when I got the notification email I thought it was for some sort of medical devices system. Didn't even clue in that those were minidiscs in the image! Fascinating stuff, even though I've never even seen a Minidisc or a player in my life! And yes, your words about the folks that write the software to keep this stuff going is spot on. As you note, most have some place where you can throw them (or sometimes their favorite charity) a $ or £ or 2 or 5 and more people need to do that when they find the software useful.

Question for the update: how have you improved your video editing and story making skills over the last couple of years? Do you see any changes? (Reason for asking is that you can really see that you are improving creatively almost every video)

I occasionally use MD and I have a "dual" setup for writing them. SonicStage on a virtual machine and webmd in a browser depending what I want to write. I hoped that Sony would release an anniversary player this year but I guess it won't happen.. just my wishful thinking :)

I still used NetMD today in the 2020's! I use ver 4.3 SonicStage and ver 2.2 openMG Jutebox to work on my Toshiba Laptop running Windows 7 Home 64 bit. They both work fine and the laptop recognizes my Sony MZ-N510 without an issue! Its nice to know that this format will continue for at lease another decade with newer software as you have shown here! Thank you!!

To me, MiniDisc will always be the archetype for scifi-looking storage. Small, silver, round... you look at it and it screams "I store things." Much more exciting than boring thumb drives or cloud storage.

This ticks two Techmoan boxes for me: showing me stuff that I remember from the time but never owned and the pleasure of sheer randomness. At the time these devices were made I didn't see the point in Minidisc as it seemed like an interim format that was bound to be superseded by MP3s. I therefore took to putting music files on CD-Rs and invested in a Rio Volt, a rather expensive portable CD player that could play files from a data disc before that became commonplace. I remember someone asking me if I knew anything about NetMD in the early 2000s. I quite liked the look of it but didn't bite.

Wow. Just tested it and worked great with Aiwa am-nx1... It was the driver installer that made all the difference. As for the purpose of MD, well, it always seems that my minidisc player drives headphones better than my phone (3.5mm jack). The phone sounds strained, but the portable MD does it easy.

Minidisc, that's a media format that I've never seen in real life. But from your videos, it sounds good. I still have all of my music in MP3 files and on CDs, sometimes I play something from Youtube. Do you think that minidisc should be useful for me? Has it some advantages over android phone and Panasonic SL-SX420 discman?

I just love how MiniDisc is still around an arguably getting more popular. Just recently I found a homebrewed adapter from Sony’s proprietary connector on players like the MZ-NH1 to USB-C. Maybe in a few years the community will be large enough that aftermarket parts for broken OLED screens and such become viable.

Great to see that people are still producing software for NetMD, I have no real use for the format but I do really like the idea of handling the MiniDiscs.

Time to dig out the ol' NetMD, sure I have a few discs that have music that I don't have anywhere else

There's a minidisc community forum that grew out of the old Sony SonicStage forums. They have a thread devoted to getting minidisc players working on modern 64-bit Windows that includes tweaked drivers and software. I've been using it for several years now and never had an issue with it. These new community efforts are interesting, shame about the reverse-engineered codecs being of lower quality though.

Like a lot of Americans, I didn't even know what MiniDisc was until I started watching Techmoan about 5 years ago. Don't have any plans to get any MiniDisc players either, but I enjoy learning the history of the format and it's current state of affairs as shown here.

If nothing else, this video has given me warm, nostalgic memories of hanging out at my bf's dormitory in 1999; using Kazaa and Winamp to obtain MP3s; subsequently listening to said MP3 playlists with Winamp visualizers, chilling out, having a great time. Browsing the 'net with Netscape Navigator. Playing the video games Final Fantasy VII and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time(?). Of course, we had the unseen spector of Stanley M Gortikov haunting us by stealing our Minidisc fun (even though we were oblivious to Minidisc existence). Wouldn't it be amusing if a resurgence of MD could be made? Even though I don't need one, I sort of want an MD/CD deck like this one: https://www.ebay.com/itm/284983672218 Questions? I have too many stupid questions. Did you put the text 'Sony Cyber Age Disc' on that machine? Your experience working at HMV? How often do people recognize you in public (as Techmoan)? I ask this question based on your Dad's carers asking him if his son was Techmoan.

Many years ago I had a 3.5" drive bay sized Minidisc player that connected to the motherboard through IDE.

Before watching the video, I'll mention that on the Franlab livestream last night, Fran mentioned your CD demagnetizer video and her take on what the original, reasonable, intent of the device could have been. She mentioned that she had e-mailed you about it, otherwise you could see it at the 40:00 mark in the video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58CDgOwrmRI

Great video.... off to dig my ol' Aiwa netMD portable out and see how it gets on....

Sonic Stage was one of the most heinous pieces of software I ever had the misfortune to have to use.

From robotic window cleaners, security cameras , mini dishwashers through to doorbells and the Hamilton beach breakfast maker. I’d love a revisit to see which items from the last ten years or so have hung around and which ones were slung out in the trash.

Today just got excellent.

I'm interested in what video ideas are forming based on what you have in the storage locker. Anything buried in the back which you're feeling renewed motivation for?

It is absolutely esoteric, abstruse, recondite, all that stuff. But, this is going to have legs as people are going to look for it over time.

I thought it was about medical devices also. You come up with some of the coolest and craziest gear that I totally passed over the first time around. Not too dry at all, thanks!

The big interest for me with NetMD devices is... I believe they use that ATRAC lossless codec? Where each song comes with two files, one is a smaller lossy file, and the other is a lossless correction file? So you can take the lossy version out and about with you, and keep the lossless version at home, saving on conversion each time without having to keep two separate files? I mean, internet speeds are good enough that my Plex server can transcode my lossless files on the fly these days. But I really liked that ingenuity.

I misunderstood the title and thought this was about devices for WebMD. Mat doing medical devices? Weird.