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Photograph courtesy of Sony
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By WILSON ROTHMAN
Sony intended the MiniDisc to replace the CD; once that plan fell flat, the maker realized its less ambitious destiny as a cassette replacement. But just as the portable, rewriteable cartridge was to become the new mix tape, the MP3 revolution happened. Still, the MD format is still around, and this year's crop, fronted by the MZ-NF610, features high-speed data transfer rates, longer battery life and song storage capacity that puts most MP3 players to shame.
There are several ways to put music onto MiniDisc with a Net MD device. You can connect it to a CD player (or anything else with stereo output) and push "Record," or you can plug it into your computer's USB port, a la typical MP3 players. You can load MP3s and rip CDs with Sony's own SonicStage program but, like most software from Sony, it has an unusual interface and can be intimidating the first few times you use it. Sony also offers a RealOne plug-in, so you can use the popular music manager to add and remove songs from discs. If you just want to send CD tracks straight to MiniDisc, Sony does provide an uncharacteristically easy-to-use program called Net MD Simple Burner.
Besides the remarkable speed at which files are transferred to MiniDisc (faster than any USB 1.1-based MP3 player I've used), Net MD allows for more files to be stored on each disc. Discs that typically stored 80 minutes at CD quality can now hold 5 hours of music (roughly 75 tracks) in "LP4" long-play mode. Curious about quality, I ripped David Bowie's "Oh, You Pretty Things" at both LP2 and LP4. Though I could hear slightly more distortion on the LP4 track during the piano intro, it remained surprisingly listenable, especially once the drums kicked in.
Though iPod still rules the portable music realm, a Net MD portable is a smarter buy than most MP3 players. The battery life is great — the 610 can run 48 hours straight on a non-rechargeable AA battery — and the discs are cheap: at $2 per 5-hour rock block, they run circles around flash memory cards.
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