Sunday, July 24, 2011

Tweetback: Minidiscs

In response to yesterday's piece on the end of portable minidiscs, @theealex responded:

i still use my MD recorder very regularly - it's essential for field recording
If I were you, Alex, I'd try and grab a spare. (Or a machine that uses flash memory?)

This does remind me of a time, towards the end of the last decade, when I was doing a thing for a UK commercial radio station which meant lots of mutual-interviewing with other stations around Europe. We arrived in Prague, at a voluntary, part-time station, and settled down to do the recording.

The volunteer looked a bit embarrassed as he rummaged in his pocket and pulled out a minidisc recorder - "I'm sorry, this must seem a really basic, outdated way of doing things" he mumbled.

Which made it awkward for us, as we then had to drag out an antediluvian compact cassette Marantz recorder, which was twice the size of a pulpit Bible and three times as heavy. Our Czech friend was nice enough to try and hide his disappointment.


1 comment:

Alex B said...

I've got a pile of disks, and my battered 10 year old machine is still going strong, despite numerous repairs (the last one made using a nail file bought from a supermarket in Palma de Mallorca)

Going to be upgrading at some point, but until then the MD recorder is still where it's at for me!

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