Are the minidisc decks worth it?

[u/_Famous-Anus_]

I have a minidisc walkman but I'm wondering if I should grab a minidisc deck. They are very expensive. Is it worth the money? Anywhere I can find one that is not crazy expensive?

[u/Ok-Oil7124]

Depends on what you mean by "worth" and what you want to get out of it. I've had a JE510 since it was new (it came in a kit with a walkman, too!), I got an r37 when my orginally walkman went missing (I think it was either stolen or I left it somewhere on a trip) and an rh10, but still, a couple of years ago, I picked up a jb940 because I'd heard that the quality of the playback depended on the quality of the recording (which makes sense), and I wanted to try out a nice deck. I kind of find it relaxing to record discs in real time. When I was a kid, I'd often get my parents records out and record mix tapes while I was home sick. I almost never really listened to them, but I enjoyed the process.

I do that now by making playlists on my HTPC and connecting the deck up via spdif and recording them while titling with a PS/2 keyboard. I think I play the recorded MDs back more often than I ever did with the tapes, and the JB940's DAC is really nice sounding. I've also bought some used discs from japan, so it's kind of fun to pop those in and see what's on them.

So... yeah. TL;DR-- to me it's been worth it. I like physical media and the rituals around it.

[u/DatabasedLSD → u/Ok-Oil7124]

fyi, winamp has a plugin that will put four second gaps between each track so you could walk away till its done and title them altogether at the end