"Exactly. Now, as any oldies in this list can tell you, saved up (I had to
go to college...) and a year later bought an R30.. that is, a year from my
decision to buy a walkman. I had never owned a walkman before and was doing
research on it when I stumbled onto MDs... Hoo boy. Roughly US$400... had a
friend in Japan to buy it for me."
I am a real oldie. With getting a great deal from a friend who manages an
appliance store, he special ordered me the original Sony MZ-1 portable recorder
for $400 (USD). But that was then. With the rebate there are Sharp portable
recorders selling for $200 or so today.
But you are missing the most important point. You mentioned the Walkman. What
were you planing to use for recording??? There are no small portable cassette
recorders that I know of. And if by Walkman you meant CD, again no portable
recorders at any price. Even the high end cassette decks would have a tough
time performing as well as the least expensive portable MD recorder made in the
last few years.
As long as it is analog and it is tape, you will still hear some hiss.
The Rio and Sony Stick are toys. With the cost of the memory cards needed for
them, you can't build up a library of albums. I think it's going to be a
looooooong time before you can buy a memory card for them that will sell for
less then three dollars.
There are many reasons why MD never caught on with the masses. The initial
selling price of recorders is one. Then there was the $16 per blank MD. If a
portable recorder's price dropped from $400 to $200 within a year or so of
introduction and blanks dropped to $5, MD might have caught on. But it is too
late for that now.
It's a shame because MD is such a great media. It's durability compared to the
"naked" CD (which is subject to scratches very easily) is, in my opinion, worth
any slight loss in sound quality that there might be.
Regards,
Larry
-----------------------------------------------------------------
To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word
"unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
