Ok, it's not my first time transferring and cleaning up vinyl but it is my first time transferring it to the MiniDisc format.

I thought I'd share with you my li'l experience which I thought would be easy but ended up.... well, let's put it this way, I found out that my record player tends to play at the wrong speed sometimes!

The album I was recording was "Sidekicks" by Thompson Twins. As far as I know, it's not available on CD but even so, I'd prefer to keep that "vinyl sound" than buy "just another CD". It's all nostalgia, folks.

So, the songs skipped, I tried again. They skipped again, I tried again. The good thing with MiniDisc, is you can delete tracks and even crate tracks as you record. For example, in between songs, you can press the 'rec' button to start a new track. Well, thanks to the Thompson Twins, they didn't leave space between most of their songs! :D So after, I had to have the fun of dividing the tracks. Do you realize how small a portable MiniDisc recorder is? Which means their buttons are tiny. Which means, one mistake and...I deleted tracks 1 and 2. So I had to tape them again. Did I say 'tape'? :) Glad that I'm still using the lingo.

I also have the brilliant idea of recording the b-sides too (which I will do on another day-- thanks to MiniDisc, I don't need to finalize anything) which means more tracks to...title! Don't get started! It took me half an hour to title all the songs (12) that I had so far and oops, I named the wrong name, spelled that incorrectly....

But it was worth it :) I can see that my vinyl will not last forever and even though I bought a new needle, the turntable is not spinning at the right speed sometimes (which means re-re-re-re-recording). So many times I found myself thinking "Why bother?! There are CDs!". But, such is character!

An interesting thing I noticed was I'm listening to these songs and noticed so many thing sI haven't noticed back in the 80s. The Thompsons Twins were really New Wave. I never noticed the soudn effects they used, the synths (I know I know), etc. Next it's the b-sides and then it's "Into the Gap".

I have recorded well over 100 mini discs, many off of album. The only problem I have faced is that mini discs are not very common. When I would play at a club with a "in-house" system. They wouldn't have a mini disc player. It was a pain to always bring mine and then hook it into their system so I decided not to use MD's anymore. I went and bought an actual CD burner. There are some nice things that MD's can do that CD's can't. You mentioned a couple, like erasing tracks, never having to finalize, being able to play one before it is a full disc, naming tracks, editing tracks and so on. You'd think with today's technology they could make a CD burner with the same features...sheesh.

Actually, you can do some things with the CD burner like adding titles to the disc and the names of the tracks - if your CD burner and the program you are using is providing this technology (CD Text).

The MD is a dying race already...I have bought my MD player about 5 years ago, and I'm using it today only to transfer tracks from vinyl to my PC. The car MD players are still to expensive, and for the costs of one MD pack, I can buy two packs of CD-Rs. Plus, only a few MD players are supplying the MP3-technology, but my PC and my home DVD player are supporting it. Easy choice... ;)

MD isn't really dying. It's huge in Asia and some parts of Europe but it never got off here. If you want cheap prices for blank MDs, go to Chinatown.

Here in Toronto, blanks can cost $12 in Chinatown. In BestBuy, they are $24.