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Sony DTC-700 audio DAT player/recorder

(kevinboone.me)
115 points naves | 5 comments | 30 Jun 25 18:03 UTC | HN request time: 0.015s | source
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PaulHoule ◴[30 Jun 25 18:35 UTC] No.44426434[source]▶
Personally I'm more of a fan of minidisc. You can get minidisc players for $100 or so on Ebay and they occasionally show up at the local reuse center for less than that and my experience is that 100% of the minidisc players I've picked up worked (had one fail in six months though...), in contrast to about a 40% success rate with cassette decks. You can buy minidiscs in bulk from Japan for about $1.50 each, which is cheaper than Type 2 tapes. Portable minidisc players are available and can be plugged into your computer via USB to record music with names for the tracks.

My reuse center got two DAT decks, one of which looked terribly trashed, for $200 a piece. Nein Danke!

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1. SpecialistK ◴[30 Jun 25 18:51 UTC] No.44426591[source]▶
MD pricing can definitely be hit-or-miss, especially on those desirable USB NetMD units. But enough were sold that a little patience all but guarantees you'll find something satisfactory.
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2. PaulHoule ◴[30 Jun 25 19:06 UTC] No.44426750[source]▶
It comes across as weird to me that it's so hard to get an actual NetMD deck which isn't portable since my mental image is that I make cassette tapes with a deck plugged into my stereo/computer and play them back on a walkman or car deck. But yeah, at some point I just started recording MD's off my computer the same way I record cassettes.
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3. SpecialistK ◴[30 Jun 25 19:11 UTC] No.44426804[source]▶
I can only assume Sony thought that most people wouldn't keep a hifi deck near an early 00s desktop PC. And by the NetMD era, portable MP3 was the hot new thing so that got most of the attention. There were some cool Vaio PCs and laptops with NetMD drives built in that I would like to play with...
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4. PaulHoule ◴[30 Jun 25 23:01 UTC] No.44428838{3}[source]▶
My main 2-channel system is a Denon AV Receiver with a burned out video board, two Panasonic speakers I got for 1/10 the original cost and a stack of obsolete audio sources (two tape decks and a minidisc player) next to a M4 Mac Mini with a USB audio out that has coax, optical and analog outs so I have all the bases covered. By far the computer is the most common playback source.
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5. SpecialistK ◴[30 Jun 25 23:14 UTC] No.44428935{4}[source]▶
The PC is for me as well - I run a Lenovo ThinkCentre tiny through a Yamaha MD8 MiniDisc multi-track recorder which then goes into my Yamaha 5.1 receiver. The MD8 is used for karaoke, and the receiver uses Dolby ProLogic to make it surround.

For recording MDs I use a Sony MZ-N920 with Web MiniDisc Pro.