Recording has been around for years, there was the tape, then came CD, but you couldn't write on them until the late nineties, and then came along the Sony Minidisc. Measuring less than 7cm in size, the square plastic case covered up a small disc. They had the right credentials; size and quality. You could barely hear the difference from CD, and yet they held as much as a CD.
The way Sony achieved this was by using a compression called ATRAC. And this method of compression is here on this MDS-PC3 unit. Don’t be fooled into thinking it is simply another recorder, its not, well it is but it does far more than record and play.
It took me a long time to finally hand over the £350 cash to the store assistant. I was very nervous to find how it stood up to my current CD writer, but I just had to find something to record my minidisks, and this seemed the perfect product, and I was in confidence after a magazines review. So back home I started the unpack aging, and found it to be smaller than the magazine photo shown. It measures about 14cm wide, and 20cm deep. Its not even heavy. But feels it; the front is a nice silver metal, with minimal buttons too. But you also get a credit card sized remote too, this has a thickness of just 4mm or more! It has soft buttons which control most of the units actions. Instead of a draw you get a slot mechanism, which I prefer. Along with an installation disc for the software and some drivers. Set-up and configuration is relatively simple, but unless you’re using the system fixed on a computer, you’ll find you have to set you Multimedia setting back to your existing audio drivers when the MDS-PC3 is disconnected, or you won’t get any sound from the computers sound system! Oh and you also get some cables, and a module the – CV-MVN10 which is your connecting unit. The software is called M-crew which uses the Windows media player, so if you don’t have it you can’t use the M-crew software. The M-crew software simply is the key to recording, you’re better off by shutting down unnecessary programs to avoid cracking during the recording.
With the recording software, you can record from almost any source, be it from a CD in a CD-ROM drive or MP3’s on the PC. It also handle the WMA format or WAV files. It does so by converting them all into ATRAC encoded standard MiniDisc files, for playback on standard players, such as a Hi Fi system.
It might sound a bit silly, with all the MP3 portables around these days, but in my view it is far much cleaner. Well once you have the recorder, the running costs of MD is far lower than MP3, unless you’re happy to spend lots of time wiping and rerecording the solid state media. Here’s what I mean: a 64Mb memory module giving you 2 hours’ playtime still costs well over £60; the alternative is a pricier player with a built in hard drive for storage. Contrast that with the Sony at less than 99p for a disc giving a healthy 74 minutes of music playback; that’s a lot more difference in the long run. BUT! Wait there more! Using the MDLP2 function you can increase playback time to 2 and a half hours! But then if you used the MDLP4 function you can increase the time further (add less quality though) to five hours, which would be great for voice recording. So it shows you how you can optimise the space on the tiny discs for almost any type of recording. I’ve use the MDLP2 format for MP3’s and the standard ATRAC for wav files and there’s only slight difference in origional to compressed with the MP3 one.
There’s still more though! The PC3 can accept feeds from a 3.5mm jack (useful for walkman recordings!) or through a “toslink” optical connection, like the ones on MD portables. It also outputs optical and analogue from the rear for connection to a Hi Fi or headphone connection. Add to the fact you can control a Sony tuner from the remote makes it as versatile as any PC, but in sound terms and this MDS PC3 is extremely useful. It’s a cheap way to store media, and thus saving space on your PC. The media is hardly expensive, but with the compression format you can retrieve extra value, albeit that these compression formats are only available to be played on the unit though.
And there’s more
If that wasn’t enough, the M-Crew software allows user to drag and drop recordings on screen, and its not at all hard to do. You can easily arrange all the tracks by mouse click, and edit them, like any MD recorder can do. Like renaming tracks titles for example. You can even print out labels to stick on the discs too! As long as you get the right sticky stuff too, though.

Sounds?
Well with MP3’s you can’t certainly listen to them, but the quality is barely anything to shout about, but with the compression like LP4 you don’t loose any distinction. With CD copies there is absolutely no difference when played through my portable, yet the atmosphere can be lost if played through an expensive Hi Fi. But in my view the features wins, it. And it sounds just as good (if not better than equally priced) recorder I have heard.

Conclusion

While I have myself a nice MD portable machine; with the PC3 I can use it features and saving space on my PC. Its more than a music maker too, its almost like a separate back up. And better still if you have millions of poor quality MP3s just wasting space. And at least with MD you aren’t wasting space, now are you?
It has loads of lovely useful features, and still sounds great, a super Sony product I love. Now what should I use my Plextor CD-RW for then?


Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 490