Definition: MiniDisc

(1) See mini CD.

(2) An earlier 2.5" digital audio disc from Sony that was available in a rewritable magneto-optic (MO) version or as read-only like a music CD. The disc also stored track titles, and although its 140MB capacity was much smaller than a CD, it held 80 minutes of music due to Sony's Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding compression (see ATRAC3).

Introduced in 1992, the MiniDisc Walkman was popular in Japan, but not in the U.S. The MiniDisc MD DATA drive came out a year later for computer storage but never caught on. There were few pre-recorded albums compared to audio tape cassettes, and CD usage was growing exponentially. Walkman production ceased in 2011. See Walkman and magneto-optic disk.

MiniDisc Cartridge

Somewhat popular in Japan, the MiniDisc attracted very few followers in the U.S.