The Digital Audio Tape (DAT) was doing well in professional recording studios but never caught on with the general public. Only a small number of prerecorded music DATs were produced and sold to the public. Philips took the logical step of offering backwards compatibility by introducing a digital tape format called the Digital Compact Cassette. The DCC met with direct competition from Sony’s MiniDisc and both prerecorded DCCs and MiniDiscs of popular artists were released and marketed to consumers. The magneto-optical disc technology allowed for random access of music, and withstood shock better. Although DCC was backwards compatible with the standard audio cassette, the market clearly favored MiniDiscs, and DCC was discontinued in 1996.

MiniDiscs however were never able to achieve a high level of success and were no real threat to the compact disc or even the analog cassette. Both MiniDiscs and standard cassettes were no match for the CD once CD-R technology became available. People were then able to record their music collections to CD. In the end, the compact disc moved on to become the undisputed king of the music sector. The MiniDisc floundered, then attempted a comeback of sorts, floundered some more and has now fallen by the wayside.

Consumers were slow to adopt the MiniDisc for several reasons. Although more popular in Japan and Europe, only a limited amount of prerecorded music became available in the US – mostly new releases from Sony Music Entertainment labels. Also, recording on the MD format was notably frustrating for many people. Initially, there was no way to transfer the audio tracks from a PC to the MiniDisc and vice versa. Sony responded to this problem by introducing software specifically designed for the purpose. This software also had issues in early releases regarding security and copyright locks that prevented the song from being further copied after being copied from the player. The newer Hi-MD has sought to address these issues, although sound files are still encrypted and decrypted when transferred, unlike standard files that are transferred directly. This means that the software must be active for all playable music transfers, which has been inconvenient to some consumers.

The MiniDisc is something of an oddity in audio history. Its innovation came at a time that made it almost obsolete before it was ever able to get off the ground. It failed in the music market because the older generations preferred audio cassettes and CDs, and the younger generation loved compact discs and eventually mp3 players. MDs suffered limitations with storage capacity that solid-state music players rapidly out paced. The inability to copy music to one’s computer and vice versa also led to difficulties for the MiniDisc in popular use. At this point in time, MiniDiscs are pretty much gone. If you have any personal or family speech or music recordings, now is the time to get them transferred to a different format.

The most annoying aspect of analogue radio is poor reception and hissing. There’s nothing worse than having to continually adjust the tuning knob to get the reception just right. So does digital really solve this problem? Well, in a word, yes, digital sound quality is generally much better than analogue, but just how good is it. A lot has been made of DAB digital radio having CD quality sound, but is this really true. Potentially yes, but this is a choice of the broadcasting station. The station can choose the quality at which it wishes to broadcast its signal. Talk shows for example are generally broadcast at a lower bandwidth than music stations.

With digital radio, there is no need to remember awkward frequencies of your favourite station. DAB radios search for and make a list of all available stations and almost all systems will store this list to memory. Station selection then becomes nothing more than a simple flick of a switch. The old hassle of searching for a station and finding nothing more than an annoying hissing sound is truly a thing of the past. A good radio will organize your stations by category making them easy to find and access.

Since their introduction some years ago, DAB digital radios have matured a great deal and competition between manufacturers has led to more feature rich systems. New models come with programme guides that allow you to record your favourite programmes and listen when it suites you. Digital displays even display live programme information such as current track, station name, programme host etc. The possibilities really are endless. A feature you could only dream off with analogue radio; some DAB devices even allow you to pause and rewind live radio so you won’t miss a thing. Yet all this is just the beginning, DAB digital radio is the future and it will be with us for a very long time to come. We can only imagine what the future holds for DAB digital radio but there is one thing for sure, its future is bright and exciting.