The minidisc I had, and there were lots like them, had a stereo-in that automatically switched between line-level and mic-level. Really amazing considering how

The minidisc I had, and there were lots like them, had a stereo-in that automatically switched between line-level and mic-level. Really amazing considering how small those devices were, because the unit wasn't much bigger than the minidisc itself. The cheap units from Sony and Panasonic (etc) virtually always did this, even though lower budget ones without the recording facility were available. Really a genius move to put a stereo microphone preamplifier into such a tiny unit. The line/mic in was also an optical in at the same time. "Abusing" headphones isn't really the right word to use – headphones and dynamic microphones are almost identical technology. One way, signals go in an drive the diaphragm into producing sound, the other way, audio hits the diaphragm and can then be amplified by a preamplifier, making a microphone. Hence it's really easy to put the earbuds into your ear and walk around recording, and when you play back it's like a perfect binaural recording of what your ears were hearing at the time. I've heard of those earbuds with microphones on the outside, that's a bit more pro. Yes you're correct, smartphones can record really easily, there was just something really aesthetically pleasing about how the minidisc was a device just built to record and playback really well. It was a beautiful way of having a recording device, without the need for dongles or doodads like you need to do it well on a smartphone. I should have also made the point that a piece of technology being limited also encourages one to find ways of transcending the limitation and doing new things with it (see the Gescom album 'Minidisc' that was designed to be played on shuffle). Having a portable field recorder that was affordable to be a birthday or Christmas present endowed one with something more valuable than a mere smartphone with a recording app, for some reason. P.s. try and record something at high volume, like a band playing, on your smartphone with the built-in microphone. You'll basically get a square-wave with interludes. The variable level of the mic preamp on the minidisc made it so you could make decent quality recordings of anything...