The recording was really almost perfect. It was compressed with ATRAC3, which was Sony's codec akin to MP3, and probably about 160kbps CBR, I think. The quality

The recording was really almost perfect. It was compressed with ATRAC3, which was Sony's codec akin to MP3, and probably about 160kbps CBR, I think. The quality was pretty high, anyway. They did some clever stuff to hide the artefacts, and I think some minidisc recorders even recorded to .wav by the end of the format's life. Nevertheless, you could record digital stereo audio live on a device smaller than a smartphone. I knew some electronic musicians at the time who would play gigs live running sounds off of a couple of minidisc's, and a lot of laptop artists would have a minidisc plugged in as reserve in case of some sort of technical failure with their laptop in a club, which happened frequently back in those heady days around the turn of the millennium.