FilesFound!BASS #8 MiniDisc
Posted on 24/06/24
MiniDiscs were one of the first things I started buying used online to see if there would be anything still on them. I'd seen some great videos by Techmoan on Youtube where he had ordered a huge box MiniDisc players and went through them all, seeing which ones still worked... I'd never really seen a MiniDisc before - I wanted to try one!
I found that there were quite a few bulk listings of MiniDiscs on sites like Yahoo Auctions and Mercari, and often selling relatively cheaply. I saw one bulk MiniDisc listing that appeared to be someone clearing out a relative's unused junk, and one of the MiniDiscs stood out to me...
The front of the BASS #8 MiniDisc
BASS #8... It looked interesting...
But, before we take a listen, let's take a quick aside to learn a little about what exactly a MiniDisc is and how to get the audio onto a modern PC today.
A Brief Summary of MiniDiscs
A MiniDisc (MD) is a physical data storage medium introduced by Sony in the early 90s for audio recording and playback. MiniDiscs were primarily popular in Japan and Europe during the mid-1990s to early 2000s, and were commonly used for making mixtapes.
They are small and square, much smaller than a CD - able to fit in the palm of your hand. They were made in countless colors and designs! I like how they look a lot.
Unlike cassette tapes before them (which store analog audio on magnetic tape), MiniDiscs store digital audio, like CDs, allowing for higher quality audio.
They have a durable plastic shell that is not removable, so the disc inside is well preserved. Pretty much every MiniDisc I've tried has still worked!
Backing up or copying a MiniDisc onto a modern computer today takes quite a few steps and some specialized hardware...
Recording the MiniDisc to a PC
I have a Sony CMT-A01MD player (the shiny silver cube in the photo below) - it can play cassettes, CDs and also MiniDiscs! It's nice and small and is basically a perfect cube for someone like me who wants to look at old media but doesn't want to own things that take up space (these two things really conflict sometimes).
But this is a device from the early 2000s, it can't exactly hook up to a PC or send files over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi...
That's where the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi HD comes in. That's the small black box on top of the Sony CMT-A01MD - the two are connected with a stereo plug cable from the Sony CMT-A01MD's headphone port to an audio splitter cable that connects to the back of the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi HD.
The Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi HD then connects to my mini PC (the flat box with the wolf-kun sticker on it) via USB. No problem!
I use my mini PC for watching things, hanging out on discord, etc, which is why it's plugged up to a big TV here. All I had to do was set up Audacity to record from the connected Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi HD, wait for it to play through in real time, then save the recording as an mp3.
There may be better ways of doing this, but it works for my setup, so I'm fine with it!
Anyway, that's enough explaining! You're here for BASS #8, aren't you...?
BASS #8
From the title, I expected BASS #8 to be... Very bass heavy music, I guess?
But I'm not sure how to describe what BASS #8 actually is.
I created a FilesFound! Soundcloud account just for uploading BASS #8 to. Sharing music is going to be a lot trickier in general than sharing old and obscure software, since copyrighted music is so hard to share even a little bit of anywhere online... But hopefully this will work for now.
Take a listen to BASS #8...!
BASS #8 is one of my most popular MiniDiscs for putting on for visiting friends when showing them some of my weird found media. I don't know how to describe it other than as a continuous, crazy remix... Listening to the whole thing puts you into a strange headspace...
It samples so many different things that I wouldn't know where to start. I've tried using various song recognizing tools to try and figure out who made it, but they don't know what to do with BASS #8 either.
If anyone happens to know more about the music on BASS #8, please let me know! Enjoy! 🎵8️⃣
UPDATE: 01/07/24
A source for BASS #8 has been found - it's a track from Dancemania!
Thanks to friend of a friend, catcat, for figuring this out. Thank you for your service!
What's funny is that they recognized it from, of all things, the "font" of the handwriting on the MiniDisc itself that was trying to imitate the font on the actual album art...
There are many more Bass #s out there...
My fiancé has been listening to BASS #0 all week, so I recommend "Splaking it Down" and giving it a listen. (I don't actually recommend Splaking it Down at all if you can help it).
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