I don’t think I ever had a Discman until I bought myself the $150 Philips model that also played MP3 CDs. It was a fine CD player with good anti-skip, but you “only” had 80 minutes per disc.
With MP3 CDs, you could have several albums up there and the quality seemed to be about the same. The organisation was not so great and it was hit or miss what album number your albums would be (and I think it could change from day to day, so it wasn’t like you could Sharpie it on the disc), but the anti-skip became nearly perfect as most of the song would be played from the buffer. I think (but I’m not sure) that made it spin less and thus, saved battery life. Makes sense anyway.
MP3 CDs (and later iRiver DAPs) were definitely a bigger jump than cassettes to CDs, but CDs were also pretty impressive (you skips between tracks relatively quickly, quality was noticeable better).
I also associate CDs with the 90s. My first portable audio player (what an archaic concept) was one of the last popular Walkman models.
Parents soon got me a Discman, which seemed liked a massive upgrade.
I don’t think I ever had a Discman until I bought myself the $150 Philips model that also played MP3 CDs. It was a fine CD player with good anti-skip, but you “only” had 80 minutes per disc.
With MP3 CDs, you could have several albums up there and the quality seemed to be about the same. The organisation was not so great and it was hit or miss what album number your albums would be (and I think it could change from day to day, so it wasn’t like you could Sharpie it on the disc), but the anti-skip became nearly perfect as most of the song would be played from the buffer. I think (but I’m not sure) that made it spin less and thus, saved battery life. Makes sense anyway.
MP3 CDs (and later iRiver DAPs) were definitely a bigger jump than cassettes to CDs, but CDs were also pretty impressive (you skips between tracks relatively quickly, quality was noticeable better).