Tascam MD-801
A 3U broadcast MiniDisc deck that let you type titles on a PC keyboard and cut edits to 1/86th of a second.
Overview
The MD-801 is a 3U rack-mountable MiniDisc recorder/player that Tascam aimed squarely at broadcast, industrial production, and conference work rather than the living room. The pitch was simple: MiniDisc gave you random access and instant search, and the MD-801 wrapped that in balanced XLR connections, AES/EBU and S/PDIF digital I/O, and a jog dial that let you edit in increments as fine as 1/86th of a second. For anyone cutting voice spots or assembling program material, that combination of fast access and frame-level trimming was the whole point.
The machine came in two flavors. The MD-801R is the record/play version, listed at $2,499.00; the MD-801P is a play-only unit at $2,399.00. An optional BU-801 RAM buffer kit, $249.00, adds instant-start operation. Tascam's own advertising in Studio-Sound (June 1996, p.88) made the speed argument its centerpiece, claiming track search up to five times faster than any other MiniDisc player and programmable instant track replay. That's marketing copy, not an independent measurement, but it speaks to who the deck was built for — people whose job depended on getting to a cut fast.
One of the more practical touches is the ability to title MD cuts with a standard PC keyboard. The MD-801 carries an RS-232 port and a PC-2 connection for a computer keyboard, so you could type disc and track names rather than pecking them out with a jog dial. The same connection also handled cut location. If you recorded in mono, Tascam noted you could double disc capacity to up to 148 minutes — a genuinely useful trick for spoken-word work.
The rear panel is where the broadcast intent shows. Balanced XLR and unbalanced RCA analog I/O sit alongside AES/EBU and S/PDIF digital connections, and SCMS is selectable, which matters for anyone who needs to move digital audio between machines without the serial copy management system getting in the way. Sound on Sound (December 1997, p.11), covering Tascam's wider MiniDisc push, positioned the MD-801 as the top of the line, with the mid-range MD-501R and a lower-priced model sitting beneath it.
A later revision, the MD-801RMKII, is worth knowing about if you're shopping. It's still a 3U rack-mountable recorder with the same jog dial and 1/86th-of-a-second editing resolution, but it adds Word Sync in/thru, an on-board Fs converter, analog output trim control, 20-bit A/D and D/A converters, End of Message notification, a link function for multi-unit operation, and an IF-8FR remote connector. Tascam listed the RMKII at $2,699.00. If you find one, check which version you're actually looking at — the feature sets differ meaningfully, and the converters alone make the RMKII the more desirable of the two.
The broader MiniDisc format didn't conquer the studio rack the way DAT did, and Studio-Sound (May 2000, p.36) was candid about that when it reviewed the budget MD-301 Mark II, noting MD "still evades many studio racks." The MD-801 sat at the opposite end of that line — the expensive, fully-loaded broadcast tool rather than the entry-level machine — and it found its users in radio, theater, concert halls, and industrial installations where random-access editing and fast cueing beat the alternatives.
For collectors today, the MD-801 is a niche within a niche: a professional MiniDisc deck from the format's broadcast-era peak, with the I/O and editing chops that separate it from consumer portables. The play-only MD-801P is the odd one out — fewer reasons to own it unless you already have a recorder. The recorders, especially the RMKII with its 20-bit converters and word sync, are the versions worth hunting. Expect the usual MiniDisc caveats: the format is obsolete, media is a finite resource, and any deck of this age deserves a careful check of its transport and loading mechanism before you trust it with a session.
eBay Listings
As an eBay Partner, we earn from qualifying purchases. This helps support our independent vintage technology research.