Sony MDS-JE440 User Manual

Product Review

Sony MDS-JE440 MiniDisc Deck

Sony MDS-JE440 MiniDisc Deck. Sony
Electronics, Inc., Consumer Audio Divi-
sion, 1 Sony Drive, Park Ridge, NJ
07656. 1-800-222-7669 or (941) 768-7669,
FAX (941) 768-7790, www.sel.sony.com.
Suggested retail price: $250.

The MDS-JE440 is Sony’s bottom-of-the-
line MiniDisc deck (

Photo 1). It is in-

tended to be used as a component with-
in a complete home audio system, and
not for portable use (for portable field
recording, Sony manufactures a com-
plete line of portable MiniDisc
recorders with microphone inputs). The
MDS-JE440 is styled to match Sony’s
CDP-XE400 and XE500 Compact Disc
players (reviewed in 

audioXpress Au-

gust 2001).

The MiniDisc has been around for
nearly ten years. Sony introduced it in
1992 as a means of making digital
recording affordable to the consumer.
The MiniDisc has the same sampling
rate and bit rate as the Compact Disc.
But, the MiniDisc is only 2½

″

in diame-

ter. In order to achieve the same
recording and playing time as the CD,
a severe amount of data compression—
about 5:1—is used during the recording
process.

Sony’s compression system is known

as ATRAC, for Adaptive TRansform
Acoustic Coding. In developing the
ATRAC system, Sony employed psy-
choacoustic principles to determine
what types of information loss are the
least readily discernible to the human
ear. In the early years of the MiniDisc,
the format’s sound quality left a great
deal to be desired. The MiniDisc
seemed like a giant step backwards—at
a time when the CD was beginning to
sound like music, the MiniDisc was a
return to the harsh, edgy, dry sound of
early digital audio. 

Much has changed since the intro-

duction of the format.
Sony has continued to
improve the ATRAC sys-
tem, and their compres-
sion algorithms have
evolved to the point
where the MiniDisc is
now gaining some re-
spect, especially among
those who need a
portable recording sys-
tem of reasonably high
quality. The MDS-JE440
uses Sony’s DSP Type R
algorithms, which Sony
calls ATRAC 3. 

The MiniDisc is a magne-
to-optical recording for-
mat using the Sony Mag-
netic Field Modulation
system, which uses both heat and mag-
netism. During recording, the laser
beam heats the recording medium,
while a magnetic field applied to the
other side of the disc leaves a perma-

nent impression in the particles in the
disc’s recording layer. This system is a
significant departure from convention-
al magneto-optical (MO) recorders, as
explained in a link on Sony’s website:

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