Sony's MD standard has many advantages over players like the RIO which is what I almost bought, thank God I didn't. The MP3 players are only starting out with voice quality recording features making them at best a very expensive walkman, they are two to three years behind. MD uses ATRAC to compress sound, which is also a lossy compression scheme like MP1 layer 3, but is much higher in quality most people say indistinguishable from CD. The AIWA uses fourth generation ATRAC (ver 4.5) which is state of the art and also backward compatible with older MD ATRAC. The AIWA is one of the top three in it's class also check out the Sharp 721 series and Sony MZR-90 series which are comparable but a little more in price (all which lack digital out BTW). All record 74 minutes stereo and just over 148 minutes in mono. Real disc capacity for MD is rated at around 140 MB. The price per MB of storage is much more economical compared to RIO and Sony's new memory stick standard. MiniDiscs cost $1.50 to $3 apiece. If you own a SBLive Platinum (or LiveValue with the Hoontech cable which is cheaper and better IMHO) you can go digital straight from the soundcard into the AIWA using the optical digital Toshiba link fiber optic cable which is included in the package. This means ANY sound going through your soundcard can be digitally recorded into the AIWA (CD's from the Digital cable, WinAmp Channels, RealAudio, etc.. It does however also support the SCMS protocol which means you can only do one generation of digital recording, there are ways around this but unless your professionally copying it's not worthwhile using the AIWA as a dubbing device buy a MD homedeck. You could always do a regular analog dub which is still great quality. As a portable recorder it is very inconspicous and is a favourite amoung concert recorders, invest in a set of bi-aural (stereo) microphones, and or a good dynamic mic (Shure sm-57) and away you go. I've heard stories about blind people using portable MD recorders as aural cameras to capture places which they've visited on vacation. The backlit screen, price and jog wheel made my mind up for me. One thing the Sony has that the AIWA doesn't is line out, but I had no problem using the headphone out with increased volume to dub recordings back into my computer for editing at proper levels. You can also do divide/join/move editing functions right on the AIWA and index up to 256 tracks. If you're serious about MD then also scope out a home deck and make sure it has digtal out so if you want to keep everthing in the digital realm you can. So far no manufacture has come out with a MD drive which can be hooked up to the computer so you can use MD to record data or do a direct music dub, so the only way to get music in is using mic/line/optical in recording at real time speeds, although some home decks can do 2X and 4X dubbing. I'm banking that the pressure with be on to produce a drive as MD continues to grow in popularity. I am very happy with my AM-F70 and expect to be for many years.