I like to listen to music when I run and when I'm working out at the gym, both environments that aren't all that conducive to a spinning optical media delivering a consistent stream of data. Because MDs are essentially smaller CDs, they're prone to the same kind of skipping that plagues the larger optical medium. However, Minidiscs have that protective plastic casing which provides a layer of stability for the disc, making it less prone to the vibrations that cause skipping.
A plastic casing isn't going to be enough to stop skipping, so Sony has employed 40 seconds of anti-shock memory in the R70. The music you hear coming out of the player isn't what's being read off the disc, but what was read 40 seconds ago. Should the device be jarred or shaken enough to cause the laser to lose contact with the disc, the anti-shock memory will pick up the slack, and you'll maintain an uninterrupted stream of musical goodness.
Two layers of skip protection seems like a good idea, and always one for a challenge, I decided to try to make the R70 skip.
Through what I'd call normal use, the R70 simply refused to skip. I walked around for hours with it playing, had it in my pocket, in a bag, in my hand, going through the paces of everday life, and the stream of music never so much as hiccupped. At the gym, with the player in a pouch, still no skipping. Granted, the gym isn't exactly a vibration-filled environment, so I decided to take the R70 out for some more strenuous testing.
There were three activities I came up with to stress the R70's antishock that I figured were reasonable: running, mountain biking, and skiing. It's now May, so skiing wasn't an option, but the running and mountain biking were no problem.
First up: running, where I was only really able to get one skip. While running with the R-70 in my hand, there was no skipping at all. However, when I tried running with it in a pouch/belt designed for walkmans, energy gels, and the like, things got more complicated. Holding the unit in my hand, my arm was necessarily dampening a lot of vibration and bouncing. Not so with the pouch. In order to get uninterrupted music, any kind of pouch/belt should be tight, and small enough to hold the player tightly to avoid bouncing. Once this is achieved, skipping is virtually nonexistent. I was able to get the R-70 to skip once while running. I was running a brutally steep downhill that was so jarring my quads and knees were begging for mercy—a rare and worst-case scenario, but worth mentioning.
Unable to hold the R-70 in my hand while mountain biking, I was forced to go with the pouch, or alternatively, a camelbak that I often ride with anyway. As with running, as long as the player is securely placed in the pouch or camelbak, skipping isn't an issue. However, since mountain biking presents a much rougher environment, there was more skipping, notably on washboard descents that had everything on the bike rattling anyway. Unless you're riding a full suspension bike with gobs of travel, you're going to have a minidisc player skip. It's inevitable. But with terrain that rough, you're not going to be able to hear much over your bike's rattling anyway.
Note: All the riding I did was on, for the most part, empty trails. Don't be riding with headphones on, listening to music, on the road with those big, nasty cars. That's just stupid, mmmkay?
It's worth noting here that, due to the solid-state nature of the storage on the vast majority of MP3 players, an MP3 player won't skip. Ever. The R70's anti-shock system survived all of what I would call the reasonable tests, so I really can't fault it. Under more extreme conditions, however, the spinning optical medium is going to invariably miss a few beats. As for skiing, my guess is that skipping would be pretty rare unless you were doing some really harsh moguls. I'm sure I could even run slalom gates with it in a secure pocket and wouldn't have a problem.
