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My mother gave me this minidisc 4 years ago as a birthday gift, and Im still using it. Ive never had any problems with it, it works great if you (like myself) dont consider necesary to have 10000 songs on a device smaller than your hand wich will ocasionally leave you music-less in a year or two.What I like:SizeI can trust it will never let me down (unlike like my ipod)The sound quality is incrediblePeople never guess what it is.What I don't Like:Small screen (but its not a real problem)Doesnt really have an ON/OFF switchI strongly recomend getting a minidisc, maybe not this one (wich is the cheapest one yet one of the best) over an mp3 player.
I dropped my 10 yr old direct-recording MD and needed a new one to assure playability of my big MD collection from vinyl. This does that.I might have purchased a much more expensive direct-recorder, but MDs are NOW lacking elemental support, and seemingly may be a discontinued product line. Also, specifications on the available top-line were not easily available. The product I bought is fine for my purpose, and for the price, I recommend 5 stars.
This little player is "Great" for multi-taskers,because it's a multi-tasking little unit,I customize my music onto different colored mini-disc in which I get to see and label. play it at the beach,parties,social functions,the bus or bike. Unlike the Ipod I was crazy about up until my control function dial died on me at the wrong place & time,I losted it all the music & the Ipod. Now should that happen again, I get to slip the music mini-disc into another back up unit and the party jamz on nobody knew about the disaster with the music situation without skipping a beat.
I also have a hi-mdwhich can record up to 35 hours on one disc. I like the ease of recording up to 5 cd's or equivalent mp3's on one 80minute disk. This Sony MZ-NE410 high speed net md walkman recorder is working great. I feel that the media is rather cheap compared to I-POD vs. The software allows for direct cd to mini or compressed mp3's from windows media player or apple i-tunes to be imported to minidisc. I bought this for my daughter's birthday. size and a set memory. I could never fit my music library on a fixed memory I-POD.
A single AA battery can last you a few days. You can still download sonicstage and use it (though why escapes me) for free, which if you get a minidisc player (with the exception of the Hi-MD players/recorders) is mandatory. The only logical explaination that I came to is that SonicStage is in reality an artificial intelligence. This form of compression allows up to five albums worth of music to be stored on a single minidisc and as I mentioned before with little overall audio quality loss. At some point in its early development it became self aware, unfortunately it has not yet gained the ability to create a cybernetic physical form and instead spends its time driving users to the brink of sanity.I cant give an honest opinion on sony's online music distribution service (Connect) because it went belly up.
The problem lies in the conversion. Unfortunately there is no standalone converter, sony is the only one who uses this and you can only use it using sonicstage. So dont use Atrac. So why is minidisc not well known.
Not to mention the ability to write the disks using the player itself. Battery life is ridiculously amazing. The odd part seems that this seems to be random. Although they can only carry about 80mins worth of audio, if you use the atrac compression, you can easily stretch that out with little sacrifice to overall sound quality. Sony uses its own music files called Atrac. One basic reason:SonicStage.Now, Im what you would label a rationalist, I use logic and reason to help determine reasonable solutions to problems or questions that I come across.
You might as well just get a cd player, that way you wont have to use binary AIDS, otherwise known as sonicstage. Dont think Im being biased either. If your someone who isnt big into digital music devices but still would like to carry a few extra songs around, minidiscs may be for you. As I also mentioned previously, sonicstage has a life of its own. It will suddenly stop conversions midway or stop transfers suddenly and when this happens it may no longer identify the player.
At times it may seem to go smooth on the first try, other times you may need to try a second transferr, and other times.well, all i can suggest is to shut down your pc, walk away, and try again another day (thats not even a joke, this is a serious recommendation).Atrac is a great audio format.
I love sony (i grew up on the ps1 and 2, and their various cassette walkmans), so when I started hearing how sony tries to impose what they beleive is right as oppose to what the consumer wants I was a bit skeptic.
If Sonly released a stand alone free to download converter then I would highly recommend getting an MD player, but this is not the case.
Im serious.
If anything go for the Hi-MD players which dont require sonicstage (infact Sony is just learning that now, and releasing hardware that doesnt require it) though those have problems themselves (marked decrease in battery life, though at 25hrs still up to par with other mp3 devices).I got one to try out and the only good that came out of it was this review.
Even though it says that the minidisc accepts regular mp3's you still need sonicstage to transfer the files which is where the biggest flaw in the entire product lies.Sonicstage is the devil.
Alas, I was wrong.
Then whats the point.
Remember, you get what you pay for, and stay away from any Sony device that requires sonicstage.
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