J_McNew's Full Review: Sony Walkman MZ-R500 PC Personal MiniDisc Player
I recently purchased a Sony MZ-R500 from Best Buy ($179) to replace my home MD deck which just broke. I thought that a portable player/recorder would be the perfect replacement. I was right!
About a year ago I bought an Audiophase portable player and found it to be very quirky and it ate through batteries at an astonishing rate. The Sony is sturdy and frugal on power consumption. I can't give you a figure yet, because I'm still on my first AA battery!
I like the fact that there is no remote with this unit. I find that the in-line remotes get in the way and they seem more prone to damage. All of the buttons are positioned near the lower-right corner of the unit, where you can access all functions while holding the unit in one hand.
There is a power port (3v, for an optional power supply), a combination audio input (both analog and optical miniplug), and a headphone out, which also serves as line-out at max volume for connection to a hi-fi stereo system.
One great function, which I was unaware of until I purchased this unit, is the MDLP (mini disc long play) function. This allows you to drop the bit rate in order to fit more on a disc. Using standard MDs, you can double or quadruple the recording time using this function. Technically, this drops the sound quality, but I must say I'm impressed. Better than low bit rate MP3s. Audio recorded in MDLP will not play on old players. However, you can choose the bit rate for each track, so you can have standard, 2x, or 4x all on one disc. If you try to play it in an old player, the tracks recorded in 2x or 4x will not play, and will show "LP" in the display.
This unit also has a Mono recording option, which doubles the recording time in the normal mode. There is no mono option for MDLP modes (they are both stereo only for some reason). Tracks recorded in mono should play on all MD players.
The package also includes a USB MD port. This is a simple little audio converter which plugs into the USB port of your computer and into the line-in of the minidisc recorder. It converts the audio from your computer to an analog signal. Installation is simple, since all of the necessary drivers are included with Windows 98/ME/2000. When the MD port is plugged in, there will be no audio from your speakers. When you unplug it, normal audio functions return.
Other than those listed above, this player/recorder has all the normal bells and whistles that come with the territory, such as disc and track naming, track combining/splitting, track moving, and individual track deletion as well as delete-all. Be careful, though... it's easy to accidentally delete the disc when you mean to only delete one track... I did it once. To delete a track, the track must be playing or paused. If not, you will delete the entire MD with no "undo" feature.
Also, this unit has a selectable recording mode which either starts a new recording at the beginning or at the end of the disc. The default (on mine at least) was to begin at the beginning, even if there is already recorded material on the disc. If you don't change it, you will probably end up recording over some stuff you wanted to keep.
I can't say anything about long term reliability yet, since I 've only had it for a few days... but expect an update or two to follow this epinion.
Portable mini-disc player with recording capability Digital gain control ensures quality recording Automatic Volume Limiter System for even, consisten...More at Amazon Marketplace
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