Sony MZ-N707 Net MD
Written: Feb 06 '05 (Updated Feb 06 '05)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Sound: |
 |
|
| Ease of Use: |
 |
|
| Durability: |
|
|
| Portability: |
|
|
| Battery Life: |
 |
|
|
Pros: Sound quality; compact; variety of sound inputs and outputs; durable batteries; robust unit
Cons: Ergonomically AWFUL, non-intuitive recording methods; restricted to 3 copies of downloaded music
The Bottom Line: New technologies now make this unit outmoded, so I would no longer recommend it. The MZ-N707 is a robust little unit with good sound quality, and some serious drawbacks
|
|
|
| gvepinions's Full Review: Sony Net MD Walkman MZ-N707 Personal MiniDisc Play... |
The long and the short of my experience with this unit is that (a) overall, it was great for its time (a time which has now gone); (b) it sounds very good; and (c) it has been AWFUL to use. Read on for a fuller explanation of these points.
I first bought the MZ-N707 minidisc recorder/player in 2001, I think (I'm writing this in 2005). At the time that I bought the unit, I was looking for a storage medium more robust, more compact, and with a greater amount of storage space than portable CD players or Walkman (cassette players).
I was not interested in the capabilities that the unit had to download MP3's, although I thought that I might become interested in this.
I had been researching minidisc recorders (not just players) for about a year, and missed the boat in buying one here in Canada because the Sharp players all disappeared suddenly. This was a shame because I read that they were much more user-friendly than the Sony MD's for things like changing recording levels during recording ('on the fly'). This turned out to be one of the many aspects of using the MZ-N707 that I have found extremely awkward.
WHAT I LOVE, or rather Like
As with some of the other products which I've reviewed on Epinions, I don't think that "love" is the word to apply to this. I do, however, really like this unit in some ways. "Love" would mean that it has been perfect for me, which it hasn't.
So, here's what I like:
1. Portable storage media, which
2. Can record at different quality levels by varying the length of the recording time (these times vary from the nominal length of the discs - either 74 or 80 mins., through 2 times, or 4 times the named length.)
3. Because the MZ-N707 records on separate discs, it means that if one of the discs breaks or becomes unusable, other discs and the player aren't necessarily affected (I have had a couple of the cheaper discs lose their metal covers and become unusable, and was able to get them out of the MZ-N707 with no damage to the unit, although it was a bit tricky extricating them).
I also like the idea of separate storage media because technology that records all the data in one place (such as mp3 players, iPods, and flash memory recorders) all stand a very good chance of making ALL of the music inaccessible if they break down, because it's all stored in the same place.
4. The sound quality - at MDLP2, i.e., twice the nominal speed - is really good; this is the setting that I've chosen to be the best compromise between good sound quality and length of recording.
5. Size. The MZ-N707 is fairly small, although it could weigh less.
6. Battery life is great. The supplied rechargeable Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) battery lasts a long, long time for recording, and even longer for playback.
7. Durability. Even though I'm very careful with all musical, electronic, and other equipment which I own, I took the MZ-N707 to the U.K. for a month of travelling around, and it never gave me any problems, and still looks like new.
8. Ability to record to and from the recorder in various ways. I appreciate the USB, optical (digital), and analogue (1/8th. of an inch minijack), and microphone inputs and outputs. There is a great variety here of ways that one can record/transfer media. The USB is for transferring tracks from computer, while the other sources enable one to work from CD players and other such units.
9. I have seen another MD owner transfer tracks from the net to the MZ-N707, and that is a very nice feature in some ways, but it also has its disadvantages on this unit (see below for details).
10. I love that this unit has an external mic. input, and I have used this once or twice. It has been very handy and is one of the reasons that I bought the MZ-N707.
What I Don't Like
Although a couple of the features which attracted me to the MZ-N707 have now been rendered obsolete by recent technology, the disadvantages that I list below were very much in evidence when I first bought the unit, although they weren't as limiting at that time.
1. The Number One dislike that I have - and I absolutely HATE it - is the continued awkwardness of labelling discs, folders and tracks.
Because I don't use the computer to record discs to the unit (see below for an explanation of why not), I laboriously enter the text for these items letter by letter. And on many, many occasions the slight difference between settings on the 4 way rocker switch used to enter this text has resulted in major mistakes which have often entailed re-recording.
This is a very, very badly designed feature of this unit.
2. Difficulty in adjusting the recording level during recording. Once again, this is possible, but very awkward to accomplish (not so, seemingly, on the Sharp units that I had read about at the beginning of my search for an MD player/recorder a year before I bought the Sony).
3. Separate, recordable media (the minidiscs). As I said above, this is an advantage in several ways, but when one carts around 17 or so discs for a month of travelling, one becomes a little tired of the space that these require. This makes otherwise unattractive options like the Apple iPod, seem quite attractive despite the disadvantages (see above, also, for more information about that).
4. Size. Once again, this used to be an advantage, but with the advent of some of the smaller flash memory player/recorders, the largest of which can now record 40 GB of data, previous advantages in this regard have now been negated.
5. Sound quality. Even though most people that I know can't actually hear differences in sound quality between mp3's of different compression ratios, the mini hard disc based (iPod) and flash memory units do sound better. Then again, it's debatable how much this matters because typically these units are used in situations where there is a lot of environmental noise. We certainly do seem to be reaching an acceptable standard of sound quality for portable units.
6. I would love to have used the capability that the MZ-N707 has to use a computer CD-Rom to download tracks via USB. In addition to making transfer of music quicker, I presume that this also would have saved me hours of labelling, and - when that process messes up because of the ergonomics of the rocker switch - re-labelling.
However, I have not even bothered to load the software for this into my computer because one can only transfer a piece of music that has been uploaded to computer 3 times. Yes, that's right, there's a copyright protection agreement that means there's a limit of 3 times on the number of transfers. That's ridiculous, as far as I'm concerned, and I write songs, too so I can empathize with musicians who fear not being paid for their work.
I think that this restriction on the number of times that one can transfer music to MD via computer also applies to tracks that have been downloaded from the Internet.
7. Ergonomically difficult to use. In addition to the points listed above concerning this comment, I also have found all of the features related to recording to be extremely difficult to remember, necessitating frustrating half-hours spent consulting the instruction manual every few months when I want to record on the MZ-N707. This is crazy in this day and age.
Finally, I have to admit that the availability of other technology means for me that the disadvantages of the MZ-N707 now outweigh the advantages.
Despite the risks of damaging a unit in which all the data is stored in one place, rather than being split-up over separate, replaceable, media such as minidiscs, I plan to buy a flash memory unit as soon as the smaller ones can store about 40 GB of data (there's one at the moment that can do this, but it's the size of the regular iPods, which are too big for me).
Having said all of the above, I do still use the MZ-N707 from time to time, and am amazed at the sound quality. It was a good unit for its time, but the drawbacks listed above involved in labelling and recording-on-the-fly seriously limit its appeal for me.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 220
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
gvepinions
|
|
Reviews written: 11
Trusted by: 0 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.