Best recorder in its class
Written: May 20 '02
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Pros: Long battery life, very good sound, excellent portability, comes with useful accessories
Cons: Terribly buggy software, remote could be better
The Bottom Line: If you want lots of music in a tiny package, or an alternative to a HD-based mp3 player then pick up a N707!
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| toddr38's Full Review: Sony Net MD Walkman MZ-N707 Personal MiniDisc Play... |
I was looking for a portable player of some kind with a few things in mind. It had to be small and portable, have excellent battery life and fit a large amount of music. The N707 turned out to be a hit on all fronts and it was less pricey than the average harddrive based mp3 player. There are a few niggles but the only major gripe of mine is the software, which is annoying but still usable. All things considered this is a great deal.
From opening the box to recording and playing my first disc it took two hours, including browsing the manual for 10 minutes, the two reboots required to install and scuffling with the burning program.
Installation of everything was easy, and I love the slick little cradle that sits on my desk. The OpenMG jukebox however is a bit of trouble. Additionally there's no software for linux or mac, if you use either MacOS or Linux primarily it'd be a good idea until a decent transfer program comes out.
I was transferring mp3s with a selection of about 12 each. On the third group of 12 it gave me an error message saying that the mp3 file was invalid, and the eight or nine other tracks that were converted to atrac3 were never transferred. After exiting and restarting the program it allowed me to convert and transfer the same problem file with no qualms, however.
I've also had problems with two tracks off my punk/rock MD that don't want to check back in. (The error message wasn't very helpful: "Cannot check in tracks." The things are still on my disc.)
Another bug is that the jukebox exited for seemingly no reason while transferring files. Also, some of the Daft Punk tracks I copied over turned out to be empty on the disc although there was no error message displayed during transfer. They play for the duration of the track but there's no sound.
My final gripe with the jukebox is its three-stroke limit on each track. That is, you can only have a track on three minidiscs. I discovered this when copying Sandstorm to all of my mix discs. It's easy enough to get around: rip your favorite song twice.
In defense of the jukebox, I found it easy to use and it works when gentle. For the record, I'm on Windows 2000 Pro SP-2.
After a good deal of wrestling I whispered sweet words into my monitor and OpenMG started to behave. I noticed that transfer of ATRAC3 files are very quick, but with the conversion of mp3 to atrac taking up a lot of cpu you won't be able to do much besides email or irc while it's working. If you have a decent CPU it won't take very long, and it's definitely much quicker than 1x copy!
After my first successful burn of a minidisc I popped it in and listened. Despite LP4 being the lowest quality setting it's not harsh on the ear, and there wasn't any real degradation of quality of the mp3s I converted. I have yet to try converting straight from cd.
Headbanging to Tool and Drowning Pool didn't skip at all, and neither did dancing to Darude. Worked like a beaut in the car, and it came with the cigarette lighter adapter as well as the standard casette hookup. Strangely, the only skip I had was when I sat down with the player in my pocket. Despite this I wouldn't take the N707 jogging, but everywhere else I feel safe with it.
In addition a patched up jukebox, the only thing I think this MiniDisc player desperately needs is a 'group' button on the remote! It'd save a lot of time skipping individual tracks or digging into my pocket for the player. Outweighing this is the 40 hour battery life with a single AA NiMH battery, the 320 minute capacity of a MiniDisc, portability and usability. I love my N707!
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 399 Cdn
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Epinions.com ID:
toddr38
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Reviews written: 3
Trusted by: 3 members
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