rwprice2608's Full Review: Sony Net MD Walkman MZ-S1 Personal MiniDisc Player
After reading all of the other reviews here, I decided to take a chance on the MZ-S1. I also read almost 200 other reviews on the net. In case you're curious, the split was about 75% positive, 25% negative toward this product.
I bought this MD player after seeing it on clearance at our local Circuit City. I've had an iRiver MP3/CD player for awhile, but it doesn't always read my MP3 discs, so I've been looking for something else. I love the flash-based MP3 players, but the small capacity has always turned me off, so MD players caught my eye.
I agree with the other reviewers on the sturdy construction of this unit. With the metal "buckle" construction, it feels solid in your hand and is clearly designed for one-handed (left hand) operation. So much so that it's awkward to use it any other way. This is so that it's easier to use while running or jogging.
As you probably already know, the headphones are terrible, but this is common among most portable music devices.
Many of the complaints I've seen centered around Sony's terrible SonicStage software, so I've been avoiding it, although I'll likely try it soon. Installation on my eMachines Windows XP system went flawlessly and the system recognized my MD player right away.
Since my only interest is to listen to music that I purchase, I decided to use the Simple Burner software to transfer tunes to the player. While connected to the internet, the software connects to the Gracenote service and automatically titles all your songs for you. This is handy, and also creates a "group" (Sony's version of a folder) for the songs to populate. Taking advantage of the USB 2.0 interface, I could transfer and entire CD of music encoded at LP4 in about 3 minutes. Pretty good!
Speaking of LP4, it's tough to hear much of a difference between it and LP2. Given that you get twice as much music at LP4, the slight tradeoff is worthwhile, in my opinion. Even so, I was a little disappointed at the inability to fit more music on a disc. On a typical CD-ROM I can easily fit 10-12 CDs on a single disk using a 160 Kbps bit rate for MP3, as a point of comparison.
And now on to sound quality. Many places on the net feature people talking about how the sound quality of MD far surpasses MP3. That may be true of an MP3 song sampled at 66 Kbps, but it's not true across the board. It's entirely possible to get really great-sounding MP3 music at higher bit rates. But I digress...
How hard would it have been for Sony to include a DSP to allow for several different EQ settings? Regular CD players were featuring this 10 years ago, so I can't imagine why it was left out here. I like strong bass, and very sharp highs, almost too bright-sounding. Unfortunately, the only setting I can change is the bass boost. This is a big disappointment to me.
Navigating a disc is okay, but that's all. Unlike most MP3 players, there's no way to see the "tree" of recorded music, so unless you've defined groups you'll need to skip past songs individually. Again, couldn't Sony have included some better navigation tools?
I see this unit's biggest strengths as follows: virtually unlimited capacity, sturdy construction, battery life, and the ability to record from a variety of sources. For just taking a few tunes to the gym, there are better choices. But this is a good option for having workout music, but also be able to take a wide range of music for longer trips.
I'm still getting used to mine, so I'll see what I think 6 months from now.
Record MP3s or CDs at up to 32x from multiple sources (PC, CD, radio, and more) Plays back in ATRAC3, supports MP3, WMA, and WAV formats Easy one-hand...More at Amazon Marketplace
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