The sound and convenience of Mindisc with the speed of CD-R.
Written: Sep 28 '03
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Pros: Great sound quality from MP3, good battery life and high-speed transfers with USB NetMD.
Cons: Stupid menu, worthless headphones.
The Bottom Line: A great recorder for MP3s and computer audio. It combines all the convenience and portability of the minidisc format with the high-speed recording/transfer capabilities of CD-R and MP3 players.
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| mediageek's Full Review: Sony Net MD Walkman MZ-N505 Personal MiniDisc Play... |
NetMD, where have you been all my life?
I am a minidisc aficionado. I own two minidisc decks, and this is the fourth portable recorder I've owned. Since I've already got a full panoply of minidisc options for home listening, live recording and portable listening, there is only one reason why I was motivated to add the MZ-N505 to my collection: NetMD.
I am active in independent media and community radio, so I've used minidisc for recording live interviews, editing programming on-the-fly, and archiving live radio broadcasts. Before I had CD-R and NetMD I was forced to dub my finished programs in real-time to minidisc, often on close deadline, and then hope I don't do something stupid (like jiggle the optical cable).
I've also built up a pretty large mp3 collection that, again, I was forced to record to minidisc in real-time for portable listening. Not so awful for a 75 minute album -- it's more of a bother when using LP2 or LP4 mode for 2.5 - 5 hours of music.
The USB-based NetMD connection between my PC and the MZ-N505 have made my life instantly easier and made recording minidiscs for work and fun much more painless.
Now, NetMD has been around a couple of years. But I'm also cheap, so that's why I held off for a while. Then, I saw the MZ-N505 (now discontinued, I believe) selling off for less than $90 on good, ol' Ubid, so I got in line for one of my own for the tidy sum of $85, which I think it's a pretty good deal.
Plenty of other reviewers before me have done a great job of outlining the basic operation and qualities of the MZ-N505, so I'll just hit some of the points that I find to be very important.
First off, I am very happy with this little minidisc recorder. I briefly considered a newer model, the MZ-N410, which is also pretty cheap (I've seen it for just a bit more than $100). But that model doesn't even have an analog or optical digital input for recording -- just NetMD. Even though I bought the MZ-N505 primarily for the NetMD interface, I still want to have the option of hooking directly to a mixer or CD player for real-time recording, which it has.
In many ways I have the same praise and complaints for the MZ-N505 that I have for its predecessor, the MZ-R500, that I reviewed a year ago ( http://www.epinions.com/content_72108379780 ). I still despise the menu you have to go through to change just about every option -- from bass level to the time display. On top of that the options reset every time you put in a new disc. What a pain.
One plus for the MZ-N505 over its ancestor the MZ-R500 is that the N505 comes with an AC adaptor included. NetMD transfers seem to require more juice than plain old playback, and so you really want to plug into wall power for that operation.
After many hours of use and a dozen or so discs recorded, I have to say that NetMD is great. I love being able to transfer hours of audio in minutes rather than hours. No, it's not quite as fast as the faster CD burners, but then minidiscs are not CDs. I like the fact that when you plug in your MZ-N505 to your computer with a recorded disc in it, the PC knows what's on it, and let's you rearrange, delete or add tracks with a simple graphical interface. That is progress.
Many folks have complained about the OpenMG software that Sony ships with this unit. I have heeded their warnings and I don't use it. I did install it, since you need the drivers and OpenMG software on your PC to use the unit at all. But I use the RealOne player to record and edit discs. This option is better because I think RealOne does a good job as an all-around media-player and "jukebox" program. It helps me keep track of all my mp3s and is very smart about organizing them.
More importantly, RealOne Player doesn't impose the same level of copyright control over your mp3s that Sony's software does. I am putting mp3s that I bought and paid for (from emusic.com) on my minidiscs, so I expect to do whatever I please with them (within reason). So it's nice not having RealOne harass me over how many times I've recorded a track.
I must say that the sound quality of the mp3s that I've put on MD with the MZ-N505 is great. As expected, the sound quality on the MD is limited by the source mp3. But with the high-quality variable-bit-rate (VBR) mp3s that I get from emusic, the sound is quite smooth, spacious and, at times, transparent, even though the MD is recorded in LP2 mode.
I haven't done intensive listening comparisons between minidiscs recorded in SP (74 minute) mode in real-time from mp3s versus NetMD recorded mp3s in LP2 mode, but my casual assessment is that their within spittin' distance with each other.
I will say that I think mp3s recorded with NetMD in LP2 mode do sound a bit better, and less grainy than those I've recorded in real-time using an optical cable connection between my PC and minidisc recorder. I might chalk up the difference to the fact that with NetMD the PC does the conversion, known as transcoding, between mp3 and ATRAC, the minidisc audio format. The PC is clearly the more powerful computational device, and I'd bet that Sony's transcoding algorithm is pretty darn good.
Thus, I've found the MZ-N505 to be a great addition to my minidisc collection, especially because of the high-speed transfers allowed by NetMD.
I also own a Rio MP3 CD player that I've used to play the mp3s I've stored on CD-R. I like it, but it's sometimes wonky and it's really bulky compared to minidisc. Besides the fact that I have a big collection of CD-Rs with mp3 files on them, the only other reason I got the Rio was because it is so easy to burn a quick CD-R with several hours of mp3s on it.
But, now with the MZ-N505 and its NetMD, I'm not sure how much more use the Rio CD player is going to get. Plus, the battery life on the N505 is amazing, and way better than any portable CD player I've ever used.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 85
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Epinions.com ID:
mediageek
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Member: Paul Riismandel
Location: Chicago, IL
Reviews written: 25
Trusted by: 4 members
About Me:
I'm a true mediageek--into all sorts of electronics and gadgets for making media.
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