A Nice Little Widget.
Written: May 12 '00 (Updated May 13 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: convenient format, good price, nifty gadget
Cons: must record mixes in real-time
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| TotoPhi's Full Review: Sony Walkman MZ-R37SP Personal MiniDisc Player |
(Last edited 00-05-13, 08:38 MTN)
Let's start with some background: I am a professional musician who focuses mostly on classical accompaniment and teaching for work. I need to be able to track rehearsals and lessons, then study them for future discussions and improvement. I also make practise tapes and "Music-Minus-One" style recordings with my synth, in both classical and pop music.
I bought this MiniDisc recorder mainly because I was getting tired of my cassette recorder, a Sony Pro Walkman WM-D6C. It worked well, and it is somewhat of a legend among my classical colleagues - but the thing was so big, bulky and power-hungry that using it for the past five years was turning out to be a chore. My dad had been using an MZ-R2 (I think, one of Sony's earliest MD models) to take custom classical mixes on the road, and also to record live recordings by his four sons, so we were pretty much sold on this format. Obviously, the ability to record ad lib sets this MD miles above most MP3 players.
Side note: one of my dreams is to use my Kurzweil K2500X synthesizer (which I have reviewed at www.harmony-central.com) to accompany instrumental concerti. Unfortunately, there is only so much sequencer data and sample data that can be manipulated on-board at a time. Also, a maximum 48 voices of polyphony can be a problem. I was hoping to use the MD unit to do backup while I played live over pre-recorded material.
Here are my likes and dislikes in point format.
LIKES
- Good price for digital recording medium! ($310 CDN at Future Shop - roughly $200 US) Much cheaper than a DAT, so...
- MD re-recording is better than CD-R burn-once for casual use. Plus my Panasonic SL-S600C discman won't read CD-R's reliably anyway.
- Automatic recording level works great for live input.
- Seems to have fantastic shock-buffer memory. Or just great inherent shake resistance.
- Direct track access is a vital feature, and still really great.
- There's just something neat about those colored Sony MiniDiscs!
- Quite good live recording quality, even through cheap microphone (old Sony ECM-144 clip mike, $50 CDN)
- Great sound quality in general. To my ear, anyway - I can't detect the supposed shortcomings of MD signal compression. (To be honest, I have not done A-B comparisons against DAT tape)
- Remote control unit is handy. I'm glad Sony switched from proprietary micro-plugs for the headphones to standard mini-plugs.
- I haven't used the extended mono-mode recording, but it's a great idea for lectures and workshops.
DISLIKES
- OEM headphones have an excessively short cable! (I guess this is a ploy for you to go out and buy extra Sony accessories! Well, tough tooties - I'm using Panasonic earbuds.)
- Window too small for useful titling! (Do any portable MP3 players display full titles like WinAmp or MusicMatch?) Besides, titling takes too long anyway. Who wants to sit and wait for a full title to scroll?
- Window and controls not backlit; difficult for night use (i.e. clandestine concert recording)
- Four central buttons (Stop, Play, Prev/Next Track) are wobbly. Contact is not always positive. Also very small... but that's expected with this slim machine.
- Track Mark button on the underside is so small that placing precise track marks manually takes me 2 or 3 tries.
- Noisy machinery. Must isolate from mike when recording live. (This is remedied when I just stuff the R37 in my foam-padded discman carry bag.)
- Recording 74-minute audio mixes from PC must be real-time. Groan!!
- Corollary: WinAmp doesn't appear to allow silent gaps inserted automatically between tracks.
- Battery drain quite high when recording in the field.
OTHER COMMENTS
- For me to use this MD recorder in live performance beside my synthesizer, I would have to count on very precise start times. That is, I would have to know that the track would start consistently at 0.3 sec (or something) after I press Play or release Pause. Unfortunately, I don't think that start points can be determined accurately, either in recording or in playback. (You can Track Advance and hold in Pause, but after an interval the machine stops. Of course the read-head needs time to reset.) If anybody knows how to get around this, please let me know! Otherwise I will have to start saving up for a notebook computer to serve this function (storing large tutti passages as samples, to be triggered real-time).
- The R37 comes bundled with an OPTICAL digital cable. That's great, I thought - I can now record directly from my synthesizer's Optical Output jack! Well... it was too good to be true. The R37 has a copy-protection routine which prevents the digital dubbing of a digital source recording. That wouldn't be a problem, except that somehow the MD recorder interprets my Kurzweil's live output via optical as a digital source recording! Sigh... I guess transfer via analog audio cable is still good enough quality.
- I don't know what the average battery life is among R37 users at Epinions, but subjectively I don't feel that I am getting much more than four or five hours playback time. Could it be because I'm using Stage 1 Megabass? Currently I'm too busy to conduct instrumented tests, so I've decided simply to start using Energizer's Lithium AA batteries. These claim to have three times the life of a regular alkaline (or 5 times in the case of a digital camera).
- I see I am being polled by Epinions about the durability of this unit. Well, darn it, I only bought the thing last week, so I'm not about to start tossing it around!
CONCLUSION
Okay, it may look as though I have more complaints than praises for the Sony MZ-R37 MiniDisc recorder. But I really am quite pleased with this unit and look forward to a decade or more of productive life with it. My wife doesn't normally like me going out to buy gadgets like this, but as she is a musician herself she has already started enjoying its benefits.
P.S. If anybody can help me get around any of my listed problems, please let me know!! E-mail totophi@yahoo.com
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
TotoPhi
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Member: Nhat-Viet ('Toto') Phi
Location: Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Reviews written: 2
Trusted by: 1 member
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