audio_crazy's Full Review: Sony Net MD Walkman MZ-NF810 Personal MiniDisc Pla...
Background:
I am a musician and my band has used Mini Disc recorders for a long time. We use them to record spontaneous musical ideas and to record performances. I also was looking for a portable jukebox music player.
Overview:
This is a largely negative review for two reasons. 1.) Sony had very misleading advertisements on this product that 2.) lead me to buy it new for $280 (in 7/2003). There is NO way the product is worth more than ~$130. If you can buy one in that neighborhood, and you don't need it for audio recording, then this review will not apply well. [Though if you don't need it for audio recording Sony has some more affordable options that could be looked at.]
If, however, you are looking at paying near retail and are interested in audio recording, please read on.
Strengths:
-1/8" Stereo Mic Input
-"Optical Mini" input
-Variable bitrate (three choices) and mic sensitivity (two choices) for audio recording
-Sony ND MD software supports WMA, MP3, etc
-USB 1.1 Download
-Dry Cell supplementary battery power
-Car kit comes with tons of accessories
-Allows for two custom EQ settings
-You have to go out of your way to make it skip
-Reliable performance
At the time I bought this there were only two MD recorders in production that had stereo mic inputs. Sony made them both and this was the cheaper of the two. Also for recording you can chose to record in the regular ATRAC bitrate (for higher quality) or the "LP2" format (still stereo, 138kbps, decent quality - good for just getting ideas down) that doubles recording time (up to 160 minutes).
The only other "strength", which is also the source of its biggest weakness is the Sony NetMD capability. The good? You can convert WMA, MP3, etc files to ATRAC data (your choice of bitrate which yields up to 80 or up to 160 minutes of playback, depending on quality [the LP4 setting sounds so bad, I would never use it]). The you can burn those files to a MD over the (not-so-fast) USB1.1 connection. The bad? Read on...
Weaknesses:
-Very Expensive New - ~$250-270 retail
-Sonic Stage (Sony's NetMD interface software) is the single most unintuitive bug-addled application I have ever used. Add to that the fact that it's a slow, garish, one-step-shy-of-a-commercial for Flash... the result? 99% suk
-NO SUPPORT FOR UPLOADING ANALOG RECORDINGS OFF MDs
-Built in copyright protection caps multiple downloads of any media file to MDs at 3.
-Built in copyright protection prevents uploading any ATRACT tracks that were not "checked out" on that PC.
-No optical output
-The display on the main unit is slanted. What's up with that? (yes, a nitpick).
Again, if you are not in the market for paying retail, and you are not looking at trying to upload your audio recordings, then don't worry about the negatives as much.
Sonic Stage... oh where to begin? I'd just say throw it away. Get the RealPlayer support for NetMD (instructions are in the manual). There are no stupid flash menus. It's a little more intuitive, I'd say. Hey Sony, you know when your software gets upstaged by a RealPlayer plugin... you've got serious problems
The single biggest complaint I have is Sony's advertising. All of the Sony publications at the time said:
- "This player supports MP3 and WMA"
- "Transfer your music between your PC and MD player via USB with 'NetMD' "
They have since changed their wording, but not much. They didn't tell you that NetMD had to convert your media files to ATRAC before it could be transferred (this could lead to wasted space or loss of quality since your Atrac bitrate choices are only ~136 OR ~270). In other words your 128kps MP3s are now taking up ~136kbps space, or your 160/192 kbps MP3s are either getting the quality cut to fit ~136kbps Atrac, or they have to take up ~270kbps worth of disc space. They also said nothing about NetMD, by it's very nature, will not let you put ANYTHING on your PC if the PC hadn't put it on the minidisc in the first place. So when I recorded a concert I was forced to run my headphone output off the MD player, into the line-in on my PC and use audio recording software to get that concert onto my PC.
Another "feature" of NetMD (in the copyright protection field) is your PC can't transfer more than 3 copies of any one audio file on your PC. This becomes a problem if you've got a smattering of favorite songs that you want to include in all sorts of mixed minidiscs. You're limited to putting that favorite Snoop Dogg track on only three of your "Greatest Gangstas" collection minidiscs! Lame-0!
What really kills me about this is in know way does this prevent music piracy. If someone really wants to rip CDs and put them on countless minidiscs, they'll just find a way to delete the transfer history off a machine. If some one makes an illegal analog recording on a MD and wants it on a computer, they'll do it, the same way I get my concerts on a PC. Sony isn't preventing anything illegal, they're just pandering to the record companies and making life much harder for those of us that have a legitimate need for more advanced features. The ability to upload an Atrac file to a PC via USB obviously exists, but they can't be bothered to let us do it.
The last big beef is a bug (how's that for alliteration?) in the NetMD ATRAC Encoder. I ripped the better part of 15 albums to make mix MDs and about 10% of them suffered from encoding errors (blips, skips, etc). If Sony's Mini Disc group can't figure out how to encode Mini Disc audio, why are we buying their products? Now since it was about a year ago that I bought my player, perhaps the NetMD encoders have been fixed... maybe...
Conclusion:
If you need to record and were thinking of paying retail for a Sony NetMD recorder... DON'T! I just bought an iRiver iHP-120. They range from $300 to $350. Given the quality of digital music players, there is no reason the best MD recorder in the world should cost more than ~$150. The iRiver will record off a 1/8" stereo mic to WAV (lossless!) or MP3 (huge bitrate range too), has a 20GB HDD and supports USB2.0. Now I can record an entire concert (with better quality than ATRAC) and transfer it to my PC in 1-2 minutes.
If you are not needing to do recording, then there are cheaper MD players out there to. Hope this helps save someone some money and maybe a headache or two...
Record and play back your own MP3 mixes directly to your Sony Mini-Disc Built-in bookmark function for skipping directly to your favorite songs More t...More at Amazon Marketplace
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