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Sony D-NF610 ATRAC3/MP3 CD Walkman with Digital Tuner

Sony D-NF610 ATRAC3/MP3 CD Walkman with Digital Tuner

List Price: $129.95
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great portable CD player
Review: Sony's D-NF610 slim CD "walkman" is an excellent personal audio companion. It's similar to its sibling D-NF510, except the NF610 has a digital tuner that pulls in AM/FM/TV and special weather channels, all in a compact, stylish form factor. Assembled in Malaysia (a country known for its anti-American politics -- hence one star deducted from my rating), the player seems pretty reliable. The weird shape is not as cool as Sony's perfectly round models, but it does allow for a larger, 2-line LCD display which, yeah!, can show MP3 tags. Another impressive feature is the 75-hour playback on two regular AA batteries.

Sound quality is good if nothing to get overly excited about. As always, you may want to replace the included headphones with your own favorite. On a good pair of earphones, the "digital mega bass" boost adds a pleasant and clear boom to the music, so you know this is not a phony, irritating bass system typically found on the Coby's and Samsung's.

The player also plays CD-R/RW discs burned with MP3 files or Sony's proprietary ATRAC3 files. Sony makes all kinds of claims regarding ATRAC3, but since 95% of the world uses MP3 and another 3% uses WMA and the rest probably AAC, I see little reason to burn ATRAC3 discs.

Finally, the price is right for a high-quality portable CD player.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Not live up to the spec on the paper
Review: The CD walkman sounds like dream finally comes true, not really, actuall far from. I listed some shortcomings:
1. After spending 4.5 hrs on burning my first AtracPlus CD from 15hr mono 96-bit mp3, this CD player just doesn't recognized the CD I just burned. Again, this CD player also doesn't recognise mp3 CD. I used three different brand CD-R. It just displayed "Sessopn 002", then stopped. Press play, it displayed "No File". So far no luck to play any MP3 or Atrac songs on CD-R.
2. SonicStage simple burner software has a slow performance, almost 1 min/per song on a P3 machine
3. CD-sound quality, I rated it 2 out of 5. The two-step base sound distorts music.
4. FM radio reception only can receive strong signals.
5. The way to manually set radio presets is bizarre.
6. jog dial always starts from the first track, not from the track in play. To cancel jog dial, you have to scroll back to first track. Why not have a cancel button?
7. play/stop/forward/back button is hard to use, unless you have a slender finger.
8. no optical output.
9. All plastic body, the good thing is it is light.
I owned at least 10 different sony products, this CD-player is going to be the first Sony product I will return because of poor quality. Very disappointed.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great CD/MP3 player
Review: The player itself is great. I have been using it for about 4-6 months now and have played a number of mp3 CDs on it. The CD player is good and solid.

I have number of burned CDs with mp3s on it and the player is rock solid on playing my mp3 CDs. In addition, the player displays the file name (and album and artist info) in the 2 line LCD display.

Audio CDs that I have burned (from mp3) with Nero 5 and Nero 6 also have the name of the songs displayed in the LCD.

The only major issue I have had with the unit is that the headphones padding falls off after 3 weeks of daily usage. (This happened to me on 2 different units.)

If the headphones were not so cheap (and poor quality on the padding) I would rate this unit 5 stars.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Dream came true
Review: This Cd player is the BEST CD PLAYER I have....first style looks cool....and sound quality is good. This could play Cd. mp3 and radio AM/FM...is like everything I need. The most important thing is this is "Sony"

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: So many features!!!!
Review: This is a great cd player, and there are only a couple flaws. Like many others, I made a list of Pros and Cons.

PROS:
-Great sound. You will here things in your music that you've never heard.
-Its a Cd,Mp3,Am/Fm Radio,Tv,Weather player.
-It has a feature called Atrac3plus, that lets you fit about 490 songs onto 1 cd, using mp3, or cd.
-You can remember your favorite radio stations.
-Long lasting battery.
-and alot more features.

CONS:
-good, but not as good sound quallity as other newer model cd players.
-Like the other guy said, the buttons are way to small, and that open button looks like its gonna snap off right when I push it.
-A tad too expensive.

i really dont care about those cons so much, so I still love it.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Best CD player i've ever had!!!!
Review: This is one of the best cd player for the price. One bad thing is the headphones that come with it, get another pair but if ou are looking for a mp3/cd player with tuner get this!!!!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Good for MP3 livesets/Sound quality problem...
Review: This review is more catered to those who download large MP3 files (i.e. radio rebroadcasts/ bootlegs/ "e-music" livesets >10 minutes). I've found this Sony player to be one of the best players for playing large MP3 files, and I've used several MP3-CD-based car and portable players over the years from Aiwa, Philips, Kenwood, SonicBlue & Sony. True, some of this this is nit-picking, but here are a few things to note...

* Yes, you can seek (ff/rew) within an MP3 file. HOWEVER, the rate of seeking is relatively slow and not adjustable--about 12 seconds to seek 1 minute forward. While this is no big deal for individual songs, it does get annoying when you want to get to say 50 minutes within a track... However, you can go to the next track and "rewind" to the end of the previous track, with the exception of the final track on the CD.
* The bookmark feature doesn't return you to a specific point within a track, it only takes you to the beginning of that track. Its usefulness is if you have 100+ songs on a disc to not have to navigate, but not if you have 5-6 large MP3 files on a CD.
* Stopping/powering down within a track DOES return you to that point in the track when you restart.
* The player seems to handle every MP3 file I've thrown at it, and properly works with absurdly large MP3 files. (I tried a 192/44 300-minute, 420MB MP3 file with no problems).
* No backlighting.
* The button volume control is poorly designed and right next to the earphone jack (which if you have headphones with a 90-degree plug will interfere with your access to the volume control).
* Sound is EXCELLENT, but I'm not using the included headphones.
* Battery life is nothing short of AMAZING.
* MP3 filenames display only the first 28 characters.
* Good MP3-ID3 tag support.
* Upgradeable firmware would be nice--but I haven't found any real bugs.
* No rubber nubs, so the player slides around on tables.
* FM works fine; AM, TV, & Weather need very strong signals.
* Radio IS usable in Europe (9kHz AM/0.05MHz FM intervals).

All in all, I love this player. I kept waiting for a DVD-based player that could play MP3s on DVD-Rs but couldn't wait anymore. I haven't tried the Atrac3 functionality and probably won't since the discs can only be played Atrac3 players (which I have no others). I'd give it 4 1/2 stars if I could but it does have a few limitations...
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It's 2 months later and I have to adjust my rating downward... One problem that I have noticed is with the sound quality. If the bass boost is on (either level 1 or 2) and the volume is high, the sound gets "maxed out" no matter what headphones you use. I know it's not the headphones since other devices provide more volume & bass without distortion. Some other reviewers here have mentioned the same sound problem on this player. Hopefully Sony knows of the problem and of a fix (firmware?) but without a fix, I would NOT recommend the player anymore, especially since my 1997-era Panasonic CD player has better sound. Above-average featureset, below-average sound quality on the D-NF610.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Best so far.
Review: Undoubtedly, this player has the best feature set on the market. It can play my long self-help mp3s with ability to scan FF and REW within an MP3, a feature which earlier players sadly lacked.

It's versatile, playing CDRs and CDRWs burned either as a normal Audio CD or DATA formats with MP3s and Sony's new format ATRAC3. I like the ability to change my compilations on the reusable CDRW discs.

The multi-band tuner is also a great feature. Heck, the only thing this thing lacks is a TV screen !

I use this player everyday, commuting to and from work, and at night. It works flawlessly. G-Protection is excellent. The unit has not skipped once since I have had it. Battery life is also excellent. Using MP3 data CDs the player reads information into its memory and stops the drive motor thereby conserving energy. I estimate that one pair of AA Alkaline Batteries can give between 50-60 hrs of usage. Life would be less for regular audio CDs though.

But....

The Bass Boost function is poorly implemented. It tends to exaggerate the mid-bass range which is 200-400Hz rather than 80-100Hz. Even at low volumes there is a slight distortion when the bass thumps. Somehow it lacks that warmth and depth that you have come to expect from Sony's D-Bass system.

Also the main function pad, used for playing, pausing, and scanning preset stations/tracks, is too small. One can end up pausing or switching the unit off if you do not look and carefully align your finger on the pad.

Small annoyances though. The unit does everything and has everything that I consider important. They should correct these oversights next time around.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Be ware!
Review: Was looking for a high sound quality portable DC player and bought this Sony D-NF610 based on the good reviews a week ago. After listening several sample CDs with various headphones, I am really disappointed by its mediocre sound quality: You CANNOT have both heavy bass and clear tremble at the same time! As a EE Ph.D in digital signal processing, I guess this is because that the window (bandwidth) of its digital filter is too narrow to let the both high and low frequency signals pass through at the same time. I think Sony want to keep the current degree of bandwidth for cost control. The trick is that they made the "window" moveable: you can move to low part to have a quite decent bass but definitly no good tremble, you can stay in the mid range with faily good of both, or you can move to the high part if you like clear sound and do care about bass punch.

I had a Kenwood portable CD player and panasonic portable CD player. Sony is slightly better than panasonic (costs around $20 more, I wish I bought Pana.) but Kenwood provides a MUCH better sound.

The headphone I tried are two sonys (one comes with the CD, one is a professoinal type), 1 Sennheiser, 1 Aiwa and 1 panasonic. Every headphone tells me the same story.

By the way, the Sony carrying case is cumbesome and the belt is not detachable. It is quite difficult to operate the CD when it is in the case.

Other functinalities are quite good so far and I agree with most of the comments from other reviewers.

I hope this review can help you to have a better sense about the CD in terms of sound quality and make the good choice best for you.

I will look for other one for myself and give this CD player to my 14 years old niece.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The New Wave Of Sony D-NF610 ATRAC3/MP3 CD Player!
Review: When I first starting looking at MP3 players, I was always very disappointed at how much money it was to expland your MP3 players memory. I was looking at around 80 bucks just to get about 490 music into one cd. I recently brought this wonderful player at Circuit City and I was quite surprise it was one of the first ATRAC3 MP3 cd player. What a great idea for Sony. You get over 490 music on one cd and the cds only cost about 6 cents a piece. I've been a strong believer in sony discmans ever since the Sony D-CJ01 came out. I replace my d-cj01 to this ATRAC3/MP3, which deliever far better sound and style. Sony put their D-NF610 ATRAC3 MP3 cd player on the market and this discman really lives up to sony quality. Now you get Sony's long lasting battery life, 2 different levels or ATRAC3 and MP3 play back. The two different ATRAC3 settings give you these two choices: 1 small buffer and higher quality of music, and 2 large buffer and lower quality music. I have yet to hear the difference in the two qualities. While running the ATRAC3 proved to be better than my previous sony discmans the D-CJ01 and the DEJ62. I have yet to hear this ATRAC3 skip while playing MP3 cds. It's been dropped, dragged, smashed but the player keeps on going. One of the coolest features of the ATRAC3 cd is that the cd itself stops after about 10 seconds of spinning and doesn't start up again for another minute and a half. Making it impossible to skip during that time and also impresses your friends. Sony's ATRAC3 lets you listen to about 50 hours of normal music and about 40 hours of MP3 format music give or take depending on the batteries you are using. Rechargable batteries have significantly lower battery times. This CD player shows next generation Sony quality. I'm glad I waited for sony to come out with a ATRAC3 cd player. A must BUY!


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