Rating: Summary: Great Buy Review: As a long-time minidisc user, I can say that this unit is easily one of the best MD units for such a low price. If you can do without a microphone input, the unit should readily handle all your recording/playback needs. The unit is extremely easy to use, has a relatively good battery life, and - for whatever its worth - is styled with a classy black and silver case. LP4 allows some 5 hours of recording on a single disc, LP2 about 2 and 1/2 hours (with better quality), and standard speed (near CD-quality) up to 80 minutes. Don't get too flustered about the software ... if you are a typical user, it works just fine, and if you want extra functionality because you are a recording enthusiast, you can use other free software. A bargain.
Rating: Summary: Great Music Player Review: I just bought this product a little while ago with a few worries, but now I see it is a great addition to my collection of gizmos, gadgets and doo-dads. It requires only 1 AA-battery, you can store up to 5 hours of great quality music on each disc(each the fraction of the size of a cd, which could only store 80 min. at most), is smaller than a cd player, allows you to control the bass and treble, and much more. The only problem I found is that you have to buy the mini discs in order to play them, and even then, you can store several cds worth of music on 1 mini disc, so you don't have to keep switching back and forth between cds. Plus, unlike cds, which once burned cannot be changed, the mini discs are like casset tapes which can be recorded and re-recorded over and over. In other words, I give it a 6 out of 5, but the system only goes up to 5, go figure...
Rating: Summary: Skip button functionally funky, extremely frustrating, :-( Review: I've had the MZ-NE410 for about 2 months now and have now started to have problems with it. When I try to skip to the next song the player either goes to the previous song or not at all. For example, if I'm on song 5 and want to skip to song 6, the display will flicker to 6 for one second, but then jump back to 5. Most times instead of skipping forward it will jump back to the previous song. Sometimes it will skip ahead or back 2 or 3 songs. I spent a good 5 minutes trying this yesterday until I finally gave up and shut the freaking thing off. This got so annoying and frustrating I was tempted to throw it at the wall. I'm very good with electronics and this drove me crazy. This is why I decided to come on Amazon and write this review. Even in group mode this happened. I've only had this problem with the skip ahead button. I also own an older model Sony MD player and I have similar problems while using a remote control. The buttons would get all mixed up. When I pressed the volume increase or decrease the MD would instead skip ahead or back, or vice versa. I've owned several MD players and recorders, but have only had this problem with Sony units. Before all this the unit functioned perfectly, although the software can be somewhat frustrating to use. Before you can record an MP3 you have to first import it, unless you're recording a whole CD using the Net MD Simple Burner software, which makes it a two step process, but then the imported music stays and takes up space on your hard drive until you remove it. Also, when recording you can't just click and drag where you want to add the song onto the MD. You have to record and then wait for the list to refresh itself, and then you can move the song to where you want it, then wait for the list to refresh again. This can get pretty tedious and adds to record time. Before I got this unit, I was using an MP3 CD player and I'm tempted to go back to it. Although it isn't as small, I've never had problems with it. It goes forward when I want it to and sits when I tell it to. The MZ-NE410 is like a dog that pees all over the carpet.About a month later and the skip buttons now also control the volume and the problem is pretty persistent now. I'd say 4 out of 5 times the buttons don't work. As I said before, I don't know if this is a common problem with Sony products, but this is the second MD player that I've owned that has had this problem. It is extremely frustrating and my next MD player will definitely not be a Sony one.
Rating: Summary: Great Product. Use a different Software though Review: Sony's MiniDisc players are good alternatives to other MP3 players. You can fit more music on cheap MD's, and have multiple MD's for the moods you are in. As for the software, Sony finally got wise and formed an agreement with realOne player to use it to download music to the player. Once you've loaded the netMD drivers, download the realOne player, and the plug in for Sony devices. You will be much happier in the long run.
Rating: Summary: Don't believe the naysayers! Review: What an awesome product! I absolutley love it! After having read the reviews I was hesitant to use the software provided with the player and I downloaded RealPlayer first... not necessary I use the software provided and it works just great! This product, hands down, beats the MP3 player solely because it can store much more music. I purchased one after having limited success with another mini disc player, big mistake. I wish I had purchased this one first. The only downside is the headphones but if you are lucky like I was you'll get some free discs and that will be equivalent to the good earphones you need to buy. What else can I say? Great price, great sound and just in time for the change of season when you spend lots of time outdoors. Stop reading and GET IT!
Rating: Summary: Good hardware Review: The hardware is solid, the max volume is very loud but not deafening, which is sometimes needed in crowded places where you need to zone out. The sonicstage software feels clumsy and is not very intuitive. I reccomend this product but using a different software studio.
Rating: Summary: Great Hardware, Worthless Software. Review: After quite a while of wanting an MD player, I bought my MZ-NE410 at the local electronics superstore yesterday. I'll start with the bad. The included software is almost totally useless. I have never encountered such a buggy program past its alpha stage. It crashed four times trying to catalouge my media. After I got about 20 MP3s in my list, it alerted me to the fact that all but 6 were unsupported, and couldn't be converted!. That was enough, so I went online, and downloaded Real One player. It works like a charm. I've been using Musicmatch to make playlists, then importing em in Real One. As for the good, this player is tiny, light, and has a cool matte black finish much like that on a B-2 or F-117. The amazing sound quality lets me hear things I never heard when listening to music through my computer, and I have a high quality home theater system connected to my comp. The player seems to excel with classical and soundtrack background scores, but everything else sounds incredible too. One unusual thing is that the included headphones actually sound great too. The display is tiny, but easy to read. It does only show track name at the beginning of a song, but you can switch to a mode that always shows the title quickly, with only a few clicks, so you can just switch back and forth if you really want to. In closing, if you're in the market for an MD player, go with this unit, just make sure to download RealOne. I'm sure the newest high end models are great too, but they cost twice as much, and still have the same enraging SonicStage software.
Rating: Summary: wicked player, software sucks Review: i bought this little toy at radioshack a couple months ago because a whole bunch of kids who ride my school bus have them too. I have always dreamed of getting an ipod but i have a low budget, being 12. sound quality on this splayer is great, and the disks hold a ton of music. i can cram atleast 3 albums onto one disk with the lowest compression. I haven't tried LP4 compression yet. Another huge bonus is that it is tiny. i really like how the batteries are AAs. They are really easy to replace and they last a long long time. In fact, you can use batteries that are too dead to be used for other purposes, such a flashlight. these almost dead batteries still work for over a week. The problems started when I installed the sonicstage software on my 2.4 GHz computer with lots of ram and everything. the setup was really SLOW. I rebooted and found that in order to actually transfer songs onto the player you had to import them from you hard drive to you "music drive." This is really anoyying. It gives you the option of manually selecting your files or searching your whole computer. I searched the first time and found tons of sound from the program files in with my music. I deleted all of the stuff i had imported and tried to manually do it. This time it put all the wrong music in the wrong folder. I had led zeppelin songs in with the beatle's Abbey Road and everything was all screwed up. so a searched again and had to manually delete all of the program sounds. That was really hard considering that i have about a thousand audio tracks on my computer. also, it reset all of my files to play in sonicstage. this sucks. I would click on a song and sonicstage would start up. i had to reset all of the program options in both sonicstage and windows media player. SonicStage is horrible. Well then sonicstage got all messed up so i reinstalled everything. There is a feature that only lets you use a disk on one computer, apparently one instance of sonicstage, i guess, because sonicstage wouldn't interact with my player anymore. i had to reformat the mini disk to get the sonicstage signature off it. All the songs on my disk were erased too, so i couldnt check them in. eventually it got back to normal though. now it works fine except for the fact that everytime you import a new CD onto you computer you have to import it into sonicstage. Also, burning onto a disk is sort of slow, but not bad really unless you are in a huge hurry. buy some headphones to go with it, the ones that come with it are aweful. What i did was i took one of those ear muffler protector things that you use for using a chainsaw or lawnmower, snapped the earpieces off the headphones that came with it, and shoved them inside the ear protector. Those babys cancel out some noise!!!
Rating: Summary: A Gadget Lover's and Music Lover's Dream!!! Best Value MD. Review: There are so many great reviews for this product. I don't want to be repetitive but this unit ROCKS! PROS: First of all, the price can't be beat. Compared with other Minidisk players, it performs fabulously and is easily the best value around. Second of all, everything you've heard about battery life is TRUE! I've gone over 150 hours at a time without changing the battery. I'm talking about playing it every day at work for 3 weeks, not to mention when I get home at night. This alone makes this MD player head and shoulders above the more advanced models. Invest in some rechargeable batteries for digital electronics and you won't be disappointed. Disk storage is good at the highest quality. You can still get several hours on a disk and the sound is awesome. CONS: I really want to give this unit a 5, but a lot of the criticism can't be dismissed. TRUE: The software is bad. Sony's proprietary ATRAC3 music format ads an extra annoying step. There are limits to how many times you can record music on a disc. The display really does not give you any useful info. The panel controls are pretty bare (notice, no "Record" button) and you cannot record voice directly with this unit as with other MD players. Also note, this unit does not have the car-kit or wireless car radio play options of other Music players. Some MD players come packaged with these things, or other MP3 players like the Ipod have these features. Not to mention the Ipod will store Gigs of music; it will just set you back 3 times as much money. These cons all need to be factored in to your comparison with other units. THE BOTTOM LINE: Some have noted performace loss over time. Simple: get a MD cleaning disk to clean your lense. This unit is very durable and has a long play life. Software updates can also solve a lot of recording problems. The cons pale in comparison with the pros. The sound quality is great. The unit is THE BEST VALUE in digital music. The battery life is UNBELIEVABLE. The MDs are getting CHEAPER BY THE DAY. An added bonus: Now that the new HD standard is out, you can buy these at deep discounts. Take advantage. BUY THIS UNIT NOW!
Rating: Summary: Good Mindisc Player...Good Price! Review: I love this minidisc player. It is so easy to use and it was modestly priced. It it small so it fits in my pant pocket. I love how you can get 5.5 hours of music on one minidisc. It also lasts quiet a while on 1 battery. It has saved me lots of money. I love this minidisc player!
|