Rating: 
Summary: Great for the price!! Good Features
Review: This is an insanely small, easy to use device. I loved it the minute I got it! I purchased it from tc2002 (who I also recommend) through amazon. It came refurbished and in perfect condition. Some reviewrs say that the software is hard to use, but I disagree. You install the software (very quick), plug in your device via USB, and start recording. I had filled the disc an hour after I had gotten it! Song transfers may take some time, but it's worth it to fit so many on 1 disc. Definitely a great medium for music playing, especially for the price you can get this device. Highly recommended!
Rating:
Summary: Good Player, Bad Software
Review: This is a really great player. It can hold 4-5 cd's worth of music on one disc, and the discs are rewritable hundreds of times. The discs are really cheap, and you can take as many as you want on a trip. The software is not very good though, you can only burn the songs a few times onto he md's, and it can take a really long time. Overall, this is a good player that is worth the money.
Rating: 
Summary: Sony Music really crippled it.
Review: Someone (and I believe it to be Sony Music) really crippled this little guy. NetMD could have been real cool, but it's nothing but a hassle. It's no wonder MD didn't catch on, even with the introduction of NetMD. First, OpenMG is simply horrible. You have to Check Out the music files that you copy to it, and you only get 3 check outs. To delete a file off the MD, you have to Check In the track. You can't just drag & drop MP3 files individually either, you have to set up a whole "playlist". Not to mention, OpenMG is buggy and crashes 9% through the transfer. I downloaded SonicStage 1.5 (OpenMG's replacement) and it's still as crippled and bloated with the same check in/check out rules and stupid playlists. I don't know why I can't just drag & drop MP3's to the MD. If the terrible software weren't bad enough, all MP3's, WAV's, etc. are converted to LP2 ATRAC3 files, so your hard drive space gets wasted. That also means if you copy MP3's to the MD in SP mode, what you're getting is just LP2 converted to PCM, then the N505 itself reconverts the PCM to ATRAC. NetMD is hardly worthwhile compared to realtime recording via SPDIF. About the only thing NetMD is good for is editing track titles from the PC.
Rating:
Summary: Great and almost invincible
Review: well for the pros- it doesnt skip EVER, the minidiscs are extreemy cheap for what and how much they hold, it is small, light, and tough(dropped it many times and ran it into a wall) the sound is pretty good, can barely tell that it is less than cd quality. convienient, it transfers songs very quickly and if the recording fails (rarely) you can still have the previous songs on it. Cons- no light on the lcd, sometimes the open md jukebox gets corrupt, with it had an aluminum casing just incase it does get smashed somehow. wrapparound headphones, more volume, and the paint eventually comes off of the corners. otherwise its an awesome music player thing. i bought a mp3 player and it doesnt even comeclose to matching my minidisc player, it also sometimes cuts a song in half but to fix it just make it so u cant record back over it.
Rating:
Summary: Worst Music Device
Review: I bought this pathitic box for quite some money, only to find out within hours that the software took about 30 min. to install on a Pentium 4 with 4 gigs of ram. Not only did the software installation go badly, the actual transfer of songs was long and unreliable. It takes about half an hour to transfter to cd JUST ONTO THE HARD DRIVE. You must transer it using the software due to it uses some weird formatte. Then burning the songs took another ten minutes. When you did get them on, youll find that after an hour, the song data gets mixed with each other, and the tracks start 10 seconds into the previous song. Out of all the music devices ive used, this is by far the worst one ever. I do not reconment buying this excuse.
Rating: 
Summary: Software brings down a GREAT PLAYER!!!
Review: Let me start off by saying that this in general is a very good minidisc player. With that aside i would like to say that everything else is far from being simple to use. When you get ready to use this product you'll notice that you will need to use their software in order to transfer the MP3s to your MD player.it begins. . . The installation of OpenMG is one of the longest i have every seen. Took me at least 4-6 mins to get it fully installed. Now There are two separate programs, OpenMG and Simple Burner.
OpenMG is the program that is used to transfer the MP3s over to the MD player. Simple Burner mearly rips and transfers the newly made MP3s to you MD player. Sounds good right? . . .Wrong OpenMG leaves traces of the song on your HD, so basically its filling your HD up with duplicates of your song but in their format (ATRAC). Then they put a restriction on it which only allows 3 transfers of one song (called checking out) and after that you will have to delete the song by using this software (called checking in) in order to be allowed more transfers. Simple Burner only allows you to rip the songs to LP2 or LP4 (basically compresses it to fit more songs) but there is no option to rip it in STEREO (i need this in order for it to work on my old MD player which does not support LP. There are ways around it though, you can download REALONE PLAYER GOLD and then add a device section to download a patch for NET MD SUPPORT. It then becomes basically OpenMG but without leaving any copies in ya HD. It is easy to manage songs on your Minidisc as well. With that being said, Yes this player is the best for its price, but be ready to be disappointed by its software that is used to transfer your songs.
Rating:
Summary: One problem
Review: This is a great product, i can store my music on the mds so i can take the mp3s off my pc, which is awesome. I can fit 3-5 Lps on a single disc at 132 KBS, awesome. I can transfer an entire cd in less than 5 minutes, awesome...
PROBLEM- transferring an entire disc worth of MP3s takes 40 minutes unless the files are already in ATRAC3 with USB 1.0. That really [bad], but its worth it, becaus eoppin in a new disc is so much better than rewriting a memory card. One thing that is really great about the minidisc, its aweosme for running and jogging, not as small as an mp3 player, but still great. Wish it was backlit though.
Rating:
Summary: great for travel
Review: I love the MD player just wish that Music jukebox supported it as well as the sonic stage. I think the controls on the sonic stage program are hard to understand. and some of my MP3 files are not compatable with the atrc3 system.
Rating:
Summary: Sony should stand behind their products
Review: I own a MZ-N505 that was given to me as a gift less than a year ago. This product does not currently put out any sound through the headphones. When I contacted Sony I was told that it was past the 90 day warranty period and that I would have to pay 95 dollars to have it fixed. The unit was only worth 150 dollars when it was given to me. In response to my dismay about the large repair cost, Sony responded there was nothing they could do and I should either pay to have it repaired or buy a new unit. I have bought many Sony products for myself and as gifts of the years but after this fustrating experience I will not buy another Sony product. Why should I when in less than a year it will not work and they will expect me to fork over more money to them. I recommend not purchasing this product.
Rating: 
Summary: FANTASIC!
Review: I am not a music expert, but have a good size CD collection, plus many MP3's. MZ-N505 makes it a breeze to: build playlists, and burn MD's. The Net MD Simple Burner is REALLY easy to use. The Open MG Jukebox can sometime be clunky...Overall, there is NO comparison between MP3 players and the MZ-N505. This recorder can burn/play unlimited numbers of MP3's, and CD tracks. The software is completely intuitive. The price is great also!
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