Rating: 
Summary: Buy a disc based mp3 player instead
Review: This product does not play mp3s. It has to convert them to ATRAC, which takes for ever, and eats of disk massive amounts of disk, since you now have copies of your songs in at least 2 different formats. The tranfer to device is reasonably fast over USB, but the conversion from mp3 to ATRAC is no where near as fast as ripping a CD.The disk format does not allow folders within folders, so you cannot group by artist and album. Also, the software has the concept of "checking out" music, so you cannot delete a song on the player without connecting to the original computer you used to download. I'm planning on returning this item ASAP, and getting a good Samsung mp3 player instead.
Rating: 
Summary: Close to what we really want but...
Review: The ideal portable digital player would have the following properties: 1. can easily fit into your pocket, 2. have generous and inexpensive storage capacity, 3. be rewritable, 4. allow movement of material back and forth from the computer to the player, 5. have a microphone for recording, 6. have excellent battery life, 7. play all kinds of media files.
I have been a mini disc user for many years. Prior to the MP3 era this was unquestionably the best portable format. Unfortunately it has, to date been stymied by low storage capacity per disc, slow recording times and file incompatibility.
This new mini disc walkman is fantastic value for money...As a mini disc player, it records with the superior atrac R format, and as recording can also be done from the CDROM of your computer, the CD database can be accessed, and the names of the songs downloaded (no more fiddley track naming). Interestingly, this does not access the built in CD database in the windows operating system, by which programs such as Musicmatch "remember" CDs. The sound quality at standard recording is excellent, at LP2 it is marginally worse than 128kbs MP3 and at LP4 there is considerable quality dropoff, which is often unnoticable when walking around with the player. LP4 allows you to record up to 5 CDs to one $2 minidisc.
So far so good. The software is rather tempermental. Although advertised as a "NetMD", MP3 files have to be first converted to Atrac 3 before they can be imported into the player. This is painfully slow. The conversion program is OpenMG jukebox. This program recurrently crashes on me when I try to convert MP3s. I have given up with this process and use my MP3CD player. Furthermore, the net burner software is not great either. It grinded to a halt, in the midst of recording at LP4, several times. Overall, as a media converter, this is not great, and I would recommend this more for re-recording your own CDs than MP3s downloaded from the internet.
The slower play function is a major advance for minidisc. One of the great things about this format is that you can record virtually anything. For example, last week I plugged mine into the audio out plug of my TV and recorded a concert at LP2 (150 minutes). You can subsequently insert track tags, and delete the ads (the tracks then squish together without a gap).
It is a pity that this walkman does not have a microphone socket...Being able to record for 5 hours on a single disk through a microphone and upload the recording to your PC would make this the ultimate voice recording device.
The battery life on this unit is awesome. I have used my MD walkman daily for the past 3 weeks on a single AA battery.
I would strongly recommend obtaining the wonderful fontopia ear bud headphones to add to this device...
This is an exceptionally good product, let down by mediocre software, and Sony's obsessional attitude to digital rights management (why can't I make as many copies of my own personal recordings as I want?). 5 out of 7 criteria ain't bad
Rating: 
Summary: Most Excellent Hardware Evil Software
Review: Sony has the final word in audio at this point in time. I have 5 hours 20 min of audio (actually prayers) on my minidisk player right now. It has changed my life. I purchased a very high quality neoprene belt holder from [a local retailer]for the unit and it works perfectly -I wear it all day and no one notices.
Battery time is phenomenal. I use rechargeable batteries and replace the SINGLE double A battery only once every three days. Praise God! A CD portable player would suck batteries in half a day (I've had four or five). Also, doing your prayers is not an easy activity, and when you have to switch a CD or replace a battery, that's usually where you leave off and go do something else.
The software DOES NOT WORK. It works if you do not care what order you put your tracks in. For example, I drag and drop a track onto my playlist and sometimes it puts it at the bottom but most of the time it puts it on top. That means you have to drag your favorite song on last. So put worst to best. But that wont work because a small portion will drag and drop anywhere sometimes last.
The worst part is when you move the tracks. You'd think you could just drag a track to the position you want -especially since a black line appears showing where it would land -but no, it often times yanks back to where it was, but strangely one space above where it was. So if a track is twenty tracks down and you drag it up you will find it rebounds back to 19 tracks down, then 18, then 17 etc. Now, when you do finally get the track in the right place everything above it is fine, but below it changes. So if 36 tracks are fine except the 34th track needs to be in the 7th place, everything from 1-7 will be fine, but everything after 7 will get juggled around -its insane -I have spent hours trying to get playlists right -its absolutely crazy!!!
My fix was to create a new folder in my Sound Forge program folder (Sound Forge is a piece of software that came with my Sound Blaster sound card that records music from various sources and allows you to cut and paste etc. within a piece of music). I copy my music files and then paste them into my new folder -lets say "playlist 1" thus I leave the original music in tact and have a manipulateable copy which I can rename with a number in front of. So in my "playlist 1" folder I rename each track with 1-9 in the order I want. Then I make a second folder called "playlist 2" for tracks 10-99 because windows alphabetizes by first letter and puts #10 after #1.
Now, DO NOT FORGET that you will never be able to change the format you put a track into unless you change its name. I accidently recorded once in LP2 instead of LP4 and my CD was only half as long. I even uninstalled all sony programs off my hard drive and scoured all my folders and when I reinstalled the tracks still came up "optimized in LP2" So I was getting CDs with LP2s and LP4s on them. My above playlist folder fix ends the problem.
The software loads automatically without any choices before during or after -it just loads and askes you to agree to contracts about 10 or 11 times -who knows what all the software it loads are? I have found one horrible thing thus far. I found it because Norton Internet Security claimed it was trying to access the internet (I blocked it). My computer was crashing every time I clicked any personal file I wanted to open in Word, Excel, Photoshop, Sound Forge, and my computer was going so slow I couldn't stand it.
All such trouble went away after I uninstalled this mostrous Webhancer garbage that claims in its documentation that it silently sends over the internet the users habits and patterns to a central database.
I am not the type to take the effort to SUE SONY, but someone will since this unsolicited software is silently installed on the users computer without any choice whatsoever (there is no choose the software you wish to load option at any point -just "I accept this agreement" buttons a dozen times"). It then silently relays personal information to who knows where and it hurts productivity by slowing down your computer. Since the Minidisk player can accept a microphone and record 5hrs 20min of voice at CD quality, many executives, professinals and inevitably, lawyers will start using it.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent product, almost perfect!
Review: I have had this player for 3 weeks now and have since transfered all of my CDs to mini disc form. It's awsome having ALL of Nirvana's albums on one disc via LP4 recording.
There are 3 recording options, stereo(80 minutes equals 80 minutes), LP2(80 minutes equals 150 minutes) and LP4(80 minutes equals 300 minutes). The sound quality on LP4 with the bass all the way up is great. I can tell very little difference between LP2 and LP4. It is so small it can fit in your pocket. I only wish there were more accessories for these gadgets(carrying cases for the discs in particular). The only flaw; each track can be labeled so you can see it on the "display screen". Just put a CD into your drive and "MD simple Burner" will find the name of the CD and each track name. The problem is that only so many letters can be programed to a disc. Most of the time it isn't a problem, however when copying a number of soundtracks to one disc, when the artist and song name appears on each track, it quicly runs out of letter space. All you have to do is edit the track names and "dumb" them down(eliminating the "the's", "Ands" ect). Albums are grouped together and are easily accessed, eliminating all the skipping through song after song to get to an album. There are 2 parts of the software, the "MDnet Simple Burner" used to burn CDs, and "OpenMG Jukebox", which is used to copy MP3s to the device. The Open MG is hard to use at first, but you'll get the hang of it. Oh, best of all. These babies don't skip! You can put it in your pocket and run at full speed, crash your car, get into a bar fight... and it plays perfectly! :) In short, pitch your portable CD players. Minidisc forever!!
Rating:
Summary: Why bother with a MP3 player?
Review: I love my minidisc player. It is easy to record and much more versatile than MP3 players at the same price. My only complaint would be that it doesn't have a belt clip and doesn't come with a FM tuner. If you are thinking about a MP3 player, think about a minidisc player.
Rating:
Summary: This thing rocks...
Review: I returned my memory MP3 player because of expandability conficts and picked this player up for the same price as the memory player + 64 meg card. To most audiophiles, the L4 encoding is a bit weak on the high end. But is no worse than 128bit mp3s. 100 times better than cassette. You can record(analog) staight from almost any device. AC power. You can rip straight from CD. Additional disks run about 2 bucks. Sure CDRs are cheaper, But a CD player much bulkier.
Rating:
Summary: great!!!
Review: I recently ordered this minidisc player after I got tired of my older one. After reading the specs, I knew I had to buy it. Not only can you download off the internet, but you can edit everything on this program called openMG. You no longer have to mess with the buttons to type in the names of tracks. With this recorder you can record up to 5 hours of music on a single minidisc!!! It records up to 32x faster than real time. In other words I can do 5 hours in like 10 minutes. Now I dont got to sit there waiting for it to finish. I took all my older minidiscs and transferred all the songs onto just a few minidiscs. Before I had used 20 minidiscs and once I transferred them I ended up with less than 10. It saves a lot of space. Before I had to be space conscious and I had to delete songs so I could put other songs on, now I don't have to worry about that. Also you can run the recorder for 56 hours on one battery. It gives you a choice of different recording levels, SP,LP2, and LP4. I honestly cannot find a sound difference in each of them. They all sound great to me. For 150 dollars this is a very good deal. I've told my friends about it and now they're buying them. It makes me wonder why this isn't popular. I think its so great. I would definately recommend this to anyone whos tired of skipping cds, bulky cd players, and buying burners to record music from. Its like carrying a burner in your pocket. It has the sound of a CD and convience of a cassette tape. Buy it, you will NOT be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: excellent investment...
Review: this sony minidisk player/recorder offers the recording flexibility of a regular tape with the quality of a cd. mp3 files are easily stored and accessed on a minidisk, with many kudos to sonys wonderful minidisk long play capabilities. this allows the user to fit twice or 4 times as much music on one minidisk, when in normal recording mode a whole cd can be fit on one minidisk. battery life is excellent, 48 hours of playback in lp2 (2nd level of music compression) mode. i havent even bought a rechargeable battery because of this. to record with this unit, i would recommend the wall outlet adaptor as the battery is drained faster.
as a comparison to mp3 players, i was able to fit 400 mb of mp3s on one minidisk in lp2 recording mode. the average storage unit in mp3 players is a 64 mb memory card, and these cards retail for around 40 dollars. minidisks, which fit 6 times as much music, are usually 2 dollars...
in comparison to cd players, the signal-to-noise ratio on minidisks equals that of cds. however, it is a much more compact player, being able to easily fit in a pocket because of its deck-of-cards size. also, cds are known to skip. i have not been able to make my minidisk player skip yet, even after shaking it like crazy and mildly banging it against hard things. this is not recommended tho lol. it hasnt skipped since ive had it.
the recording modes, stereo, lp2 stereo, and lp4 stereo, enable the user to fit 1, 2, or 4 times the amount of music on a cd on one minidisk. normal recording for headphone listening can be done with lp2 mode without any noticeable decrease in sound quality until u use the minidisk in an amplified car or home md deck. for louder playing i would use normal stereo recording, and even in this mode an entire cd fits on one md. recording can be done with the openMG jukebox program supplied with the unit, as well as microphones or the optical cable which both are not included in the mzn505 package but can be purchased seperately.
the only complaint i have is that the openMG jukebox software converts the mp3 files to an encrypted form to prevent copyright infringement before they are transferred to the player via the USB port. converting the files takes some time, and slows down the process of transferring mp3s to the player. however after the converting is done transfer times of 16x for lp2 and 32x for lp4 can be achieved. this is not a big problem for me, and i love my minidisk player...!
Rating:
Summary: This has got to be the best portable device ever!!!!
Review: I dont understand why Minidisc is not more popular? It is a great medium, to take the place of cassette tape, cd, etc.... I have been able to consolidate my entire cd collection on to about 15-20 minidiscs, which I can take with me everywhere. I love this thing. The only problem i have is that the minidisc is not more popular. I have been researching the minidisc for a few weeks, and have visited my local Best Buy store, that had no units in stock!! they had a ton of mp3cd players, but no minidisc. What is up with that???? Long live the Minidisc!!
Rating:
Summary: this is awesome!
Review: i just got one of these on friday and i had no problems with it whatsoever. i had to buy another pair of headphones cuz the ones provided were cheesy (i recommend a sony headphone since it brings out the bass boost). its dead simple to burn cd's on it w/ the software provided n it takes about 5 minutes 4 an album to get recorded. the battery life is great. it cud go 50 hrs straight w/ a duracell ultra 'aa'. the openmg software is hard to use n i still didnt get it straight but the player makes up 4 it. it looks great, the controls r easy n it displays the name of the song also on the lcd (not backlit). the sound quality is superb especially w/ the bass boost on level 2 (the highest level). even though no belt clip is provided, it fits comfortably in ur pocket so it doesnt matter. this is a great substitute for those phony mp3 player w/ so called 'memory'. the memory for this costs [price] for 5 hrs. this is the real deal!
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