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Sony MDS JE520
by mellory_crad
Once hailed as the future of recorded music, Sony's MiniDisc format failed to deliver in almost every area. Its lifespan artificially prolonged by its adoption in the broadcast industry, this relic has struggled in the consumer arena from it very conception.
However, with the JE520, Sony might be onto a ... winner...
Alongside the expected features, such as Play, Pause, Fast Forward, Fast Rewind, Stop, Record, Eject, Power On/Off etc, Sony have introduced some new, and most welcome features. Foremost among these is the ability to program the device to play tracks on the inserted disc in any order you chose, as well as a "random" (or shuffle - for the iPod generation) mode - handy when you feel a bit crazy, and crave the suspense of not quite knowing what you are going to hear next.
The "lossy" ATRAC compression algorithms have also moved on in leaps and bounds since the "grainy" tones of yesteryear graced our hifis, offering a viable alternative to the phillips compact cassette format.
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Sony MDS JE470
by hotcritic
I am an entertainer, and so having all my backing tracks on one mini disc is crucial to me. When I first purchased my equipment, I was sure my microphone and speakers were going to be top of my list. However, I soon found out how important a mini disc player was going to be. I had used cd's previously. But thet scratched ... so easily. Finding the tracks I wanted would take time, and not always in my key!
A visit to comet was all it took for me to discover my Sony je 470.
The salesman asked what I neede to improve my music output.
I told him I need to carry less cd's, but still have them to hand.
He told me that on long play, I could fit up to 80 tracks onto one mini disc.
This was music to my ears!
He went on to tell me that the je47o also has a recording facility, so as to enable me to record from cd onto mini disc.
This enabled me to be daring in choosing tracks that would follow one another on my music sets.
I must admit to not discovering all the features on my mini disc 0player, but the important ones are there for me.
You do not have volume control as this would be controlled from the system you are using to input you mini disc.
You do however have track delete, track record, name input, disc name input, which all display in the tinted and attractive window display.
Sony is a household name. Thats why I trust their products.
Although the price leaves something to be desired: 149.99 i HAVE HAD MY MONEYS WORTH OUT OF IT.
I often download music, and instead of having to burn it onto cd's which don't always work, and limit you to approx 20 tracks, I download 80+ songs directly onto my mini disc player into the disc!
My player is silver, although they are available in black too.
A very easy product to use, and if your like me, not technically inclined, just using the basic features will make it a worthwhile investment.
It has an
auto loading mechanism, no hard shoving to inset your discs.
You can choose your recording level, again displayed in the display window. This reduces risk of distortion on recording.
When playing back your recordings you have repeat facility that will play the disc as many times as you like.
You have four play modes, anologue and digital, mono and stereo.
Quite light in a video shape.
You have long play one which enables you to record approx 20 tracks, up to long play four which I have fitted over 90 tracks on.
I wouldn't be without my mini disc player, and have since learnt that they are now used in 34% of cars!
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Sony MDS JE530
by schmams
After having a portable MiniDisc recorder (Sony MZ-R70) for some months I decided to go for a deck as well. One may ask, why bother spending all this money on a deck, when a decent portable recorder has all the necessary functions, plus it's much smaller. Well, there are few things that decks generally do better: Better ... sound quality - here we are talking mainly about the DAC (digital to analog converter). A top of the range MiniDisc deck would have more sophisticated DAC and hooked to a analog amplifier will sound better than a portable. MDS- JE530 sounds considerably better than the MZ- R70 hooked to the same amplifier, although I couldn't find any quality difference in the ATRAC sound (4.5 vs. DSP type R). (ATRAC= Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding for MiniDisc, to find out more see http://www.minidisc.org/aes_atrac.html)
Ease of use - editing minidiscs is much easier on a deck than on any portable. However the MDS-JE530 is not the best example, but more about this later. Finally, even the most expensive portables don't have things usually found on most decks, like digital output, good sound level indicator and display, custom functions etc.
Now, about the unit. It feels well built and sturdy, weights 3.4 kg. All the knobs and controls on the front panel are logically positioned and operate smoothly. The MiniDisc insert slot is in the center, which I like more than the side slot design found on Sharp decks. The display is large and bright. The level control indicator has 19 cells, not as good as on some tape decks but good enough for me at least. It can even be customized to hold the peak levels. The only bad thing about the display is that you cannot set the deck to scroll continuously the song title during play. Instead, when you want to see the whole song title you should press the scroll button on the remote.
The MDS JE-530 comes with all types connections one needs. Switching between them is done easily wit
h the switch on the front panel. There is optical, digital IN and OUT coaxial digital IN and of course analog LINE IN and OUT as well as phones output with level control. No microphone input though, but if you have a portable this is not a big problem. However this may be important for some people.
Talking about features, MDS JE-530 has more than enough. All the usual ones (editing, play modes etc.) plus pitch control, timer, fading in and out, smart space and auto cut, (useful when recording from analog sources), digital recording, level control and some customizing possibilities. Perhaps the most useful function is the one allowing you to set the sound level at which a track mark is added. When recording from a noisy analog source, the input level never goes down to – infinity dB and track marks are not added properly. With this function you can actually set the input level say to -40 dB and the deck will count everything below this level as silence- very useful if you plan to record a lot from LPs and tapes. When dividing and combining tracks, MDS JE-530 offers a very fine control over the position (1/83 of the second I think) which is not bad at all.
The sound quality is pretty good. I did some A-B listening tests against my Technics SL-PG 490 CD player (see other op) both hooked to my Marantz PM-57 stereo amplifier and could not hear significant difference in quality, and if any I'm sure this is due to the different signal path through the amp rather than ATRAC loss of quality. In any case, the sound quality is extremely close to the original. Concerning sound artefacts and coding problems (reported by some people) I have had no problems so far.
Now, the remote control RM-D29M was my biggest disappointment. It is much smaller than on the other 5xx series Sony decks. Adding track titles is much slower, since one button holds 3 letters and the cursor has to be moved after each letter by pressing the search button. This make
s up to 4 pressings per letter, which can become annoying if trying to add a long song title. Other than that the remote is OK. Most of the functions can be performed from the remote. If you own Sony CD player, you can control and synchronize the play and recordings from the remote. (I had already bought my Technics by then, otherwise I would have gone for the highly recommended Sony CDP–XE330).
I bought my MiniDisc player for £150, back in 1999, (From SevenOaks Hi-Fi, Ipswich, Suffolk) but that was soon after it had been released, now however, if you can still find this machine, I would say you should be able to pick it up for around £100 – 120, as newer models command the market today. Also on an additional note, the MiniDisc Deck is available in two finishes, either Black (MDS JE-530 B) or Silver (MDS JE-530 S), but there is no difference in the actual machine, in case you were confronted by the two names and were confused.
To sum up the Sony MDS JE-530, in one sentence, it is a feature packed MiniDisc deck, with great sound and reasonably priced, shame about the remote though.
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