This is the Daddy !!! (Sony MD Walkman MZ-N1)

Member Name: krmc01

Product:	Sony MD Walkman MZ-N1
Date:	10/06/03 (290 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Size, Excellent sound quality, Ability to record from external sources

Disadvantages: No Mac support, Poor software

I was the owner of an old sony MD recorder for close to 5 years. Sadly this product died recently and thanks to an extended warranty I was able to get a new machine upto the value of the original.

The MZ-N1 was the only choice. I have been the proud owner of this for 6 months now. Magnesium body, solid door mechanism and tiny in size compared with my old brick shaped recorder.

In the box you get an excellent remote control, optical lead for home stereo recording, rechargeable battery and dry battery pack. The rechargeable's run for about 60 hrs so it is unlikely you will make much use of the screw on battery pack. A nifty leather wallet is also included although I tend to drop it my pocket and clip the remote somewhere for easy player control.

The headphones included with the unit are worse than poor! So consider an upgrade. If you do this you will realise the sound quality is first class. This is Without doubt the best sounding portable device I have heard. Bass is clear and midtones are all crisp. Sound settings can all be manually tweaked so regardless of your musical taste the right sound can be discovered on the player via the remote. Its very simple to operate with the 'jog dial' located on the side of the machine. Sony has added this feature to many products and it makes the learning curve simple as everything can be accessed via this.

Recording from other sources is a breeze. The optical cable creates a Digital link from your home stereo and the line in will capture audio from other sources. I record from vinyl most of the time and the recording quality is excellent thanks to the facility of manually adjusting the recording levels.

The unit comes with three play / rec modes. 'Normal', 'Lp2' and 'Lp4' which will double or quadruple your recording capacity. I use Lp2 and i'm unable to tell the difference. Many reviews state Lp4 is just as good but I cannot testify to this.



There is one small catch though. The 'Network' 'Net' side of things. While the player is first class the software which comes bundled with it for the PC side of things will likely have you pulling your hair out till the wee small hours. The program in question is Open MG software. Its prone to crashing and not very good to use. The software transfers your Mp3 files to Atrac format and then sends them to the player at a claimed '32' times speed. If you have a large Mp3 collection the software duplicates your files to this format. This will bulk up your hard drive so its better doing this in chunks. The software only allows 3 transfers of the same song. This is a copyright issue 'Digital Rights Management Issue.' The software also only enables you to send tracks to the MD not the other way round. Again this is a copyright issue. This can be done in real time though from the line out into the Mic or input jack on the PC.

There is one god send though and its a Sony program called simpleburner. This enables you to pop a CD in the drive of your machine and the software converts the format and sends it to the player bypassing your hard drive. One warning though before you uninstall the Open MG software and bin the disk. This piece of software must be installed to run 'simpleburner.'

I am not an expert on the software bundled with the machine as I have only used it a few times on my dads PC but if you are a patient person it should be fine.

Before I end I would like to say Sony should sort the mac support issue. I am a Mac Owner and I am unable to take advantage of the computer side of the product. There is a third party program for the Mac which allows naming of tracks but thats it. Sort it out Sony !!!!

I hope I have not borred you too much this review. This on the whole is such a great product its difficult to keep the review the short. if like me you are using this for recordin
g fro
m other sources and looking for the maximum in portability. this is the choice. Why buy an Mp3 player with 128mb or 256mb imbedded memory when blank discs for this beauty cost a quid each and can store up to 320 mins of music in Lp4 mode.

The software may not be great but the player itself deserves nothing less than 5 stars.

I hope you enjoy this product.

Just a note to say the Sony simpleburner does not come with the system. It can be downloaded freely of the internet. Just run a search under Sony Simpleburner. Its a small application and will only take a few minutes.

Summary: