Music On The Go (Sony MD Walkman MZ-R70)

Name: jackie-brown

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Product:	Sony MD Walkman MZ-R70
Date:	18/04/02 (190 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: See op

Disadvantages: See op

I was very lucky to get my hands on the Sony MZ-R70 portable minidisc recorder because it didn’t even cost me a single penny! I won one of these by gaining top score in a music quiz on Bt’s ‘Get Out There’ website (www.getoutthere.bt.com).

The player is small and stylish and is square in shape. I have a silver one and think that they also do them in a couple of other colours. It measures around 81x26x74mm and in full use with battery and minidisc weighs about 150g. The case isn’t entirely flat due to a slight bulge at the bottom of the casing where the battery goes, this sometimes prevents it from slipping into really slim shirt pockets but it does give you something to grip!

The R70 comes with a remote control that the headphones plug into so you can control what you’re listening to without having to reach back into your pocket for the player. It also has an input for a power charger, along with digital and mic inputs and comes with a carry case, digital cable for recording and also a rechargeable battery. Plugging the minidisc into the mains with the adapter whilst the battery is in the recorder can simply recharge the Sony rechargeable battery. A small bar on the players screen lets you know the power left in the battery. It tends to take around 3 hrs to fully charge but gives more than 6hrs playback time. A standard AA battery can also be used and will probably give you more than twice this amount of playback time so if you’re on a long journey and don’t think 6hrs will be long enough then it’s always handy to have another battery to hand.

The R70 has 40 seconds of anti-shock memory which means that what you hear isn't what's being read off the disc, but what is being played from the memory. This means that no matter how hard you shake and rattle the thing (believe me I’ve put it to the test) you still get a continued stream of sound with no jumping.

A 
216;Hold’ button is present on the back of the player which you can put on to ensure that you don’t accidentally press any of the buttons when you don’t want to i.e. to ensure that you don’t switch it on by accident and end up flattening your battery or perhaps to stop you from pressing stop when you are doing some crucial recording.

The controls on the players casing are all easy to use and the screen displays the tracks that you are listening to and you can also program in names for each track, which will be displayed on the screen.

I tend to use the minidisc player for recording band gigs. The player plugs straight into the mixing desk and can record up to 74 minutes. It has a manual record volume control so you can record things higher than they are supposed to be as the automatic setting is a little quiet. When I get home, I can then easily plug it straight into the pc, save it as a wave file and then burn it onto a CD.

A huge advantage with minidiscs is that you can record over them time and time again, supposedly up to a million times. Although I don’t really use the Minidisc player for listening to music (I tend to use an mp3 player instead) I do highly recommend it for people such as musicians who want to be able to easily record their sound live.

Although this model is now one of Sony’s older Minidisc players it’s still a good one with all the features you could possibly need, it’s cheaper than most of the newer models and you can probably pick one up for around £110.

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