There is an alternative to an Mp3 player. (Sony Net MD Walkman MZ-N10)

Member Name: geoffcampos

Product:	Sony Net MD Walkman MZ-N10
Date:	24/04/03 (884 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Tiny, Light, Battery duration

Disadvantages: Some copyright issues, Learning curve, That's it

After an amazing dearth of 'good' Mp3 players, the iPod from Apple seemed to have it all - capacity, portability, design and about a dozen X-factors. I expected a half-crazed technology zealot to force one on me at gun-point soon after the launch of the Windows formatted version, but alas, he/she must have been nabbed and banged up by the 'let's keep all the cool, new technology products exorbitantly expensive' police.

I looked for an alternative. There are no alternatives - Mp3 players at least. iRiver - yeah right. Zillion? Give me a break Mr. Dixons - and no - I don't want an extended guarantee. Any Creative product? Don't make me get violent. 128MB of flash memory is still weirdly -nay - artificially pricey. Memory sticks? They might as well forge them from Platinum ingots signed by David Beckham [platinum originally derived from egg shavings in Carl Faberge's workshop].

I despaired.

I considered a 'to hell with it - it's only money' splurge on an iPod then did the maths.

Windows iPod + FireWire card = a seriously unjustifiable wodge of cake for a personal stereo.

Much (silent) time passed.

One day, as I gazed at the screaming horror before the eyes of God that is the Creative JukeBox, tears streaming down my cheeks, I noticed a small, unassuming silver box next to a DAB radio (don't get me started). It was a MiniDisc player.

The last time I thought about MiniDiscs was literally ten years ago when I concluded that the format was a dead duck foisted on us by a megalithic Sony monopoly.

A couple of years ago when I bought the first Mp3 player in Britain - the MPman from, uh, some company, I thought the MiniDiscs fate was sealed, posted, opened and damned. Then I thought how brilliant it would be if one could treat a MiniDisc as a say, Zip disk, and a MiniDisc player/recorder as an Mp3/WMA/Ogg whatever decoder/recorder. Sadly, the telepaths at So
ny 'R&D' ripped off and developed my idea. Sort of.

Well.

Let me tell you, I've had a change of heart. Mp3 players haven't come along as far as I'd expected (with perhaps the exception of the walletwateringly rich iPod) and the MiniDisc format has had a nearly Mp3 change championed by the 'NetMD' technology.

Permit me to explain. Before NetMD, you could only record music to a MiniDisc at real time - i.e. 60mins recording time for 60mins of portable listening pleasure. This of course, is pants. I wanted the ability to copy Mp3's/WMA's to a disk quickly, simply and painlessly, and this is what you kind of get with the NetMD.

Enough preamblic lore and onto the review.

The MZ-N10 is Sony's 10th anniversary edition of the MiniDisc player, and it is not surprisingly the top of the range NetMD doohicky. the hardware is pretty lush. It's extremely small - barely bigger than a minidisc in any dimension. It is 'shirt pocketable'. It is a nicely painted magnesium, light and quality-feeling. The buttons are reasonably well positioned and intuitive. The Jog dial is useful and ergonomic. The curved glass over the LCD is lens-like, which causes quite a bit of reflection, combined with the poor contrast, it could be better. The battery is a built-in Li-Ion affair, and appears to last forever on a single charge - no kidding, I am amazed at the duration - which is better the higher the compression used on the music (i.e. less rpm's) - more of this later.

The accessories don't really surprise. The remote control is a thin tube with ok controls and a very good, backlit LCD. Nice clip. The cradle is a cheapy-ish recharger with a goat-gettingly proprietary USB cable for PC connection and the bud-style headphones fit snugly in my bin. There's a huge, black 'AA' battery piggy-pack as well, but it was obviously dropped in the box by mistake bound for a different mode
l. You won't use it - possibly as a battery warmer. There's an optical cable as well. Which is neat I guess.

So, the bits that travel with you are tasty, the bits you leave at home are tolerably average.

Ok, onto the computer bit of the equation. As you have guessed, you connect to the Windows-poisoned PC (not Mac compatible I'm afraid) with a USB cable. Instantly I thought to myself, 'oh dear' - slow and plug and pray. However, everyone has USB and firewire/USB2 cards are still pretty expensive, so I liked not having to buy additional clobber. The software is always something which I assume will be utter, utter guff. I even disabled my anti-virus software before installing it less it quarantines it. The Windows XP 'Sonic Stage' installation went without a hitch (pity no Linux port) and detects the MD extremely reliably - I can eject the MD from the cradle whilst the program is running and reinsert with full, instant detection. The display on the MD also reflects the connection with a 'PC--MD' prompt.

The GUI is Macromedia Flash based which looks slick and clean albeit wandering from Windows consistency - always a pet hate of mine. It is however, reasonably intuitive. You have typically three components - the MD players' currently loaded disc, your PC's CD player and an HD located folder called the 'Music Drive' which you nominate.

In order to get music to the MD, you must first transfer your Mp3's/WMA's etc. to the Music Drive folder - this converts them to Sony's ATRAC3 encrypted format - so basically, you will have to duplicate all of your music - doubling the space your music takes up. The time this takes depends on the compression you opt for. This loses me a bit.

Example:

I have a song called 'totallylegaltune.mp3'. I originally ripped it from a CD at 128kbps. I can transfer it to the Music Drive at either 132, 105 or 66kbps or more as
ATRAC3plus. So, am I further compressing the files? Or am I padding out the grain? I don't have the energy to find out.

So, let's say I've transferred the song at 66kbps. This is stored as an 'openMG' format file - this is an encrypted Sony format apparently.

Now, I can transfer the song in a matter of seconds to the MD. This part really is magically fast. Once you have your songs sitting on your HD as openMG, the transfer rates to the MD trounce traditional, non-firewire/USB2 Mp3 players.

On the MD, the song is 'LP4stereo'. This is long play x 4 - so, you can get 4x 80mins on an 80min disc - not a bad amount of songage. As discs are so cheap, this whips solid state.
132kbps is LP2, so 2x 80mins. You get the picture.

The sound quality at LP4 I think is very good, at LP2, it is excellent - I cannot distinguish from CD (especially when a song was transferred directly from a CD instead of an Mp3 file). The player whilst playing is solid state-esque, as it is virtually silent. Of course, you get the song titles, folders, etc. on the unit and remote.

I have yet to fully explore the more advanced functions, but there is a lot of editing capability, although it is limited with tracks recorded from the PC - I got a lot of 'protected track' warnings when trying to re-label files on the unit.

Yes, copyright. This is a bit of a groan. Copyright concerns limits this player a lot. You cannot 'upload' music or recording back to the PC unless they were 'checked out' from the PC in the first place. So, if you take a nice, digital bootleg of that concert with an external mic, create track marks, add song titles, reorder them, erase the 'I wrote this song when I was just...' and 'it was only when I visited India when I...' bits - don't think you can then upload it to your PC to float the Mp3's about the web. No uploads. Also, you can only 'check
out' the same song three times in one session or something. Weird.

If I had spent more than a couple of days with the device I would go on, but this should give you the non-technical gist of the thing.

All things considered (like the cheapness compared to the iPod - the only real contender), It is a marvel of engineering and a true object of desire. The size & weight is just fab - other MD's are chunksters in comparison, and the battery lasts for yonks. Transferring albums from a PC is not as much of a chore as you might think, despite the copyright limitations and occasional program hangs on abnormally encoded files. MiniDiscs are super cheap, and the quality of recording with a decent mic (not included) is absolutely incredible, as is recording via the optical fibre cable (male-female included).

If you're going to get a MiniDisc player/recorder - get this one.

If you're thinking of an Mp3 player, get the iPod - failing that, get this.

If you want a portable recorder - get this.

Summary: