Top quality digital audio player (Sony Walkman NW-MS11 128 MB)

Member Name: stark99

Product:	Sony Walkman NW-MS11 128 MB
Date:	01/08/02 (3207 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Slim, lightweight design, large capacity, quick USB track download

Disadvantages: Software can be awkward at first, more costly than similarly spec'd players, ATRAC3 can be a pain

This is something of a double-whammy - the first review of this product and my first review for DooYoo!

On reading other reviews, it seems to me that a lot of people are trying to be way too eloquent and in many cases, don't concentrate enough on the actual item they're reviewing. When I look at a review, I don't want to finish reading it thinking "Oh, wow, I wish he/she'd go the extra mile and make that into a full blown novel", I want to know if my hard earned cash is going to be well spent on whatever it is that's being reviewed. I'll choose content over style every time.....that said, I'll stop being a hypocrite and get on with it...

I spent a lot of time searching for a decent digital audio player and finally decided on the Sony NW-E10, (which I still think is a better player, on paper at least, than the MS-11 as it natively supports MP3), but had problems
sourcing one as Sony had just decided to discontinue it. Just my luck. The MS-11 is very similar to the NW-E10, but uses a 128Mb 'MagicGate' memory stick as storage (as opposed to the NW-E10, which uses flash memory) and only natively supports Sony's ATRAC3 encoding (the NW-E10, as I mentioned above, also natively supports MP3). At the end of the day, I've got a fair amount of Sony kit and find that in general, you can't go wrong with it.

I've only had it up and running for a few days but have to say that so far, I'm really impressed. This is actually my second MS-11. I couldn't get the OpenMG software (used for managing your music and transferring
files to/from the unit) to recognise the first one, even though the operating system (WinME) seemed to think
everything was connected fine. I'm an IT engineer and without sounding like I'm blowing my own brass instrument, if I had problems getting it to work, I expect most people would have had problems with it. The replacement (which coin

cided with me buying a new PC running XP Home - and no, I'm not made of money!) installed, connected and started working first time. Reviews about the NW-MS7 mention problems running under ME, so bear that in mind before making your decision - unless, of course, you don't mind re-installing the O/S on your PC in order to get the MS-11 to work!

The MS-11 itself, is about as long as a packet of cigarettes, half as wide and probably weighs only a fraction more. It comes with a rechargeable battery that, according to the manual, will last for 10-11 hours (you'll have to charge and re-charge it a few times before reaching optimal battery life - which takes about 2 hours). It's silver/grey in colour with a single line (but scrolling) blue backlit LCD display. This is used for the simple menu system and to display information about the current track (or a nice little graphic equaliser!). There are the usual random play options, a volume limiting system that can be customised for 3 different settings (LO, MED and HIGH) and a really useful 'MegaBass' feature which can beef up MP3s that have been created with too much treble. Controlling which track is played is achieved by using a 'seesaw' control that rolls back & forth to skip/fast-forward/rewind tracks (and to move around the menu system), and depresses to start/pause play and for selecting items from aforesaid menu system. It comes with a pair of solid 'in-the-ear' headphones which, in my opinion, are too easily heard from the outside - so budget for another pair if you don't want to annoy fellow public transport users...having said that, they obviously would be fine for use when jogging or in the gym. You also get a keyring attachment in the box but I can't think who'd want to place £300 worth of audio gadgetry on their keys, except for the "Hey, look at my walkman - it fits on my keyring!" value.

The MS-11 arrives with a 128Mb
'
;MagicGate' memory stick, which at the lowest ATRAC3 encoding rate (66Kbps - remember, it's higher quality than MP3, so this probably equates to around 96Kbps using MP3 encoding) can hold 4-5 CDs worth. The lower level doesn't really seem to differ in quality from the intermediate encoding rate (105kbps - at least, with my ears) but average track sizes are about almost 1Mb lower. As I type this review, I've got near to 50 tracks on my MS-11, with almost 30Mb to spare! The 'MagicGate' part of the memory stick name refers to it adhering to a digital music copy protection system. Much has been said about companies like Sony making products that limit the type of music you can use depending on where it originates from (I certainly don't agree with this and it was almost enough to make me buy elsewhere), but the MS-11 is just so damn good! The OpenMG software that comes with the MS-11 lets you "check out" a file to the device 3 times before you have to check it back in again. In real terms, this basically means that instead of just erasing the tracks already on the unit itself, you have to perform a "check in" on each track, which really takes no more than a few seconds per song. I've got a fairly big collection of MP3s downloaded from the internet and have only found 1 file that OpenMG refused to import (and I suspect that this was due to the file consistency rather than any copy protection issues). Importing MP3s to ATRAC3 is a doddle and only takes 30 seconds or so for each file (on a 2.2GHz P4) and once done will be stored in the Sony\OpenMG\Packages folder as a .OMG file. These files can be played by the OpenMG software but don't expect something like WinAmp to handle them. Moving songs to the device is nice and quick thanks to the USB connection and ripping a whole CD will take around 5 minutes.

The only problem I've had so far is that when ripping CDs, even on my 'fast&
#39; PC,
doing other things whilst the OpenMG software is encoding the tracks sometimes causes tiny gaps in the resulting file(s) - I assume this due to the CPU maxing out (even on a 2.2GHz with 512Mb RAM and a 48x CD! - good old Micro$oft). The moral of this, I suppose, is to not plan on using the machine for anything else whilst ripping is in progress. It's surprising, as I've converted many CDs to MP3 on much slower PCs, whilst running other apps in the background without ever having these sort of problems. Anyway, I digress...

All in all, the NW-MS11 is an extremely smart piece of kit and the only thing I can fault it on so far is the price. At an RRP of £300 (street price of around £270 - I got mine for £240 ;-z), it's considerably more than other players of a similar spec., but the Sony brand is one you can trust and it just drips quality.

If you're looking for a quality, upgradeable "MP3" player and have a few extra pennies to spare, then you won't go far wrong with the NW-MS11.

*** LONG TERM TEST UPDATE ***

I've had the MS-11 for about a year now, so thought I'd post a few more "long term" results/thoughts...

The MS-11 remains a great digital audio player and my previous comments still stand. However (you knew there was going to be a 'however', right?), there are a few niggles that have only come to light during extended use...

As mentioned above, I've been using this for about a year and it seems that the rechargeable battery is approaching its demise. Sony quote 4 hours initial battery life and, when new, is just about on the button. I expected to have to replace it at some point, I just didn't expect 'some point' to come so soon. I still get a good couple of hours from the battery but the charge indicator (which has 3 'bars') never says that it's full, even following a full overnight charge. In addition to
this, it seems to go from 2 bars down to a single bar after just a few minutes of play. It's a little disconcerting, not knowing if you need to charge the battery (yet again) for that long journey or that workout in the gym.

Also (and this is a tiny niggle - I may well have mentioned this in the initial review), the random play option doesn't actually seem to be that random. I'm sure the chaos theorists will disagree (and technically, they're right of course), but regularly playing 3/4 consecutive tracks isn't what I'd call 'random' (or 'shuffle as the MS-11 calls it....never play poker with this device! hehe).

This may be a general trait of 'in the ear' headphones, but I still find the pair that's included with the MS-11 to let out too much sound, so much so that you end up having to turn the volume up to near maximum. I also find that the left headphone doesn't fit as well as the right one and it tends to fall out when I'm running.........and that my arm hurts when I do this, etc. :-0

Having to use Sony's own ATRAC3 encoding has gone from being a minor annoyance to somewhat of a pain in the a*se. It's only really that it's inconvenient rather than causing any actual problems. I'm also just about to buy a car audio unit that's MP3 compatible so will probably end up having 2 copies of everything. Bear things like this in mind before committing yourself to Sony's encoding dictatorship...

On the plus side, the build quality of this unit is just something else... It still looks like new, all the buttons and moving parts are still as responsive as they were on first use and its survived being dropped countless times.

On the whole, I'm glad that I chose the NW-MS11 although sometimes I daydream about having a natively MP3/WMV compatible player......aaaahhhhhhh!

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