Customer Reviews

Sony D-NE320PSBLK Psyc MP3/ATRAC CD Walkman (Black)

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The person that claim it can't play his mp3 files? Well, either he is burning the disc wrong, or he has no clue what he is doing... This player works like a charm!

I am an engineer in the Consumer Electronics business, and deal with digital video and audio on a daily basis. Naturally, I am ULTRA MEGA picky. THIS IS THE BEST MP3 PLAYER, period!! The sound quality on this is simply amazing, far better than iPod and anything I've used so far. Panasonic is my favorite my overall brand, but Sony is blowing my expectations like crazy lately...

This player uses single AA battery, and the battery door is inside. Many companies have tried that design, but using two batteries and not able to shrink the size. Sony, however, made the player ultra thin and light weight. The battery compartment act as an elevator for the player, so it lift the player off the desk a little, but allows the rest of the player body to be very thin, very cool! The battery life on a single AA is claimed at 41 hours!!! Guess what? I got close to 50 hours!!! That's simply AMAZING. The player is tightly designed to be just super slightly larger than a regular CD. Without the AA battery, the player with a CD weights about a CD and its case (regular thickness case, not those thin cases).

User interface is very responsive, simple, yet elegant. The display is somewhat small, but with super fine pixels, it's able to display everything clearly! The player offers two types of sound enhancements, 1) equalizer 2) clearbass; each has multiple settings to tune to your taste. Sony also parted away from a big overhead headphone, and went with a tiny earbud type headphone. Unlike others, this little guy produces amazing bass and clarity. Lack of better words, I am amazed how much sound it can produce and how rich the sound is. I tested the player's operating system and user interface by repeatedly change settings and pushing buttons--something I do at work and drives my coworkers crazy, but the player never stutter, crash or lockup. Pretty stable software!!! YAY :)

Sony also made the directory browsing exceptionally quick and interactive... You can quickly find songs and traverse directories. Sony also achieved something NO other company has done so far, the preload/caching of each track is done soooooo fast; that it's almost as responsive as a regular audio CD when you switch tracks. The anti-shock is also awesome. It quickly loads the sound and stops the motor, so no matter how much you shake, it doesn't skip. Sony's anti-skip also work great during loading, so if you shake while the unit is buffering a song, you won't get corrupted playback like many cheap players. (Memorex, Audiovox, RCA, countless cheap crap from China, cough, cough ;)

I can go on and on about how much I like this... Sony priced this very very competitively, it's only about $15 more than some cheap Memorex junk, and the price is actually lower than Panasonic's. The cost difference is EASILY justified for the money you will save in batteries.

This is one finely engineered product!!! Go buy one, and you will agree with me!

[Note: I have the white version of D-NE320, but feature-wise and operation-wise, the different versions are identical. Hope my review and price tip help you.]

Even though I love my Sony NW-HD3 20GB MP3 player, when I listen to my beloved classical music collection, I still much prefer CDs, since when it comes to sound quality, MP3 simply cannot match the original CD recording. This Sony CD player is great for classical music (as well as jazz and vocals, or anything that an audiophile loves). You can feed the output to a high-end amplifier and get unbeatable sound. Or use a good pair of headphones.

This CD/MP3 player is also great for books-on-CDs. Ripping CD audiobooks is a pain and a tedious process. So it's simply easier to listen to the CDs direcly, and this lightweight, stylish, easy-to-use CD player is just PERFECT for that. And it runs for days on a single AA battery. (Hint: get Panasonic's new Oxyride AA batteries for double the life of even the best alkalines.)

I just love this portable CD player. If you are also an audiophile or an audiobook lover, this is perfect for your needs.

The only minor gripe is the player doesn't support WMA, which would have been even more fantastic for ripped audiobooks (better quality, smaller files). MP3 still takes too much space at the usual 128kbps bitrate. If I were to rip, I'd want to rip into 48kbps WMA and would still get great sound quality. (But I don't have the patience to rip anyway...)

BTW, this player (and the black version) are actually cheaper on Sony's consumer website, sonystyle dot com, where it sells for $49.95. I should have checked there first.

UPDATE: I was happy to discover that the inline remote control that comes with the D-NE320 also works on my Sony NW-HD3 20GB MP3 player. Awesome!

I just bought one all I can say is WOW!!!! This thing rules it is amazingly light, and has amazing sound quality even at 64k. It's only 53 dollars and u can put 490 songs on one cd and organize them into groups, wow thats about 5 times more then ipod shuffle can have and the ipod shuffle doesnt even have an lcd screen that displays information. Plus just one battery lasts 41 hours. Also this thing will never skip I have shook it held it upside down but it will not skip. What are you waiting for go buy one of these now!!

I just bought thus cd player on 7/19/05 and i love it. The sound is great and it is very dourable i was going to get a water-proof cd player because my mom and dad have a 28' bayliner but i saw this cd player into radio shack and i wanted it so i got it and when i got down on the docks i dropped it into the water and it still works great. I used to have a sony s2 but someone stole it in christmas 13 days after i got it. They say that you get 41 hours on the cd player but i got 52 hours on it so far. I love the remote because i can put the cd player into my pocket and play around with it without touching the cd player. So my over opinion is to get this one.

There are no disappointments involved. This cd/mp3 player is truly amazing. It is near skin tight of the CD itself and you can search and find menus and titles and all the info you need. In my opinion, this is better (and cheaper) than a small mp3 player. THe only small flaw is that it takes a couple seconds to shut off. Other than that, this product is definitely worth the buy.

I bought this player in mid March for about 70 dollars since I bought direct from Sony and paid shipping. At least when I bought it, I recieved 5 free downloads from Sony's connect store. But I hope I can give you an accurate review on every aspect of this player since I've had it for so long.

Looks: This player definately looks great. The black glossy image only lasts for so long though. After 3 months of school goer's usage, scratches do form on the surface. But these are only very noticable in high light conditions. The looks are definately eye catching and the player itself is overall very stylish.

Durability: Ok, I've dropped this about 23 times and it still plays just fine. Of course it doesn't look new but it plays fine. But cracks do form up on the top plastic surface but nothing major. Overall excellent build quality and durability.
Spin Up: Spin ups for newly loaded cds takes aobut 15 seconds for a full cd. It really depends on alot of things. A cd-r loads faster than a cd-rw for some reason. Atrac 3plus cds take longer to load where as normal cd-da's are fast yet aren't immediate like the cd-da only players.

Volume Output: Because this is a one battery operation, the sound volume will not be too high, but overall it is impressive. At the 85 percent mark , the sound distorts noticably. It really depends on the headphones you use. The stock headphones can give you great volume whereas full sized ciramaurals require an amp to be driven. A great solution to this is to get some active noise-cancelling headphones which amplify significantly. Personally I'm using Akai -AK8220 headphones which are absolutely excellent but are nearly impossible to find. I got lucky by finding one in my local FYE.

Negative: No backlight(but this might be good for saving battery, but its always useful to have a backlight)
Problems: Sometimes during manual track changing the cd player get "lost" in the disc and takes a while to get back on track.
Fastforwarding is laggy along with rewinding especially on atrac3plus. No problems on cd-da though.
Battery Life: It once again depends on headphones and equalizer settings. With my semi circamaural Akai's i get around 35 hours.

Playback: Playback is excellent, sound quality is excellent as well.

Skipping: No skipping, impossible to make this skip.
Functionality: The in player battery storage is great and prevents any risk of an accidental opening. I don't like the multipurpose volume/track buttons. The side lid opening is great. The hold button actually holds. A good deal of menu navigating for simple things like bass increase but worth it for the additional features. 7 language support is useless.
Software: Sony includes sonic stage with this player and I never liked sonic stage from the start. It really lags up and is extremely unstable. Personally I prefer using nero to burn my files. I don't use Atrac 3 plus, since it sounds a little dark.

Summary: This is a great player, sound quality is excellent, and its durable. If you're a highschooler that generally handles these things roughly, it just might make it through til senior prom night. the software included is useless for me at least. The looks are good, the value is good. I don't think theres much better stuff out there. I got this because I was too lazy to convert all my cd collection into mp3's on my computer. If you arent lazy, check out the new pysc mp3 players. Also check the I-rivers and slimline series of panasonics.

This is by far the best MP3 Ive used It has NEVER skiped It could play any MP3 not like that guy who doesnt know how to burn or has a cheap ass burner [THEY SELL SOME ON THIS SITE]. The CD player is The BEST It has also NEVER skiped it could read any burned CDs. The stylish earphones are really loud and cool. The detachabel remote is great and the sound/bass is the best. If I were you id buy this item right away and it extremly cheap its on sale right now so hurry.

Has anyone mentioned what the Walkman's software (Sonicstage) allows one to do when burning one's own CD?? I don't think so ... and it's impressive! I just burned one for travel that has 254 tracks ... and there could probably have been more on the ATRAC format CD. (The walkman's packaging suggests there could be as many as 490) While the tracks on the resulting CD aren't concert hall quality, I find they are quite acceptable when played on this walkman.

Using (free) software like Windows media, I'd concluded that I was going to have to buy an iPod if I wanted to load in one place a lot of my music for playing later. Fortunately, I didn't go as far as to purchase an iPod for hundreds of dollars before reading the packing material.

I used Windows Media to rip my CDs, saving them in the mp3 format that others have suggested is best to account for the varying requirements of audio players. (The process was very easy to figure out.) Then I used Sonicstage to first "build my library" via file/import; and then to make the list of albums/tracks to burn on an ATRAC formatted CD. Instructions aren't that great, but the process is doable.

The Sonicstage process for burning the CD took awhile -- more than an hour for 254 tracks. But the result was well worth the wait ... and a whole lot cheaper than paying for the song-capacity offered by an iPod!!

I got this a while back, and it's still in perfect condition. Good features, and plays good. One thing thats a plus about this player is that it only takes "ONE" battery, not TWO! So you can save batteries. You may be thinking, it must not last long since it's only one battery, but it does suprisingly. For 49.99, thats a cheap price for a really good discman! Worth the money!

Ahhh... who needs to spend a few hundred bucks on an iPod??? I bought this unit and have an "unlimited" supply of what I want to hear!! I made an MP3 CD of classic rock and got about half way through it on a recent trip from San Diego to Phoenix. I've made others of "albums", "soundtracks", "jazz", "blues", and "bluegrass", each one of which will last 'bout as long as a set (2) of double-A batteries (10-12 hours)and I can get a home and car power supply if I want to. Great "shock protection". It plays through both my car stereo and home stereo just fine... comes with a nice set of headphones and worked great on a recent 8 mile hike. What more could you want for under fifty bucks??