Customer Reviews

Sony D-NE520 MP3 / ATRAC CD Walkman (Black)

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

 

 

In reference to the below feedback, the user either had a bad unit or did not know how to use the player (reading the manual before using is a must). I previously used the SoulPlayer portable mp3 player and was 100 percent satisfied with it. After over 3 years of daily use it bit the dust. I was forced to look for another brand as SoulPlayer no longer manufactured a disc type MP3 player. I decided on the Sony, mainly by name recognition. I am glad I did. Sound quality is excellent with many user defined EQ settings. The display is a little small but does show everything you would need to know: Album name, Artist name, song title, etc. You can flip through the different setting to show the bit rate of the MP3, time left, etc. Actually, there are more settings then most people would use but for my money, more is better than less! Oh, and it only uses 1 AA battery which seems to last forever. Use rechargeables and forget it. Highly recommended for people looking for a disc type MP3 player.

I disagree with the earlier comments. I bought this for my wife last year and I think the sound is great, it compares favorably with other units I have tried out that were more expensive then this one.
If I were to fault anything it would be the very small controls on the unit, or on the headphone control cord, but once you get used to using them they are good.

Sony invented walkman. So this expensive walkman ought to be great, right? Wrong. The people who have written negative reviews got it right. Whoever thought it had great sound, well, I might suggest ...

I thought that perhaps the negative reviews were just a couple of people who, for whatever reason, don't like the Sony brand. Such biased criticism, unfortunately, is quite common. So I ignored their negative advice and bought it. After all, over the years I have been happy with my various Walkman products. Further I wanted something that would play a compressed format that had considerably higher quality than I can get with MP3s. After trying Atrac3plus at high bit rates on my PC, I decided that this was a good solution for my jaded ears.

I produced five Atrac CD's of classical music and slipped the first one into the Walkman. To save power, the player's motor only kicks in whenever it needs to refill a buffer. It then shuts the motor off. The motor noise, however, is as loud as the music at the maximum safe dB level! Very annoying. The problem doesn't go away when playing CDs either, but since the motor is almost always on, you can hear it all the time and must "tune your brain" in order to ignor the noise.

I thought it might just be that the motor needed "breaking in." No such luck. It has just gotten worse over the last two months. I then called Sony. After several somewhat inane "non-starters," they admitted they had a problem with a lot of these units, and to send it, along with the original sales slip, to Sony for repair or referbishment at their option. Unfortunately, even though I had registered the product with their web site, this did not seem to be enough to get Sony to act. They wanted the original sales slip, which, of course, I have not been able to find.

A second problem that Sony needs to resolve is the boot time. It takes about 30 seconds for the player to decide if the disk is a CD, and MP3, or an Atrac and load its album/track database. You wait and wait before the music can begin. Then your patients is rewarded with even more motor scrapings and screechings.

At this price, I can buy a very good universal DVD player. So why did Sony allow this noisy thing to come onto the marketplace? I don't know. I'm just thankful I didn't make more Atrac CDs before I tested it out. At least now I only have to find a good solution and reproduce five disks at this point. The replacement, however, will not be Sony.

If anyone doesn't mind the noise, I've got one for sale. Cheap.

When I opened my D-NE520, I was thrilled. The machine is sleek & black, the LCD elegant & the remote simple & intuitive.

Unfortunately, the sound quality was, frankly, horrible. And I'm not some sort of effete audiophile: there was a persistent hiss that was incredibly distracting. I looked around on line, and, while there aren't too many reviews of this product, I found others had experienced the same thing.

Stay away from this one. I'm sorry to say it's a dud. Mine is going back right now.

While the look and feel of this walkman is very nice, the sound quality was awful when wearing headphones. If I switched the audio output from "headphone" to the alternate feature which allows hooking up the player to a stereo, the sound was great, but then I couldn't work the volume. I will be returning this product and looking around for something better. I had high expectations of this product, and am very disappointed in this Sony product.