Sony MZ-N510CK NetMD Walkman/Recorder with Car Kit

by Sony

Product Details

Product Manual [2.21mb PDF]

• Item Weight: 3.7 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B00008IHP3
• Item model number: MZ-N510CK
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (61 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
  • #29 in Electronics > Portable Audio & Video > Minidisc Players
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes
• Date first available at Amazon.com: February 10, 2003

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description The MZ-N510CK Net MD Walkman recorder has everything needed to create great-sounding music mixes. In addition to transferring music at up to 32x speed (using its LP4 mode), the unit's SonicStage Jukebox software stores and manages digital music files, custom playlists, and music transfers. Bookmarking lets you program favorite songs in real time during playback, and supplied car accessories turn a vehicle into a personal music club.

The MZ-N510CK offers high-speed transfer from a PC via a direct USB connection, and it can record more than five hours of music on one 80-minute minidisc (using LP4 mode). It also uses Sony's skip-free G-Protection technology, which eliminates or reduces skipping during many active uses. The MZ-N510CK is compatible with the RealOne music player and the pressplay.com online music subscription service. It plays back ATRAC3 files and supports multiple Internet audio formats, including MP3, WMA, and WAV.

Besides the bundled SonicStage software and SonicStage simple burner application, the MZ-N510CK includes MoodLogic software, which goes beyond typical jukebox applications, letting you compile music by mood or tempo rather than simply by artists and song titles. MoodLogic corrects file information by identifying and retitling mislabeled tracks during ID3 tag cleaning. It also has a feature called Music Marker, which lets you "tag" music during playback. Once the device is reconnected to a PC, MoodLogic retrieves the marks, connects to the Musiclub Web site, and provides you with information about the song and artist and links to download new tracks, purchase CDs, or discover similar artists. The unit provides up to 56 hours of continuous playback on one AA battery and comes with a Remote Commander control and an AC adapter.

Here's how you can use the included Sonic Stage Software to manage your music files:

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wish I had this years ago!, September 30, 2003

By 

Richard G. Amirault (Malden, MA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sony MZ-N510CK NetMD Walkman/Recorder with Car Kit (Electronics)

Great product. I wish I had discovered minidisc technology years ago. I purchase this for one reason (descrete, portable recording), but ended up using it mostly for another reason (music playback)

It's not perfect. I wish it had the AM/FM turer, but I was not willing to pay the $70 extra for the model with the tuner. I would also have been nice to record off a mike, but it has a line input and you can run your mike(s) thru a mixer if you really need to record "live".

Recordings made thru the line-input cannot be uploaded to your computer either.

But what it does it does very, very well. A single 80 min disc can hold (at maximum compression) well over 5 hours of music! It only needs a single AA cell, and that lasts for over 50 hours on playback. Well worth the money.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars I love it and I hate it, April 2, 2004

By 

Toomuchnoise - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sony MZ-N510CK NetMD Walkman/Recorder with Car Kit (Electronics)

TWO YEAR UPDATE:

After two years of use, I love it more and hate it less.

It is worked WIHOUT FAIL on daily use. I can't say this about most of my electronic gear. I use it mostly for "time shifting" of my favorite radio programs. I also use it to listen to books on tape (which I've dubbed over)... again it is a great product for this. The bookmarking feature is wonderful for keeping track where you're at in the book.

I now have the SonicStage version 2 and it is much better. Still not great... but much more useable.

--------------

I use my MD player every day so, obviously, something is right about it. I actually own two!

But I also want to write a cranky email to this engineer at Sony signed off on the software! It is AMAZINGLY bad! SonicStage (1.5 is my version) is SO counter-intuitive that I just can't use it... and I'm pretty savvy with computer stuff. LITERALLY -- I can't use it.

I can't figure out any way to just drag-and-drop songs to the player in the SonicStage software. Why in the world not? It's baffling.

Instead Sony makes you go through this ridiculous "check in check out" process. (or is it "check out - check in"?) It makes no sense to me. Maybe if you grew up on right-brained computer games like Mario Brothers, you could just let go of the need for logic.

FORTUNATELY, you can get a plug-in for RealAudio which is better but still not that great. The SimpleBurner isn't too bad either -- it's just limited to copying your CDs.

The Sony MD player is terrific at recording stuff off the radio for time-shifting. However, Sony won't let you transfer it back on to your computer for safe-keeping. The only way to do this is real time dubbing through your sound card. How FRUSTRATING! The MD could be one terrific tool for ripping your old LPs, or whatever, but Sony has made this impractical. This crippling of functions by Sony makes it useless for lots of people, I'm sure.

The compression and audio quality are terrific and it sounds great to my ears, even at the highest compression rates.

One terrific thing you can do with the MD is record off you favorite radio stations and then edit out the commercials and even move the songs around. This is so easy to do, that I do this while on my evening walks! You end up with a custom "best of" tape. But, then it's a pain-in-the-neck if you want to get that back on your computer.

The price is a deal for such a great piece of hardware and the MD disks are cheap, sturdy and hold a lot. I take mine on trips all over the world and even 5 MDs is plenty. I take my MD places that I would be nervous to take an IPod or some other higher-priced MP3 player. Also, battery life is great and it uses just normal AA's which you can buy anywhere -- a big advantage for travel.

Even though it is marketed as "speedy" it doesn't seem that fast to me. I haven't' actually timed it, but I think you could burn an MP3 CD quite a bit faster.

So, if you want to time-shift NPR or Rush, it's a great little machine. I havne't seen anything around that can beat it. But I wouldn't recommend it for listening to MP3s.

If Sony had just written better software and hadn't crippled it, the MD player would be killer. But, it's good for some functions like time shifting.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Walkman is great, July 3, 2003

By 

Sameep Tandon (Saratoga, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sony MZ-N510CK NetMD Walkman/Recorder with Car Kit (Electronics)

This is a great MiniDisc Recorder/Player, but I highly discourage people from running with it. It's quite big, and a little bulky, even though it does fit in a palm of somebody older than 13. It's pros definetly outweigh the cons. So heres my list of pros and cons.

Pros
Great Software- I dont see what the complaining is about. If you follow the directions you'll be done in less than 2 minutes!
Recording Speeds- Really nice if your in a hurry. You can burn approximately 20 songs a minute and 100 songs in 6 minutes.
Memory/Data in a MiniDisc- Although the minidisc claims to be 74 minutes, you can alter the quality of the song (Lp4, Lp2) modes and gets incredible amounts of songs. In LP4 mode (66k) you can get nearly 5 hours of music (4 hours 59 minutes to be precise) and in Lp2 (132k) you can get approx. half of that. Although I said "Alter the quality) there is really no way you can tell the difference between standard and LP4. The only difference I have picked up is that you have to raise the volume a little bit.
Battery Life- 1AA battery can run for 56 hours continually (but its more if you turn it on and off) I've had my MiniDisc Player for 2 weeks now and I listen to it atleast 3/4 hours a day and still is at FULL battery.

Cons
Searching for songs- Searching for songs often can be a pain, especially if you don't figure it out (READ THE MANUAL! IT REALLY WORKS)

There aren't many cons to this player.

Overall I would give this player a high rating of 4.5/5 stars. It's really good and I don't see what the complaining is about.