Customer Reviews

Sony MZNH600D Hi-MD MiniDisc Walkman

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

This Player is very nice and capacity is OK for a removable media, however the whole Hi-MD---OpenMG----SonicStage---ATRAC is very inconvenient to use.

I will summarize:

PROS:

-ATRACplus algorithm sound decent at 64kbps, comparable to MP3 at 128kbps in my opinion. There is also a 256kbps option which sounds very good, but files are pretty big for the Hi-MD capacity, makes it inconvenient.
-The advertised price for the Hi-MD blank disks is ok, around $7.
-Price compares to that of the MiniIpod or some Flash MP3 players, however this is "supposed" (read below) to be upgradeable by buying more blank Hi-MDs
-Runs on AA battery.
-You can run with it and get no skips.

CONS:

-You MUST use SonicStage software to transfer files to / from the MD.
-No MP3 support on the unit, only plays ATRAC. MP3s are transcoded by the PC software.
-SonicStage is a little bit unreliable.
-You CAN NOT upload songs from MD to your PC. So you can't use the MDs as a backup of your PC music collection, because if your PC fails, you can't upload the songs again.
-Even if you encode songs in ATRACplus with SonicStage, you can't move the files to another PC. And I'm not talking about illegal moving, you might have more than one PC.
-You can only play (so far) ATRACplus files with Sony's software (in your PC, I mean).
-Hi-MD blank discs are scarce, not even sony online store has them in stock at the moment of this review.

I think this unit is a good alternative to a Flash based MP3 player of medium capacity (256-512MB) if you can find it for less than $200.

For a little more than this you can get a 4/5 GB HD player like the MiniIpod and save the hassle of the propietary format, algorithm, rights protection format (OpenMG) and having only one choice of software.

I think Sony could have made a good product but it's taking the wrong path towards protection of copyrights. They shouln't do so at the expense of reducing the product functionality and reliability.

OK, right off the bat I have to wonder how the earlier reviewer took 12 hours to download 1GB of music to the MZNH600. It took me about 1 hour! While that may still seem like a long time, considering how much music you're transfering, I don't think it's a problem.

I was seriously considering the Apple iPod. The Sony Hi-MD won me over as a great alternative - it uses a standard single AA battery which last an incredable 25 hours. There's no hard drive to worry about - excellent shock resistance. It doesn't hold as much on a single disk but it's not that big a deal to change disks. Besides, 1GB on the Sony is about equivalent to 35 CDs... it works for me. Took it on a 800 mile car trip to Oregon and back and it was flawless.

Some have complained about the SonicStage software but I've found it to be just fine. I've used iTunes and I'm annoyed at how iTunes takes over the CD-ROM functions to the point that it disables other CD software! At least the Sony SonicStage doesn't do that!

Sound quality is excellent at the Atrac3 64kbps rate. This is the next to highest compression which allows about 35 hours of music to fit on 1GB. At the highest compression, I noticed that voices started to sound a bit odd. Still, at 64kbps, I can fit more music on 1GB than a typical mp3 player - I estimate about 50% more. So compared to other mp3 players, the Hi-MD is really equivalent to 1.5GB to 2GB.

If I have a gripe, its the tiny display. It actually works fine but it's not backlit and navagating the menus takes a little practice. The controls, while small, actually work quite well, though.

I also considered some of the solid state mp3 players but to get the same amount of music on a Rio Chiba for example, would raise the price way beyond that of the Sony. This little Hi-MD player is an excellent value - Oh yeah, and did I mention that it doubles as a 1GB plug and play portable USB data drive... I highly recommend it.

The player is on par with Sony's excellent track of Minidisc players. The new 1 Gig discs are awesome! They can take up to 45 hours of music. 7 hours if you are using the best quality.

The player increases the capacity of regular 5 hour Minidiscs to 13 hours! So you can more than double the capacity of your old dics.

Battery life is awesome. 30 hours or so with HD discs and 50 with older ones.

Best part for me, the player can be used as a portable drive! Only using HD media, you plug the player to your PC using the USB cable, and voila! You have a 1GB drive ready to use without installing any drivers! Just works! Best part, no adapter needed for the player when it's connected. The player takes power from the USB cable and does not use your battery while connected to the PC.

Overall, this player is awesome! I love it! Go get one :)

THe new minidisc by Sony is awesome. 1 minidisc holds a Gig of memory, shock resistant and it is very portable. The sound is awesome, becuase Sony allows you to customize the sound on 6 different levels meaning sound can be adjusted to your preference. Battery life is around 30 hours which is great. Runs off one regular one AA battery which is great and this thing is light. You can use to workout or whatever it perfecty sets itself up to be any type of player you want it to be. Atrac3plus is a great addition to the Hi-MD, even Atrac3plus at 64kps is better than Mp3 128kps. Overall this is a great product I recommend this over any Mp3 jukebox or flash player.

I have had this unit for 2 weeks and love it. It comes with all of the features that last years higher net-md players came with, including EQ, remote output (no remote though) and easy to navigate mini joystick and jog dial. Its very convenient to have a player that accepts AA batteries, since there are alot of good high capacity cells in this size, unlike the gum-stick batteries which are rare, low capacity and become usless in less than a year. The playtime is good too, even on a rechargable. No skips either, even with really rough use.

First thing I did was go to Sony's Connect website and download the latest version of SonicStage. It installed perfectly, saving all of the play lists I have accumulated from my Net-MD Walkman which used SonicStage 1.0. It works great for ripping songs from CD; it's fairly fast. It has a CD info database that blows away Windows Media Player's, no matter how obscure the title.

I was able to fit all 200 CD's, over 2000 songs onto 4 HI-MDs and 2 80 minutes discs, one for each genre of music. They all fit neatly into a compact 5 disc case.

I plugged the remote that cane with my MZ-N10, and it works great. I can easily change play modes and skip tracks with it.

The problems I had are:

Ultra slow MP3 conversion; it takes SonicStage hours to convert a whole HI-MD disc worth of Mp3's.

No song export from HI-MD disc; if you try to transfer a song from the recorder to SonicStage it will erase the track from the recorder, and disappear from the music library, possibly to a temp folder some where. (Just checked, they did get exported but are in a folder called Optimized Files, not to the music library like where they were supposed to go.) The discs are hard to come by, I tried 3 vendors and all were out of the discs.

Bottom line this is one of the best minidisc platers out there, if you dont need anything too ultra high end. there are tons of models out there and it turns out one of the most basic is also the best, cant say anything bad about the player its self.

Follow - up: I upgraded to an RH10 minidisc player to replace this one, and it turns out that the MP3 cpability of the RH10 doent work for VBR's plus all of my gumstick batteries died, so I stopped using it. Im back to this one afterall due to its better batery option.

This is a fantastic device. I love the fact that you can transfer music from your cd right onto the MD player without converting it to an MP3 (or similar file) first. Not to mention that Sony's proprietary ATRAC files have been proven to sound better than MP3s that take up more memory. The transfer rate is actually suprisingly fast. 1GB of disk space is more than enough to fill your head with tons of songs. Not to mention that the player is infinitely expandable since you CAN buy more disks. I bought this player on June 31st 2004 and was able to buy extra 1GB disks right from www.sony.com (no problem with availability either... and they shipped it to me overnight for the same cost as ground shipping). So ignore the hype about availability or lack there of and dive on in on machine. You won't regret it.

This player is sweet in every single way:
->The 6 band equalizer is very flexible. I can customize it by mimicking windows media player setting to create a pleasant listening experience to almost any music genre.
->The navigation is very friendly and fast. The jog-dial is very convenient when browsing a massive list of song on 1GByte disc.
->Atrac3 plus and 1GByte disc are a killer combo. I can put as much at 36 hour of high quality music (encoded at 64kbps) on one 1Gbyte disc.
->The quality of Atrac3 plus encoded at 64kbps is pretty identical to mp3 at 192kbps. If it is not because of the copyright hassle, it might have made a revolution in music archiving.
->The player is pretty durable itself. I have dropped it 3 times from about 2-3 feets height but it has never died on me. During 6 month of ownership, there isn't any problem I can think of.
->One fully rechargeable battery can last for the whole week with 4-5 listerning hour per day. If it is out of battery, I can always swap in a new AA battery to increase listening time. Its ability to use AA battery makes it very friendly. Unlike Ipod and other hard drive base mp3 player, there is no hidden cost in the battery replacement. AA battery is dirt cheap: 1 Energizer rechargeable battery costs only 1-2 bucks and can be recharged up to 500 times.
->About the software, unlike lots of people's opinion, I found it very friendly and easy to use. I 've learned that you can make it more stable by disable auto launching whenever the player is connected and CDDB function (go to tool/Option and disable CDDB or auto launching function). This can fix the memory leak in SonicStage 3.1 and make it more stable.

Ipods are cool and have a lot of capacity, but expensive and the battery doesn't last much.
Solid-state players are cool, but storage is bloody expensive, and battery doesn't last much either.
CD/MP3 players are cheap but bulky, do not double as portable storage and you need a burner.
PDAs are convenient because you only carry one thing, but have expensive storage and short battery life.

This little thing can store 35 CDs with pretty good quality on 1 minidisc, will run over 25 hours on just 1 humble regular AA battery; I use rechargeables which last even longer. It is great as portable storage and backup tool since you can have several discs. I am in Toronto and buy them at the Sony shop in Yorkdale mall, but you can also get them from Futureshop or Sonystyle.ca.

Sound is very good, probably like a 128 Kbps MP3. It has a 5-band customizable equalizer.

Only cons: I installed Sonicstage on 3 PCs: it refuses to work on one of them, other than that it's ok. Also, you can't copy back music from a minidisc to a different PC.

My advice: go get it.

Before buying it, answer the question: How do you usually get your tracks? I am just talking about legal sources.

If you have those 400+ CD collection at home, then this is the right hardware for you. Use the Net MD simple burner software, and you can live reasonably happy. The sound and ease of use are excellent and will compensate some frustration with the software such as check in check out.. (forget sonic stage at all!!)

If you buy your music online, no matter where (Napster, Walmart, Itunes, etc..), then forget it! Before you get used to all the work around, such as burn all of them into CD's, them upload them and then edit the tag information for each track or so, you will want to get rid of it immediately... Unfortunately Sony hasn't woken up for the new digital world yet (Will they someday?)

I owned a minidisc player a while back (specifically, the Sony MZ-N510CK NetMD Walkman) and I had mixed feelings about it. First, the storage on the minidiscs wasn't the greatest - one could fit maybe two hours of music on it with the 150-megabyte discs. Second, I always found it odd you couldn't write other media to the discs, like documents and pictures. And I was disapointed that there wasn't a wider range in bit rates you could rip music from using Sony's Sonicstage. While the atrac compression format gives excellent sound - better, in my opinion, than any mp3 - I wished they would give more options. All in all, I didn't feel that the player was worth it. But then I found that Sony was relasing a new line of minidisc players, so I thought I'd give it a shot.

It was worth it.

First, the new discs hold an incredible one gigabyte of information. I have fit almost 240 songs onto a disc at the 132 bit rate. Also, you can now use the players to back up your information. The old minidiscs that only held 150 megabytes, in the new players, are reformatted to hold 300 megabytes. I use my old ones to back up my documents and pictures - I haven't touched my CD burner in months! And there are new bit rates to choose from. It isn't as wide a selection as with mp3 rippers, but the extra choice is nice. The transfer of info using my USB 2.0 is quick and easy.

Sadly, as other reviewers have mentioned, the new Sonicstage software is a pain to use. I never had any problems with the old Sonicstage program, but for some reason the new version is extremely buggy and irritating. Additionally, don't be fooled by the packaging - while sonicstage does recognize mp3 and wma format, when you try to transfer the songs to your discman it will convert them to atrac format beforehand.

All in all, if you're leary of investing your money in a hardrive-based mp3 player, as I was, this is an excellent alternative. I am very satisfied with the product.