Sony MZ-S1 S2 Sports Net MD MiniDisc Player

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Product Details

Product Manual [1.36mb PDF]

• Item Weight: 3 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B0000667AP
• Item model number: MZ-S1
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (80 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #29,175 in Electronics (See Bestsellers in Electronics)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #10 in	Electronics > Portable Audio & Video > Minidisc Players
  #15 in	Electronics > Home Audio & Theater > Minidisc Players & Recorders

• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes
• Date first available at Amazon.com: April 30, 2002

Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review
Combining the power and versatility of a minidisc Walkman with a body shell that is both reflective and robust, Sony has created a minidisc (MD) player/recorder aimed at the active sports market.

The MZ-S1 Net MiniDisc Walkman is a larger, chunkier, and heavier MD player than most, because it's a rugged sports model. It comes complete with a large latch that clips securely over the rubber-sealed disc slot, rubber covers for all the ports and socket, and a tough, wipe-clean case that won't scratch. The earbud headphones are light and unobtrusive, too, but the strap only prevents you from dropping it rather than letting you carry it easily.

You can run, jog, and shake or drop the case without interrupting the music, and all the controls are on the side, falling naturally under your thumb when you hold the player one-handed. Play, stop, fast forward, rewind, and volume are all combined in one five-way control; only pause is separate. Although the edges are a little sharp for comfort, the control makes it easy to get the track you want without looking at the player, and it's almost impossible to change the volume by accident; if you do there's an automatic volume control to stop it from getting too loud too suddenly.

You do need to look at the player to record or edit track names, but as you can only record from an external source like a CD player you're not likely to be on the move at the time. There's an optical cable in the box for digital connections but you'll need a second cable for analog sources. Alternatively, you can plug the USB cable into your PC and transfer tracks you have stored as MP3 or WMA files. You get the same choice of single-, double-, or quadruple-length recording, which puts over five hours of music on one minidisc, and you get about 50 hours play time from a single AA battery. The OpenMG JukeBox software is a little complicated because you have to check tracks in and out of your library to transfer them, but you can create multiple playlists and convert CD tracks directly. You can't transfer tracks from minidisc to MP3, though.

You're paying a slight premium for the rugged, go-anywhere portability of the Net MiniDisc Walkman, but the controls are simple and the sound quality is excellent. --Mary Branscombe, Amazon.co.uk

Product Description
If you crave tunes while you workout, then check out this S2 Sports Net MDM-^Y by Sony. This handheld minidisc Walkman« records CDs or MP3s from your PC at up to 32x speed. It features a durable, water-resistant design, the G-ProtectionM-^Y anti-shock system, and rich Digital Mega Bass« enhanced sound. You can get up to 54 hours of playback with 1 "AA" battery and the MDLPM-^Y feature provides 4 times as much music on 1 disc than a standard MD, giving you over 5 hours of music.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

69 of 74 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars The Simple Truth, October 1, 2003

By A Customer

Here goes. This review is meant to make buyers aware of the flaws in this so-called "easy transfers" from a PC to a NetMD (ANY model of NetMD).

Don't get too worked up about the hype of cheap minidiscs and 160 Mb worth of songs you can put in it. There are some catches that you need to be aware of:

1. You can transfer your MP3s only 3 times to a minidisc. Yes, 3 times. Why? Sony has made a licensing agreement with itself (the Sony label company) that an MP3 file can only be transfered 3 times. So, if your first transfer didn't work-- you got 2 transfers left. If your disc got broken, it doesn't matter-- only 1 transfer is left. This, ladies and gentlemen, is called the OpenMG magic. The OpenMG software is a nightmare to be told in reason number 2.

2. The OpenMG software that comes with this device is a pure frustrating-agonizing joke. Go to www.musiclub.sonystyle.com and see how many people are complaining about this software. Sony "the software company" and Sony "the electronics company" is so incompatible with each other that you'd think one's made in Japan and the other in the U.S separated by a large body of water (literally). Technically: You have to convert MP3s to an ATrac3 file before transfering anything to a NetMD device. OpenMG's job is to convert MP3 files into Atrac3 files. Guess what? Those converts DOES NOT always work. Transfering a CD to an MP3? You still need to convert to Atrac3 files. You cannot record anything to a minidisc without converting it first-- well what if the conversions DOES NOT always work? A HAH! Strike 2!

3. Finally, I have had a NetMD MZ-NF610 for the past 2 months. The first month, everything worked fine--transfers were good, followed every single instructions on the manual, and never dropped, bumped, and hurt the device in any way. What happened in the second month you asked? These MP3-Atrac3 conversions started to go wrong. Go to any minidisc forum in the website (search for "minidisc forum" on google) and you will see that there's this huge problem of converting files. The conversion progress goes up to 8 or 9% and then it halted into nowhere. No explanation and no reason. Sony support line doesn't help because the people working there are your grandparents.

If you're thinking about buying this device as an alternate MP3 device, re-think again. The industry is on a crackdown and what makes you think that you can transfer these files freely? Buying this device is like buying a 200 dollar worth of fish net. The simple truth.

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Quality - Great Technology, February 3, 2003

By A Customer

I read all the reviews AFTER I bought this player. I was concerned about the Sony software, but not too worried since I knew I could use Real One Player to record & manage tracks.I have an MP3 player (128MB) and I like this system more. Here's why. . .

Basically I like to listen to a lot of different kinds of music. I can fit about 40 songs (5 hours) on one mini disc at a great quality level. I can't fit that many on my MP3 player. If I want to switch tunes, I simply change discs --- Takes a second or two. With the MP3 player, I have to boot up my system, hook up the player, etc, etc, etc.

I run, snowboard, mountain bike, and work out with this player. It gets sweaty, and it gets frozen, and it gets knocked around big time. What it doesn't do is skip. It's bulletproof. I think it runs about 50 hours on 1 AA battery. The sound is excellent, but as mentioned in some other reviews, the headphones could be better.

It does take a while to load up the songs from your PC to the player though. Loading songs to my MP3 player is much faster, I have to admit. But here's the thing - Blank mini discs are [very reasonable priced, and can be recorded on again and again about a million times without failing. All told I have a bunch of discs, but only 3 that I listen to with a fair amount of regularity. Those 3 discs have about 15 hours of music, and cost [very little]. Do the math, and compare that to the cost of extra memory in an MP3 player.

Bottom line is I'm really surprised that these players have not really caught on in the USA. They're big everywhere else. This new generation of players are among the first to be easily managed from a PC, so hopefully that is what was keeping them from catching on before.

37 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A cool gadget, but..., April 22, 2002

By	Tarkus - See all my reviews

I'm starting to wonder whether Sony is even on the right track in trying to remain relevant in the mp3-centric digital music world.

I think something like NetMD would have been utterly fantastic three years ago, when USB-enabled computers were starting to gain mainstream adoption, and before hard disk and cd-r burner prices hadn't dropped low enough for more people to rip and burn their music collection. Then, I think, the ability to transfer up to five hours of music onto a single, (relatively) inexpensive minidisc would have held greater appeal.

Regardless of timing, the NetMD technology is still pretty neat. You are able to transfer digital content, either imported mp3/wma or audio CD's, directly to minidisc using one of three compression settings.

SP, the full-bore setting, allows up to 80 minutes on one disc, and is the best sounding of the three. It is "lossy" compression, like mp3, but to my damaged ears, they sound at least as good as CD's. LP2 doubles the storage time, but the increased compression makes the resulting recordings sound like... well, ALMOST as good as a 160kbps cbr mp3. Almost.

LP4 quadruples storage time, but as you might guess, the sound quality is pretty dodgy, comparable to a poorly ripped 128kbps (or lower) cbr mp3. LP4 is pretty much a lost cause as far as most rock goes, but it is surprisingly passable for hip-hop and spoken word (and probably for most electronica, but I have yet to test this).

As far as transferring existing mp3/wma content goes, I wouldn't recommend it (I know, it pretty much nulls the hype of NetMD, doesn't it?). I've tried converting a batch of 160kbps cbr mp3's to SP and LP2, using the included OpenMG Jukebox. At SP, the sound quality is comparable to the original, but the transfer to MD takes almost as long as the length of the content. Transfer in LP2 is faster, if you disregard the processor-hog conversion to ATRAC LP2 mode, but the sound quality takes a nosedive.

From what I've read, OMG Jukebox is notoriously unstable. Or so I've read. I've been able to successfully install it on two separate Windows 2000 Pro machines, and I'm feeling so lucky, I'm going to buy a lottery ticket once I'm done with this review.

That said, once you fast forward to 2002, where more people than not have gigabytes of existing mp3's on her or his hard disk, you have to wonder whether it's more convenient to rely on a solid state mp3 player to take small sections of this content without any further format-shifting, or dump them en masse to CD-R/W's for use with 3" or 5" disc-based mp3 players. If NetMD handled mp3's and wma's natively (or even managed Sony's proprietary ATRAC without the inflexible audio management software), I think this product would have much more relevance today. However, due to intellectual property concerns, I think Sony hamstrung itself with its convoluted content management system.

In the meanwhile, I've been using the Net MD Simple Burner program to transfer audio CD content directly to MD (mostly in LP2 mode, with some LP4, but for some weird reason, SP is NOT available as a transfer mode with Simple Burner!). I have started amassing a usable variety of discs packed with songs for the gym or for walks in the park, and from there on, it's straightforward MD goodness. Compact form factor, high skip resistance, durable media, high battery life. Basically all the things that most CD-R/W mp3 players aren't. And in a nice change of pace from the bumblebee black-and-yellow motif, the new S2 Sports design definitely adds some to the "cool factor".

I'm inclined to think that Sony munged the Minidisc yet again, this time with questionable software, but the good news is that I am still able to make use of NetMD. Drop me a line if you have any questions or war stories to share.