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This is the second minidisc player I've owned. The sound is fine. My first one (Sony MZ-R30) was exceptional in quality so maybe it isn't fair to compare the two. but this newer one is slow to respond, awkward to open, and the control panel is slightly hard to see. My main complaint is the slow operating speed and clumsiness of opening it to insert the disc. I probably would not recommend this item unless you don't care about ease of use.
I don't know how in the world I missed this when shopping, but this model DOES NOT HAVE A MICROPHONE, NOR ANY WAY TO USE ONE WITH IT. And the Hi-MD format is just terrific.I'd love to have a more versatile machine using Hi-MD, that I could easily record things with, move files around under Linux, and use OGGs etc. The Hi-MD format is everything I'd read, I can't for the life of me fathom why Sony isn't doing more to spread the use of MiniDisc. It's just too limited, and only because of the iron paw of Sony. To me that eliminates at least half of the usefulness of such a device, but it's my fault for not finding that out before buying.So why the 4 stars. Because, as a player it's awesome. I'd read a lot about the Hi-MD format so I wanted to check it out in person. But this machine ain't it.
Now that my little experiment's over it's probably heading to Goodwill.Oh, and the folks I ordered it from (ship2you) did an absolutely superb job, thanks, it got to me in 2 days. with. I got a refurbished model for I think around $90(). The interface on the machine is kinda clunky but for stuff like Japanese lessons that won't really matter too much since you won't be fishing around too much.So as just a player, I really like this little booger. Well, shop twice buy once I reckon. Shame.
Yah SonicStage is a pain (though better than I expected from reviews, I guess Sony did improve it) but the Japanese lessons & music I put on the disc sounded absolutely fantastic. I've read that some people get 34+ hours of battery usage & I wouldn't doubt it. With a mic jack, and some software tweaks, this would be a heck of a machine I could be happy with for years. and everything was great.
Minidiscs are rewritable a million times according to Sony, and act as a hard disc drive meaning you can delete and rearrange the music or data on the disc. I've had cds corrupt data in as few as 2 years.
The fact that the media is removable makes this device even more attractive. The 1 gig capacity and atracplus codec are reason enough to use HiMD.
Minidiscs last longer than cds. If your hardrive player or flash player breaks and it will, or if the battery fails then you can't access any of the music on the player.
In contrast, you always have your mini-discs. Minidiscs have a much longer life span.
Since the advent of HI MD minidiscs Sony has made this the only portable way to listen to music.
Sound quality is excellent for compress music. Some people say it's made of cheap plastic. The Pros: It's a thing of beauty. The bad. Well may be true priced at $100.00+, but that aside I would have to disagree. Runs on a single AA battery for days. It uses the obsolete USB 1.0 so it take 45 min to 1 hr to transfer 1gb music or data. Sonicstage isn't music-sharing friendly.
The more recent units look to be cheaply made. When it does, you will get the famous "BLANKDISK" error whenever you insert your disc. The early units seem to be made better. For about $3, I could copy a whole CD to one regular minidisc and keep it in my media library. I have been a long time user of Sony's minidisc equipment. After loosing valuable data, I have put all 3 of my units and dozens of recorded and blank discs in a drawer. It may be 6 months, it may be three years, but it will happen. THIS CABLE WILL FAIL in time.
No great loss if you use the minidisc for music only, but a potential disaster if you use it for backing up data (which I used to do). The read/write heads have to move back and forth across the media, and this is the weak point. I mainly liked the removable media feature. This will destroy whatever data was on the disc. There is one inherent design flaw with a media that has to spin. There is a tiny ribbon cable that attaches to the read/write head. I researched this on minidisc forums and found that It had happened to others.I used minidiscs for data backup because the $3, 300MB discs were perfect for my needs. Probably never to be used again.
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