Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony MZ-N505 Net MD Walkman Player/Recorder (Gold)

The pros definitely out weighs the cons for mz-n505 MD player. Pros: small, light, don't skip, good storage on 80Min MD's, cheap media $1.5-$2/MD, good sound quality, relatively fast transfer from pc-player. Cons: copy right limitation can get annoying, no night vision ldc display, only display song name at beginning of track, no carrying case or belt clip. As for the software, some people think it's too complicated, i think it's not that bad. you just have to play around with it. i didn't have any trouble with it yet. OpenMG is the software u need to transfer mp3 to player, and u can edit ur track names and orders with it too, which is much easier than doing it by hand on the player. Simple cd burner software is good for burning cd's without copying it on ur computer and then having to converting them to mp3's first then burning them. u cannot erase mp3 tracks on ur player, but u can delete the cd ones u burned in there. no player is 100% perfect, but i think this MD player has much more good qualities than bad ones and most can live with it happily. There are more reviews in the Mz-N505 gold section if you want to read more. Anyways, i enjoy it very much, no regret for not getting a mp3 player instead.

This product is not an MP3 player, nor is it a portable CD player. It is something infinitely better and more sublime. Sony made a botch of OpenMG and it was irresponsible of them to bill the NetMD units as being MP3 players, but the N505 is still a great machine, for the same reasons that Minidisc in general is a great and unique format. Read on to find out why.

Minidisc players surpass portable CD and MP3 players in several aspects:

It records! This MD unit and most others are capable of recording. You can't do that with a portable CD player or most portable MP3 players. You can record live or dub other sources, anytime, anywhere, with pristine quality, different sources on one MD if you want to. You can edit the sequence and content of what you record right on the MD recorder. You can record up to 5 hours of lecture or whatever on one disc. You can record, re-record, append to, resequence, or erase minidisc media up to a MILLION times, right on the MD unit. You do not first have to encode your music with a computer. You do not even need to have a computer to enjoy MD.

Sound quality. Minidisc players have better digital-to-analog conversion and better headphone outputs than ANY portable CD player or MP3 player, bar none. Using ATRAC Type-R, you get dynamic range and frequency response at least as good as that of CD audio, but with the warm, smooth, humanistic qualities of good vinyl. It's actually a GOOD thing that MD transcodes other digital formats to ATRAC. ATRAC sounds better than MP3, unless you use LP4, the super-long-play ATRAC codec. ATRAC is better than MP3 at the same bitrate because it is more mature and was designed from the start to store high quality audio, not to be a low-bitrate Internet download format, for which MP3 is optimized. It is true that MP3 at 256 Kbps, at least using the LAME encoder, is generally regarded as indistinguishable from CD audio quality. ATRAC Type-R uses a higher average bit rate than that - 292 Kbps! It is, in a word, overkill. You cannot get better sound quality in a portable device. Just remember to throw away the included headphones and get some that sound decent. The included ones are junk, as one might expect from the headphones that come with a $140 MD recorder. If it came with better ones, they'd have to charge more. The N505 has the same DAC and same headphone output as the top-of-the-line model, the N1, so get some good headphones and you won't have a complaint about the sound.

Stability. While solid-state players don't, even the best CD players can skip. Minidisc was designed from the ground up not to skip. You'd destroy the MD unit before you could get it to skip. It's that good. The current line of Sony MD players all have the same anti-skip protection, including the N505. It works amazingly well.

Durability. MD players are smaller, lighter, and more durable than CD players. MD blanks are smaller, lighter, and more durable than CD blanks. They store just as much music as an MD, twice as much in LP2 mode, four times as much in LP4 mode (though I don't recommend LP4 for critical listening). Even though it's at the bottom of the line, the N505 feels solid.

Bottom line: if you can hardly bear to leave your computer because you love your MP3 collection, fine, buy an iPod and carry your collection around with you. But if you love MUSIC and own some CDs or some vinyl, or you'd like to be able to record on the go, don't hesitate to get an MD player. The MZ-N505 is a great unit to get started with Minidisc. If you need a microphone input, get the N707 or the N1 instead. I am thrilled with my N505 and do not regret choosing it or the MD format in the least.

Sony minidisc is a great product. I had it up and running in less than 10 minutes. I'm not sure what the problems are about that I've read some other people having with the OpenMG Jukebox software that is used to organize your playlists and write to the minidisc. I had no problem using the OpenMG software. My system had no problem connecting thru the USB port. Some people have written that you might as well just buy a cd-writer and rip .wav files to it or .mp3 files if your portable cd player can read .mp3 files. There are 2 big advantages that the minidisc player has over this method. First, the minidisc is much smaller than a normal cd player. It can fit easily in your pocket. It's smaller than a wallet. Second, the minidisc can hold a lot more music than a regular cd-r. I copied 2 cds (21 songs) to my first minidisc and have not even filled up half of the minidisc. I highly recommend this product. Each minidisc is only about ($). I got 5 for free with a coupon when I bought the minidisc player so I may never have to buy any more minidiscs. One of my friends has a minidisc player and he recommended it to me. I'm very glad that I took his advice.

The sound from the nicely sized, small unit was great but the OpenMg software would not work for me on a Pentium 4 with XP Home. Spent over an hour on the phone with Sony tech support and still not fixed. Gave up on it and returned the unit.

Superb player/recorder. I've recently been able to try this excellent MD. It is small, compact, and has an extremely long battery life.
Although I've heard reports of buggy software, I have had no problems with it so far. The USB connection allows for much faster transfer of songs from computer to minidisc. Doesnt have remote or mic input, but it will suit the average user's need.