Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony D-NE300 ATRAC Walkman Portable CD Player (Blue)

I'll try and put this review in for both of Amazon's NE300 models, since they are just different colours afterall. Further to what's already been said, here is some extra info on the player that I was unable to find elsewhere prior to buying it, so this may be of help:

- if an MP3 song lack's ID3 tags, the player's LCD screen will show the filename as you'd see it in windows. Long filenames will scroll automatically
- manually going from mp3 track to track (ie, just hitting forward) there is around a 3 sec delay. If you let a song finish by itself, however, it will go immediately to the next
- load time on a full mp3 disc is 20 seconds (I timed it). Load time on a disc with a single mp3 was 16 seconds. Load time on an audio cd with one track was 10-11 seconds
- this player does not play .wma (windows media audio) files, even though the guy at sony I asked said it does (admittedly the player does not advertise that it plays wma)
- the cd-rw disc I tried worked fine, and that's all I'll be using
- stock headphones seem decent, and in fact with them this player does go very loud
- music order: I had no problems with it. Whether files were in the root directory, or within sub folders everything seemed to play in order as it was burned
- adtrack I did not test. I have no intention of converting all of my mp3s, so no idea on how well it works
- I experienced no "missing end pieces" on songs, as one reviewer said that he did
- I'm confirming that there is no backlight for this
- note that the NE300 blue and gray, on amazon, are slightly different pictures. I bought the gray one from another source and it looked as the blue one on amazon does (it was gray, obviously, but the physical shape of it, I mean). The gray on amazon has a little indicator below the LCD (which mine does not have). I wonder if there are slightly different versions, and the newer ones possibly solve some old issues like track order? I bought mine yesterday BTW.
- I experienced no skipping issues, but I only tried the player in the car and shaking it for maybe 10 seconds. I think technology is such these days that if you're experiencing mp3 skipping on an mp3 discman, it's probably a very poor player; I'd expect no skipping (except maybe running, and supposedly this can handle that)

I give this a 5-star, because it does everything that it claims to do, and it does it well. The player feels reasonably solid. It is, afterall, a $50 player with a lot built into it, so don't expect something you can use as a frisbee. It's quite small with little wasted room.

I do wish it had a backlight, and I'd have no problem losing some battery life (especially since it's awesome with this player), but I knew I was not getting that when I bought it.

EDIT: I should mention something else. When you're scanning from song to song, you will see it exactly as you'd see it in windows explorer, ie. no ID3 tagging; just the file name. It's not until you play the song that you'll see the ID3 tag details, like album, artist, etc.

This is my first mp3 player, but I'm no stranger to electronics and standard CD players. I bought this player last night at Target so there are probably features and annoyances I have yet to discover. I just thought I'd share my first impression.

The D-NE300 comes with software for compressing audio files (Atrac3) but the software required updates and made my computer crash. I gave up on that for now, mp3s work just fine for me.

PROS:
**This little player is very customizable!
**LCD screen shows ID3 information, which has a customizable display - you can cycle through title, artist, and album with the push of a button. ID3 tags can be created and edited using the free program Winamp. If you don't have winamp yet and you're buying an MP3 player, something is probably wrong with you.
**There are 3 equalizer presets and a custom style that can be set in one of 21 different combinations.
**The large center button has the play button and menu buttons. The small buttons on either side of the large button are for moving through directories. I have a CD with 8 different albums, with one click I can move from one album to the next. The other two buttons on the face of the player are stop and menu.
**There are several different listening options.. you can listen to one song repeated, all the music on the disc, all shuffled, one directory, one directory shuffled, playlists, playlists shuffled, your most-played songs, your most-played songs shuffled. So many options!
**Battery life is 85 hours! This is in part because the LCD powers down when you push stop. When you push any button, the LCD pops back on and displays the last song you were playing. There's no power button! There's also a timer option, so you can go to sleep listening to music and not worry about the batteries.
**The sound is very nice, plenty of volume, and the bass is sufficient. I'm using my own Sony MDR-Q22LP headphones. The sound quality was a big improvement over my Philips Magnavox CD player using the same headphones. I've tried both music and audio books, the sound is crisp and loud. (see CONS below).
**I've heard complaints with mp3 players about a delay between songs. I have not experienced this. The jump from one song to the next is instant. I use NTI CD Maker for burning.
**The case is sleek and stylish. If appearance is important to you, this player is not lacking. The blue color does have a questionably purple tint to it. If you're a guy or buying it for a guy who would be offended, you may want to consider the grey case.


CONS:
**There is no backlight on the display. That doesnt bother me, I usually know what I'm listening to or I don't care to look at every song title as it's playing.
**The player has a loading time of about 15 seconds. MP3 players are not instant like standard CD players... at least this one isn't. Also, the loading sounds can be a little noisy. Probably not louder than the sound of a phone on vibrate, but louder than I expected.
**The headphones that come with the player are crappy and very quiet. Suprise suprise. I'm using my Sony MDR-Q22LP headphones ($15).
**The volume control consists of two buttons on the side, up and down. A bar appears on the LCD when adjusting the volume. I would've liked some sort of numerical indication of the volume. This is just me being nit-picky.

Bought this CD player recently to replace a regular CD player. Not only can you play a CD full of MP3s, it plays ATRAC3 format files (1/2 the size of standard MP3s). Included is the software to convert mp3s to ATRAC3. Being able to have one CD that holds about 500 songs is amazing. I can listen to one CD all day and not hear the same song twice. But, the most amazing thing is that the CD player, when listening to ATRAC3 CDs, uses very little power, saving a bundle in batteries. Also, when you press stop, the player automatically shuts off and remember where you were, so, when you come back, you can pick up right where you left off, even in the middle of a song. Great product that lives up to the quality that I have grown to appreciate with Sony.

I bought one of these last month on recommendations and am very pleased with it. I have an NE510 I purchased last year, which was nice, but I needed a second player. This one has better features and better sound. The battery life is as good or better than indicated on the package.

Instead of just presets and bass boost, it has a parametric equalizer. Bass, mid, and treble can each be adjusted up or down three, each in high, mid, or low positions, for a total of 21 possible adjustments in each range. Bass may not boom, but it isn't boomy or muddy, either. The setting is saved as custom. There are also presets (I have used "Heavy" for some rock, but off otherwise).

Although I have used SonicStage software, I don't recommend it (not because I dislike Atrac3, but because I don't like the program). MP3s made by any program, burned to cd by any program, can be used on this player. I have used CDs with LAME MP3s (VBR) burned by MusicMatch and Nero with no problem. Nested directories also weren't a problem. MP3 CDs do take longer to load up when they are first put in (less than 30 seconds for a 700MB CD with 7 directories, 81 tracks, 625MB; less than 15 for commercial audio CD). Titles scroll and you can change the display options.

There are several playback options, including 10 most frequently played (also shuffle), and by group and m3u playlists on MP3 CDs among others.

The one problem with this player is the physical feel. The plastic is very light and thin so it seems a bit flimsy. The hold button on the bottom doesn't have as solid a feel as the ones on my Sony MD player or Clie, but the same as the NE510 so maybe that is just the CD player style. For the price, this isn't unexpected therefore I did not give it 4 stars.

Some reviewers complain about the D-NE511 and D-NE300 models not being loud enough. I thought heck, at least it's gonna save the kid's ears. After I bought it I tried it with four different headphones and now I know what they meant. With two headphones the volume was indeed faint and way too weak to enjoy the music. But with the other two the volume was loud enough, actually too loud (but not distorted) to listen to it for any longer period. And yes, this model was made for the European market (1.5 mV output instead of 5.0 mV for Japan and America). So if you want this model just keep looking for the right earphones/headphones.
Telling the truth I'm not some techno fan and would like to hear also in forty years from now so I don't really mind. But I play the tuba which is also loud sometimes.

Another complaint was there is no bass boost button on it - there is a programmable equaliser instead (called parametric sound setting or something like that). You can define your own style for bass, mid and high using 7 levels for each, which offers 21 choices. Some of these are pre-programmed and are called Soft, Active and Heavy + Off + Custom. Good enough for me while on the road. At least the tuba comes through very well.

One thing I heard in the shop but haven't found in the manual, thus cannot really confirm. The guy said the shock protection system is based on a new approach than in the case of the older D-NE511 model. In that the music was read into memory and played from there. But what if you go out for jogging. Start the player, memory gets full, you start jogging. Memory starts to get emptied and if you don't stop jogging after a couple of minutes it won't be refilled as the laser beam cannot position accurately enough. With the D-NE300 this is different. Sony is said to have analysed jogging with the outcome that we spend 0.2 sec on average in the air and for the D-NE300 this short while is enough to reposition the laser beam and fill memory to the extent that when you arrive back on your feet the music is played from the memory. I tried to shake the thing to have it screwed up but failed - I got tired sooner than I could do the trick. Even if this story with the 0.2 sec beam positioning is a good candidate for an urban legend, at least we can tell it to others by some beer.

I have not yet tried the ATRAC-disk creating software, but I know in advance that (1) it is not perfect (neither am I) (2) if I want and ATRAC disk, with some effort I will be able to create one so this is not an issue. If you don't like to fiddle around with computers or you buy this thing for someone who is afraid of
them then probably the ATRAC compression stuff is not a big bonus.

Otherwise, I think this is an excellent model. With good earphones the sound is very good, indeed. I would recommend it for anyone.