Sony MZ-N707 Blue Net MiniDisc Walkman

Amazon Customer Reviews

(4 out of 5)

Sony Net MD

The MZ-N707 is a compact, lightweight and multi-functional bit of kit and by all means, you do get what you pay for - in a good way! Little things such as the Rechargeable battery carrying case make this product look like one that Sony has really concentrated on. The charging cradle is an excellent edition to the MD world and the software is - on the whole, easy to handle. However, there is one complaint I have. The Long Play mode does not work as well as it probably should through the Net MD invention. On LP2 or LP4, there is quite a noticeable difference in sound where it becomes more grainy and less constant, especially in the voice area and guitar area of the sound output. The Longplay modes are good though for tracks that are very long and aren't of good quality in the first place. The Normal Stereo mode does take a while to transfer - just short of the time it would take to record straight off a cd, but the sound quality is perfect! The earphones give out a good allround sound, however I prefer to use my Groove earphones from my old Sony discman as these position further in your ear and give a deeper sound. The Software - OpenMG Jukebox - is practical for the job at hand, however, it is not one to annoy or be impatient with or it may stop working! It has never frozen on my PC, but then again, I have Windows XP which does a good job to stop that from happening. The carry case and remote are very helpful and stylish, and the battery life is phenomenal - I still haven't used the rechargeable one yet as after all of the music transferring and listening to music, the battery indicator is still on full for the single AA battery that should last for 56 hours! This is a great MD, packed with features - but be warned, the MD's recorded through this device cannot be played on any non-Net MD devices!

A good buy, and very Groovy!!

(2 out of 5)

2 Stars for a few reasons, otherwise a great product

Interested in Sony Net MD Products?
There are a few things that you should be aware of, and they'll help you in your decision. Sony has imposed restrictions in the use of their software that make it impossible to digitally upload recorded information to your computer (via USB). There are a number of references to this elsewhere on the Net, so I will not go into this at length, save to say that if you wish to record lectures, then transfer them to PC, you will have to do so in realtime via analog connections, diminishing the quality immensely or, if you are a member of a band who wishes to record practices for the purposes of review, YOU WILL BE RESTRICTED TO DOING SO ONLY WITHIN THE MD, AND WILL NOT BE ABLE TO EASILY TRANSFER THEM TO YOUR PC WHILST MAINTAINING THE HIGH QUALITY OF THE RECORDING THAT RESIDES WITHIN THE MD.
The second (and probably worst) complication, is that Sony will not allow some CD's that you may own to be transfered into the MD unit, claiming that it may be a copywrite violation of some sort. Hope you don't like Led Zeppelin. I have contacted Sony regarding these complications, and have as of now, still received no replies. I promise to return with a considerably more positive review, should Sony choose to make the appropriate changes to their software. I've no problems with the hardware other than the lack of a backlit display, which one would expect, given the cost of the unit. Sony's copywrite policies theoretically make it easier to transfer ILLEGALY OBTAINED MUSIC (MP3's namely) than music that you have purchased legally. It just seems odd, seeing as they own such a large label.

(5 out of 5)

WOW

OK, o arrival i unpacked the mini-disc player and was so suprised. The size for one was smaller than i had though and the weight f it.

I straight away turned my PC on and installed the software, this took a while even on my reasonable spec PC, p3 700 mhz 512 ram. I didnt mind but when i got the software installed i was easily able to start transferring some on my MANY MANY mp3 collection over to a minddisc. This was at a reasonable speed, but could be made little faster.

I managed to get 5 FULL albums on and a few single tracks onto ONE signle minidisc, WOW. Amazing huh?

So, down to testing the sound quality of this product. My only grumble is that i like my music loud and it was nt loud enogh for me, but hey i can deal with that. Especially when on FULL blast the sound does NOT distort at all, even in the songs with more bass than others. Oh and about the bass it is perfect for a portable deviice, clear and deep.

Hope this review helps cos its well worth the price.

(4 out of 5)

You Should Buy This!

I chose the Sony MZN - 707 because of the net md feature and the price. I had been thinking of buying a md player for a long time and when I finally could afford one, I chose the 707. With This player you get very sophisticated technology for [the price]. The sound quality is extremely high when in short play and also in lp2 mode but deteriorates a little bit in lp4 mode as some of the high frequency sound is taken away but it still sounds very good.
I found the player easy to use when using both the supplied optical cable to record from a cd player and when using the usb port to record from pc. The mg media jukebox software took a while to install but has worked without error on my windows 98 pentium II 350 mhz machine for nearly 2 months now. The player itself is very lightweight (even with the battery and a mini disc inserted) and smaller than I expected. The battery charging stand is a great bonus as you can just leave it plugged into the wall and when the battery is flat, just stand the player on it and it will charge in around 3 - 4 hours. The new USB 2.0 technology means that the player can transfer data to and from a pc at 32x the normal speed. The player has lots of input ports such as digital optical in - analog line in and microphone in and is very good when used as a dictophone. The only reason I gave this product 4 stars is because it doesn't include a digital OUT port so I cannot listen to the player digitally when connected to my hi-fi and must use an analog connection which brings the sound quality down but the player sounds excellent when listened to through the headphones and has no distortion even at high volume levels.

(5 out of 5)

NET MD - Innovation at it's best

Having already owned a sony minidisk recorder/player i am familar with sony features and recording modes, however typical minidisk technology required lengthy real-time recording whilst listening to the music. When trying to fill a disk on LP4 it can take hours, so when sony launched their NET MD i was straight for it.
By using the USB interface and the OpenMG Jukebox software you can now copy songs, from CDs and downloaded files such as .wav and .mp3 straight onto your players, no fussing!

Though i do stress the software can be annoying - word of advice - don't try to transfer more than 3-4 songs at once it can confuse the software.
The Recording options are typical of Sony Minidisk players, standard = disk capacity in mins, LP2 = double capacity and LP4 = 4x disk capacity you can easily get around 80 songs on one disk (depending on song length) when recording at LP4.
Hint: the sound quality is about the same at all recording levels, but the software compresses the files to ATRAC3 so it can take a little longer to transfer the files.

The 5 disks that come with the players are plenty enough to last a long time, Minidisks can be written and re-written over a thousand times before they begin to loose sound quailty, and unlike CD copying where an error spoils the disk, this is not so with the minidisk, it just doesn't allow it. the durability of the disks is much better than a typical writable CD.

Battery life, is a bonus unlike conventional portable CD players minidisk players are kind to battery life, so far i've managed more three days off the charging stand with at least 10 hours of playback and i still had life in the battery, the re-chargeable battery seems to be good at retaining it's charge.

Recording songs from a CD is possible in two ways, the first directly from your Stereo using the optical lead (provided) but is real-time only recording, or you can use the copy from CD function in the more recent versions of windows media player, which transfers the music to your hard drive.
OpenMG has an annoying but ingeneous way of protecting the music, firstly it check songs in and out of your hard-drive which allows it to keep track of the songs, you cannot make more than three consecutive copies of a single song without checking a copy back in. also it will not allow the songs to be checked out on one PC and checked in on another.

If you have used a MD player before you will know how annoying it was to give your songs names, or how easy it was to delete the whole disk content by accident, the NET MD player keeps the names and artists of the songs when the song has been transfered, it scrolls across both the remote and the player screen when the songs are playing, also you cannot delete the content of the Disk if it was recorded by a PC has the songs are required to be transfered back the the PC.
you can also play around with the play order of songs and create groups through the OpenMG software

Overall the SONY NET MD players are the most useful and innovative pieces of technology since the MP3 players with the added bonus of cheap storage and versatile features, i would recommend this piece of technology to any lover of music.