Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony D-NE1 Silver ATRAC/MP3 CD Walkman

Well, where to start? Quick delivery as usual by Amazon, with free CDs and satchel as well.

Firstly, the software is very easy to use. Just select MP3s from your computer and convert to ATRAC if you want (takes a while though!). Note that you can't edit the files after you burn them, even with a CD-RW, because they're gobbledegook on the CD, unlike MP3s. That said, I just burned a CD with 317 tracks (count 'em) which almost fills the CD!

As far as the design goes, well, it's a beaut. You can see the CD spinning (or not: it has 8MB of memory so spins up a whole song at a time!) through the window at the edge; the buttons on the unit are discreet but nice; and the charging stand is largely superfluous, but still nice to display it :-)

The sound quality is fantastic, though I dumped the supplied earbuds straightaway. I find that the volume is plenty loud enough; I wonder whether the previous correspondents either had the AVLS system set to "Limit" or were using the supplied earbuds which (I imagine) aren't that powerful.

Navigation is very easy on the remote with group/album skip buttons (forwards and backwards) as well as a jog-button for FF/RW and skipping tracks. Other buttons let you change the display (using tags imported from MP3) to show title and time elapsed; artist/bitrate and time remaining; or album (the name of the group it's in). When playing Audio CDs the first two are the same but the third display is the total remaining time. You can also change the play mode from standard to folder to single track to shuffle to shuffle within folder to Bookmarks (you can bookmark a song as you listen to it) to playlist (MP3 only, .m3u files) to PGM mode which plays tracks in your favourite order (a playlist on the fly as it were, can be up to 64 tracks long). The other button on the remote is to change the bass. There's a hold button on the remote as well as the unit, which comes in handy!

Battery life is assumed to be superb: you get the most life from ATRAC, followed 10% less by MP3, with CD about 60% of ATRAC. Using the stick batteries you get 55 hours of life, with AAs only you get 95 and the full 150 is using both. Having G Protection on full rather than standard reduces the life using CDs by a further 10%.

Everything you need is provided and has been thought through carefully. I'd thoroughly recommend the Sony DNE1 to anyone with a medium sized collection of MP3s looking for portability.

I am very happy with this CD player. I was a bit put off by the price to start off with but i suppose quality does come at an expense. And well on that basis this is a bargain!. I have absolutly no faults with the CD player because it is excellent. Much better than the shitty Dionner somthing or other i had before. THe battery life is just incredible - had it on the lithium batterys for 2 days non stop, unrecharged and theres still lots of life left in the battery. Also it looks ALOT thinner than it does on the picture and its very light and fits very well in your pocket aswell. My only nag is that you cant use the software on 98 or lower , ONLY 2000 and XP which nobody had said but thats no problem because i was going to get XP at the weekend anyway. So i havent tryed the ATRAC thingy as yet but i am still very very impressed with it. CAnt see wot the idiots are on about complaining about the volume levels, its fine and keeps its quality even at max, but thats probably just the headphones - not the tacky ,cheap , crappy ones that came with it. anyway basically i think this is excellantay and would definitly recomend it to anyone

Where to begin? I stumbled across this product whilst playing around one evening on the amazon site. I never knew such things existed. I have owned a Sony Discman for about 9 years and have never had a problem - except the batteries give out after about 80 mins(rechargables and throwaways)and you are resticted to one disc at a time - a real pain when on the move and the slightest movement makes it jump all over the place.
This product caught my eye. Was it possible to condense so much music on one disc and be able to play it for hours on end whilst jogging etc? I read all the reviews on this site and decided to take the plunge! Wow! I ordered it on a Thursday at 1300 hrs and it came on the next day at 0930 hrs.
The software was extremely easy to install. The program is simplicity itself. I asumed that you needed to play the entire CD in order to download - no, just insert, select and transfer, then repeat the process until you are ready to burn your CD-R. So simple and quick. I downloaded my entire Rainbow collection in about 10 mins and put it in the machine with trepadation. I need not have worried. The quality was out of this world. Why people say otherwise I don't know. Also why do they complain about the volume? I like to listen to hard rock and the Discman is certainly up to that.
I also bought a Sony Belt case - essential to get the best use out this brilliant product. Would I recommend it? You bet I would! Expensive it may be but hey life's short enough.

This is a very useful piece of audio equipment. The unit looks fantastic, with polished aluminium top, see thru sides, a neat cradle for charging and a well featured remote control. The jog protector works well when playing cds and probably isn't required when playing MP3 or Atrac discs. The software for Atrac was easy to install and easy to use (Windows 98SE in my case). It takes about 3 hours to create a full Atrac disc, with maybe 400-450 tracks on it: easy to edit playlists and the Gracenote cd info finder means you don't need to bother with titling tracks. It is easy to navigate the files when playing and sound quality is very pleasing. The unit is pretty light and the rechargeable batteries give plenty play time.

The downside of the player is its lack of volume. I tried with Sony DJ phones and with Fontopia buds. It is bearable but well below a standard player - I compared volume levels with my old D-E715 portable cd player and reckon the D-NE1 only manages to reach about 70% of the output of that player.

I reckon it's money fairly well spent, but if you like your music fairly loud you may wish to consider something else.

this is great. I bought it in hongkong before it even came out here, and i was impressed. I never used to like discmans because they're chunky, and if you barely touch them they'll skip like mad.. not to mention the batteries on standard ones only last for like.. 2 hours??! they just didn't seem worth the investment..
however, i was proved wrong with this little baby. not only is it really small, it looks great... doesn't skip at all.. and this is when i'm shaking it around like mad! And most importantly...., it's ability to play ATRAC! It comes with the software, you just load it onto your computer, and select all the cd's and mp3's you want on it.. literally hundreds of songs can be put onto one disc. Burn the disc.. then play it .. voila, days worth of music on one cd. there's a funtion on the discman where you can select particular sections of music on the disc to play, so you can organise your music into 'mood' categories depending on what you want to listen to. so say goodbye to endlessly listening to 12 tracks repeating! Say HELLO to a portable jukebox!
The batteries last forever as well. and they're rechargable (it comes with charger) I can play mine for over 60 hours continuously before it needs recharging!
I can't criticise it.. it's excellent. :o)