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Sony D-NE520 ATRAC/MP3 CD Walkman
See it at Amazon.co.uk for £79.99Average Customer Rating
(5.0 out of 5)
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Most Helpful First | Newest First | + Share1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
An excellent player
(5 out of 5) by Robbie Downes on Nov 21, 2006 (UK)I was looking for a CD Walkman for use in low light conditions - ideally one with a back lit display, but I doubted such a thing existed (having never seen one) until I came across the Sony D-NE520.
The display back-light only lights up for 10-20 seconds after any button press, but that's fine for selecting tracks or changing sound settings.
It also has a red LED that lights when in play mode, flashes in pause mode, and goes out in stop mode - very useful for knowing what mode it's in at a glance. The same LED also turns amber when playing an mp3 disc and green for an Atrac disc.
Atrac is Sony's own music compression codac, claimed by Sony to be better than mp3. It also offers gapless playback which is great for mix albums. However the SonicStage software that Sony supply with this player is very slow at burning CD's. Also you can only play the Atrac files on some Sony players.
I've ended up just using mp3 CD's burn with my existing software.
Like most discmans, the buttons on the front panel are a bit fiddly but the remote that the D-NE520 comes with has much larger buttons (especially the play/pause button). (The more expensive D-NE920's remote is very fiddly.) However the display back-light doesn't work when you use the remotes buttons.
It also has a function call "Search" (no the player only (not on the remote): Pressing "Search" allows you to scroll through other tracks or, on an mp3 disc, to scroll through folders (say artists), drill down and scroll again (say albums by that artist) then again (tracks on album) all without interrupting play. When you finally select a track it jumps from the track currently playing to the track selected with a short gap.
Sound quality is excellent, but at low volume settings it is possible hear a back ground hiss on the output.
Overall I'm very pleased with my purchase.
Now the bad news, it has been recently discontinued and is in short supply.
The display back-light only lights up for 10-20 seconds after any button press, but that's fine for selecting tracks or changing sound settings.
It also has a red LED that lights when in play mode, flashes in pause mode, and goes out in stop mode - very useful for knowing what mode it's in at a glance. The same LED also turns amber when playing an mp3 disc and green for an Atrac disc.
Atrac is Sony's own music compression codac, claimed by Sony to be better than mp3. It also offers gapless playback which is great for mix albums. However the SonicStage software that Sony supply with this player is very slow at burning CD's. Also you can only play the Atrac files on some Sony players.
I've ended up just using mp3 CD's burn with my existing software.
Like most discmans, the buttons on the front panel are a bit fiddly but the remote that the D-NE520 comes with has much larger buttons (especially the play/pause button). (The more expensive D-NE920's remote is very fiddly.) However the display back-light doesn't work when you use the remotes buttons.
It also has a function call "Search" (no the player only (not on the remote): Pressing "Search" allows you to scroll through other tracks or, on an mp3 disc, to scroll through folders (say artists), drill down and scroll again (say albums by that artist) then again (tracks on album) all without interrupting play. When you finally select a track it jumps from the track currently playing to the track selected with a short gap.
Sound quality is excellent, but at low volume settings it is possible hear a back ground hiss on the output.
Overall I'm very pleased with my purchase.
Now the bad news, it has been recently discontinued and is in short supply.