Sony MZ-N1

Sony MZ-N1 - I bought this mini-disc for one main purpose, which was to download live recordings onto a CD.

Background

Since moving into a new Church, I have been involved in the recording of the services and live music concerts. The equipment put into the Church was a mini-disc and a tape. The services are recorded onto tape and the mini-disc is only used as a backup. It soon became clear to me that the mini-disc was of superior quality; unfortunately, the facilities to transfer from mind-disc to CD were not in place.

My Brief

I then took it upon myself to investigate portable mini-disc and decided to buy one. I did this so that I would be able to listen to the service at a later date at home, with the possibility of transferring the music onto a CD to listen in the car.

The Product

This is a portable Net MD - which means you can transfer from the PC to the MD (line in). It is IMPOSSIBLE to transfer the other way, which makes this MD no use to me for the purpose mentioned above.

There is a docking station connected to the computer through a USB connection and the music is transferred this way. The station is also plugged into the mains and when the MD is in location it charges up the battery, about 3.5 hours for a full charge. The battery is a NiMH NH-14WM and has up to 110 hours of playing time and up to 52 hours of recording.

The MD can record at 4 times the time, so on a 80 min disc you can record almost 320 minutes of sound. This is a great facility if you are on holidays as you can record 5 CD albums onto 1 MD, thus cutting down the amount of luggage.

I tried using both the computer and the CD player to download music onto a disc. My preferred method was to use the CD player as this was doing in real time and the sound quality on playback was much better than a recording from the computer.

Having said that, the MD is a superbly built machine with all the controls neatly at hand. The operations of the MD are also fairly straightforward (once you have read the manual a few times). The sound quality is fantastic through the supplied headphones; connect into a remote control, which clips onto you when you are out for a run or a walk. The lead from the headphones for me was a bit too short and the left earpiece needed to be adjusted.

On the MD there is a Line out and a Mic connection, allowing you to record straight on to the MD through a Mic. A HOLD button the back of the player disengages the controls on the player, this stops accidental jumping from track to track when jogging. A display box on the player allows you to view the tracks being played - VERY ANNOYING is the fact there is no light and you have to continually tile the player to view the songs.

The remote has the same display as the player and all the functions are the same, on this there is a light.

I have connected the MD to the main Hi-Fi in the house and played through an amp. The results are outstanding with a great quality of sound giving a full range of frequencies.

The Software

PC download application is Open MG Jukebox 2.2, and allows CD, WAV, and MP3 tracks, as well as music purchased on the Internet to be downloaded too. OpenMG system will ensure that a bonafide NetMD recorder is connected before allowing a transfer, and will prevent ATRAC audio files created on one PC from being played, downloaded or used on a different PC.

My Opinion.

This is a great machine if you want to download music from your PC or CD and be able to take it with you for holidays, walks, etc. UNFORTUNATELY, the job I wanted this machine to do - it did not. Nevertheless I have had great enjoyment out of the machine and will continue to use it and build up a collection of music and store it in smaller places. Music downloaded from the internet can be transferred to the MD.

I took on board what someone had suggested I do to transfer to the PC. The method he advised:

(It was only after I brought a MD that I realised, you couldn't transfer music from a MD back onto you hard-drive for recording onto a cd. Well, there is a way to do it, you have to record the MD back onto your PC by connecting the MD to the mic input on your soundcard. I haven't a clue how to do this though, not really very good at the whole PC lark. I do love MD's though, I think they're much better than MP3 players, at least you're not limited to a certain number of tracks, with an MD, you just insert a new mini-disc. Good op! Ciao for now - J)

I was able to transfer the music to the computer, but unfortunatly the music was transfered in analoge form NOT digital. I then burnt a CD using NERO, the result was less then satisfactory. At least I know it can be done.

DIGITAL to DIGITAL. As already mentioned, it is impossible to transfer from MD to PC in a digital format, Music can be transfered using ANOTHER machine which has an optical output from the MD and an optical INPUT into the CD recorder.

Hope this extra stuff has been of help.

I was looking for a new walkman and when the net md came out i knew i wanted one. It was a sunday afternoon and i was desperate to get a Sony MZ-N1 that day and all the shops were closed so i went to arding and hobbs and got the last one for a complete rip off price of £270! The player's great and i'm pretty pleased with it. It plays all my needs and when you are making net md's you can choose what size you want for your tracks to be recorded on. They say that the smaller you make the tracks the lower the quality but i cannot notice the difference. On lp4 i managed to fit 72songs on one minidisc. The wierdest point was that there is no way of switching the minidisc off. I just press stop and take out the battery. THe looks are stunning and when on it's cradle it looks great. It would be really nice though to have a backlight on the main part as their is only a backlight on the extension. Another point which annoys me is that you have to carry the discs around with you the whole time and there is no obvious way of naming the discs so you don't really know what's what. Apart from these it's a neat player but if i had the choice i'd change it for an mp3 player. It has a lot of settings and options which are also quite usful especially the sound 2 setting which amplify's the sound to give you a really rich and earthy sound