[bangraman]

What are your gripes and 'happy points' about them? I'd be interested to hear from the above model MiniDisc owners and ex-owners who also have other current MP3 players such as the iPod, the iRivers, etc. Please list your MD model and the other player(s).

 

[Trawlerman]

My main gripe with the N10 is that the headphone output just plain sucks! In an effor to get increased battery life they have reduced the output to such a low level that this unit can't even drive my MX500 earbuds let alone PX200s.

If you want to use at home with such as DT531s or Grado SR60s then forget it.

I've also found that the Surround Field modes are pretty worthless and really only a gimmick.




Of the player that I have I like R900 and the probably the R909 the best of all.

I've owned a MZR35 for years now and this is a really great MDP with a decent headphone-out and a seperated Line-out but it's showing it's age and doesn't have the MDLP facilities of the newer machines. Can't fault this one at all.

 

[bangraman]

Ah. That is the European Limitation. A non limited one is perfectly able to drive a PX100/200, not to ear blasting levels but for comfortable listening.

 

[Dweebgal]

i had an n10 (i pre-ordered it with audiocubes pretty much the day it was announced), i was pretty happy with it overall, and i was kinda happy with netmd, but there was just something missing, then i sold it and had an r910 for a while.

then i sold all my MD gear (blanks, cd with optical out etc etc) and got my ipod, and have never looked back. mainly because i was using netmd as a poor subsitute for an mp3 player (which it is).


MD is very good, but i felt the extra points it had over an ipod were of no use to me (i never do anything like live recording), and i think a well made, high bitrate mp3 (to me at least) sounds as good as, if not better than ATRAC.


one gripe i have with the ipod: battery life.

 

[bangraman]

Could you put your finger on what you specifically didn't like with Net MD?

 

[Dweebgal]

you want an essay?

there were a few things:

crap software/restrictions, i know there were alternatives availible, which i used, but it was a pain in the rear end, i felt i had to babysit the whole process.

although it was faster than realtime, it was rarely as fast as advertised (and my computer is not exactly top of the range, but it's not slow by any means, 1.7ghz, 512megs of RAM)

no SP transfers.

(and this is probably just a moan about MD in general really) but the low output is quite sucky (even the japanese models are only 5mW/channel)

 

[bangraman]

Thanks. Was your experience with Sonicstage or with OpenMG (not a huge difference, but needs asking)?

 

[Dweebgal]

both. and they are pretty much as bad as each other, SS is a slight improvement, but it's all the same clunky, crash prone, buggy restriction riddled software underneath.



i had an N1 and an N10, the N1 died after taking a rather unfortunate vodka bath

 

[PodMan]

SonicStage is an improvement over OpenMG (faster and less crash-prone) but still pales when compared against iTunes or any other type of good mp3 software. I very much dislike the check-in/check-out system.

Netmd minidisc recorders are pretty cost-effective against conventional mp3 flash players but they are obviously not optimal for sound quality or ease of use.

i've began the migration back to mp3 players ever since I got a creative nomad 2 jukebox 20gb. creative's software may be bad but it is still way better than SonicStage. I am using usb1.1 connection for both and creative's interface seems at least 3X faster (I am counting just raw usb data transfers, not the conversion from mp3 to atrac3, which obviously increases time even more), so obviously Sony netmd software/hardware still have a ways to go for "improvement". not to mention that creative's headphone output is a lot stronger than any minidisc player i've heard. I had an ipod + itunes before all of this and that was easily the most convenient device but I am hesitant to go back to it because I want a longer lasting battery.

lame aps encoded mp3s beat LP2 in sound quality. I haven't really done much comparison against SP but I would say they are pretty much equal on my listening equipment (can't really do any direct comparisons because of the hardware differences).

I keep an n505 around still to make the occassional LP2 disc but i don't listen to it anymore. i think i am just going to keep my sharp DR480 and bookshelf unit (to make SP transfers) in the future and do most of my listening off an mp3 hd player. the convenience of having all your songs in one place is hard to beat. I use a sharp mt770 for live recordings but I might want to replace it and the n505 with some sort of mp3 recorder.