Sony Walkman D-NE20 Personal CD Player

Sony is one of the giants in electronics and no matter where you go they seem to dominate the market. I have a 100 CD changer in my home stereo and a six CD changer in my truck but I wanted something that I could listen to when I was in bed or on the computer. A couple guys that I work with said that this was the best model on the market and easy to work right out of the box. Maybe I am a functional moron but this thing is anything but easy to work out of the box. To start off with it has stuff like ATRAC supported formats. I am a simple guy. I like simple stuff. If I have to go online and read an hour about something in order to figure out what an acronym is then chances are it is something that I won't be using. If you are someone that downloads songs or uses this format then knock yourself out. You will have a ball with this. I was tempted to try out the Connect Music Store that Sony runs to download songs in the ATRAC format but that is something that will have to wait until I figure out what I am doing and how well the store is maintained. I have heard way too many horror stories about people buying songs only to play them back and they are different versions or cover versions.

The sound on this is pretty tight and even though he has stuff on it that scares the crap out of me when you play anything on it, it sounds great. I had some trouble playing burned CD's that my friends gave me. The display was coming up in French instead of English and it took me about an hour to figure out how to chance it and get the change to stick. It would skip from French to Spanish then to English and then back to French. It wasn't that big of a deal to me since I knew what was on them but it was weird to see how the songs were translated. There are five lines of display that will tell you pretty much everything except the temperature outside and what the lottery numbers are going to be. In order to really make use of this stuff you have to have songs that are labeled and recognized by the player. Sometimes the songs are shown, sometimes the artist or band name comes up, sometimes I get nothing at all.

This player comes with a remote control, battery adapter for the rechargeable battery and a carrying case with the Sony logo on it. It took about three hours for this to charge when it was brand new but now that it has been broken in it only takes about an hour to charge it to capacity. This does not throw off a lot of heat when the adapter is plugged in which I always worry about when things come with rechargeable batteries. Most of the time I use this on the charger so there is no need for the other battery to be in place but when I take this with me I have to remember to put an AA battery into the compartment. A friend of mine that owns this player said that he altered the power circuits so that all the power is drawn from the rechargeable battery but that is something that I am not messing around with. I was the kid that almost burned the house down with the Radio Shack 50 - In - One project kit so I steer clear of stuff that involves using a soldering iron. I can live with the fact that I have to spend money on batteries in order for this to work off the charger. If I was ever tempted to change the power routing on this all I have to do is remember the words on the warranty page. If you change, modify or alter anything it automatically means that Sony won't make any repairs on this. By the way, you get a one year warranty with this for parts and labor but you have to take it to an authorized Sony repair location or send it to them.

When Walkmans first came out they were these huge things that skipped if you took a deep breath near them. This one has Skip Free G Protection which is nothing more than a fancy name for skip protection. Drop it, throw it or bump it and it keeps playing. It's pretty light-weight too, with both batteries on it it's still under a pound. It took me a while but I did learn how to program this to play a song over and over or to have them played in a certain order. The book that comes with it isn't the easiest thing to understand but if you stick with it eventually you get it right. The one thing that still screws with me is the automatic volume control that limits how loud you can have the volume. If I am paying over a hundred and fifty dollars for something I want to be able to play it so loud that my ears bleed and my brain feels like it is going to explode. You can squeeze out a little extra volume if you turn the mega bass on but if you are listening to something that already has a heavy bass to it chances are it is going to sound pretty distorted.

When I got this and started messing around with it I was half tempted to box it up and send it back. I made sure that I got it from a site that would let me return it if I didn't like it. After kicking and hitting my co-workers several times for recommending this I decided to keep it and give it an honesty try. After I got some pointers on how to use this it got easier to work but I am going to say this one more time, I am a simple guy. I don't need most of the stuff on this player. Eventually I think I will try the Sony music store and get some songs but that is only after I know what I am doing. What's the sense of paying for downloads when you aren't sure what you are doing. The sound that you get from this is great and mostly anything you play on it sounds crystal clear. This is a real change from the old Sony Walkman that I had. If I could change anything about this I would make the buttons a little bigger, make it water-proof and have headphones that compliment the player. The ones that you get with this are the in ear ones that slip around a little if you don't have the head-band adjusted the right way.

I'm not sure how technical I am supposed to get with these kinds of reviews but I like to think that putting things in a simple manner is best. If something is a piece of junk then that's what I will say. This isn't junk but it's just way too much for me at this point in time. I am sure the techno-functional people think that this is great since you can cram up to 490 songs on a single CD but hell, I don't think I even like that many songs. the time has come and gone for me to be able to return this for a refund or an exchange so I guess I am forced to learn how to make the most and best of it. Instead of having the burning software with this Sony should have a video of how to use it. It would be a hell of a lot easier than trying to read their instruction manual.