Sony Walkman D-CJ01 Personal CD Player
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Similar in Portable CD Players
- CD-R/CD-RW Playback: CD-R/CD-RW
- Bass Boost: With Bass Boost
- Anti Skip Buffer: G-Protection By Sony
- Supported Formats: MP3
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Excellent Discman, good mp3 player
Pros
Great sound, quick, hardly ever skips, takes standard batteries, Great looks, high-quality feel
Cons
no FF/RW with mp3, pause between tracks when playing mp3s
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
Until Sony makes a Discman that plays mp3s with a shorter gap between tracks (FF/RW for mp3 would be nice too), this is the Discman/mp3 player for me.
I've been using Discman CD players since the WM-D3 unit (anyone remember those?). I buy a pretty new Discman every year or two, and this one easily is my favorite.
The controls are well placed, responsive, and the LCD panel is nice and big.
The unit almost never skips, even with G-Protection turned off! I frequently drive around town with the player sitting on the dashboard, and it never skips, even when it fell onto the floor of the car once. I always leave G-Protection turned off.
Unlike some players, this one takes standard AA batteries. I use a pair of 1600 rated NiMh rechargeable batteries, and they get me through a typical week or two of use before needing a recharge. The AC adapter recharges them perfectly, just plug in and press the "Stop/Charge" button.
When it comes to playing mp3 music, I've been using the unit for a few weeks, and here are some things I would have liked to know before burning CDs of mp3 music:
1) It's best to encode using high-quality VBR (variable bit rate), since the Discman loads up discs of VBR mp3 much faster than constant bit rate. Constant bit rate mp3 discs take a minute or so for the player to analyze, or whatever the heck it seems to do. Use VBR, and the disc is almost immediately ready to play upon insertion.
2) Again relating to (1) above, don't use folders of folders in your CDs of mp3 music; the player only displays songs, not directories. The discman reads through folders alphabetically, and doesn't seem to check past a certain number of characters. In other words, if the first 30 characters of the folder name are the same for all 8 folders on the CD, then they might not be played through in any particular order.
3) While playing mp3, the Discman will spin the disc up for several seconds, loading music into memory, and then will play for a minute or so before spinning the disc up again. Unfortunately, Sony engineers did not think to program the unit to spin up right before the end of each sing, because there is a pause of a second or two between each track while the disc is spun up again. If the disc happens to be actively spinning at the end of the song, there is practically no pause before the next track. When playing audio CDs, there is absolutely no pause between tracks.
4) Use high speed CD-RW! Organize your mp3 library into sorted folders having the form "Artist (last name, first name), Album" and have each folder contain enough music to fill a CD. As you add music to your library, just stick it into the corresponding folder, and then re-partition the folders to CD-size, and re-burn your CD-RWs. I find this to be a convenient way to keep hundreds of albums of music around with me, by having a little CD case that stores 24 CDs.
5) When you first put the batteries in, press and HOLD the stop button while inserting the batteries. Release the stop button a second or so after inserting the second battery. Now, you won't have to hear the silly beep sound every time you press a button.
There! Having read all of that that, I hope that you can enjoy the Discman to its fullest if you get one. I love it.
By the way, get some good headphones. Headphones that come with these sorts of things always are terrible; they are strictly perfunctory. I use Grado SR-225s, but the Grado SR-60s are the ultimate bargain in headphones at $70.
The controls are well placed, responsive, and the LCD panel is nice and big.
The unit almost never skips, even with G-Protection turned off! I frequently drive around town with the player sitting on the dashboard, and it never skips, even when it fell onto the floor of the car once. I always leave G-Protection turned off.
Unlike some players, this one takes standard AA batteries. I use a pair of 1600 rated NiMh rechargeable batteries, and they get me through a typical week or two of use before needing a recharge. The AC adapter recharges them perfectly, just plug in and press the "Stop/Charge" button.
When it comes to playing mp3 music, I've been using the unit for a few weeks, and here are some things I would have liked to know before burning CDs of mp3 music:
1) It's best to encode using high-quality VBR (variable bit rate), since the Discman loads up discs of VBR mp3 much faster than constant bit rate. Constant bit rate mp3 discs take a minute or so for the player to analyze, or whatever the heck it seems to do. Use VBR, and the disc is almost immediately ready to play upon insertion.
2) Again relating to (1) above, don't use folders of folders in your CDs of mp3 music; the player only displays songs, not directories. The discman reads through folders alphabetically, and doesn't seem to check past a certain number of characters. In other words, if the first 30 characters of the folder name are the same for all 8 folders on the CD, then they might not be played through in any particular order.
3) While playing mp3, the Discman will spin the disc up for several seconds, loading music into memory, and then will play for a minute or so before spinning the disc up again. Unfortunately, Sony engineers did not think to program the unit to spin up right before the end of each sing, because there is a pause of a second or two between each track while the disc is spun up again. If the disc happens to be actively spinning at the end of the song, there is practically no pause before the next track. When playing audio CDs, there is absolutely no pause between tracks.
4) Use high speed CD-RW! Organize your mp3 library into sorted folders having the form "Artist (last name, first name), Album" and have each folder contain enough music to fill a CD. As you add music to your library, just stick it into the corresponding folder, and then re-partition the folders to CD-size, and re-burn your CD-RWs. I find this to be a convenient way to keep hundreds of albums of music around with me, by having a little CD case that stores 24 CDs.
5) When you first put the batteries in, press and HOLD the stop button while inserting the batteries. Release the stop button a second or so after inserting the second battery. Now, you won't have to hear the silly beep sound every time you press a button.
There! Having read all of that that, I hope that you can enjoy the Discman to its fullest if you get one. I love it.
By the way, get some good headphones. Headphones that come with these sorts of things always are terrible; they are strictly perfunctory. I use Grado SR-225s, but the Grado SR-60s are the ultimate bargain in headphones at $70.
