Sony ATRAC3plus D-NE320 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
- Supported Formats: MP3
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A Great Portable That's Priced Right
Pros
SUPERB custom equalizer, great display, plays all my mp3 cds, looks sharp!
Cons
Best features designed to work with ATRAC audio, no backlight. Very poor battery location!
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
Very high quality unit with GREAT CUSTOM EQ, plenty of "bells and whistles" without a very high price. Looks cool, too! Be careful when changing battery!
Recently my beloved Rio Volt SP150 "bit the dust" - it served me very well, playing every day for almost 5 years. From what I have seen online, the most comparable unit to replace it is the iRiver SLIMX player, typically more than $100. OUCH. I had been using a no-name cheapo player in the interim, pretty much disgusted with the lack of features, the rather poor sound, and so on.
Then I stopped at the store and took a look at what was around. The SONY PSYC caught my eye, looking at the features listed on the back, it seemed to be close to filling the bill for my old Rio Volt...$60, not too bad.
These Sony units are geared toward the Sony ATRAC encoding scheme (originally used for Minidisc recording, primarily). There is a cd included with the ATRAC encoding software on it, for home use on the computer. Although the quality of ATRAC is actually superior to mp3, I am more concerned with universal compatability - I'm not interested in burning "special" cd's that ONLY work in this player.
Thank goodness the player also plays mp3! Reads all the way down to 8kbts (good for those low-quality Old Time Radio shows!) up to 320kbts, CBR and VBR (though no WMA). Reads mp3 tags or filenames, can use m3u playlists. VERY easy navigation through folders, shows titles of folders and tracks (not just track numbers!), will go to 8 subfolders (!).
Nice graphics scroll title/artist info across the top of screen, next line is a black bar with the track number and elapsed time shown in white, very easy to read. The bottom section of the display shows audio format/cd spin/and battery level. No backlight, however...
Plays regular cd's, of course - even reads cd text!
Next nice feature is the "parametric" equalizer - not quite a parametric EQ, but one of the best I've ever seen in a portable unit! There are 3 bass boost settings "Clearbass"(lo/ med/ hi boost), and 3 "Equalizer" settings (vocal/ lo bass and treble boost/ hi bass and treble boost), and a 4th CUSTOM setting. On the custom setting you can boost OR CUT (!) in the bass, midrange, AND treble frequencies. A REAL PLUS, CAN'T SAY HOW MUCH I LOVE THIS!
The player supports 7 different languages (English/ French/ German/ Italian/ Portuguese/ Russian/ Spanish). It has "G-Protection", evidently a flash buffer to keep songs from skipping, though it doesn't say how much (you can choose "1" or "2", probably means 1 or 2 minutes?).
If you mark your favorite songs, the unit will "remember" them and play them back later("Bookmark Play"). The unit will also play from where you left off (useful, if not necessary on mp3 cd's with 100+ songs!). Plenty of playback and program play options.
It works on a single AA battery, but the advertised "41 hours battery life" is only with low-bitrate ATRAC files and a fresh alkaline battery (not a rechargeable), G-Protection 1, and with the EQ turned off. Real time with a rechargeable battery and mp3 cd on regular use, is probably more like 8 hours. Not bad, but NOT 41 hours, either! If you have the optional power adapter, you can charge the battery right in the player.
It also advertises "seamless" playback (no gaps between songs), but that is only with the ATRAC format. Gaps are there during mp3 playback, but only 2 or 3 seconds.
Includes earbud headphones and an inline "remote" with basic functions, but no case. Manual is WELL WRITTEN and EASY TO UNDERSTAND (how refreshing!).
I would have to say that this was a good choice to replace my Rio Volt - the only thing I miss is the backlight. If you are interested in AM/FM radio, the next step up SONY has it for about $10 more. There's even a model with weather and television audio - COOL!
Lots and lots of features for not that much money. Nice.
UPDATE A FEW DAYS LATER: I still like it a whole lot, but I must give it a thumbs-down on the battery location - the single battery tips in and out in only one direction, which is WAY TOO CLOSE to the hinged lid...better have a key or a pen handy to pry it out! This should have been engineered to point the opposite way, or at least should have had a ribbon underneath to facilitate removal (the Rio Volt had a ribbon).
Then I stopped at the store and took a look at what was around. The SONY PSYC caught my eye, looking at the features listed on the back, it seemed to be close to filling the bill for my old Rio Volt...$60, not too bad.
These Sony units are geared toward the Sony ATRAC encoding scheme (originally used for Minidisc recording, primarily). There is a cd included with the ATRAC encoding software on it, for home use on the computer. Although the quality of ATRAC is actually superior to mp3, I am more concerned with universal compatability - I'm not interested in burning "special" cd's that ONLY work in this player.
Thank goodness the player also plays mp3! Reads all the way down to 8kbts (good for those low-quality Old Time Radio shows!) up to 320kbts, CBR and VBR (though no WMA). Reads mp3 tags or filenames, can use m3u playlists. VERY easy navigation through folders, shows titles of folders and tracks (not just track numbers!), will go to 8 subfolders (!).
Nice graphics scroll title/artist info across the top of screen, next line is a black bar with the track number and elapsed time shown in white, very easy to read. The bottom section of the display shows audio format/cd spin/and battery level. No backlight, however...
Plays regular cd's, of course - even reads cd text!
Next nice feature is the "parametric" equalizer - not quite a parametric EQ, but one of the best I've ever seen in a portable unit! There are 3 bass boost settings "Clearbass"(lo/ med/ hi boost), and 3 "Equalizer" settings (vocal/ lo bass and treble boost/ hi bass and treble boost), and a 4th CUSTOM setting. On the custom setting you can boost OR CUT (!) in the bass, midrange, AND treble frequencies. A REAL PLUS, CAN'T SAY HOW MUCH I LOVE THIS!
The player supports 7 different languages (English/ French/ German/ Italian/ Portuguese/ Russian/ Spanish). It has "G-Protection", evidently a flash buffer to keep songs from skipping, though it doesn't say how much (you can choose "1" or "2", probably means 1 or 2 minutes?).
If you mark your favorite songs, the unit will "remember" them and play them back later("Bookmark Play"). The unit will also play from where you left off (useful, if not necessary on mp3 cd's with 100+ songs!). Plenty of playback and program play options.
It works on a single AA battery, but the advertised "41 hours battery life" is only with low-bitrate ATRAC files and a fresh alkaline battery (not a rechargeable), G-Protection 1, and with the EQ turned off. Real time with a rechargeable battery and mp3 cd on regular use, is probably more like 8 hours. Not bad, but NOT 41 hours, either! If you have the optional power adapter, you can charge the battery right in the player.
It also advertises "seamless" playback (no gaps between songs), but that is only with the ATRAC format. Gaps are there during mp3 playback, but only 2 or 3 seconds.
Includes earbud headphones and an inline "remote" with basic functions, but no case. Manual is WELL WRITTEN and EASY TO UNDERSTAND (how refreshing!).
I would have to say that this was a good choice to replace my Rio Volt - the only thing I miss is the backlight. If you are interested in AM/FM radio, the next step up SONY has it for about $10 more. There's even a model with weather and television audio - COOL!
Lots and lots of features for not that much money. Nice.
UPDATE A FEW DAYS LATER: I still like it a whole lot, but I must give it a thumbs-down on the battery location - the single battery tips in and out in only one direction, which is WAY TOO CLOSE to the hinged lid...better have a key or a pen handy to pry it out! This should have been engineered to point the opposite way, or at least should have had a ribbon underneath to facilitate removal (the Rio Volt had a ribbon).
