Sony Net MD MZ-N505 Personal MiniDisc Player

After some research, I bought the MZ-N505 for use with my motorcycle audio system. I've tried CD based systems in the past, including Rio Volt, but always had lots of trouble with skipping. I finally resorted to an Intel Audio Player 3000, which worked great, but I grew tired of having to go back to the PC daily to put down new songs due to the low 64MB capacity. Sony's Net MD sounded like a perfect solution. With the ability to put 5 hours of music on a single minidisc, I can carry dozens of of albums with me without taking up much room in the saddlebag.

So far, the Sony is working great! Time will tell how well the G-protection anti-skip works on the bike (I've got a 2000+ mile trip coming up in a couple weeks.) The MZ-N505 is small enough though that if skipping due to vibrations picked up from the motorcycle becomes a problem, it can easily be attached to my belt or tucked away in a jacket pocket.

My only real gripe so far is that the audio output is not very loud. That's a common problem on these small personal units (the Intel I have been using is among the loudest I've come across.) To hear things clearly, I've had to crank the volume to maximum on the Sony and turn up my motorcycle's audio system up louder than normal. There doesn't seem to be any distortion because of this.

Setup of the software is somewhat of a trial. Grab a drink and be prepared to sit there answering stupid dialogs for at least 20 minutes. The installer runs lots of individual setups for OpenMG, Simple Burner, driver, patches, etc... Very poorly done.

I'm one of these guys that tosses the manuals aside and likes to get right down to using the thing. With the Simple Burner software, I had my first CD copying to minidisc in less than a minute. The first CD transfer got down to the last song on the CD and then the transfer seemed to hang. After 15 minutes or so, I stopped the transfer, closed Simple Burner, disconnected/reconnected the Sony, and restarted the application. I was able to tranfer the remaining song just fine. I then copied 5 more CDs to minidisc without a hitch. Weird, but no harm done and all the songs play fine. I had read that the software was buggy in other reviews, so I didn't think much of it.

I primarily wanted to use the Sony for tranferring CDs to minidisc, rather than copying over mp3's. For that purpose, I think this unit is great. CD transfers go relatively fast, no more time than a normal rip to mp3 files. It's also much more convenient than CD/mp3 players where you have to rip, convert, store files on your hard drive, then burn to CD.

The OpenMG software is really quirky and I don't recommend it for anything other than manipulating tracks on minidisc that have been copied from CD with Simple Burner. Working with mp3 files entails a stupid check in/check out procedure that's not worth the hassle in my opinion. Being a musician, I can appreciate the copy-protection effort, but this implementation is just silly, annoying, and easily hacked around. If you're looking for a portable primarily for your mp3 files, this may not be the unit for you.

Quality at the highest compression setting (LP4 = roughly 5 hours of music on an 80 minute minidisc) is quite good. Sounds as good, if not better, than 128K mp3 encoding.

I do wish the controls were a little bit bigger, as they are a challenge to use with a gloved hand on the motorcycle.

A mic input would have been nice. You can get that on the higher priced 707 model, but I couldn't justify the extra expense.

For a compact device that's able to record from so many sources (mp3, wma, wav, line in, etc.), it doesn't get much better currently.