Guest NRen2k5 Posted November 29, 2004 Report Share Posted November 29, 2004 On thursday, I thought I had found a real treasure at Future Shop's refurb counter. It was a D-NE900 ATRAC3plus/MP3-CD walkman, for only $99.98 with a 4-year extended warranty. I was impressed by the form-factor and decided to bring it home with me, since my RioVolt SP-250 is starting to show its age. Boy was I ever disappointed. The unit advertises a "seamless" playback feature, but it doesn't work on MP3's. Furthermore, the player inserts gaps of nearly an entire second in between MP3's and cuts of the last second of every MP3 it plays. The ID3 tag display is best described as slow, compared to my RioVolt. The RioVolt ticks the text screen by screen but the Sony scrolls letter by letter at a rate of about 2 every second, which as you can imagine takes forever for a song with a 130-character title. Also, it doesn't support playlists. I thought I could live with these design flaws because, I told myself, the sound quality is a little better than the RioVolt and I got an amazing deal. No. The feather that broke the camel's back was when I took out the first CD that I had been listening to on the unit and put another in - it refuse to begin playing. I checked a manual online and it turns out that the Sony may refuse to play a disc if you have any files other than MP3's or OMA's on it! Ridiculous!!! I have a collection of about 25 MP3-CD's at this point and I always include a few pieces of MP3 software on them as well as some playlists, the images of the albums' covers and a playlist for each album. To have to re-burn my entire collection because of such a minor thing that Sony neglected to get right on such a high-end piece of electronics is just asking too much, so I returned the D-NE900 for a full refund saturday evening. I hope that my review has helped to dissuade anybody here from buying the Sony D-NE900 this holiday season. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fat Tires Posted November 29, 2004 Report Share Posted November 29, 2004 Although you have been unhappy with the D-NE900, not everyone will have the same experience. A lot of folks may choose to rip their music in Sonicstage so that they can use gapless with their ATRAC files. They may also choose to not put additional files on their discs. I've been a happy user of a D-NE900 for months. I have used some MP3 CDs in it, but I admit to primarily using 256kb ATRAC3Plus files for the most part. The excellent battery life from just one gumstick battery is incredible. It's compact size is nice as well, it is almost the smallest player ever. I see that any Sony ATRAC CD player would be a bad choice for you, good luck in your search for a model that will meet your needs. The Sony models will work out very well for anyone who chooses to use Sony's software to rip their music. In fact, Hi-MD and NetMD users can even share these files between CDs and minidiscs. That's a nice thing in my opinion. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest NRen2k5 Posted November 29, 2004 Report Share Posted November 29, 2004 You're in the minority. The D-NE series is lousy for MP3-CD playback. And now that Hi-MD is on the scene, I really don't see any point in a CD walkman that is only useful for playing ATRAC3 files. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fat Tires Posted November 29, 2004 Report Share Posted November 29, 2004 I travel a great deal for my job and often buy CDs while I'm on the road. I wanted a decent PCDP for playing them when I get them. I use the D-NE900 primarily for Rebook CDs and then for ATRAC CDs that I burn. The MP3 CDs that I use are usually given to me. The benefits of the D-NE900 to me are the nice CD playback quality, ATRAC compatibility, optical output, slim size, and battery life. The MP3 playback is a nice extra feature for me. There's a nice review at Head-Fi that lists the benefits and flaws of this player quite nicely. http://www6.head-fi.org/forums/showthread....ghlight=d-ne900 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest NRen2k5 Posted November 29, 2004 Report Share Posted November 29, 2004 I agree, that does sum it up pretty nicely. The D-NE900 might work out okay for someone who isn't an established MP3 user, but it's a nightmare for someone who is. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KJ_Palmer Posted November 29, 2004 Report Share Posted November 29, 2004 Sorry, to hear about your bad experiences NRen. But like Nismo, I'm also a very happy NE900 user, though admittedlty I don't use for playing MP3's. For playing standard CD's and my home compilations it's one of the best CDPs I've owned.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest NRen2k5 Posted November 30, 2004 Report Share Posted November 30, 2004 Do you mean to say you take your CD's out of the house? :ohmy: It's bad enough that they may get scratched, but some of my CD's are copy-protected, so scratches would be worse because, the error-correction is rendered useless (counterproductive, actually). Again about the D-NE900... it's funny that CD's with files other than MP3 and .OMA will freeze it up, because not even the MpTrip has this problem. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KJ_Palmer Posted November 30, 2004 Report Share Posted November 30, 2004 Well no, I just burn a regular CD-R copy and take that out :rasp:. Or if I buy a CD while I'm out I play that... Normally, of course i've got my MD player with me... Anyway, the NE900 seems fine as a standard player - soundwise, and I love the CD-text feature, a first for me on a portable. But I guess as a MP3 etc. player it falls flat.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bhangraman Posted December 2, 2004 Report Share Posted December 2, 2004 VBR's really trip up the NE900. MP3 support is probably not one of it's strengths, but if you already have Sonicstage for your MD and a sizeable collection of ATRAC files it's actually quite useful. The redbook (standard CD) playback is one of the better examples that I've come across, although I don't mean the UK/European crippled models (which is average, and it does have the accuracy of playback but not the dynamic strengths of the uncrippled versions). If you're big on MP3's, you are best served with the iRivers. http://www5.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php?t=70340 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest NRen2k5 Posted December 3, 2004 Report Share Posted December 3, 2004 Actually, I already have an iRiver - the RioVolt SP-250, flashed with iMP-250 firmware. I'm looking to replace it sometime soon because I think the antiskip memory is starting to become unreliable (occasionally hearing a blip or a hiccup in my music). And I don't have SonicStage. My recorder is not NetMD, it's an R-500. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rumz Posted December 9, 2004 Report Share Posted December 9, 2004 I have a lot of mp3s but I guess I haven't really tried them on my D-NE300 (I'm thinking of upgrading to the 900). Like others have said, it works great with Atrac though I mainly use it with Redbook audio CDs-- which is where I think it shines. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest NRen2k5 Posted December 12, 2004 Report Share Posted December 12, 2004 Hah... it's too bad; maybe I should have kept the D-NE900. My R-500 was in for repairs and the service company never did the job, and I got an MZ-NH700 as a replacement. I'm sure to be using ATRAC3 on PC now... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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