Sony MZ-DN430PS, Onkyo DX-7555

[bluecrab]

Because one of my two remaining fully functioning MZ-R500s became very ill, I recently got the Sony MZ-DN430PS portable MD.

It cost 29.95 USD on Ebay, refurbed by Sony, with warranty. The unit is about the same size as the R500. This is an SP/LP unit. It's not in the Equipment Browser here, though. It has Type S, main reason I went with it, as I use LP2 for most portable listening. The SQ improvement over the R500's 4.5 or R (not sure) is not subtle. It's NetMD enabled and comes with Sonic Stage CD, no help to me at all as I use Mac OS. The DN430 is slightly more difficult to use than the R500, and it has some "misfeatures":

* USB connection only, no line in/out (of course, it does have headphone out).

* Cannot view total time remaining on a disc you're playing.

The Type S makes the $30 a decent deal for this kind of unit. For some reason, a black one in same condition is $17 or so more. Bottom line is that it sounds just great. There are three settings called Sound (1/2/3); I think they may be more EQ-like than the R500's three bass settings. I believe the USB port is for NetMD use only, so whatever I play on the DN430 has to be recorded on some other MD unit. SOP for me, anyway, as I use one of my MD decks for recording.

Also picked up an Onkyo DX-7555 CD player.

The short story is that I bought a refurbed one from an online Onkyo authorized dealer. I didn't work correctly and it took me well over two months to get the whole mess straightened out, involving two Onkyo service centers, Onkyo's New Jersey headquarters, and more phone calls, emails, and legal-language letters than I should have had to employ. Eventually though, Onkyo somehow caused an A-stock unit to appear (they had said they had none) and sent it to me. I just like the way Onkyo CD players look, or I would have just sent the thing back when it malfunctioned. It really does sound nice, though.