Sony DNE509 ATRAC3PLUS CD Walkman
[Archived in CD Players, MP3-CD Players und Discman, Products, Sony]
Manufacturer: Sony
Price at amazon.com: $59.99This item is not stocked or has been discontinued.
- Sonic Stage Simple Burner Software Icluded.
- Bookmark playback fuction for easy programming
- 1 line dot matrix display
- Supports ID3 tagging and CD Text
- Up to 490 Songs on 1 CD
Product Description:
CD Player with ATRAC technologgy for downloading songs from your computer.
Average Customer Rating:
Comment: A great deal Rating:
I read lots of reviews conserning other CD-mp3 players. Most of them did match this Sony player. By far the batt. life is much greater than others. I have had mine for three weeks and I have used it everyday. The batteries are still working. The sound is great. With the factory headphones I can hear my music with greater definition than with any stereo that I own.
It would be nice to have a larger display and to beable to light it. However this is not a problem if you take the time to set up directories when you burn a CD. This makes searching quite easy.
The ATRAC3PLUS format works well on the player but it takes forever to convert the files and there is no way to save progress. It took my P733 processor seven hours to set up one CD with Sony's format. However, the format can be very nice because with it you can fix a ton of music on one disk. I have almost 30 CDs on one ATRAC disk.
I am totaly pleased with my purchase and I sujest that you look at reviews concerning many different players before buying one.
Good Luck!
Comment: Sony Shows Its True Quality Rating:
The previous review was just dissing the small display, he/she was ignoring everything else this player has to offer. I bought this player mainly because of its 490 song cd capacity, but also because I trust the Sony name. It has a dot matrix display, a display that uses a number of tiny dots to show the letters and numbers, instead of the usual long, parallel, and perpindicular lines. This means you can put more than just letters and numbers on your MP3 or atrac files. The display is small, which is still very readable thanks to the dot matrix, to conserve batteries. This is one reason for its 77 hour atrac3plus battery life, untouchable at this price range. Battery life is 72 hours for Mp3 cds recorded at 128 kbps and 48 hours for regular audio cds. The main reason for it's remarkable battery life is, this CD player just spins for the first 15 seconds of an MP3/atrac3/atrac3plus cd to read the rest of the song, and then stops turning the cd completely, really! It stops reading off the cd and starts reading from its memory. It takes about three seconds to read every new song since it has to start spinning the cd again. That is about the average of regular cd players. I played an atrac3plus cd with the lid up to see if this was true, and it did exactly as I described. There is no way to make a atrac3/atrac3plus cd skip after the first 15 seconds because, well the cd is not spinning! Even taking the cd out won't make it skip. Trust me, it is very hard to make a a MP3/atrac3/atrac3plus cd skip for even the first 15 seconds. There is also 2 modes of G-Protection for regular cds.
Ok now about the software. I installed it cleanly on xp home. I started putting in my cds and converting them to atrac3plus 64 kbps, equal to 128 kbps MP3 quality because of atrac3plus' higher sound quality. Those who are stuck on mp3s don't know what they're missing out on. You can have an atrac3plus file with the same sound quality at half the bit rate and file size as an mp3, plus retain cd quality sound at 64 kbps. In other words, you can double your song capacity and still keep the same quality as an mp3 that is twice the bit rate and file size of an atrac3plus. You can convert your mp3 collection to atrac using SonicStage. SonicStage only burns atrac cds, so you have to use a another program to make mp3 cds. It takes a long time to convert cd tracks to atrac3plus. I got to my about 10th cd and then it wouldn't read the cd because it was too scratched. I pressed "stop", and tried to put in a different cd but it wouldn't read it either, even though the cd was not scratched. I wound up having to restart and start all over, very annoying. It took me a little over three hours to convert 22 cds to atrac3plus, including the restart.
When you start SonicStage, there are two columns. The left side where you get your music and the right side for the atrac cd. You have the choices of atrac3 at 132, 105, and 66 kbps, or atrac3plus at 64 (the default and recommended) or 48 kbps (to get about 490 songs on a cd). Atrac3 compresses your music roughly 1/10th its original size, while atrac3plus compresses your music about 1/20th its original size. Remember, atrac is very high quality music compared to mp3 at its bit rates. You start at the left side, where you have the choice of getting your music off of a cd or from an mp3 folder on your computer. You must register with CDDB to have your ID3 tag information entered automatically when you put in a cd. You can edit the track and artist info after they appear on the left side. When you have the music album you like, then you convert them to atrac. Your music then gets moved over to the right side. You can keep adding as many albums as you like. Once they're on the right side, you can make your final touches with your artist and track info and then burn to cd. Please note, you can't change ID3 tag info after its burned to a cd, but can come back to SonicStage with a cd that already has atrac songs on it and keep on adding music. This player can handle up to 99 sessions per cd. A session is the number of times a cd has been through SonicStage to add music. A handy, accurate meter at the top tells you how much of the cd you have burned and how much music is to be added.
Back to the player, the sound quality is unbelievable. The bass is really emphasized on the "Sound 2" mode using the supplied headphones. You can really turn this player up, too, unlike the panasonics. The battery compartment is under the cd player lid, which I find to be useful if you seem to have your batteries popping out of your cd player. There isn't really any other benefit for that except I fooled my cousins that it didn't have any batteries when I showed them the bottom of the player. Talking about the bottom of the player, the hold switch is there, don't know why. It could have easily would have fit under the open button. When you close the cd lid, the player automatically reads the cd. Don't worry if there is no cd in it, it will read for a few seconds and then turns itself off. You then have to press play to start playing your music. You could of had it off and pressed play and it would have started playing. You have to press play either way. The "Auto-Read" feaure is also a possible energy waster. For example, if you had a cd in the player, close the lid, and put it up, the player would be on for quite sometime without you knowing it. When I had my cd player put away with a cd in it, the cd started reading and spinning by itself, and nothing pressed any of the buttons. Luckily, I was there to stop it. I don't recommend leaving your cds in this cd player, unless you put it on hold. I think that is ridiculous though, turning on hold to put your cd player away. I think the "Auto-Read" feature is something I can do without.
You can search backwards and forwards through an mp3 file as smooth as a cd audio track. You can't say the same for the other mp3 cd players near this price range. You can do the same with an atrac, but it won't be so smooth. Sony has brought back the pause button some users complained about Sony players not having, but it keeps its resume feature, which I like. You can now turn off those beeps you hear when you press a button. There's AVLS for which I have no reason to use. This cd player does have programming. Sony calls it the bookmark feature. You can program your favorite songs and this player remembers them on your cds. You can program a cd in any order you like. The bookmark feature eliminates the need for having to program your favorite songs everytime you put in one of your favorite cds. When you put back in a cd with favorites on it, this player will remember the favorites you picked, and can play them back if you like. You can program up to 99 songs for each regular cd, and this player can remember your favorites on up to 10 regular cds. For MP3 cds, you can program up to 400 files and this cd player will remember your favorites for up to 10 MP3 cds. For Atrac, you can program up to 999 songs per cd, and it'll remember your favorites for up to 5 atrac cds.This is CD-RW compatible unlike my previous Sony cd player, the D-E220. It also plays MP3 cds from 16-320 kbps, including variable bit rate (VBR). Yes, it is ID3 tag and cd text capable, not seen on some other players for around this price. Overall, tremendous quality and value.
Comment: Flimsy, Not Worth The Money Rating:
I bought a new D-NE509 a while ago, and when I hadn't even owned it for two weeks, it suddenly stopped working. I've consulted the instructions, and none of the valid reasons as to why it would read "NO DISC" when there was a disc in place were present. This item had not been under any stressful elements and was brand-new when I bought it from Target in the Mid-West. I'm currently rounding up the cheap headphones that also came with it and plan on returning it very soon--and not for another one! It also makes very loud rustling noises. Sony should be better than this, and I have switched back to the cd player/walkman I had been using for two years.
Dysfunction aside, this cd player is too big for the little capabilities it does provide. It is too large to hold easily in your hand, nor to slip into a jacket pocket or a front pocket on a hoodie. You'd think it would have a large screen, but instead it doesn't. I've seen much smaller MP3 players that display more than this does.
If you're interested in hearing your music and nothing else, this would be the item to choose. But if you want actual options, then get something better.
Posted at November 11, 2003 07:59 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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