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Reviewer Comments For Click for more reviews! MZ-N1 by MiniDisc T-Station Description: General reviews on Sony MZ-N1 NetMD MDLP MiniDisc recorder. Read more reviews at eCoustics.com.

Average Reviewer Rating: Number of Reviews: 7 ( Displaying Reviews: 1 - 2 )   MZ-N1 Worth It's Weight In Gold Reviewer: Anonymous from Australia     November 05, 2002 Recently on a trip overseas I purchased my MZ-N1 NetMD for a fair amount. I've read countless reviews about this unit but decided to buy one and test it out for myself. Upon arriving home I opened the neat little package to reveal and surprisingly light and compact MD unit. Overall the unit is GREAT. It packs great features and the software does not crash, I have OpenMG Ver. 2.2. I reckon it could beat any MP3 player. As for the sound quality SP does sound the best with LP2 a good option for those long trips on the road. Sound quality is superb with good, natural bass and nice highs. The earbuds that came with the unit are not the best but are acceptable. The only annoying thing is converting the MP3, WMA or CD audio files etc. into OpenMG format which can take a while if using a slower speed computer than recommended. But that is probably the only gripe I have about it. Overall a great unit. I truly recommend this product you will not be disappointed.   Pondering the depths of bitrate? Reviewer: Daniel from usa     August 09, 2002 Aight, so you've read the great "this is the best thing to hit the face of the planet" bits on here. I conciet i haven't dug through the entire review database, but I notice some thing smissing(now that I have a mz-n1 of my own, that is). True, for compacting the information as much as it has been, it does sound quite remarkable. But the LP modes degrade sound quality more than you want to think. I'm a musician, and spend a lot of time recording stuff/learning things from recordings, and the lp's don't cut it sometimes. First off, their claim that "SP mode is better than CD quality." Ok, so CD quality is 128Kb/s, and SP mode boasts 132Kb/s. That's all great and dandy, but i have yet to see a way to get my hands on the masters of any music I like, so that extra 4Kb/s really is just for show. And ontop of that, the way MD's crunch data into a smaller format is by putting a threshold on the volume it digitally stores on the disc. Peachy, but keep in mind that while the human ear(on average) can hear 2KHz-20KHz(abouts) most people can tell when a 30KHz frenquency is missing from a tune they know fairly well. Secondly, every time you increase the length you can put on that quite FINITE space, you decrease quality. LP2 knocks the quality down to 105Kb/s. that's about 1/6th of the frenquency range that you're not going to be hearing anymore. and LP4 knocks it down to 66Kb/s. that's half CD quality on a good day. I'm not bashing this little machine, I enjoy it very much, but Sony seems to have left this information out of most advertisings that they put out. I have yet to find it in the owners manual, I had to dig through the openGL jukebox to find this info, after i noticed the degraded quality that is. And openGL is, in itself another review all together. It will only let you put songs back on your harddrive if they were "checked out" from the same computer. No sharing this stuff with your friends through the MD medium there. This means that if you'r erecording a show, or something less illegal, like a professor in class, or a conversation about a contract, you're stuck with it on MD only(well not entirely true, but as far as OpenGL is concerned...). Another problem with this program, or at least a bit i didn't like about it, is when you're copying from a CD it only gives you the option of putting the file in Sony's own custom format on your computer. No mp3, wma, ram, or anything else. Honestly, if sony doesn't stop getting stingy about their music industry finances, MD's might not make it without the aid of 3rd party software and or soundcards with optical outputs/inputs(which is what breathed life back into MD a couple years back anyway). My theory is that Sony is just trying to make sure we are buying the CD's from their record label instead of going crazy with ripping them from friends CD's or the internet. If they don't get with the times, I can't honestly say i invision MD's being around for much longer. Unfortunently MP3 players are more popular, sad but true... Long live the MD.. just let Sony/sharp/kenwod/etc... know where we(the people paying for them) stand and they'll be around for a while. musician/professional student