Sony D-NE10S Silver ATRAC/MP3 CD Walkman

With build quality and design being near perfect, I tested the actual sound quality. Sadly, this is where things went a bit wrong. Firstly the supplied earphones look great but sound downright dreadful and suite those free radios you get rather than a £140 CD walkman and I strongly recommend you bin them as soon as you can and buy some quality ones. But what really annoyed me was that I knew Sony only did this for profit as they would have to force people to go and buy a decent pair. This has been a very bad trend for Sony and really does destroy their reputation as a high quality brand. I could remember the ‘Groove Fontopia’ earbuds they use to supply with their cassette/CD walkmans before and these were very good with deep bass and clean treble, but then they suddenly ditched them and started to supply the cheap open air earphones, even with the latest £200+ minidisk walkmans. But now they have gone a step further and supplied even more rubbish earphones! Luckily for me I already had a pair of Sony MDR-EX71SL ear buds which made things sound as they should. This is really disappointing for most people as it would mean having to pay an extra £20 or so for some quality ear/head phones. Bad news for Sony and their reputation!

The next problem with the sound is the new ‘Parametric Equaliser’. Don’t get me wrong, when I say this is a problem, because I was really pleased that Sony had finally moved up a step and included a customisable equaliser. The problem is that they didn’t implement it very well. I can’t understand why they made things so awkward? For example, you can only control certain parts of the equaliser spectrum, which makes the overall shape of the equaliser very uneven and therefore the different frequencies don’t sound right. You only get to control 1 of 3 different sections in the low, medium and high band ranges which makes the whole customisation process very difficult. This all equates to a really inefficient equaliser design which is totally unnecessary when a simple 6-10 band graphical equaliser (ranging from 60Hz-16Khz) would have been much better as it would have given you much better control over the frequency ranges without any confusion. The sound itself is top quality, but in terms of raw power output it isn’t as powerful as it should be. Even with the MDR-EX71SLs the bass sounds slightly weak. That said it still sounds very good with clear treble and mid ranging sounds. Also, if you get too confused with the custom equaliser settings the ‘Heavy’ preset setting still sounds good.

Music CD playback is obviously high quality, but more importantly the playback of MP3 is very good and has so far played all the mp3s I’ve thrown at it flawlessly.
ATRAC format CDs worked beautifully, but unfortunately the ‘Sonic Stage’ software caused a weird problem with all my mp3s on my pc and caused the volume to keep shifting up and down erratically (very strange!), but this seems to be an isolated glitch with my PC as most people have reported no problems like mine. That said the ATRAC CDs I made still sounded great even at 64kbps. But for me Mp3 playback was what I needed as 95% of my music is in mp3.

Overall, this CD player is pretty awesome if you don’t mind buying a new pair of earphones. The mp3 and Atrac CD playback is very cool especially since the price of CD-R/RWs is very cheap. If your gonna exercise with it, your fully protected with the 'G-Protection' anti-skip system. Most of the other problems were only minor flaws in the function and design of the walkman. Apart from that the only other problem for people would be the price tag of £140 which is still quite low compared to some places, like for example in Argos where it costs £170! If you want the very best in looks design and functionality, I’d recommend this but because of its price tag I would suggest you look at the Sony D-NE1 which is only £100 and is pretty much identical to the D-NE10 in terms of functionality. Also, there have been alot of good reviews about the I-River iMP-550&450 models which are top quality portable mp3 players.

I decided on this model as I had good memories of my sony CD player from 4 years back, plus it looked amazing. Lifting it out of the box, the 1st thing that struck me was how small the player is. It fits nicely in my hand, is not much bigger than a CD itself & quite thin. Its incredibly light, lighter than a pack of cards!!! The metal build feels quite sturdy.

Audio CD playback is excellent and all my MP3 CDs work fine. I haven't tried the Atrac feature as I have read online that the program is prone to crashes and resorts all your music into different folders.

The remote is easy to use once you memorise the combination of buttons to change playback options or settings, however because it is so small you can press the wrong button by mistake. These are all minor gripes though. I was surprised a jog dial wasn't on the remote, as it would make life easier. The included extra AA battery holder is of black plastic and looks rather cheap against the smart silver metal finish of the player. The included carrying pouch for the player, while the colour isn't to my taste (a dark torquoise/green), is nothing more than a drawstring bag and at best will keep the player clean but wouldn't stop it getting damaged if dropped for example. The included headphones are a big letdown. While I already own a decent pair, others would have to spend £20 - £30 on new headphones. The glass charging stand is very samll and does the job well.

This is a excellent player and only loses 1 star simply because you need to spend another £20 on headphones and there is no jog dial on the remote to make shifting through a long list of songs easier.

i just wanted to put a few things straight about atrac and sonic stage! atrac format is actually better quality than mp3. atrac at 64kbps is equal to mp3 at 128kbps firstly. secondly atrac can be tuned up to 256kbps which sounds phenominal.

it is also common myth than sonic stage converts ur whole library to mp3 immediately once its on ur computer. it doesnt, u can store songs in sonic stage in raw mp3 or wma format, it only converts them if u either select the atrac cd format for cds or the check out option for minidisc and hi-md! this means that it takes up no extra space on ur harddrive re-copying music u already have into another format. for example an album in mp3 will only convert to atrac if u choose to copy it to a minidisc and then it will only convert to atrac on the minidisc/cd not on ur hard drive. dont be fooled sonic stage is a very good program if u know how to use it properly

that said the player it top notch as is the remote and supplied accessories. if u charge the battery to full and play it to empty ull get a weeks use and not have to recharge. less recharging of the battery = longer life span of battery