Sony D-NE511 Silver ATRAC/MP3 CD Walkman

- Very basic in-ear headphones - they're OK, but they could have at least had a volume control or something.
- Two instruction manuals - one for the Walkman and one for the ATRAC CD burning software, which I thought was very nice of them as PC software rarely come with PRINTED manuals these days.
- An AC mains adapter (4.5V) - one of those new really lightweight ones. I assume it can be used for recharging batteries (which would explain the extra 1.5V) somehow but I didn't see anything in the manual about it. It's got a pretty long wire too (about 3m?), which I find very useful for playing in bed :D

The Walkman itself is pretty slim, but is a big longer than most with the big display and stuff. The battery compartment is INSIDE the CD tray, which is strange but a very good idea because the usual battery doors always break or get lost with these kinds of things. Build quality is adequate - nice buttons and everything, pretty metallic finish , but the CD door does look a *bit* flimsy. It has buttons for everything you need, and the jog dial is very useful for easy track access, especially with big MP3/ATRAC CDs.

It plays normal audio CDs well enough, and displays track names and whatnot with the few CD Text CDs.

I burned an ATRAC (which, by the way is the standard format used to fit so much onto MiniDiscs) CD at 48x speed using the highest (132kbps) ATRAC3 encoding, and I fit 9 albums on with about 50MB to spare. The CD played perfectly, but did take a while to load because I made it in 9 different sessions. Personally, I think the sound quality is much better than the average 128kbps MP3, as it retains really bassy low frequency sounds better than MP3s. I haven't really tried any other bitrates yet, but I heard ATRAC3plus recordings don't actually sound too bad for such low bitrates. The ATRAC recording software is very easy to use, and it can recieve CD track titles from CDDB databases on the web.

I tried making an MP3 CD using Nero Express (the Walkman isn't supplied with MP3 CD-burning software) at 48x speed. I fit 176 tracks (mostly 128kbps) on the CD with a bit of space left. It's mostly OK but a few of the traks burned at the beginning of the CD occasionally skip a bit. The Walkman seems to be a bit more "picky" with MP3 CDs than ATRAC CDs. Maybe the CD burner just had a bad day - I'm not sure exactly.

I recommend burning MP3 CDs at low speeds (24x or lower) for error-free playback, and try to burn a CD all in one session as it really cuts down on loading time when the Walkman searches for track names when first inserted.

All you need to do is make a normal ISO/Joliet CD and just stick MP3 files on it (you can use folders too) - it's so simple!

I haven't tried CD-RWs yet but it's supposed to be compatible with them unlike most cheaper and older CD players.

The G-Protection system works very well - even on mode 1 (there's a switch inside) you can walk around and even shake the hell out of it with your hand and it refuses to skip! Dodgy MP3 CDs *seem* to skip less on mode 2, too!

Other things I liked:
- Resume function: You can stop playback, leave it as long as you want, and as long as you leave the CD and the batteries/adaptor in it will start playing exactly where you left off when you press play!
- Multiple playback modes: Normal, single folder, one track repeat, shuffle and single folder shuffle.
- ID3 tag (incl. version 2) support.
- Folder select buttons.
- No having to put up with any copy protection or Microsoft stuff.

Things I didn't like:
- The sound level is adequate for headphones, but as others have said it is a bit quiet when connected to speakers or a hi-fi.
- Lack of remote support. I know at this price it won't come with a remote but they could have at least had a socket for one.
- Lack of support for other audio formats like OGG Vorbis (which I personally think is superior to MP3) and AAC.
- ATRAC CDs can ONLY be played on ATRAC Walkmans, and there's no software to play them on your PC. You never know though - future Sony DVD players may be able to play ATRAC CDs if the format takes off.

Still, you don't expect EVERYTHING at this price and it's still GREAT for an entry-level early model of a new system. I don't know if ATRAC CDs will ever be popular but that doesn't stop them from sounding great. Anyway, it's still superb for MP3 and audio CD playback!

1) The most obvious but important point is that you can get loads of music on 1 cd at a decent quality (with 64k ATRAC3+ you get 24 hours and it sounds fine).

2) The Volume. Unless you want to seriously damage your hearing the volume is usually fine for the supplied earphones. However, if you listen to classical music, which tends to be quieter and have a greater dynamic range, the volume can be a bit low. When using the cd player at home I plug it into my computer speakers and the volume's fine for normal listening, but can't go as loud as a normal cd in a hifi.

3) The general design of the cd player is good and the jog dial makes navigating an ATRAC cd of 300+ tracks a breeze: you rotate it to scroll through the tracks and press it to play the currently selected one. I do however have a few gripes about the ergonomics. I sometimes find that when I press the jog dial I accidentily scroll up or down one song. Also the volume button is on the side of the cd player so you have to hold the other side of the cd player when operating it.

4) Missing features. The feature I most sorely miss on this cd player is a program facility. Bog standard cd players usually have this and they normally have no more than 20 tracks. With over 300 you really miss this. The play modes are good: you can do random play on the entire disc or just for one group (which corresponds to an album). There is no backlight. The cd player doesn't come with a carry case but it fits perfectly in the padded envelopes you get DVDs in.

5) Power. To start with I used some dirt cheap (20 for a couple of quid) non-alkaline batteries and they only lasted less than 10 hours. I then replaced them with some alkaline batteries and it's still going strong after on average a couple of hours use a day for several weeks. The batteries aren't rechargable but I can safely recharge them with this great recharger I've got (I think it was from a company called Innovations if you want one). The supplied AC adapter is small and light (remember to take out the batteries before plugging this in).

6) Misc. When you insert an ATRAC or MP3 cd it has to scan the whole disc before you can play a song. For a 25 folder (album) 360 track ATRAC cd this takes 20 - 30 seconds; a bit more for an MP3 cd as the ATRAC burning software produces a table of contents to speed up the scanning process (I think). Also it doesn't start reading the next track until the current track has finished, which can be a bit annoying if one track leads into the next. The hold button's nice and it weighs 275 grams with the batteries in it. Also in jumping from one track to another, particularly if they're a long way apart on the disc, the cd player makes quite a loud noise. If you're wearing the headphones listening to music you won't notice but others around you might get annoyed.

7) The software. I found the ATRAC burning software simple to use. There are 2 ways of getting music onto an ATRAC cd: 1) put in the cd and the tracks will get ripped to ATRAC and stored in a temporary folder, or select mp3 files in which case they get converted to ATRAC just before burning the cd. I therfore ripped my CDs to mp3 (using a free and perfectly decent ripping tool dBpowerAMP). This meant that when I wanted to make another cd with those tracks I didn't need to rip them from cd again. It took about 2 - 3 hours to convert 24 hours of music to ATRAC (my PC is 1.2GHz celeron 128MB RAM). I encountered some problems with the ATRAC software reading my mp3 files. Sometimes the track length would show up as 20536 minutes or something ridiculous, in which case I could convert the mp3 file to .wav and then back again to mp3 (so I had to re-enter the ID3 tags using winamp). However, after I had burnt a cd I found that some tracks had been missed out, I think because the ID3 tags were corrupted (maybe dBpowerAMPs fault?) or the bit rate was too low. The good thing is that, even with CD-Rs you can add more files to a disc once you've burnt it if there is still space.

All in all, a great product despite a few problems, especially at the price on amazon.