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Review : Sony MiniDisc Net MD Walkman MZ-NE410
When I drove across Washington state on Friday I had nothing but Clear Channel owned corporate radio to listen to.
My God! It was horrible and my ear was assaulted every minute with shrill piercing ads for crap that I wound never ever consider buying. I vowed that this would end and that I would invest a hundred and fifty bucks in a digital music MP3 player.
I purchased a Sony MiniDisc Net MD Walkman MZ-NE410. It only cost me 95 bucks at Fred Meyers and while it is not a traditional MP3 player I am very pleased and impressed with it.
I was not ready to spend four hundred bucks on an iPod and I wanted something that could carry more music than a typical flash MP3 Player. I seriously was considering an iRiver player but I could not find one that did not have a microphone on them. While these are cool features I can get in trouble for bringing a microphone recording device or a camera to where I work.
I was impressed with the Sony MiniDisc Net MD Walkmans size and price point. I know that MiniDisc technology was very popular in Japan but it never found a home here in America. It is an format designed by Sony to deliver the access and quality of a CD with the rewritable flexibility of a audio tape. It is a small CD-like re-writable optical disc contained in a protective plastic case much like a floppy disk. MiniDiscs are power-efficient, rugged, compact, shock and skip resistant, easily edited and not that expensive. The Sony UMD format that will be used in the Playstation Portable are simpler in concept to the MiniDisc but much smaller and more fixed data.
The problem was when it came out in 1993 they made up for the smaller space by using a compression algorithm. It ended up that the first algorithms were not up to the same quality of a CD and the ended up failing the Pepsi challenge for hard core audiophiles. But work progressed on the MiniDisc format and new compression algorithms were created. The latest one ATRAC3 is damn close to CD perfect sound and surpasses mp3 for quality of sound and file compression and can get around four hours of music out of an "80-minute" MiniDisc.
You know those discs that Neo was selling at the beginning of The Matrix? Those were Minidiscs.
The advent of MP3 stored digital audio and the MiniDisc are a match made in heaven and I am damn glad I picked this over the Apple iPod or a Flash Memory based digital audio player. The iPod is over three time the price of hundred dollar Net MD Walkman MZ-NE410 and is prone to magnetic corruption and crashes. Once your iPod HD dies it will take all the music stored on it.
The Net MD Walkman MZ-NE410 is a bit smaller than a pack of cigarettes but is almost a square than a rectangle. There is a bulge on the bottom for the single AA battery that powers the unit. You can get over 50 hours of play of a single AA battery and my rechargeables work perfectly. You drain more power when you are writing discs but it is not that bad. The unit it self is not that much bigger than the Minidisc media and will have no problem fitting in a shirt pocket and can be stored in almost any outfit without a big ass bulge.
The design is very spartanistic and simplistic with a small unlit LED display and a four direction joystick disk for the control buttons. On the right of the unit is the covered USB port, headphone jack and the Hold lock for when you don't want the switches affected like in a pocket. There is a pretty snappy spring to open up the disc compartment and I can swap discs without looking. There is no built in recorder but this generation of MiniDiscs are intended to be used with computers and MP3 files.
The media can be found at any serious music and electronics store but I doubt you will find it at your local Wal-Mart. I spent 20 bucks on a 15 pack of blank disks so that is about three gigs of compressed digital music. You do the math. Finding blank Minidiscs takes a bit but it is nowhere as hard as finding blank BetaMax cassettes. You can store 196.2 megs per disc. That makes is more than 20 times cheaper than using a flash memory card. It takes about 15 minutes to burn a full MD disc but your computer is not locked up like a CD-R drive so I just surf the web when burning some disks.
There are no new music on MiniDisc in the US but Japan and the rest of Asia were much more receptive to the MiniDisc format.
There are two software packages included with the Net MD Walkman MZ-NE410. Net MD Simple Burner is a very easy to use tool for ripping a CD to a ATRAC3 compressed Minidisc. Non MP3 fanatics should use this tool.
Sony SonicStage is much more complete music manager program where you can arrange your MP3 and WMA files. The design has a bit of a learning curve but I was able to figure it out and get proficient. Editing play list layouts, file names and other cool tricks were easy to do once I got over the nonstandard interface. My only real complaint is that the secure DRM enable Windows Media Abba cover album that I purchased from BuyMusic.com did not work with the SonicStage software forcing me to use Windows Media Player9 to burn a CD and then make a MD from the burned CD if I wanted to. It is not quite iTunes but it is damn close and works for me.
The engineers at Sony are the masters of making small sexy personal audio devices and this is all that in spades. This is the preferred personal Digital audio player of NINJAS!
Jake at September 23, 2003 
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Comments
I use my MD recorder to make dubs of copy-protected discs. Sad that the MD format still hasn't caught on in America.
Posted by: Richie at September 23, 2003 02:10 AM
Just as a side note, CD-R technology has gotten to the point that it's basically brain dead to create CDs. I've had a CD-R since the days of the first generation of 2X burners, and yes they used to lock your machine to prevent buffer underruns, etc. But now, I have a 52/24/52 CD-R(W) drive that burns disks in about 5 minutes and has new technology that prevents uderruns, meaning I can continue to browse the web or any number of things while I burn. Right now I burn to regular audio CDs for my car, but at some point I want to get a CD based MP3 player. That seems like the much more economical solution for me right now.
Posted by: Bob at September 23, 2003 04:06 AM
my only problem with mini-discs, as with cds, is the moving parts. i have an ipaq with a 256 flash card on it. but any pocket pc will do. my ipaq is 2 years old now, but plays games, keeps contacts, syncs with my outlook at work, i can watch movies too. while the flash card doesn't hold as much, i can buy more cards, and even get a 1GB minidrive to put in. so my options are more open.
but, the investment is a little more than the mini-disk player, but not as much as an ipod.
Posted by: tj at September 23, 2003 06:06 AM
If it's good enough for ninjas, it's good enough for me :)
Posted by: pellinore at September 23, 2003 06:06 AM
my minidisc player was cheaper than yours (though not as stylish ;) hehe) and i love it...i'd rather use this than anything else...i can get upwards of 30-40 songs on one minidisc, so it literally is HOURS of playing time...(oh, and you can find blank minidiscs (with or without cases) at best buy :D)
Posted by: lilly at September 23, 2003 06:27 AM
I like the concept of Flash Memory based MP3 players but I think it will be a couple years for the price point of the media to get as cheap as MiniDiscs. 2 bucks for 200 Megs is a nice deal. I have never had my MD skip on me and 50+ hours off one AA change is nice. However when I get a Sony PSP I will probably use the MemoryStick port as an MP3 player.
Posted by: Jake at September 23, 2003 09:56 AM
Hmm, I still thinking picking up a refurbished 10GB iPod for $169 is a better deal, plus it can be used as an external drive, but you don't get to use said cool discs.
Posted by: Anthony at September 24, 2003 04:39 PM
Well there is no Firewire drive on my PC and Apple has yet to support USB 2.0 on the iPods. This thing is down with USB 2.0.
I was wrong the latest iPods now support USB 2 as well as Firewire.
Posted by: Jake at September 24, 2003 04:57 PM
hey...i just bought a sony md walkman mz-ne410 and every time i go to put mp3s on it it says low battery(but the batterys r brand new) and just shuts off. I used both sonic stage and net md. If n e one else has this problem and knows how to fix it please respond.
Posted by: steve at November 1, 2003 03:08 PM
hey...i just bought a sony md walkman mz-ne410 and every time i go to put mp3s on it it says low battery(but the batterys r brand new) and just shuts off. I used both sonic stage and net md. If n e one else has this problem and knows how to fix it please respond.
Posted by: steve at November 1, 2003 03:08 PM
I use lithium rechargeable batteries and I make sure they are charged when I burn disks but when I just use them regularly I get about a weeks worth of normal listening on about four hours a day. I think your batteries may be bad and I suggest a good set of rechargables
Posted by: Jake at November 1, 2003 09:30 PM
I just got a 410-MD for Christmas and I must say. I am very impressed with it. The sound is great and I found the software pretty easy to figure out. I also like having 5 hours of music on one disc. I have seen the MD as low as 79 bucks at Circuit City. I agree the Ipods do look pretty cool and have lots of disc space, but if you don't want to spend the money the MD is a pretty cool alternative.
Posted by: Dan at December 30, 2003 05:12 AM
I received a NE410 for Christmas. I wasn't sure if I wanted to exchange it for something using solid state memory. Well, I am glad I did keep it. The 74 minute mini disk that came with the player, now holds 125 minutes of music. The sound is great. The battery life is great. It's a keeper. My only complaint is the SonicStage software crashes on me. I have not looked for for updates as yet.
Posted by: Bruce at December 30, 2003 07:41 AM
Hey, i just bought this exact model, can i record on one of sony's mics that they advertise as good mics to use with an md player on this particular model, cuz i don't see a line in
Posted by: Gordy at December 30, 2003 09:36 PM
No you can not record on this MD. There is no real time recording on this unit and no mic. But you can record on a PC and then import the WAV or MP3 file then load it onto a minidisc
Posted by: Jake at December 30, 2003 09:41 PM
I recently got a MZ-NE410 and I now have about 30 songs on my disk that came with it. When I try to get music on that disk or any other disk it says "Failed to write data to Device/Media.
*song*"
I tried removing songs from the MD player but that has not worked.
If anybody know how to fix this, please post or email me at brane_damegd@hotmail.com
Thanks :-D
Posted by: Josh at January 2, 2004 08:57 PM
Try making sure you are using freshly charged batteries.
Posted by: Jake at January 2, 2004 10:19 PM
where may i get a copy?
Posted by: aerick at January 20, 2004 06:44 AM
Amazon.com, sony.com or your favorite online retailer I guess.
Posted by: Jake at January 20, 2004 10:04 AM
how do these hold up to jogging and skiing? I just bought mine, so I can't say yet, I hope it does hold up well in these conditions. I didn't want to spend 300-500 on an IPOD. I am amazed at the sound quality!!!! And even the cheasy headphones that come with it sound good, can't wait to get some better ones. My only complaint thus far is that it takes far too long to convert and copy the files to the disc. Why didn't sony make these things USB 2.0 compliant!?!?! If they did, the file would copy much faster to the disc. Oh well, i guess patience is a virtue for 100 bucks as oposed to firewire and usb 2.0 on the ipod for 300-500 bucks. ;) I kinda like the idea of having all these discs with my music on it so I can just slap in my favorite mix whenever i want instead of having to deal with a hard drive full of tunes that i'll never play because there are too many and it's too hard to keep track of them all on a 40 gig drive.
Posted by: djrobsd at January 29, 2004 01:56 AM
I don't jog or ski but it did not skip when I went bike riding and city hiking. Well the problem you are having is not transferring the files but converting the song to the Sony ATRAC file format. If you transfer the CD to your hard drive and store it in the ATRAC file format and the burn will be much faster. It actually does use USB 2.0
Posted by: Jake at January 29, 2004 11:33 AM
I need help finding out where i can find a website that will let me download sonicstage to my computer
Posted by: matt at February 1, 2004 09:24 AM
I need help finding out where i can find a website that will let me download sonicstage to my computer
Posted by: matt at February 1, 2004 09:25 AM
I need help finding out where i can find a website that will let me download sonicstage to my computer
Posted by: matt at February 1, 2004 09:26 AM
Contact Sony tech support.
Posted by: Jake at February 1, 2004 09:55 PM
The Sony net md was fine while it lasted but like every other sony product I have ever owned, it did not last long. I diagnosed the problem to the output amp. Before you thrown one out because of broken mechanical problems, I'll pay shipping. I can salvage the board.
Posted by: Ahoydave at February 24, 2004 02:12 PM
The player is great. Period. Also -- for you trance enthusiasts (and classical enthusiasts): DJ sets and split songs (recordings that are split into several tracks) play as smoothly as silk! Mp3 players, of course, make that irritating pause between each file (albeit a brief pause).
This thing kicks the crap out of any mp3 player I've tried, and the price points speak for themselves.
Posted by: Andy at March 10, 2004 12:05 AM
I love my minidisk player but i cant install the disk correctly it says cannot load database and i no it works because i installed it correctly before but then i brought my puter into to get tuned up and the guy deleted it so anyways if any of u have gone through the same problem as me and have a solution please email me it would be greatly appreciatred
Posted by: mike at March 10, 2004 01:59 PM
Uninstall the software, Reboot, Reinstall the software, Reboot, then contact Sony Technical Support.
Posted by: Jake at March 10, 2004 02:08 PM
I too am having problems when transferring songs from a CD to the MD player. It always says "Low Battery" even though I am using brand new batteries and it even shows the battery symbol on the player as full.
I see that this problem has been posted before ... anyone with suggestions or an answer please let me know.
Thanks,
rocksolidjeff@yahoo.com
Posted by: Jeff at March 28, 2004 05:52 PM
yes me too, i'm having the exact same problem, and all the solutions I have seen are just putting in a new/fully charged battery. Personally I think putting in a new battery everytime I have to write songs onto the MD is ridiculous, for something something I pay $100 - 150 for, I don't even have that many new batteries lying around, I'm trying to get an exchange on it
Posted by: ghosty at April 1, 2004 09:16 PM