Sony's NetMD player mixes the high quality audio world of MiniDisc with the convenience of MP3 playback. The hardware is great, but the software still needs a lot of work.

The NetMD itself looks much like many other MiniDisc players. It's only a shade larger than a MiniDisc itself, and while there are plenty of other MP3 players that come smaller, it's still not inconveniently large. Virtually every side and surface of the player controls one function or another, from the basic controls and LCD screen on the front to the hold switch on the back. Also supplied with the NetMD is a cabled remote control and a pair of very average bud headphones. Sony can't be criticised too much for the buds being awful; supplied bud headphones are always awful.

Wired for sound
The remote is a small cigar sized tube with an LCD that can be used to play back audio files and alter basic settings like shuffling and volume control. It works quite well, although we were annoyed by the fact that it has a lengthy cable and a clip on the back, but the bud headphones have a tiny 35cm cable. The end result of this is that the only thing you can clip the remote to is your shoulder. Needless to say, we quickly dumped the buds in favour of some more comfortable headphones with better sound clarity and a longer cable.

The other hardware part of the NetMD is the USB cradle, which is similar in size and function to most PDA cradles. Pop the NetMD into the cradle and you can synchronise songs through the supplied Net MD software while the Net MD recharges. If you don't have time to charge the supplied NiMh battery, it will accept standard AA batteries through a screw-on battery adapter.

Bud headphones aside, the hardware is very good, extremely flexible in its uses and easy to carry around. When the time comes to actually transfer some music, however, the headaches start.

In order to synchronise music to the NetMD, it's necessary to install OpenMG Jukebox 2.2. Novice PC users are likely to be freaked out by the install procedure. Apart from the application it also installs a number of updates that come with alphanumeric names but no explanatory text. In an age where Net borne viruses make good tabloid fodder, this is a bad step on Sony's part. The upgrades should at least be explained prior to installation, or installed invisibly as part of the basic installation.

The day the music died
More annoying than strange update names was the lack of stability of OpenMG Jukebox 2.2 itself. To put it bluntly, it tended to crash. Not a little, not even a moderate amount, but a lot. Once it had crashed, song transfer times slowed if it was run again without a PC reboot.

OpenMG Jukebox 2.2 also forms Sony's basic anti-piracy bulwark. In our testing, largely due to its instability, it only made a cursory effort at this. Songs can only be checked out to the NetMD three times, but reinserting them is a trivial affair of seeking them out from the hard drive again. It may have been due to our crashes, but often the software wouldn't recognise songs for check-in later on, which meant we could freely delete them from a MD and replicate them without it even triggering one of our three genuine uses. It's not possible to transfer files upstream to a PC at all through the NetMD. Like other MD players, it's also possible to hook up a regular CD player to the NetMD for recording purposes.

Can't you hear the music pumping hard?
NetMD, like Sony's recent MD players, supports LP2 and LP4 recording modes for double and quadruple recording lengths with a responding drop in recording quality. It's certainly something that's noticeable if you plug the NetMD into a good quality speaker system, but less so through most headphones. Audiophiles will certainly still spot the differences, but those looking for a Walkman replacement shouldn't be too fussed. Perhaps the lower quality of LP4 mode explains the awful included bud headphones; with them in we could barely tell the difference at all.

Transfer speeds for the NetMD varied wildly. For a single track on a freshly booted machine, it took 3:12 to transfer a 4:47 song in standard stereo mode. That dropped to 1:00 for LP2 mode, and only 45 seconds in LP4 mode. Transferring songs in groups is slower, however; especially if the software has crashed or you've previously tried to transfer songs onto an already full disc. We have no idea why the software insisted on these slower transfers for repeat business; with no need to convert to ATRAC format, you'd think they'd be faster, not slower. OMG Jukebox can record direct from CD, but we wouldn't recommend this, as its ripping algorithm is especially slow. Just make sure that whatever you do rip with transfers files out as 2-Channel, 44.1KHz 16 Bit sound, as that's the only format OMG Jukebox recognises.

Sony NetMD MZ-N1
Company: Sony
Price: AU$899
Distributor: Selected resellers
Phone: 1300 13 7669

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