- Average user rating: 4.0 stars out of 17 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
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1 out of 1 people found this review helpful
4.5 stars
"Ahh, the old Sony exceptional quality"
Pros: Recording! Noise cancellation, design, materials, sound
Cons: Sony formats and store, flimsy-seeming charge/sync/record port
Summary: This is just such a quality piece. With a $15 cord from Sony, you can record line-in at up to 256 kbps ATRAC3 Plus (?I think it's Plus?) formats, or in Linear-PCM 1411kbps! (The CNET review and Sony's web site say you need the $50 cradle to record, but the cord is enough.) The other line-in recording flash players (e.g., Zen Nano Plus) use cheaper codecs that max out at 160kbps MP3, with reportedly substandard codecs.
The audio quality seems great, but I don't really have good enough hearing to render a valid judgment. It's a nice piece of equipment, metal sides and back. The display is nice, and I don't mind the Sonic Stage as I can add nice album covers by letting Sony do it for me (from CDDB I think it said), or download a JPEG from Amazon.com and apply it in the right-click "Properties" for the song or album (as I did for a Joseph Conrad free audiobook). These album covers appear as little icons in Sonic Stage and on the player. Playlists were easy to create (which I had to do for another audiobook ripped from a CD which wasn't recognized in CDDB). I had significantly more problems understanding Windows Media Player than Sonic Stage. I downloaded the latest Sonic Stage (4.3?) and it allows me to keep MP3s in the library and also transfer to the device without conversion to ATRAC. Using Windows Explorer, I can't see any MP3s on the Sony device, but right-clicking "Properties" on songs in Sonic Stage's device pane says they're MP3s. I'll probably rip some songs to ATRAC3 Plus for its compactness and quality--I've used this format before for a Sony MP3 CD player.
You're in a Sony world, no PlaysForSure for library audiobooks, no support for subscription music. You either have MP3s to load, or rip CDs, or shop at Sony Connect.
One possible con is if the noise cancellation earphones don't fit well in your ears. Then the noise cancellation won't work well, and if you switch to another type, then you lose the noise cancellation.
- 1 reply to this review
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Do you now by any chance if the noise cancelling will still work if you use the line in?
This to be able to use the headset with NC active to watch the movies in airplanes
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