SonyD-NE510 ATRAC3/MP3 CD Walkman

when you gotta have original old school stuff for a gift to a loved one, whats money

I knit and use my walkman when I fly and I drive people to and from Dr appointments and anytime I have to sit and wait. this amounts to about 20 MP3 Dis each year and more than 20 knitting projects. My old one got wet and I could not fined a CD Player or MP3 player that could be stopped and restarted at the sane place it stopped until I found this CD Walkman, It meets my needs. I have purchased 2. Now I am covered. If this one does not last 20 years like my last one did. If you go on the internet you will find that this animal is no longer made so the good ones are all 5 stars or dead.

These things are obsolete if they even work anymore.

Did not work

Let me give you an honest comment. The CD Walkman is good and comparable to my former one. I think the price is quite high for a second-hand Walkman. I bought my former one at eBay for only $36 all in all. But since I was in need, I grabbed the opportunity. Thank you anyway.

I just bought this used on eBay for $3. Reading the historical reviews here is very interesting and gives some perspective on why ATRAC and Minidisc failed. I didn't realize that Sony bundled Simple Burner with these units, and limited the ATRAC bitrate to 64K under the insane idea that somehow ATRAC was twice as efficient as MP3. It was not. ATRAC3Plus at 64K basically sounded lousy, like any other Codec at 64K. But Sony had to try and prove that they were somehow better than everyone else - so if you bought one of these units, or another unit and ripped your stuff at 64K, then listened to someone's iPod where they were probably ripping to Apple's AAC format at 128K, there was no comparison. I'm well aware of all of the rubbish that Sony spouted about ATRAC3Plus 64 being the equal of MP3s or AAC or WMA at 128K (I have about 10 Minidisc units) - but it was simply not true. Perhaps at very low volumes, on poor quality speakers or headphones you wouldn't be able to tell the difference - but people who said 64K sounded better than MP3 either totally drank the Kool-Aid, had bad headphones, didn't know how to rip good quality MP3 (e.g., LAME VBR), or were deaf. If Sony had just let the user decide which bitrate to use (they provided 48K, 64K, and 256K, and eventually, 96, 128 and 160) - they would have been much better off.

While they don't seem to make Sony Discmans anymore, I found this one "used" . I am very happy with this CD player. It is the best one that I have ever owned quality wise and the technology is a step up from what I was used to.

I plays well and doesn't eat batteries like the DNE 500. It has a 3 setting equilizer which works well enough. The display is fairly easy to read if you have visual difficulties. Play, forward, back, and stop are easy to use. The repeat mode is nice as is the 3 type of display.