Minidisc Players

If you are going to buy only 1 unit ( I have a full deck and this portable ) you'll be frustrated with anything less than this one. That's because the control placement for editing are well designed.

If you have two units ( 1 deck and 1 portable ) you should have this as part of you portable. I bought the sony bundle first ( the deck and portable unit ). The problem here is you can't record or edit with the portable. I real bummer if you go over to your friends place and hear something you've gotta have. Not to mention if you need to record a meeting or a lecture, you'll be out of luck if you've bought the sony bundle.

I run with this unit and it will skip only about 3 times over 8 miles of terrain.

The other nice thing about this is it small. Fits in you shirt pocket. If you'll be editing while your jogging like I do, the add on battery pack that holds an additional 2 AA is a nice feature.

The quality is better than audio tape by far, and the recording length of the disks (60, 74, or 80 minutes) surpasses that of most tapes too. When I originally bought this unit, I looked into its specifications for a long time trying to decide between the R37 and the R55 and a Diamond RIO Portable MP3 Player.

I love MP3's, as most people who are "into" audio do, but I found the lack of the ability to change data without a computer on the RIO was troublesome. I had to be able to flip discs, so that I could listen to it on long car rides - the 64MB of the RIO's memory could only hold about 70 minutes of music... then a computer was needed to change the data in the 64MB. TERRIBLE! I needed the removable discs!

Then came the R33... I decided against this because it was just too big. I love the compact size of my R55, and it was worth the extra money. Now I take my R55 everywhere - I have about 15 mixes of my favorite music, and 2 or three blanks in my case all the time, so I can record classes and such (Go Purdue!!!) In all, the best audio recorder / player out there today!

Enhancements I'm planning to get: an MP3 converter that will download MP3s from your compuer so you can record them to discs, and a microphone.

The sound is great at home with my Sennheiser 540 over the ear headphones, and it can play through a sound system. I carry it everywhere and play it with high quality Sennheiser ear-buds whenever there is a free moment. (The Sennheisers are a bit cheaper than the high end Sony's and sound as good.) Having good sound wherever you are is a great plus.

The battery problems mentioned by others can be solved if you alternate recharging two of the Sony batteries. That way, one is always fresh. Each seems to last 3 to 4 hours. To tell the truth, I wouldn't want to have it in my ears more than three hours at a time anyway.

Agreed that titling is a pain. Life would be easier if you could type them in from a computer. Yet, there is enough time to input the titles on the first listen. The drawback is that after all the tedius effort, I'm reluctant to record over the track.