N505 - how audio equipment should be made

Author's Rating:

Pros: Light, Small, Quick, Good Quailty Audio, Fast (LP2) transfer of audio.

Cons: SOFTWARE :( , user interface possible dislike.

The Bottom Line: 
Small, great quality, good battery life, and easy of use...what more could you ask for?

Author's Review
I was getting a little annoyed by the fact that my CD player was becoming more of an annoyance, e.g. takes a lot of space in side pocket. Other than that it was fine (shock proof), however, it was time i placed it to the side.
My uncle loved his minidisc..and so did i..

So i had a quick look in the window and seen the N505 @£180. I remember seeing this on www.richersounds.co.uk for much less, and therefore struck a deal with the merchant.

1 hour later i was at home twiddling with the N505. The interface is very nicely laid out buttons, and quite easy to use, although my friend found them a little small. Straight away i linked it up to the pc and fired up the OpenMG software...its only weakest link so far...

Open MG - why oh why:

Its an ok piece of software, very easy to use, although a little frustrating at times. For example it wasnt very clear when it came to adding mp3' tracks to your playlists. I find the software a bit unstable - infact it just froze up during writing this review. The interface could do with sharpening up, and i wasnt too happy to find it dominating my system as main mp3 player, although to be expected really. If you use it purely for transfering music, it should be fine.

A little note - a beefy computer for re-encoding files into Atrac3 (audio compression for MD) would be a good thing. Doesnt take long on mine , e.g. 5-15seconds each track, but you can judge my pc for yourself.

http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?rigid=11974

Onto sound quality...dam im pleased :) On track's such as Muse's Space dementia, you can clearly hear the piano over the drums, and the bass doesnt dominate over the other frequencies, which is a nice change. I dunno about the other guy who reviewd this - but id say that the N505 does have a loud output, or should that be i havent gone death yet ? :)

Comparing the LP2 and Original mode's is VERY hard, there is very little to distinguish both. However, LP4 is more like 96kbit/s mp3' files, not as detailed as a higher rated file, but not too bad either. Im using mine purely in LP2.


The remote is quite nice, although again this is more personal opinion as my friend wasnt too keen on it , were as im pretty happy with it. Shame it has no screen on it - but hey, my brain works :) That'll do.

Battery life so far hasnt been bad, and from what my uncle was saying about his R90, it shouldnt be too bad. G-protection works by loading a good proportion of the song into memory - hence why they give EXTREME high playback times. What I noticed is that the MD would load for 5 seconds then the mechanism inside would stop for a good 80 seconds (in LP2 mode). Good idea, as im yet to hear it "break up" in playback.

The NI-CD battery is ok- although i felt they were being cheap , and should have thrown in a NI-MH ... so that way it doesnt dry up in 6 months time like most cadiums doo. But this is a replaceable AA cell - no worries really. Runs on alkaline's too. Although this isnt as nice on the environment - or your pocket.

So in short, its a cracking buy. Yes you can buy the higher range models with nice lcd's on the remote, although can it be justified in the price ? I wasnt born yesterday, and i doubt you are if your reading this.

$ = £

WELL RECOMMENDED :)