Sony's CD-ROM Discman follows old strengths

By Zatni Arbi

JAKARTA (JP): On one of the shelves in my study sits the first Sony Discman that I had ever bought. It is definitely very bulky compared with today's designs, but it has a rechargeable battery. It introduced me to the wonderful sonic world of compact disks.

My first audio compact disk was one that contained Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik played by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields with Sir Neville Marriner as the conductor. At the time, I listened to this CD over and over because, as a student living on a scholarship in Honolulu, Hawaii, I didn't have money to buy more CDs.

That old Discman has gone through a lot of abuse. I used to take it to bed at night because I really enjoyed listening to semi-classical music through earphones until I fell asleep (I was sharing an apartment room with a fellow student and therefore I had to use earphones to leave him in peace). I sometimes took it with me to the library at the beautiful Manoa campus, and it got squashed between thick and heavy text books inside my backpack.

Naturally, after a while this mistreatment had an impact. The hinges of the cover were finally broken, and big dents and cracks began to show here and there. The worst problem was that there was no sound from the headphones unless I spent at least ten minutes fiddling with the jack.

Later, the battery gave me just a few minutes of playing time before it ran out of juice -- although I had recharged it for hours. Yet, despite the damage, it can still play music if I'm willing to twist it, roll it and shake it.

That was indeed an extraordinarily interesting product. I've encountered many lousy Sony products, but I've also encountered a lot of interesting ones from the giant electronics company that are now as ragged as that old Discman of mine.

It is more than nine years since I bought that first Discman, and I have recently found another interesting Discman from Sony. It is interesting because, like the Panasonic KXL-D740 that I reviewed early last month, it can also read CD-ROMs. I cannot test its sturdiness with the old tortures, because it is not mine. But, courtesy of Memori Primatama, I was able to play with it to get to know its features.

You may recall from my review of the Panasonic drive, that I liked it very much. The new Sony Discman costs about Rp 200,000 (US$86) more than that one, but the extra features may make the price difference irrelevant. That doesn't mean that I've changed my mind about the Panasonic drive, though.

Slim design

While unpacking the CD-ROM Discman, one may get a little bit intimidated by the array of accessories that the box contains. Fortunately it doesn't require a rocket scientist to figure out how to put the pieces together.

The handsome, two-color drive (the body is black and the cover is dark gray) is very slim. It is smaller than the Panasonic drive, but it feels much more rugged than the latter. There is not a see-through window on the cover, and this increases the rugged look of the drive.

This portable CD-ROM drive comes with a rechargeable lithium ion battery, which is the newest kind of battery technology for portable devices on the market today. This type of battery usually comes inside an expensive notebook computer, because it costs more than any other type of notebook battery. The one that comes in the package is very small -- almost the size of an AA battery, and it slides into a compartment at the back of the drive.

I did not test the battery as the gadget was on loan, and the manual did not say how long we could expect it to last when it was fully recharged.

When it is playing audio compact disks, the LCD monitor tells us the track number, the minutes and seconds of play time and other playing mode information. Unfortunately, the LCD is on the front of the player. Not only is it very small, it is also difficult to read if it is placed on a table top because of the angle. We have to be in front of the drive to be able to read it. The Panasonic's placement of the LCD display is preferable. Since it is on the top cover, we do not have to bend down to read it.

Although the unit does not have a strap, you could take it jogging if you wished. Just slide the alkaline battery case underneath the drive until the catchers click into place. This docking station holds four AA batteries. But we must still insert the power cable's jack from the alkaline battery compartment into the power socket of the drive. I wish Sony had made the procedure automatic by adding connectors that would snap together the moment the drive was seated properly on the base.

A SCSI device

The included PC Card that connects the Discman drive to a notebook computer is an Adaptec APA 1460 SCSI II host adapter. Using a card made by the leader in SCSI adapters means that we can connect other SCSI devices to our notebook with no problem. The drive can be assigned SCSI ID # 3 or # 5 by changing the dip switch on the bottom side of the drive. When the card was inserted into the PC Card slot of my notebook for the first time, Windows 95 immediately recognized it and requested Setup Disk # 7 to be inserted into the floppy drive so that the necessary device driver files could be copied to the hard disk.

Unlike the Panasonic drive, however, the connection at the back of the drive uses a small SCSI interface, which may still be difficult to find on the market. I like the Panasonic drive better because it uses the standard wide SCSI connector. If your desktop PC already has a SCSI board, you can normally attach the drive to it and it will become an external CD-ROM drive. In the case of the Sony Discman, you will have to buy the new, small connector to make it work.

Getting the notebook to recognize the drive was a little bit tricky, particularly because I had sinned by not reading the manual carefully. It turned out that I had to turn on the drive first by pressing the Play button before inserting the card into its slot. Only then could I begin to install the driver for the CD-ROM drive which came on a single diskette.

Once the software driver was installed, the device worked flawlessly. Performance was just what you'd expect from a quad- speed drive. The drive could read all kinds of CDs -- including CD-recordable, multisession Photo CD and CD-extra. A green lamp lights up when the drive is busy working.

Other features

The installation process also added EZ-SCSI utilities to Windows 95, including Adaptec CD-player and Photo-CD viewer. In addition to the standard CD player utility, there is also a mini CD-Player that does not take too much space on the notebook screen. The driver diskette also contains drivers for Windows 3.x and DOS. It is thoughtful of Sony to include all these drivers, because not everybody is using Windows 95, even a year after its launch.

For music lovers, Sony included a pair of Sony headphones that produce good quality sound. Like most other ultra-portable CD players, there is only one control button for sound, i.e., the volume control. Unfortunately, the control is a little too close to the headphone jack and the line-out jacks, which makes setting the volume rather awkward if you have it connected to a pair of headphones and an amplifier.

The control buttons could have been located more sensibly. The Rewind button is placed to the right of the Play button. It would be more logical to put this button to left of the Play button and the Fast Forward to the right of the Play button. The Power Off button has a label underneath it, but unless you had read the manual you would not know that to power up you should press the Play button.

Two buttons sit to the left of the LCD display. One activates the Select mode, and the other selects either CD-ROM or audio CD playing mode. In my opinion, the functions of these two buttons could easily be combined into one. The bass frequency range can be boosted, using the Mode and Select buttons, too.

The sound quality is good, whether you're listening to the audio CD through a pair of power speakers connected to the line- out jack or through the included headphones. The CD, however, has to be pushed down the hub with a little force. It is unlike most other CD players that we've seen, where we usually only have drop the CD inside the well.

This reminds me of the CD-ROM drive of a friend's Compaq notebook. I was trying to install a software program from my CD- ROM, but I couldn't get the drive to read the CD-ROM. When I pushed the Eject button, the tray refused to come out. When it finally came out, I realized that, as for this Sony Discman, I should have pressed the CD-ROM all the way down the shaft.

The good thing about the locking mechanism on this player is that it is more immune to shocks. But remember this when you use a new CD-ROM drive: You may have to place your fingers around the center of the CD-ROM and press it down with a little force before the drive can work properly.

As I mentioned earlier, this Sony Discman is more expensive than the Panasonic. If what you want is performance and if the extra convenience of a rechargeable battery is unnecessary, you should buy the Panasonic. But, if you have the money and you like the rechargeable battery, you should go with Sony. With the lithium ion battery and the cute headphones, the price difference is certainly worth it.