The first thing noticied about this player is that it sports Sony's newly used 2-Line matrix display. For people like me, who like to see song, disc title, and time, all at once, this new feature really comes in handy. The major steps up from its little sister, the 320, are the included remote commander, which can control every functioin of the unit, the 2-line display, the extra buttons on the unit (including scroll, a fader button, which can be used to fade up and down during playback and recording, play mode, and repeat buttons), the ability to program tracks in any order, digitally fade in and out, adjust the record level using the jog dial (no analog record level control), a headphone out, the ability to record in mono (which doubles the record time), a second optical in (TOS-link), and an optical output. Of all the new features the ones that are very nice to me are the two line display and of course the ability to name and do all the editing features from a huge, user friendly remote. It is the biggest Sony remote I have ever seen! This unit is very easy to use and the digital record level setting feature is nice because it remembers its last setting and if you record off the radio you can memorize each stations record level (some stations have minor differences in broadcast levels) The digital record level is adjusted by pressing the imput button and then using the jog dial to increase it by a tenth of a decibal. However, the jog dial is speed sensitive, what this means is that the faster or harder you turn it the more it will increase or decrease. For example, you can turn it one full turn and increase the deciblas by almost 2, if you jerk it a whole turn it will go about 5 decibals. You can also adjust the record level from the remote, but the process is a bit slower. It also features a larger dB meter, about a thrid larger then the 320, but no where near as large as the dB meter on my WE425 cassette deck.

The set up menu is also very nice. It offers minor adjustments of almost everything on the deck, from digital out levels to digital in levels, to how low the sound level has to go down to utilize the level sync feature. Recording is very easy, even easier then cassette, and the time machine recording feature is very nice (as soon as you press record, the 6 second buffer starts to fill with the imput, if you activate the time machine record function it will (plaster) all the music stored in the buffer instantly onto the disc). I have no complaints for the unit except for the smaller music calender (this is the first unit to have a 15 element calender instead of 25) and to get to the editing features you have to go through an extra menu to get to. Some things I would like to see a future unit to have are an S-Link (A-1) control out and in, a larger music calender, buttons on the remote that can be pressed directly to do the editing functions (divide, combine, etc.), seperate menus for the setup and editing functions, and the ability for the name of the track to continuesly scroll accross the screen during playback (like most portables do). This is a very solid unit, and I have not had any problems with it. I would highly reccommend it. However, I think the 530, 630, and 930 are out at about this time and they probably have some nice improvments over the *20 series. So if your in the market for a SONY home recording unit, be sure to check out the 520.