I purchased my R50 in February, from Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. I noticed it in the "See, Buy Fly" magazine, for fl.599,- which is approximately $360. Usually it would have cost $50 more in the shops, but I took this opportunity to purchase this unit here. When I got the unit, I was amazed how small it was. I know that it is not the smallest, but I thought that it would have been slightly thicker. As compared to the R30, it is quite a bit smaller. Measuring 109.5 x 19.7 x 77mm (w/h/d) and weighing 190g, with no battery or MD, it is light and compact. Supplied with the Walkman: AC Power Adapter (AC-MZ60A), earbuds with a remote control (RM-MZR50), LIP-8 Lithium-Ion rechargeable battery, a dry cell case, earbud pads and a soft carrying pouch.

This particular unit is the Silver coloured one. The buttons are well placed, on the front. The editing buttons (End Search, Track Mark and Erase) are placed on the bottom, along with 'Record' and 'Open' Beside the slider to open the clamshell, is the headphone/remote socket. The hold switch is positioned above the 3 editing buttons. On the left side, is the (optical) input and output, along with the microphone (plug in power). Also on this side, the 'Mega Bass' and 'Synchro Record'. Top side, the DC in (6v) and the lid for the LIP-8 Rechargeable Battery. On the right side, is where the external battery case can be attached. On the rear, the Mic Sensitivity, and AVLS switches are placed. Also, the Clock set & a hole for placing the unit on a car mounting bracket.

The front panel consists of: play, stop, pause, title/enter, fwd, rev, the vertical jog dial, display & mode. There is an LED for when the unit is recording. The screen displays: track #, track title, disc name (both scroll to the left), time, battery indication (4 steps), bass indication (3 steps), position pointer (flashes to show where on the disc the laser is reading) and a 1 band spectrum analyzer. Also, a disc turning to show playback. One thing to notice: if the TOC has been edited, the ellipse around the 'turning disc' flashes. By pressing "display" the screen shows the remaining time of the song, and title. Press it once more shows the total time remaining (of the disc) and the disc name. Press it again, the display shows the date & time recorded. (a.m. & p.m.) Press it once more and it returns to the track # and time. If the player is stopped, and the display button is pressed 3 times, the display shows the current date & time. Play modes: press once: repeat all. Again: repeats current song. Again: random play. Editing is done with the use of the (very handy) vertical jog dial. The recorder has the whole Qwerty keyboard installed. To title a track, play it and press the title/enter button. The recorder automatically goes into 'repeat mode' By rolling the jog-dial up & down, you can scroll through characters. Once the desired character is found, the dial can be pushed down, and the recorder automatically moves to the next space where a character can be placed. Once the whole title is entered, press title/enter. To title the whole disc, playback must be stopped. Then just carry out the previous steps. Moving songs, and viewing the rest of the disc (while one song is playing), and selecting songs can be done through the jog-dial. Erasing is also very easy. Play the song, and press erase twice. (First it asks, "Erase?" and pressing it again basically means OK!) Erasing the whole disc: Press stop (to stop any playback/recording) hole erase and slide record.

The "Stick Type" remote control has a shuttle used to play, fwd, and rew. Stop is situated on the end of the shuttle. Also on the remote: vol (+ & -). track mark (ONLY whilst recording. Not playback), display, playmode, pause and a hold switch. On the back, a clip. The remote accommodates mini plugs, so no messing around with microplugs and adapters! The screen shows: track #, track time, track title, disc title (using display) spinning disc and battery indication. When recording, a REC. shows up to the left of the battery indication. Recording is also very easy. Plug in an analogue or digital source into the Line In, press end search, and slide record. Record standby, hold down pause and slide record. Mono record: go into standby rec., and press mode. Manual recording level: press pause, slide rec. for 2 sec, and then use fwd and rew to alter recording level. Recording level can not be altered during recording. A handy feature when recharging the battery is that you can also use the unit to play back MDs. Therefore, whilst using the unit, it is also charging. The LIP-8 Lithium-Ion battery gives app. 7 hours of playback. Attach the external battery, and you get an extra 15 hours, totaling 22 hours! The external battery alone gives approximately 12 hours. Recording with the LIP-8 gives approximately 4 hours. One very handy feature, is that the battery has no memory problems; you can charge the battery while it is still half full!

Overall, I am very pleased with this unit. Although it is discontinued, I believe it is one of the best recorders Sony has produced. The Jog Dial is a very handy feature, which the successor of the R50, the R55 does not have. Although there is no backlite display, I do not need this feature. Since the R55 has now taken over, I would still have opted for this model because of the battery life, Jog Dial, and being able to use the recorder whilst charging the battery. Yes, the R55 is smaller, which is tempting, but it can have "phantom" problems. There is only one drawback to the unit: mechanically it can be quite noisy. This may become annoying when using a microphone which is connected directly to the unit (i.e. a Sony ecm-ds70p one point stereo mic) However, most of the time, you barely hear the unit. Even though the R50 is no longer being made, if you find it in the shops, take the opportunity in purchasing this great unit. You won't regret it! The MZ-R50 is a solid portable MiniDisc recorder. When I first got it, I couldn't believe how small it was, and even to today's standards, its miniscule. It has less volume than a regular CD case, and easily slips into your jeans pocket (unlike CD players that just couldn't do it). Included with the unit was a cool stick remote, a pair of earbud headphones, a thin carrying bag for the unit, an LIP-8 rechargeable battery, an AC adapter, and an add-on 2 AA battery gumpack.

Everything about the MZ-R50 feels like its been well thought out. Button placement is great, and the jog dial wheel makes titling your MiniDisc tracks *so* much faster than other methods. The clamshell lid design has allowed Sony to make the unit slimmer than the slot-in design other brands generally use. The microphone in, line in, and line out jacks are all on one side surface, with the remote/headphones jack located neatly on the corner. The display is great... you can get track time, track time remaining, disc time remaining, date, etc. It even has a level meter for when you're recording.

I love the Lithium-Ion battery that comes with it. It'll last for 8 hours on playback... not too shabby. And you can start recharging the battery even when its been half used up... no battery memory problems! The remote is great, too. Its not bulky like most of the remotes out there. The scrolling display even will show you full track names.

Overall, I am very satisfied with this unit. I've shown it to lots of my friends, and believe it or not, I actually have SEVEN friends who went out and got the MZ-R50 too! Not bad. :) So if you're asking, I can tell you right now, the MZ-R50 is a great unit!

Added note: I have had my MZ-R50 for over a year now, and it has started to suffer a bit from age. The clamshell lid no longer springs open as it used to, and several of the screws in the unit have actually come loose (since then I've sealed them with Lock-Tite glue). But function wise, the unit is still working great. The MZ-R50 have given me alot of joy for the time I have had it. For me it's almost perfect. The size (11 x 2 x 8 cm) isn't very much bigger than a ordinary casette walkman, the weight with the supplied battery and a MD may be a bit too heavy (240 g / 8.5 oz) for a shirt-pocket or similar though.

The battery time (7h play / 4h Recording) with the supplied battery is O.k and can be pushed up with the battery case housing standard AA-batteries, though it gets pretty bulky with it attached.

The size/weight of the remote is perfect and usage of the remote is O.k but it could be improved quite a bit I think. For example it would be nice to have a backlit display and be able to edit the names of tracks/discs from the remote, though I think the possibility of getting the later drawback fixed is limitied due to limitations in the interface between the player and remote.

There may wery well be a possibility to replace the remote with a new one from Sony's newer modell wich will have a backlite display, but this modell havn't been relased yet where I live so I can't be certain though.

So far I havn't noticed any problems with it, there are things you can improve such as the interface for naming discs and tracks, supply better headphones, and etc but this is drawbacks every portable MD player suffers from. I have some comments to add to the previous reviews, because otherwise I would be reiterating comments that were already made, to which I wholeheartedly agree. However, the MZR-50 has some undesirable features for making serious home recordings, and I do not consider it a pro unit for certain applications. I will add the caveat that this may be a problem with all MiniDisc portable recorders, and I will have to start looking more closely at the features on other machines to see if there is a better one out there.

For the past two years I have been recording live events where there only thing I needed to do to get a good recording (besides mike placement) was to set the levels or leave it on automatic record. The MZR-50 is wonderful for this application EXCEPT that you cannot set record levels on the fly, which is a problem with all Sony portables.

I decided to try a new application and set out to record myself singing and playing guitar. I chose to use the manual record levels to try to get the best recording that I could. In my opinion, the manual record features on this unit are inexact. There is no indicator that shows the actual Db level. While you are recording there are several empty rectangles running vertically up the left side of the display and they are "blacked out" in ascending order based on how loud the recording is. The MZR-50 manual merely advises that after 7 of the rectangles have turned black, anything above that is in the "hot zone," i.e. there is likely distortion. So the first problem besides no Db level indicators is that the hot zone that is not clearly marked on the display, and one must resort to squinting at black rectangles.

Here is the biggest problem as I see it. In order to set manual record levels, one must use the SAME buttons that set the volume up and down on playback. When either the plus or minus button is pushed, a horizontal black line at the bottom of the display is made either larger or smaller. This is quite an inexact science. This wouldn't be so bad in and of itself, but it is compounded by the fact that each time you listen to a "take" on playback, you have to use the SAME volume buttons to get a good volume in the headphones, thereby upsetting the levels you had previously set for recording. Unlike the record levels, there are not even separate rectangles to help get you back where you were in order to record another "take."

It does not take long for this process to be extremely frustrating. I am going to use my Sharp deck to record next time, and I certainly hope that it facilitates home recording better than the MZR-50. The MZR-50 is fine for recording out in the field, say a concert, or a lecture--any situation where the subject of your recording is not going to stop and start over many times in order to get a decent "take." But a musician trying to get good home recordings might be well advised to buy another machine. The only way I can think of to use this machine efficiently for home recording is to get the record level set for a particular song, and each time you think you've gotten a bad "take" just put the machine on pause, rather than stopping, so you'll get a track mark. Then push pause again when you are ready to start over. When you're all done, pick the track or tracks you like and erase the bad ones.

Of course, when you go to the next song, or use different instruments, you'll be back where you started from--going back and forther between using the same plus and minus buttons to set the record levels AND for volume to listen to the playback. GRRRRR. Although critics and the media would say "world's smallest", "world's lightest", and "this is the best recorder..." and what else for every new model that comes to the market, I'd still say from my experience that this is one of the best recorders ever produced by Sony. I have one myself, so this is no joke.

Here I am only going to outline the remarkable characteristics that I have noticed since I'd started using this player, and am going to avoid the rest of the details everyone already knows.

The MZ-R50 seems to be an improvement from the MZ- R30, as their designs look similar, and is actually a larger version of the MZ-R55. It has all the capabilities of the R55, but with more features, and better.

The Jog Dial. The jog dial makes titling a lot faster, as you can avoid pressing the button many times or holding it down just to reach a letter. With the flick of a thumb you can scroll through many letters at one go, so it is overall faster to reach each letter you want. Track searching is facilitated, because you can scroll from the first track immediately to the last track on the disc. For example, say your disc has 15 tracks. Ordinarily if you pressed the Fwd button you'd have to press it 14 times if you're at the first track to reach the fifteenth track. But with the jog dial you just have to turn it downwards once and press it to reach track 15 from track 1 (or you can turn it upwards 14 times too, which in this case is still faster than using the buttons). It is a feature that should be sustained on all models!

The Lithium Ion Battery. This is one reason that contributes to the size of the MZ-R50. The li-Ion battery has much longer life than the NiMH battery, and has a longer shelf-life too. The reason why later models using the NiMH battery can play and record longer than this model is because they are designed to use up less battery power in the same amount of time. The R50 can last on 8 hours of playback and 5 hours on record with one charge, which is reasonable, unlike the R55 - 4 hours playback and 2.5 hours record. I used to own an R55, and after some time of usage I'd found that the battery shelf-life had decreased so much it could only record 1.5 hours (and playback for only about 2 hours)! As time stretched on, every now and then I found I had to use the AA battery pack, which was really cumbersome! I sold it in the end.

I own a few models of Sony recorders, and noticed that the MZ-R50 has the FASTEST disc reading speed of all the recorders! It takes about three seconds or less from the moment you insert a disc and close the lid to read the TOC in the disc - faster than the R55. To play a track it is almost instantaneous. The MZ-R91, which I also own now, takes about ten seconds just to read the TOC! And it takes another few seconds just to play a track. Of course, here I'm talking about playing any track other than the first (straight after disc insertion), as the first track does not need scrolling, and therefore is accessed quite fast on all recorders. TOC update is also significantly faster. Probably also explains why the R50 is larger. To make the R55, R90 and R91 smaller, Sony had to sacrifice something, so disc reading turned out slower. In the end they made the R91 so small until the Line Out had to be removed.

About sound quality, I have tried different models of recorders over time and (I don't know about you, but) I feel the MZ-R50 has slightly better sound than other recorders. I've done careful listening on friends' recorders and it seems the larger models like the R30 and R50 have slightly richer bass and slightly more 'surround' effect than the smaller models. This is another reason why I'd decided to sell my R55. Some people I'd told this to said they couldn't tell the difference and that they all sounded equally good, but I am telling you I can hear the difference. I believe this is because the larger models contain space to house a better amplifier chip.

I am not the type who is particular about size, but I'd say I prefer the size of the R50 because it is easier and nicer to hold while doing editing. If the unit is too small then you'd have to do editing with one hand and it can become quite tiring. It's all personal preference, really.

Also, this is one unit whereby almost every function has a button on its own! There is one button for Erase, one for Track Mark, one for End Search, which is rare on other recorders! It also has separate holes; one for (Optical)Line In, one for Line Out, one for Microphone (Plug in Power), and one for headphones/remote. Look at the R91: because of its size, Sony had to sacrifice the Line Out on the R91 and combine it with the headphones instead. If you own an R91 you'll know that this can be quite a hassle.

The last thing I must say about this unit is this one special thing about it that the other recorders do not / did not have. If you possess an older R50 with rom version less than 01.40, you can digitally copy an MD to another MD! On R50s that were produced earlier it is possible to go into test mode and turn off the SCMS (Serial Copy Management System) which prevents the mass generating of digital copies.

It's a pity this model is no longer in production. It is really hard to find a brand new sealed-in-the-box MZ-R50 now. To all R50 owners: cherish it very well! I can attest to what others have said about dropping the r50. In the few weeks i've had mine i've accidentally dropped it 3-4 times. Well actually it's been more like i've gotten tangled up in the mess of cabling and yanked it down off it's perch (it gets messy with a psu, headphones, line out, line in and mic in). This was on a carpeted rug mind you from about 3-4 feet. I don't look forward to the day that I accidently drop it on anything harder. The only thing I think that would fail is the plastic battery cover....which while a bit niftier than the usual battery cover held on by two studded plastic clips it is by no means something that would withstand a lot of exertion. It would have made more sense just to machine a piece of magnesium alloy for it. I imagine it was a cost provision to use plastic.

Being that this is my first minidisc, i'm pretty happy with the choice I made, sound quality is good, though my opinion is hardly subjective as i've not heard a whole lot of bad sounding md's. It's kinda heavy the size of it is just right, from what i've seen smaller equals less and smaller sized buttons. Cool metal in hands. Very nice to look at, I have a silver model....would of been nice to gotten a blue model though I did see a posting somewhere and some pics of someone who did their own VERY nice paint job on a r50. So that may be a possibility in the future, but i'm happy with the way it looks now. If I would have done a tad bit more looking into the other brands I am pretty sure I would have gone for a backlit, slot-loading, on the fly rec level adjustable sharp model (701 I think it was, though i've heard the sharps are notorious for getting a utoc error). Maybe it's not backlit though, anyhow installing a backlight (or a strip of backlighting material to the lcd) yourself would be possible. I've heard of people who do it on music equipment, though a little expensively.

I was mainly looking at slightly used models as I wasn't looking to spend much over $150. I considered getting an r37 new, but the r50 looked like such a better model.

The buttons on the outside edge are very small and have taken some getting used to (the megabass button is like a 1/3 of the size of the next biggest button). One thing which bugs me is when the unit is in it's included pouch you obviously want the headphone jack pointing up (to minimize stress on it and to maximize the cable length)....but when the unit is oriented in this manner all the usefull controls are on the other end of the unit. I've gotten pretty good at feeling through the pouch for controls...but it would have been more convienient if the transport controls and headphone jack were on the same end. A minor gripe...

Another thing i've noticed is that the plug for the remote is a lot sturdier and low profile than a norml angle plug. I would pay extra for a plug like this but with false remote leads, as i'm not that interested in remotes.

I don't use the included headphones, as I don't use the remote (a foot long headphone cable doesn't leave you with many options besides using it with the remote). I'll probobly pick up some nice sony buds, like those 888's or the m70's (I think?)

I haven't really used the remote much, it looks nice and has teeny buttons and is missing some functions I think it ought to have....like record, track mark (there is a track mark button on there but it only works while recording...dunno what the thinking is in that). I would think it would get in my way if anything as well as garnering unwanted attention, but for bringing the main controls outside of your enclosed md it would work well (as in my above mentioned rant). It has a clip which the unit itself doesn't have. I think a third pary could make a clip pretty easily though as there is a metal screw hole on the back of the unit where a car adapter screws in. I usually have the md in it's little sack in a bag of some sort.

I filled up 7 md's worth of stuff from my computer the first 3 days I had it. This went very well, I really got a feel for working with marking tracks, deleting portions of audio and rearranging the tracks around. You can't name tracks while recording which other units can. This kinda sucks because it would only make sense if your recording in real-time. On the other hand you can name tracks in play mode, which is a decent compromise I guess, it would really be bad if you couldn't do this. The track your naming loops continuesly until you confirm your selection, then the unit briefly pauses to write the info to the toc. I thought the lack of a program mode was pretty lame....but then I realized you can manually and very easily move tracks around in the toc. There are no menu's whatsoever in the r50....just multiple button pressing for some functions. This makes getting things done a lot more intuitive than scrolling through one large menu (the newer sony's have this "feature"). You can't name tracks while recording but you can name them while playing (albeit the track just repeats continuesly, and once you enter in the track name playback stops momentarily). Setting track marks on the fly worked pretty easily. Why you can't set track marks in play mode from the remote makes no sense to me.

The mega boost sounds good. It boosts both hi and lo ends just enough not to be overdoing it, i'm not sure if turning mega boost off would save battery life but I would imagine a little bit. I usually just leave it on the first level, it likes to reset itself sometimes. I'm not sure what causes this, haven't gotten to the bottom of that.

I wish I could tell what the time is on the r50, it has a clock...geez. Time stamping is nice though. For whatever reason the remote only displays the Time the track was recorded, why no other time stamp info baffles me.

I understand some other md units can't be used while recharging, the r50 can though....this rocks. Battery life is decent, and will last a day. Haven't used the battery pack yet, but it screws on pretty securely and what's kinda neat is that the battery pack will recharge the internal battery when the md is off or so i've heard.

One thing I have noticed and was pointed out to me after I bought the r50 was the relatively low headphone output level. It's rated at 5mw at 16ohms. I had been previously using a portable discman that had a much more pronounced output so I was kinda bummed. Sensitive impedance matched closed ear headphones maximise what is there. I have never gotten with the avl system all sony portables use. It's probobly just a selling point for parents. Back in the days walkmans used to pump out mad wattage to your ears and I could understand having something that would keep you from going deaf (or at least warn you), but with such an underpowered headphone output it is just silly. When hooked up from the line out to my home stereo what comes out sounds nice, almost nicer than that of the output on my portable cd (don't know why...maybe i'm just dreaming). Anyhow...

I was lucky to have gotten my r50 about a week before I was going to a show, Tortoise & Nobukazu Takemura. So I was really excited that I would be able to tape it. I didn't have a lot of cash to spend on a microphone so I picked up one of those inexensive binaural electret sets of mic's radio shack sells for $20 (thanks minidisc.org for the suggestion). It's OK...they only supply with one mic clip for holding both mics next to each other, a battery box with an obnoxiously long cable (comes in handy though if your recording from other than yourself) and two mono plugs (errr...this makes it pretty much useless for using with a minidisc outside of a home, unless using an adapter is to your fancy....it isn't for me, to bulky), and 2 wind screens.

Now in the few days before the concert I did some experimenting with just the mic itself hooked into the mic in jack on my r50. First things first.....auto-leveling sucks for live recording via a mic. I had very good transparent results when using it for recording from a line out, where the levels don't fluctuate so greatly....though I can forsee even having problems with this, with very dynamic orchestral type music (which isn't usually in my listening rotation).

The addition of a mic sensitivity lo/hi switch is really nice. I understand some of the units after the r50 don't even have this and the latest sony md's have this implemented in a software menu. Don't get me wrong it's nothing like recording level adjustment, it's just nice to have the option to pick up a lot more signal when your doing field recordings or other faintly audible things. Works well picking up conversations at a distance....if that is your fancy.

Setting record levels requires you hold the record switch for 2 seconds. The r50 allways defaults to auto leveling, which is kinda poopey. You can get around this by just pausing recording instead of stoping, though this wastes precious battery life. Thankfully when the r50 powers down or you exit out of rec mode it will remember your last manual record level. Another nice feature is that the r50 starts recording immediatly when you slide the recording switch(i usually like to go into rec mode paused so this isn't a big feature for me), some other units make you wait for the toc to be read before starting recording, which would chop of a bit of audio in the begining.

I made up some homemade mic clips out of store bought aligator clips (the kind with a tube at the end used for crimping larger gauge wire around, you can bend these flat for a base to insert the electrets in). So i just bent and pounded the tubes on the end flat, punched a hole in the center and started drilling em out to fit in the electrets. I did the measurements by eye and went down one measument from there, i think it was 3/8 of an inch in the end. I then cut out a little chink in the front for the elecrets wire to pass thru. Did a little adjusting with a small vice grip with the electrets in the hole to make sure it was snug. As an afterthought I super-glued some electrical tape to the top surface that the electrets would be facing up from, so as to make things a little smoother for the electrets. I left a little bit of tape around the inside edges. This worked really quite well, in a jiffy.

So after I had these made up i clipped the mics on the sides of a hat and went walking around recording things this way. I got pretty good results, it's really weird listening to some of the stuff and you swear something is walking up behind you, the stereo imaging and spatializion was very realistic. I'm a sorta hobby electro musician and this was one of the big selling points for buying a minidisc, taking field recordings easily, being able to sample anything and everything!

I also tried the mics on my shoulders, underneath my arms inside my shirt and without the clips positioned in shirt pocket button holes. I got the best stereo field (imo) from the mics pointing out of the button holes. The mics clipped onto my hat pointed out toward the side...which made things kinda odd sounding stereo field wise.

In prepartion for the show I was gonna see I tried out the mics recording my home stereo at a fairly loud spl level. I later realized that it was no where near the levels at the show.

Reading record and play levels as well as setting them...is pretty impercise. As others have said the lack of an indicator that shows you where your signal overloads sucks. Some kind person (sorry I forgot to write down your name) figured out, what the indicator bars on the left of the display correspond with in terms of db level.

The Sony has its advantages as well. The level meter bar, while not clearly labeled, has been 'decoded' to the equivalent values: 1 = -51dB, 2 = -40dB, 3 = -30dB, 4 = -20dB, 5 = -12dB, 6 = -6dB, 7 = -4dB, 8 = -2dB, 9 = 0dB ("OVER")

So la la la, the day of the show comes up and I decided i'm going to just put the mics inside my shirt underneath my arms as I was worried about security and being stealthy. I started out in auto leveling mode for the opening act. I had a little bit of light in the theater, but w/out any I would have been dead in the water...a little pen light would come in handy. Halfway through the opening act I paused recording and slid the rec switch over to get into manual rec mode. This was my first time doing this on the fly so it took me a bit, I later got pretty quick at doing this which I was happy with and losing a few secs of audio wasn't to big for me. I set the levels so they weren't peaking so much and left it that way until I felt I could turn up the level a bit. La la la, end of the opening act I went to bathroom to relieve my worry. It sounded ok.....a little distortion, which I thought was just because the mic pre in the md was clipping. Later I figured out the mic was the one overloading. The boomy standing bass really did it.

I think if I would have used a battery box (one with a low roll off filter would be great...the sound profesionals sells one I may pick up, though expensive) I could have gotten less distortion from the mic. As from what I understand more power to the mic gives it a wider dynamic range and frequency response...the roll off filter would have just kept the boomy bassy from being recorded.

Overall it was an OK first live concert recording, and experience. I enjoyed myself :)

I imagine my r50 to last a long time and get a lot of use.

Minidiscs Rock!