Excellent

I bought this to replace a Philips stereo which lasted a year. In the hope of this lasting longer, I spent another 50+ pounds on this model, and I was very happy.

In the box comes a slim remote controller (without AAA batteries), with an English manual (for UK) and a power lead. The stereo itself is very well designed, and sturdy. It does not seem to be made out of the cheap plastic my previous Philips, Sharp, Hitachi stereos were made out of.

The stereo itself is not light, not heavy. Its handle is huge, the aerial is normal, cassette deck is well positioned with the buttons, and the CD tray is on the top. One down side is that the CD door is quite large, so it takes some time to open and close - but the oil will wear down on that.

Whats not mentioned anywhere is that this speaker actually has CONVEX shaped speakers, which is rather wierd, as normal speakers are concave shaped, but apparently its a design to allow more dynamic and wide music output which I thought was quite nice. The speakers go very loud. The volume button has two buttons, so its rather annoying if you want to put the music from level 1 to 10 without having to wait 30 seconds. The speakers do have good power to them, and I thought it was excellent sound, especially with the Mega Bass function (although this didn't make MUCH of a difference with it being on).

The player can play MP3 too and has an Operate button on the front to turn on and off. It also has a sleep function which is handy, so you can set it to turn off by itself. The player also has I think 3 presents for the equaliser, which you can't change. Doesn't make a huge difference changing this but might do depending on your music.

Overall, a very very good sturdy well built model from Sony. Impressed so far. Definitely worth a purchase!

*This model seems to have been out since 2006, however Sony have released a new model which is exaclty the same which released in Nov 2007. The new model is £80 at the moment - compared to £65 for this model, and the new model is Blue in colour. There is however NO difference as far as I am aware between the two models apart from the colour, and the shelf life its had.*

Hope that helps!

Sony CFDS01CD Radio Recorder

I bought this radio recorder for a friend who is partially sighted. It's perfect, the buttons are big and it's very easy to use at an affordable price.

Pretty good player

I have owned this CD player for a few years. It is a pretty good player and still works as well as the day I bought it.

I have no complaints about this at all.

Cheap but good SACD quality.

I have used this player for about 6 months now. Even with normal CD's it is a pretty impressive sound. With SACD surround sound it is excellent value.

Sony - trading on past glories...

I am writing a review of a Sony recordable CD deck to warn potential buyers that I have found it to be badly-specified and -worst of all- unreliable. Although my deck has been used only very occasionally, it has begun to malfunction and refuses to do 'what it says on the box', namely, to record.

I tried to contact Sony UK on this matter, but that was a futile exercise whereby you are put on hold for 15 mins and then answered by an Asian call-centre. Eventually I was told that the equipment was broken (revelations!) and gave me the number of the nearest repairer in my area. Hopeless.

Sony is perhaps an example of a company that has grown too large with a commensurate drop in quality-control. It used to be one of the top 2 brands of quality hifi equipment (I have Sony gear from the 80's which is still working perfectly) - no longer. I shall NEVER buy Sony again. The notorious unreliablility of their Vaio laptops reflects the fact that like Mercedes-Benz, they are trading on past glories and customers are paying for poor quality and rather vulgar showiness, rather than a quality piece of equipment.

Quick and dirty - fantastic bit of kit

I had to give this unit 5 stars, but first one negative point I need to cover - when recording vocals (I use an SM58) I cannot really hear myself through headphones - the master fader doubles as the master headphone volume, so cutting the volume of the recorded tracks down to let the vocal stand out means that you cant get much volume overall - clearly when it comes to vocals the best way to work is via an external amplifier of some sort which headphones in that, but I wouldn't say this was major enough to justify losing a star.
What I love about the BR900 is how quick and dirty it is. You just switch on and record. No long boot, no complicated menus and fantastic BOSS quality effects built in. The amp emulators are very good, and the effects are quite dry - I use a gibson nighthawk and it really shines now. Previously I was using a Tascam 788 which is a good (but complicated) box, however the built in effects drowned everything and you could probably get the same guitar sound using a Peavey Predator.
The bass simulators, which vastly simplify the layout of my corner of the living room known either as 'that mess' or 'my studio' depending on who you talk to, allow you to use your six string guitar as a bass. Maybe would not be the case on any guitar out there, but on mine, I find it only really works with the 6th and 5th strings, 4th string and on sounds a bit strained. However the finished result is surprisingly convincing.
Equally true for the built in drums, which have a wide variety of patterns, and a 'tap' function to allow you select tempo (tap the button four times and the tempo is set). I am quite lazy about these things and the BR900 accomodates me nicely in that respect. I select a verse drum pattern when recording, then when I bounce down, I am able to toggle between the various patterns available in the arrangement (i.e. rock1, jazz3, ballad2 etc) so for the intro I can turn the wheel to intro, then verse 1, then middle, verse2 etc, and it will not change the patern till the next bar so you don't have to worry about precision timing - and the tempo will not change. (Although make sure you bounce drums before shutting down the BR 900 session if you changed the tempo as sometimes it goes back to the default tempo). The end result is a convincing drum arrangement with the minimum fuss. Of course you can pre define your drum arrangement based on the timing, number of bars etc - and this would allow you to harvest bits from different song types. But I'm not too much of a perfectionist on that count, and as I said the BR 900 allows me to work quick and dirty and still get a finished result.
The built in CD works great - you don't even need to master - you can bounce directly onto CD which is great for allowing you to listen to work in progress in the car for example. Only two inputs! Suits me just fine, as I'm a singer songwriter, but might limit others. The only way to use both simultaneously is with the COSM effect switched off, but you can still apply other basic effects to the channels - not done that yet though.
The vocal effects are also good, and again do not drown the vocal and fit in with the guitar effects nicely.
I can't recommend this highly enough, and at the price the quality is amazing.
Not tried the internal condenser microphone, but could be handy if running it on batteries (takes 6 or 8 double A, which in itself is nice, no need to buy expensive batteries).
There's a lot of low cost digital eight tracks out there - however for a guitarist singer songwriter, the quality of the effects are a point to consider carefuly - if you plan to use the internal effects then buy this - the effects are BOSS quality.

CDs all in order: a great jukebox!

This piece of equipment is excellent for getting all your cds in order, by category too. I have all the kids music in one group, audio books in another, classic, jazz, rock, Xmas, etc. in others. Then I choose a group and play the tracks on shuffle. We can have it playing all day and it doesn't get boring as the choice of tracks is enormous. An added bonus is the memories from the hits of years ago from cds long forgotten. Living abroad now it beats the unfamiliar offerings of the local radio station.

Once the mechanism jammed but after we fixed it, we used a spirit level to get the box exactly straight and there have been no problems since.

An excellent home jukebox!

Cheap & Nasty

Poor quality and with several faults appearing after short time of use, now the CD player has given up.