 Sony MEX-1GP, All the music you will ever need! |
| Review Date: April 15, 2007 |
| Reviewer: Melvin Jensen, Edison, NJ United States |
I love Sony products and this radio is no exception. I doubt I will ever be using CDs anymore with this radio even though it could handle it if I had wanted it too. Between the radio, Sirius, and the Giapanel, I am set. The faceplate holds 1 Gig of music, in MP3 format only. Plenty if you ask me. It will only play WMA files when on CD. Not a big deal. A cable is included and it simply hooks up to your computer and shows as an extra drive on your computer to drag and drop your MP3 files too. Sort by folder if you wish to sort your music into different folders, such as Dance, Country, Etc. Flipping through the folders from the faceplate is as easy as hitting the ablum up or down butons. You also have the typical shuffle and repeat buttons. Choice what you want to display on the faceplate while you listen, be it the time or the track name. I think you can shuffle through your current folder or all your folders if you wish, but I haven't played with that option yet as much. The biggest annoyance I have found with this radio, is that it is very finiky in regards to the satellite radio channels being displayed on the faceplate when using Sat radio. I first had problems with the channels being displayed when I was setting up the Sirius service. I couldn't get the channels to be displayed on the faceplate even though I heard the stations. After speaking with Sony Tech Support directly, I had to use the reset button, which did get the stations to be displayed, even though all my settings were shot. I have found that if you shut off your vehicle before hitting the off button on the radio, your satellite radio channels won't be displayed again until after you hit the reset button on the radio again wiping everything out, having to redo all your settings. This doesn't affect your MP3s that you have stored on your Gigapanel, but you will have to set your clock and radio stations all over again. (sort of a bug) This radio just supplies SO much music, I do not regret getting it. Sony just makes such quality products, how could you be disappointed in one? It is also Satellite radio ready so wether you use XM or Sirius, I don't think it matters, but for those that don't have satellite, Look into it. It is definitely worth the few extra pennies more a month and is fairly cheap if you commute or travel alot,(about the cost of you and a significant other eating at McDonalds once) so my advice is to get it. This radio has a cool blue backlight to it that I like. It also has a fancy plastic case to carry the faceplate around in (which I probaly won't use much), and a remote (fancy, but again, probaly won't use) but there for those looking for that sort of thing. Anyway, I doubt anyone would be disappointed in this radio which you can now find around the internet for about $200. About the only thing I would have liked to see this thing do, is play DVDs, which that isn't what I was looking for anyways, and there is no bluetooth options with it, again not a big deal for me. I just loved the fact that you could store MP3 on the faceplate and that it was Sat Radio Ready. So easy to take along alot of tunes in your car, instead of a bunch of CDs. Check this radio out, you won't be disappointed in a Sony.
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The best stereo
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| Review Date: May 28, 2008 |
| Reviewer: D. Sanchez, Houston, TX USA |
| I have always had a Sony Deck in my cars. But this has the be the best one yet. You can add music to the faceplate and also play MP3 CDs. Easy to install and looks good in my truck. |
What I have been waiting for!
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| Review Date: June 11, 2008 |
| Reviewer: Eugene Allen, Chicago, IL |
| I searched far and wide and this is the only product of its kind on the market today! It is great to have the 1 gig memory face unit that plugs right into your computer for adding mp3s. No messy docking stations or extra wire hookups, just a nice clean factory look. It holds hundreds of songs and has a cd player as well. Great sound quality and an excellent price. I recommend this to anyone who loves music and is in the market for a new car radio!!! |
Sony MEX car receiver
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| Review Date: July 4, 2008 |
| Reviewer: Peter S. Klein, Florida |
| This is a tank! It doesn't look like a light show but the sound quality and ease of operation makes it a winner. Sony make several base models for the car. The give each one certain features allowing the buyer to choose one that fits his needs. It capably drives a Sony 10 disk changer. The Mex1GPcomes with a wireless remote, plays MP3 music and has a state of the art hush quiet amplifier. One very neat feature in this unit is a 1Gb flash memory built into the detachable face allowing transfer of mp3 from your computer to the head unit by simply bringing the detachable face into your home office and attaching via USB cable (supplied). You can store up to 500 songs! Talk about high quality audio, this unit operates quietly wth a 100 Db+ silence. The model number may change, but the Sony head units always keep the precision and quality technology affords. |
I'm buying nearly every Sony ATRAC CDR playing stereo that I can find.
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| Review Date: June 15, 2008 |
| Reviewer: Rykre, Carson City, Nevada |
ATRAC: A technology that has revolutionized the way we listen to music.
Are you aware of Sony's SonicStage and the ATRAC CD format available through this car stereo? If you're interested, I'm gonna tell you just how wonderful this CDR burning program really is. It has truly changed the way I listen to music, and the fact that I have put over a thousand of my CD's onto just a small box of CDR's to be played at work on my Sony ZS-XN30 boombox, my Sony D-NE10 Walkman, and my Sony CMT-HPR99XM home stereo in my bedroom, and my Sony MEX-1GP car stereo, such as this unit here.
Today, we take for granted that we can carry a whole music library with us and listen to it wherever we like. It was Sony that first made this possible with its audio compression technology ATRAC (Adaptive TRansform Acoustic Coding), which was introduced with the MiniDisc in 1992.
ATRAC uses a variety of advanced technologies to analyze digital sound data, allowing it to reduce the size of that data while maintaining superb sound quality (ATRAC compresses music data to approximately 1/5 the data rate of a CD; ATRAC3 and ATRAC3plus are able to compress music data to approximately 1/10 and 1/20 the data rate of a CD, respectively). This ability to reduce the size of data has enabled recording media to be made smaller and more tracks to be recorded on them, changing the way we listen to music.
First of all, having an ATRAC CDR player for the car is the greatest thing because when you have ATRAC CDR's, you don't have to change CD's and endanger yourself while driving because it will seem like you won't have to change CD's for many weeks. One ATRAC CDR in the car will play practically forever. This one particular Sony car stereo, the MEX-1GP, has a removable faceplate that you can hook up to your computer and load up to one gig of your mp3's directly from the computer just in case you don't have a CD with you, at the time. So with this unit, you can play either, the radio, XM satellite (a program you pay for), the mp3's in the giga panel, or your CD's. What more do you want?
Sony's SonicStage and ATRAC CDR burning program has been discontinued. Probably for legal reasons because it was just too damn wonderful to allow the world to continue to embrace. The music industry must have felt a whole new threat in new CD burning technology.
All the boomboxes seem to have disappeared or they are selling at either a give-away cost, or at an extremely high price because some people out there know just how valuable they really are. A few years back, Sony created a program called SonicStage. You set this program up in your computer just like you would load Nero, or MusicMatch or any other way that you can burn CDR's on your computer. SonicStage is totally a Sony program where you can put all your CD's and your MP3's into a library and then burn CDR's that will hold up to nearly 33 hours of music on to one CDR, and with excellent sound quality. Actually, sounding far better than just transferring MP3's to a CDR as a data transfer.
Now, all of a sudden, these Sony ATRAC CDR playing stereos (which include boomboxes, walkman's, and car stereo's) are suddenly discontinued and I believe it's a conspiracy to stop a fabulous music sharing option, however, that's not why I love the invention of the ATRAC CD player. Back in 2004, I bought my first ATRAC CD playing boombox (Sony ZS-XN30), not yet knowing what ATRAC even means. But the booklet instructed me to set up SonicStage in my computer so that I can now put lots of music on one CDR. Their advertisement was "Atrac3plus: 490 songs on one CD. Burning software supplied". That caught my interest so I set it up right away into my computer. Now I'm ready to burn some CDR's to play at work. To set up my library in SonicStage, I just started caring over a few mp3's that I had, but then I started to load a bunch of CD's of music that represented a certain theme. I put all my "blues" collection CD's, plus some James Brown, Ray Charles, and other important blues singers into this SonicStage library. After I put all I had into the library, I ended up with about 27 hours of music. All "blues", and about 550 songs. I selected the burning option of 48 kps so that all my songs can be put on to one CDR. I carried all the songs over to the burning option and started the burn. This CDR took about 2 and a half hours to burn. Sure, that's a long time, but it was worth it. When the burn was complete, I put this Blues CDR into my Sony ZS-XN30, and pressed shuffle. After about 25 seconds of the unit needing to read the CD, song number 312 started to play. It even displayed the name of the song and the artist on the LCD screen. After that, it jumped to like song number 185, and that song played. It was suddenly so wonderful to hear songs shuffling without hearing CD changing noise and having a long delay like a multiple CD player (shuffling whole CD's). Instantly, this new CDR that I just made became the most valuable CD that I owned because it had so much on it. So, that Monday, I took my Sony boombox and my "blues" ATRAC CDR to work. Set it up, and hit shuffle. It played all day long. When I turned it off at my lunch hour, I came back, turned it back on, and it continued to play where it left off. That was great because this allows me to play the whole CD without hearing even one song repeated, all week long. By mid Thursday that week, the last song on the CDR finally played then the CD stopped. I've come to realize that Sony's SonicStage and the ATRAC CDR burning program is the greatest invention for storing music on a single hard copy unit. This is better than just floating all your mp3's in an inferior sound carrying unit like an ipod. How much music can your ipod hold? 60, 80, 100 hours? With Sony's ATRAC CD burning program, you can make 33 hour CDR's, and as many of them as you want. And all my ATRAC CDR's can be played on any Sony ATRAC CD player. I now have about 100 ATRAC CDR's and no reason to play any of my other CD's. I boxed them all up and put them away, never really needing them ever again. That is, not until the day I lose my last Sony ATRAC CDR player.
So this is why I'm buying up as many Sony ATRAC CD players that I can so I can be set for life to always be able to play my ATRAC CDR's. It seems now (as of June 2008), Sony's car stereos that play ATRAC CD's are still only available through independent sources. You can't get them directly from Sony anymore. These units are discontinued. I don't know if you can set up SonicStage in your computer anymore as a new user. Call or write to Sony and learn more about ATRAC and see if we can bring this back, because this truly is the greatest breakthrough in storing and preserving all our favorite music. I don't think it got promoted very well. I'm loving this Sony MEX-1GP, and I've got three more Sony CDX-GT710 (W) car stereos in my closet for my cars in the future. I can't let ATRAC go. This is just as wonderful as the "Electric Car" was before Bush and the ever threatened oil industry took that technology away.
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