Sony NAS-CZ1 Network Audio Player and Shelf System Review

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(More customer reviews)This Network Audio Player has outstanding sound, and easily fits on my bookshelf. The black and silver case design is a huge improvement over the cheap plastic look of many bookshelf systems sold today.
One of the best features is the ability of the unit to play music stored on your computer hard drive. From my existing music library that I created using Windows Media Player, the NAS-CZ1 plays the music one song after another, album by album. You can also create playlists if you want selected songs.
The challenge is to get the software and the NAS-CZ1 configured. I would say that this is a project for someone with some hands-on home networking skills, as I wanted a wireless setup. Since the NAS-CZ1 requires an Ethernet cable, I used a Linksys wap54 wireless access point to connect to my home wireless network.
All the internet features are provided through the Sony software called m-crew server. There is very little documentation on this software, even when I looked using Google. It is also version 1.0 and there apparently are no updates to the software that comes on the cd with the unit. M-Crew server is a very straightforward, no-frills solution to broadcasting music to the NAS-CZ1. There are a few things about it though. First, you need to use some version of Windows XP. Windows 2000,2003, 98, etc. will not work and the installer on the cd will stop you from proceeding. So you must have an XP computer that is on whenever you want to listen to music stored on your hard disk. This means that when I want to fall asleep to the music, I need to leave my computer running.
You need to remember that the account you installed the m-crew server software needs to be logged in. This is because the software runs background processes that won't be started until the account user logs in. Not a problem if you have a single user account login on the computer and the computer is re-booted for some reason, but I will have to look at setting up the computer to automatically startup the software background services when the computer re-boots. I found this out when Microsoft rebooted my pc for one of their automatic software updates. The connection from my NAS-CZ1 just stopped working until I re-logged into the account again.
One other problem with the m-crew server software or possibly the NAS-CZ1 is that you cannot have songs with titles using Asian characters. So any Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc. songs will not play on the NAS-CZ1. In fact, the m-crew server software will let you store a say, Chinese titled song just fine. The problem arises when the NAS-CZ1 tries to play it. It will error out and you need to skip the song and restart the player manually. To delete the song, you need to (and they don't tell you this in the documentation) edit the m-crew server content database table using MS Access to delete the row containing the song, or edit out the Asian characters and you can then play the song. It seems that the NAS-CZ1 only has the ability to display english characters and that is why it errors on non-english titles. You would think that an international company like Sony would release product that accommodates languages other than english character based items.
If all else fails with the m-crew server software, uninstall and install it again.
Internet radio is another interesting feature that, if you can get running, sounds really nice. First, choose internet radio stations with a bit rate of no less than 32k, for decent sound. Second, forget about any radio stations that use their own radio player (do not use Windows media player), or require Real Player. If the radio station url does not end with an "aspx", then you can be pretty sure it won't work on the NAS-CZ1. Sony provides about 10 sample stations for the NAS-CZ1, but does not tell you how to find more radio stations. So the problems is finding internet radio sations and testing them to see if they work on the NAS-CZ1. Time consuming at best, and I have not tried searching for more stations outside of my initial setup effort of the NAS-CZ1.
At this time, I am impressed with the technology that Sony put into this unit, but I can also see a lot of buyers looking for a quick and easy way of listening to music on their computer hard dirve returning this unit due to the complicated setup and troubleshooting needed. I bought my NAS-CZ1 at Fry's for $189 and it was their last boxed unit, that was a return.
Personally, I like the unit and now that I have figured out the limitations and quirks, I'm considering a second unit for my home office. It is a real delight to be able to have my entire music collection available without having to manually change cds.

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