Buy Sony ZS-XN30 Multi-Codec S2 Sports CD/Tuner Boombox (White)Sony ZS-XN30 Multi-Codec S2 Sports CD/Tuner Boombox (White) Product Description:
- CD and radio boombox with MP3/ATRAC3plus playback, ID3 recognition, 4-line, dot-matrix display, and 2-position Mega Bass enhancement
- S2 Sports design offers high style, water resistance, and convenient construction with centralized controls and built-in carry handle
- Jog-lever navigation lets you scroll "fast forward" or "fast back" through MP3/ATRAC3plus files and folders
- ESP2 CD shock protection minimizes skipping during CD playback; digital FM/AM tuner includes 20 FM and 10 AM station presets
- Uses two 4-inch powered speakers and 2 passive, bass-enhancing radiators; runs on 6 C batteries (not included) or supplied AC power adapter
Product Description
SONY ZS-XN30 -- Unique rugged styling and multi-format playback capability combine to set this ultra-portable S2 Series CD / Tuner apart from the crowd. 4 Line Dot Matrix Display ESP Shock Protection Digital AM / FM Stereo Tuner Mega Bass Sound System Passive Radiator Bass Enhancement 30 Station Memory Presets ( 10 AM / 20 FM ) CD Play Modes ( Program / Shuffle / Repeat ) Color - White
Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
18 of 19 people found the following review helpful.
Very clean sound
By RicR2
(1) Plusses:By "very clean sound" I mean that the accuracy/lack of distortion is excellent for a unit of its size.I use it for water aerobics classes, along with several other boomboxes at the same time (that all receive their music via a low-power FM transmitter). In this environment, compared to both the Aiwa CD Boom Box - CSD-XD55 and the Sony CDF-G70, the S2 has less volume but cleaner sound, especially when the bass button is on.(2) MinusesI keep accidentally activating the Jog-Lever -- the joystick on the handle -- when I grab the S2 by the handle. "Accidentally activating" means that I knock the FM tuner off its station.(3) Other considerationsIt does have an FM antenna, that completely disappears into the body of the unit.(4) Summary"Very clean sound" means that, if you want a true portable, it's worth the price.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful.Does What I Need It To
By terryoregon
I bought this boombox because it has one unique feature that is hard to find on any other boombox.My primary use for this boombox is to download very long mp3 files (two hours long) from the Internet(talk radio files). The problem is that I may listen to fifteen minutes of this file in one day, and then listen to the rest of the file later. With most boomboxes (once power has been turned off/on), I would have to start over at the beginning of the file and try to fast forward through fifteen minutes to get back to where I left off.However, the Sony ZS-XN30 *remembers* exactly where it left off in the mp3 file. So if I listen to fifteen minutes of a two-hour mp3 file, and then turn the power button off - I can then go back the next day and the file will start playing exactly where it left off. I even tried unplugging the power chord (with no batteries installed), and it still remembered where it left off. This only works if you don't unplug the power for more than about two minutes. I tried it for five minutes, and the memory was lost. But two minutes is more than enough time to move the boombox around the house - and plug it in elsewhere.I am disappointed that there is no bass/trebble control. Only a "mega bass" button that is either off/on.
27 of 32 people found the following review helpful.Not a bad product, but it could stand a few improvements.
By JD in TX
I've owned this stereo for a couple of months now. I got it essentially for free because of the "Sony points" that I earn by using a Sony credit card. As a result, price was not an issue for me. I do not profess to be an "audiophile," so I do not consider myself qualified to address hyper-technical issues about the quality of the sound that this stereo produces.First impressions: this thing was way bigger than I expected it to be. That is, it was longer than I expected it to be. All accounts report it to be 16 7/8 inches long (i.e. the Amazon website and the sonystyle.com website), but this thing is probably at least 3 or 4 inches longer than that. I would put my official estimate at just over 20 inches long. I know, that sounds like a minimal difference, but instead of getting a small-ish stereo for my office, I ended up with a large piece of equipment that I really couldn't just stick in an un-noticeable location. (If you're interested, as for the other dimensions, it's about 5 1/2 inches high and just over 9 1/2 inches deep. I'm not sure where Sony got its measurements of 6 3/4 and 11 1/4, and it concerns me that Sony can't seem to take accurate measurements of its products.)More first impressions: the stereo has a built-in handle in the front of it, and I don't think that the handle was too visible in the pictures that I saw before deciding to purchase it. It's just a stylistic thing, but I assume that it is intended to make the stereo more easily portable. No big deal. Stylistically, the stereo has a kind of cool look to it, even though the model that I purchased is white. I've gotten used to the color of it. As with all (well, most) Sony products, the stereo has a very solid feel; it doesn't feel abnormally light-weight and "cheapy." (How's that for a hyper-technical evaluation?)Ease of use/functionality: the buttons are all pretty easy to understand. No big tricks, really. EXCEPT for the little scroll wheel thing that allows you to jump to different tracks on a CD. Once you scroll to the track that you want, you push the scroll wheel in, and that selects the track. It gets a little more confusing if you are playing a CD full of MP3s or ATRAC3plus files. In the defense of the stereo itself, however, that's more a matter of how the CD itself is burned, not how the hardware is set up to read the CD.The display is a bit small. Typically, the name of the album is on the top line of the display, the name of the song is on the second line down, and the third line down contains the track number and the elapsed time of the song. However, each line of text (i.e. the top two lines) allows only 10 or 11 characters at a time. As a result, if the letters in the name of the album or song is over that number (10 or 11), the display shows only the first 10 or 11 letters for a second or two, and then it begins to scroll to the left to reveal the remaining letters. So, unless the name of the song or album is fairly short, you never see the whole name at one time. It's always scrolling. It doesn't bother me that much, unless I want to see what the name of a certain song is, and then I'll have to wait until it finishes scrolling to see the name of the song from the beginning. It can be a little annoying. I can't imagine that it would have been too difficult to put the LCD screen elsewhere on the unit, thereby allowing a larger LCD.My biggest "ease of use" complaint: there are two buttons on the front of the unit. They're actually on the built-in handle. (That's a separate complaint because, if I ever planned on carrying the stereo around while listening to a CD, as absurd as that sounds, I wouldn't want to worry about accidentally hitting one of the two buttons on the handle.) The button on the left is the "stop" button, marked by the standard "square" indicator. No big deal. The other button is a "joystick" kind of thing. Pushing the "joystick" button IN plays or pauses the selected track. Pushing it forward or backward is the equivalent of pushing a search/skip button on a "normal" stereo. For example, if you quickly push it forward, it will skip to the next track. Easy enough. In theory, if you hold the button in the forward position (i.e. to the right), it should search through the current track; fast-forward, basically. I've found that this "fast-forwarding" doesn't work very well. On most stereos, the rate of fast-forwarding increases the longer the button is held down. Not so on this stereo. Instead, it continues to skip maybe three seconds at the most, and the rate never increases. The same problem occurs when you hold the button to the left, or "backward." As a result, the fast-forwarding and rewinding are not that helpful. (By the way, when in radio "mode," pushing the joystick button to the left and right scans through the various pre-set radio stations. When in CD mode, pushing the button up and down scans through the various "folders" that the CD may contain; obviously this only applies if it's a burned CD that was set up with more than one "folder" in mind. When in radio mode, pushing the button up and down is the equivalent of a scan/seek tuning button on a typical radio. Each of those functions seems to work normally.)I still haven't gotten to my biggest complaint: if you want to pause a track (because, say, your boss has walked into your office, and you'd prefer that your boss not realize that you are listening to Metallica while trying to get some work done), you have to be VERY careful about pushing the joystick button directly IN. Any slight push to the left or right will cause you to either repeat the track or skip to the next track, respectively. This has happened to me far too many times. This could have been easily solved by making a separate play/pause button next to this problematic "joystick" thing. That is, by far, the most annoying aspect of the stereo (yes, I'm THAT petty).Sound: I obviously didn't get this stereo to impress the ladies with a huge bass boom. The "megabass" function on the unit is almost laughable; even with said function selected, there's just not much bass here. However, when I decided to buy this stereo, I recognized that I didn't need a unit that would put out huge sound. It does the job, and that's all that matters, I guess.Software: yes, this comes with the Sony SonicStage software. I really enjoy being able to load hundreds of songs onto a CD. Under the default settings of the SonicStage software, however, you're not going to get 490 songs on one CD. I think I've managed to put around 300 or so average-length songs on one CD, though. As with almost all software, SonicStage takes some getting used to. After burning a couple of CDs, I finally figured out how to make separate "folders" for different albums, which makes scrolling a whole lot easier and less time-consuming. Disadvantage: the ATRAC3plus format is apparently proprietary to Sony and therefore useless to anyone that does not have a ATRAC3-capable machine. It may be better to make an MP3 CD, which will be more useful to someone if they wish to borrow the CD.The sound quality seems to be fine (remember my disclaimer about not professing to be an "audiophile"). I do have one complaint, however, and this might only apply to the ATRAC3plus format: between every song (and occasionally even during a song), you hear a high-pitched "squeak" kind of noise, which is probably the CD laser or something. I don't know if the stereo makes that noise when playing all-MP3 CDs or normal store-bought CDs because I haven't tried playing either of those CDs yet. One final beef: if you put an ATRAC3plus CD into the stereo, it takes a little while to "load" and start playing. It's like the stereo has to read the CD over and over again before it starts to play it. I don't know why that is. The wait is perhaps only 20 seconds, but you know how annoying that gets when you're ready to listen to some music.
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