As much as I like the player there are somethings I would love to change.
Written: Mar 17 '01
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Pros: Plays CDs, MP3s and VCDs, affordable
Cons: ugly, background hiss on CD playback
The Bottom Line: I'd buy it again, but can't recommend it to people. My friends all want one, and I won't dissuade them, but I'm hardly encouraging it.
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| dilip's Full Review: A-MAX DAV309 Personal CD Player |
To start I must say that I do like the player (DAV-310). I'm fairly critical of it, but it does what I bought it for, and it was fairly inexpensive (just over $100USD).
Good Things
MP3 Playback is smooth
The MP3 playback mode is good, but a bit rudimentary. The sound is clean and the player is reliable for decoding MP3s. The fact that it plays a CD worth is a big bonus, as it gives you about six to eight hours of high quality listening (160-192 kbps encoded mp3s).
VCD Playback
The VCD playback is acceptable. It isn't noticeably different than a VCD playing though my DVD player, which means that it is good. The hook ups are good, and it means that if I remember to bring my power cord I can play VCD's anywhere.
Cost
The player ran me $165 CAD, which translates to about $110 USD. Not bad, especially in comparison to the solid state players. Don't think that this is a replacement for a solid state player though, the player isn't built for shocks.
Remote Control
If you remember that there isn't a huge angle though which the player receives the signal everything works well, though it does take a while to figure out certain things.
Bad Things
Industrial design
I'm a big fan of things that are made well, look good, and perform like they look. This player was apparantly designed using surplus parts, and the colour scheme was done by a blind person. This is the biggest and ugliest player that I've ever seen, and if it didn't work so well there's no chance that I would have bought it.
CD Playback
There is noticeable hiss on the CD playback, even when there is a dead sporton a CD. This is apparantly a CODEC problem that is specific to the CD portion as there is no noticeable distortion on either the VCD or MP3 playback.
Controls
There are such poor controls for the player without the remote control that it is almost impossible to use. With the remote it is a bit better, but some of the things during mp3 playback should be better explained. For example we all know that track skip skips to the next track, but why did I end up discovering that ff in mp3 mode skipped 10 tracks, when it isn't mentioned in the manual.
MP3 track delay
Since the mp3 playback is buffered thorugh a smalsl amount of solid state memory skipping tacks lets the player finish playing whatever is in memory and then spins the deisc up and loads in the new track. This causes a fair amount of lag between selecting a track and actually getting it to start playing.
ID3 tags
I know that people in this area are starting to sound like a broken record, but why do people build players that don't have ID3 support. There is no way that I am going to know what I was listening to for every track on a general mixed CD. I realize that it would have raised the price, but let's remember that this is a highly select category of personal electronics, and most of us would have paid more for that feature.
No resume
I wish that I could press stop twice to turn the player off, and then when I restarted it I could start up where I had left off. I know that this is easier on a conventional CD player, but it would have been so appreciated. I hate the fact that I end up having to listen to large swaths of mush a few times in a day as a result of that. If you want to start to hate a song put it at the start of a CD that you start a few times a day. I guarantee you that within a week you'll wonder why you even bothered with that song at all.
All told I think that the player has a lot of potential. I'm happy with miune and doubt that it will get returned. I am still looking for a good solid state player, and hopefully that one will end up being better designed as far as the industrial design goes.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 110
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Epinions.com ID:
dilip
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Member: Dilip Andrade
Reviews written: 25
Trusted by: 3 members
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