A great budget MP3 player
Written: Feb 18 '03
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Pros: Cheap, good sound, well built, cool blue display :)
Cons: Menu system can be confusing (before you read the manual), slow to initialise
The Bottom Line: Above average build quality and sound for the price. Put together very well and has all the features most users will need.
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| basirk's Full Review: Dioneer DCP-100 Personal CD Player |
Background
I'm going on an extended holiday shortly, and I really couldn't be without my music for that long. Taking all my CDs isn't really an option as they would fill my rucksack. MP3s were the only real alternative (Minidisc was out as you still need one disc per album).
If anyone has ever looked at buying an MP3 player, they'll know that there is now a lot of types, sizes and prices to choose from. You've got Flash players, Hard disk players and CD players.
The Format Choices
Flash MP3 players:
Media (flash cards) are expensive and you're limited to the amount you can store on them. If you have a PC, then the contents of the Flash cards can be changed, but this is slow and I won't have access to a PC on my hols. The players can be cheap and small and, as there are no moving parts, they are quite robust.
HDD MP3 players:
They can store your entire collection so no extra media is required. Unfortunately they are still quite expensive and can be heavy. Most also require proprietary rechargeable batteries, which isn't good if you're stuck in the outback with no mains electric to plug your adapter into. There's also the issue of carrying all your eggs in one basket - if the hard disk breaks, you've lost all your music. And let's face it, hard discs are not known for their ruggedness.
CD MP3 players:
Very cheap, as is the media (25p (40c) a disc). You will get, on average, 10 albums on one CD using 160kbit compression (which is perfectly adequate for headphone or small speaker use). That means that a collection of 200 albums will fit in one of those little 20-CD wallet things. Many players also use regular AA batteries, which can be picked up anywhere. On the down-side, the players can be bulky.
As I was going to be "it the middle of nowhere" for a number of months, the player I chose needed to have normal batteries. I am also on a budget, so both HDD players and Flash players weren't an option.
My Choice
So I'd chosen to get a CD MP3 player. My entire collection would compress down onto just 13 CDs. My budget limited me to under 100 quid (~160 bucks). The iRiver ones looked cool and had great reviews, but were too expensive. I looked at lots of unbranded ones, but they didn't look like they'd last very long. Then I came across the Dioneer, which I thought must be rubbish as it's a blatant rip of Pioneer. There's a number of reviews available for the Dioneer and they all said it was actually a decent piece of kit. So I got one. It cost me 95 quid including VAT and p&p (about 152 bucks) from Scan (http://www.scan.co.uk)
The Review
I've had it for a few days now. My first impressions were:
- front panel keys a bit tacky
- cool blue display :)
- not as bulky as it looks in the photo
- very lighweight/plasticy remote
- vicious clam-shell spring
- poor headphones
I stuck an MP3 disc in and was quite impressed by the array of icons on the display - no idea what they all meant of course. After playing around with it for a bit and getting rather confused, I resorted to reading the manual. Within 5 minutes I'd figured out how to use the "Dion" navigation system and set the player up how I liked it. That's not bad going, but then I've used gadgets like this before.
What can be confusing is the fact that there are 2 modes of operation. You can play all songs (in a variety of orders), or you can play just bookmarked songs. The manual makes a big thing about the bookmarked playlist (B Mode), but quite frankly I like to listen to all tracks on an album so I've kind of ignored this feature. Having said that, if anyone would like to use this feature, then songs can be bookmarked as they are played (rather than prior to playing). This means you can listen to the entire disc (A Mode), bookmarking songs as you go, and the next time you play the disc you can use B Mode and just listen to the bookmarked tracks. That's nice I suppose.
The remote is very lightweight (is that good or bad?) but the buttons have a nice clicky feel to them, and I actually found navigation of the menu system easier using the remote (rather than using the keys on the front panel). You can buy the DCP-100 without the remote for a bit less money. Personally though, I like it.
You have a limited number of EQ settings - Normal, Classic, Rock and Jazz. Normal sounded a bit flat, but Rock is ok. There's also a bass boost, which is left on (does anyone ever bother turning this off?)
The display is one of the coolest parts of the player. It's blue back-lit and shows:
- Spectrogram
- Current track
- Next track
- MP3 bit-rate
- EQ setting
- Repeat setting (normal/intro/random/A-B/track/directory/disc)
- ESP (Electronic Shock Protection) in secs for Audio CD
- Track play time
- A/B Mode
- Power status
- Media format (MP3/Audio CD/WMA)
- Key lock status
That's a lot for such a small screen. One thing I found a little annoying was the scrolling track name. You can set the scroll speed, but the LCD can't cope with the faster speed and the name just turns into a faded blur. Also, the "next track" title doesn't scroll. I suppose I should be thankful that it displays anything at all about the next track, as it would appear many other MP3 players don't bother at all.
If you store all your albums in directories, then that's not a problem for the DCP-100. You can navigate to any folder or sub-folder and start playing tracks from there. This wasn't made clear in any reviews I read.
Another useful feature, which I probably should have mentioned before, is that the player plays a number of different format discs. It can play MP3, WMA and Audio CD on CD-DA, CD-R and CD-RW discs.
And how does it sound? Well through the supplied headphones - not great. Then I stuck it through my amp (using the handy line-out socket) and it really wasn't all that bad! Obviously the quality will depend on how the original was compressed, but I was genuinely impressed with the sound. The original CDs played very well indeed. With my own headphones it was also very good.
Conclusion
Sorry, didn't mean to write a novel :)
For the price, the DCP-100 is incredible. The important part - the sound - is great. It has a reasonably long battery life (about 22 hours, although I've been running it off the supplied adapter so can't verify this). It is very well built, and I wouldn't feel too unhappy throwing it into a rucksack. You get everything you need in the box, including a cloth drawstring bag and a set of batteries.
On the downside, navigation of the menu system can be awkward using the front panel keys. However the remote makes navigation quite a bit easier. The unit also takes quite a while to start up from cold - nearly 25 seconds before any sound comes out!
Would I recommend it? Yes, definitely, especially if you're on a budget and want to use it when you're travelling. If you want something less bulky, you could take a look at the other Dioneer models - DCP-200 and DCP-400. The 400 looks particularly cool.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 152
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Epinions.com ID:
basirk
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Reviews written: 1
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