Fully functional, no-nonsense, easy-to-use MP3 CD Player.
Written: May 30 '01
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Pros: Functional, Long Battery Life, Play MP3 CD/CDA, Song name displayed, software upgradeable.
Cons: Useless dancers on display, 80dB SNR for CDA
The Bottom Line: Lots of MP3 CDs you want to listen to in your car or on-to-go? Buy this
product and put your mind at ease. Simple, Functional, Affordable.
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| orac1e's Full Review: Rio Volt SP100 Personal CD Player |
The jury is out on the final word on this product. There are varying opinions - some think it is flimsy and cheap yet at the same time semi-worth the money, others cannot bear the thought of SonicBlue actually making money off what they consider to be a very poor product.
I bought this player from an Ebay auction for just under $150 US. This is reasonable, since that's about the same amount of money you would pay at a US retailer. In Canada, I was only able to find the product at 'FUTURE SHOP' for a whopping $299.99 + 15% sales tax (in the end, I think it comes out to roughly the same amount considering exchange rates, etc.).
Let's begin...
The package is a simple molded medium strength plastic case - like something you would buy a set of $40.00 headphones in. Once you are through the box, the Rio Volt is securely packaged along with the following:
= Ear Bud Headphones
= Remote Control (can be bypasses if you like)
= Carrying Case (simple, black, neoprene looking material with belt loop)
= AC Adaptor
= 2 Duracell AA Batteries
= 2 Installation CDs (one contains EasyCD Creator 4, the other contains the Manuals, Acrobat 4 and RealJukebox)
= A "Getting Started" pamphlet.
Getting started is a snap if you already have MP3 CDs previously made. Just pop it in, plug it into the wall, and press play. The backlight immediately comes on, and the CD player spins up to read the CD's Table of Contets (TOC). The little dancers at the bottom of the display also come up, and to be honest don't serve any useful purpose other than to make you think "how stupid is that?". Upon reading the TOC, the directory structure is displayed enabling you to traverse the directories and display MP3s to play. You can play entire directories by creating playlists. Unfortunately, the directory tree is not retained, so subdirectories become children of the root (be wary when creating compilation CD's in the future - subdirs may end up having same names). A nice little feature is how the song being selected from the directory scrolls across the screen so that you can see the title, etc. (this scrolling action could have been longer to support Joliet long filenames, but it's adequate - make sure to shorten song names when you are making compilation CD's in the future).
Sound quality is just fine. Although I completely know and understand (I've spent over 8 years studying electrical engineering in University) the specs and parameters that many audio techies and self-proclaimed so-called "audiophiles" love to use to either praise/knock products, don't mean much to me. I personally bought this player for my car so that I would not have to constantly swap CD's from my current player which only plays CDA and can only play a single CD at a time. In light of the fact that there is so much background noise, etc during normal vehicle operation, your ear will essentially be unable to hear many of the losses which result either from MP3 encoding or because of less than optimal design on the electronics side of things. Yes, these things ARE audible if you are in a quiet room, or if you have it cranked up, but this sacrifice in quality is something that should be EXPECTED when buying an MP3 player (it's almost always a result of the lossy encoding, and not the electronics). Interfacing the player to my car stereo was a breeze. WIth the fact that two batteries will last roughly 10 hours, you don't REALLY need to buy a car adaptor (although it's nice to have one).
Shock protection is very good (you can adjust between 10s or 40s) - I can't get the thing to skip. The remote works fine and is quite handy (e.g. when you tuck the player under a car seat and want to just go to the next song in shuffle mode), plus there is a neat little clip on the side letting to fasten it to wherever is convenient. The player itself, LOOKS flimsy since it is made of plastic, but it's surprisingly durable. One unfortunate drawback during playback is the fact there is silence introduced between tracks (this means no continuous playback of mixed-track MP3s - SonicBlue tech support told me that it was UNDER 1s, but it's more like 1.5-2s). I don't know what SonicBlue has planned with regards to this, but I am hoping that a software upgrade will be made available to make continuous playback possible (software upgrades are possible by simply burning the latest ROM onto the root of any CD - updates are automatic).
Overall, I think that the Rio Volt is a no-nonsense product which was developed to address the market's need for a portable CD player that also plays MP3 CDs. If you are just itching to put your MP3 CDs to work in your car, or during a workout, then I would highly recommend this product. It is superior to almost all of the other MP3 CD players out there when considering price, functionality, display size, accessories, and ease-of-use (the TDK Mojo is another excellent product yet quite pricey, and others are inferior in other ways or have severe detriments - check out www.funmp3players.com if you are interested).
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 145.00
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Epinions.com ID:
orac1e
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Member: Peter Androutsos
Reviews written: 14
Trusted by: 4 members
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