Adequate and affordable
Written: Dec 05 '03 (Updated Feb 07 '04)
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Pros: Features, price, ease of use
Cons: The romantic-mood-killer bright display
The Bottom Line: Buy it. Great value for the money
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| azwan's Full Review: Blaupunkt MP3000 Car CD Player |
I have been shopping around for a replacement of my vehicle's factory cassette radio for a while when I stumbled upon this unit. Looking at the features and price I think this is a good deal for the $$$.
This unit has all you'd ever want in a cd/mp3/wma player!
A D-I-Y installation took about 3 hrs. Most of that time is spent on figuring out the wiring scheme for the vehicle (FYI - if you own a Mitsu Montero, it proves to be a challenge). It's no plug-and-play I tell you.
When all is said and done, the unit performs great and looks wonderful(not gaudy). Controls were easy to manage. The volume control is a knob, not a push button, which is a strong selling point for me. Manipulations of the tone, bal, fader, and almost everything else is intuitive. Again the main and only knob on the unit takes care of this.
CD works flawlessly. I have yet to try out the MP3 portion, maybe later today.
The only two issues that I have with this unit is
1) Lack of Treble. Even at max setting, I am not quite satisfied with it. It may be the not-so-great factory speakers, which will be my next project.
2) The display brightness. On yeah, this thing is a beacon and a half. The display contrast adjustment does not reduce the brightness, just the view angle. So if you do a lot of night driving be prepared to take something with you to put over the display, or you'll be basked in a bluish eerie glow.
Other than that, I am satisfied with the unit.
Bought at www.sealeddeals.com
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Update 10-Dec-2003
Well its been almost a week and I thought an update on his product is due.
The unit performed as expected. The resume feature on the CD and MP3 is great. It picks up from where you last stopped listening. Now about the MP3 part...
I spent the last 4 days burning MP3s from my private CD collection. In the beginning, none of the created disc were readable by the MP3000. I had TOC ERROR, COMM ERROR, and FILE ERROR at different times. Almost to the brink of sheer frustration and madness did it dawn on me, and now everything works! The trick is to crank down the write speed of the CD burner when you create the MP3 disc. I crank it down to 4X and used a cheap media(PNY) and presto the MP3000 read it without any problems, real quick. You may want to experiment with higher write speed e.g. 6X, 8X. As far as the file layout structure, it goes like this: ARTIST/ALBUM/Track number+Song title.
After all that, I would still stand by my initial review on the MP3000. The convenience of having the ability to have 10-11 albums on one MP3 disc is wonderful.
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Update Feb-07-2004
Well, it's been a couple months now and a recent enquiry from somebody reminded me of the need to update this review.
All in all, the unit has been performing flawlessly. Some adjustments and discoveries I made were
a) Use a quality media. I found that FUJIFILM blank CD works beautifully, even at 40X burn speed.
b) I use a freeware called CDex to create all my MP3s. Its a great and economical way to backup all my CD collectionts to MP3.
c) When creating WMA (Windows Media Audio) files, stick the coding bitrate of 96kbps. Higher bitrates tend to cause skipping in MP3000 when I drive over rough surface. Interestingly enough, no skipping occurs when playing MP3 files coded at bitrates as high as 192kbps.
d) Replaced the front speakers. It's like night and day. Sound clarity improved dramatically. Plan to replace the rear speakers in Spring. And that should be it...
I love the MP3000 so much that if I ever trade vehicles, I'd pull it out and install it in the new one.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 108
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Epinions.com ID:
azwan
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Reviews written: 3
Trusted by: 1 member
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