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RioVolt SP100 Portable CD/MP3 Player with 120 Second Anti-Shock

RioVolt SP100 Portable CD/MP3 Player with 120 Second Anti-Shock

List Price: $169.99
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: It's worth the price.
Review: I've played everything on this machine and it's just great! I've put CD's into this machine and shook it with no skip! This includes regular CD's, CDR's, CDRW, and MP3 format!! Believe me it's worth the money!!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Firmware UG 2.00 Adds Lots Of New Features
Review: I had tried the Phillips Expanium (?) but realized that I had to have one with a display that shows titles, song time, etc. A backlit display at that. I returned the Phillips and did more research and bought the RioVolt. I have had it for a week and updated the firmware right away. Along with many other additional features, it added resume which always knows where it was playing when I turned it off and starts from there next time. The Phillips had this feature but my 262 song CDRW confused it and I never knew where it was going to start. I am very happy with my RioVolt.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: best player i have ever used
Review: This player is truly amazing. The new firmware adds great features and increases performance. I love the large backlit screen and the sleek look of it.

worth every penny.

also - be sure to get the latest firmware if you buy this.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Rio Volt - The most versatile CD player out
Review: I researched many different CD/MP3 players in my quest to purchase one. I settled on the Rio Volt for two main reasons: 1) reviews had given it great marks 2) I was captured by the brand name The piece was pricey ..., but the features make it worth it. It plays all Audio CDs, MP3s and WMAs. It is firmware upgradable, which allows it to recognize new audio formats. I upgraded it to the latest software version, which added better menus, a revised volume control, User-Defined Equalizer and more. It gets good battery life, and I have tested it with different CD-Rs and CD-RWs, with no problems at all. It is easy to navigate, with a big, bright, back-lit LCD. Some people have complained about the lag time between songs. The pause is miniscule, possibly being 1.5 seconds at the most. It is certainly a more-than-fair trade-off for fitting upwards of 200 songs on a CD, and getting 15 hours battery life and up to 120 seconds Anti-Shock. I have also heard that to use the program feature you must know the number of the song. However, this is also a mistake. You can program a playlist by track name, which makes it very easy to hear only the songs you want. The Resume feature allows you to turn the player off, and come back later at the exact same spot and with the exact same options. This is the best CD/MP3 player to buy. You won't regret it, and you'll get way more than you $$$ worth out of it.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: The best value for your money !
Review: I initially bought a Philips MP3 player and returned it in order to purchased the RioVolt. The RioVolt offers more features and the sound quality is significantly better. The bundled software adds value to this product, however technical support is not available for the included version of Easy CD Creator 4(The only support available are the faq's posted on Roxio's website). I contacted Sonic Blue about this issue and notified them that in order for a customer to obtain technical support for Easy CD creator, you must provide them with a Technical Support ID number and their response is below:

Dear Valued Customer,

We supply Easy CD creator on our CD as a convenience and technically you do not need to install the software. The Technical Support ID number is only available when you purchase the full version from Roxio. If you are having issues with version 4.03 then please reinstall the version you know that works.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Rio Volt Defines the MP3 Player State of the Art
Review: I've now tried 3 different MP3 CD players. The RIO is head and shoulders the best; it defines the state of the art. It starts with the user interface: you can cursor through both albums and songs, shuffle repeat within an album or on the entire CD, play sequentially, and more. The interface is intuitive and easy to remember. Playback has been flawless and sounds great -- this is a BIG problem with other players which either hang up or abandon a track in the middle. I'd definitely recommed this product. MP3 CD's (later MP3 DVDs) will revolutionize portable music. I get up to 20 hours of music on a single CD and 15 hours on 2 batteries.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: The Best Portable MP3 player around
Review: After waiting for a long time for an MP3-CD player to come out, I was thrilled to read the stats on this one. MP3-CD has one great benefit over memory players, such as Creative's Nomad: infinite storage space. Basically you are limited by the amount of CDs full of music you can burn.

First of all, the plusses. This player has a myriad of options, most notably playback options. There are the standard play/stop, etc. buttons, plus a few others. The +10 button allows you to jump ahead 10 songs when you are navigating, making it easy to browse through 100 or more songs (typically you can fit between 100 and 200 songs on a disc, depending upon the compression rate of your MP3s). The Mode button changes the playback mode between several options, including play all songs in current directory only, shuffle all songs, shuffle songs in directory, or play a single song repeatedly.

The memory button allows you to isolate a section of a song to play over and over again. I guess this is nice if you really like a certain part of a song, but not for much else. There is a built in equalizer that has 4 presets. I find that "rock" sounds the best, and greatly enhances the sound qaulity of the music.

The player includes some earphones--average and uncomfortable at best--a remote control that is clever yet impractical in most situations, and a carrying case that is good for little more than storage. At least you get some free batteries.

I tried an MP3 CD with directories first, to see if the player supported archived files. To my delight, it did, and it handles them quite nicely. It is easy to browse your folders and files with the "navi" button, and it is nice to be able to browse for the next song while you're listening. The memory button allows you to create playlists, if you wish to take the time. I find that shuffle mode is best.

The only problem I have with the player's display is the large font that makes seeing the entire song name impossible. This could have been corrected if the words scrolled across the screen faster, but alas, they do not. You may find yourself sitting and waiting for an entire song's name to scroll by to see if it is the one you want.

The player's sound quality is excellent, and you can forget worrying about any skips. The player spins up the disc every 2 minutes, storing MP3 data on flash memory, and CD audio has 10 or 40 second protection, depending on your choice. The batteries last for about 13 hours, a little more than you can fit on a CD at 160 kbps compression (I get 10 hours average at this rate).

In short, if you are looking for a definitive MP3 player with plenty of options, a cool looking design, and plenty of storage, then the RioVolt is a good choice.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Cool features, but way too unreliable
Review: Let me preface this review by saying that I'm currently on my second Rio Volt. I purchased one two months ago, used it, returned it, purchased another one, and have been using this one for about two weeks.

To be fair, the reasons I like Rio Volt:

1) The upgradable capabilities are a BIG plus. HUGE. To know that certain features can be added with a 2 second download and burn is a great relief, as I know the player has less chance of becoming obsolete.

2) The mp3 capability is also obviously the main reason for buying it. It was great to take 15 albums by the same artist, encode them and burn them to one disc, and have that to listen to. Quite convenient.

3) The display, while a bit complicated at first, was very helpful in navigation- especially with the ID3 tags.

4) Different EQ's, including a new "user-defined" EQ (with version 2.0)

Now, the reasons I am returning my second Rio Volt:

1) This is the main reason- the damn thing skips WAY too much- almost constantly. I heard there were some skipping problems with mp3s, but I'm not even talking about mp3s. I'm not even talking about CD-Rs. I'm talking about regular CDs. I set the shock protection to 40 seconds and it still skips constantly. I do not jog with the thing, but I do a lot of walking in my daily commute. In order to keep the player from bouncing around in my bag/jacket pocket, I generally keep a hand on it at all times to keep it stable. However, even doing THIS causes it to skip every few seconds. The only time I can guarantee no skips is when it's sitting on a flat surface- and guess what? That's not why I bought a portable player.

2) The thing eats up batteries, even with skip protection turned off. I use it a total of maybe 1.5 hours total per day, and I don't know why batteries are dead after 3 or 4 days. Unacceptable.

3) Carrying case? Don't even go there. :-) 100% useless.

4) The remote, while a VERY cool feature, is difficult to control. I was intending to use it quickly, while walking, to change songs. I wind up having to stop what I'm doing to stare at the remote to see what I'm doing...then I have to pull out the CD player to confirm it.

5) Loading time, and again, not even for an mp3 disc, but for a store-bought, professionally-manufactured CD, is way too long. The thing takes up to a minute to load.

6) The sound on this thing is just not very powerful.

Some people love this player, and more power to them. I'm an optimistic person and was very eager to receive my second Rio Volt, hoping that my first one was just a "bad egg." I think that they're the first company to really put out a functional mp3/CD player, but being the first, I think there are just some bugs that need to be worked out. I personally can't keep a player that skips this much- it's just way too unreliable for my needs. I can deal with not having an mp3 CD player for now- technology will eventually bring about better players. Until then, my personal opinion is to steer clear of the Rio Volt- unless you plan to have it sit on a tabletop whenever you use it.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: not good
Review: It skips badly. This says it all for me as I was looking for a player that I could take around with me. That claimed skip protection is wrong.Thank you very much. I ended up returning this one and buying Phillips, which is much better in the skip department. Phillips does skip, but only if you forget to turn the skip protection on and shake it realy hard.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great
Review: Just bought one of these nifty thingys and I love it. Gotta love technology!!!


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