Rating: 
Summary: This product is awesome
Review: The Rio Volt is the greatest cd/mp3 player ever.
Rating:
Summary: A True Review
Review: Let me say before I get started I do not work for SonicBlue or Amazon (since many believe insiders write these reviews).I just bought the Rio today and its great let me address all problems skipping is nonexistent I played a CD-RW with over 120 MP3's at different bitrates from 96 to 302! And they all sounded great the reason there is no skipping is because it stops spinning when it loads the CD I even shook it while it was reading the CD no skipping it plays all formats of CD audio WMA MP3 and even game music from CD I put in the quake CD and it played normal (just don't listen to track 1)
Some other problems like poor sound quality are wrong you can get this thing pretty loud and two people can listen at once (2 Jacks) also it may say that you can accidentally turn this on by bumping it but that's not true there's a hold button on the player and remote which is great the reason there are bad reviews is because they are probably using version 1.13 all you have to do is burn a CD with the new firmware (version 2.10) and everything works better.
Also there is no way to get rid of the dancers at the bottom but its not that big of a deal the backlight is great and considering the great quality of this product I'm guessing the SP-90 works great too.
Rating: 
Summary: Fire hazard with NiMH batteries and AC adapter
Review: This unit is great as far as musical functionality. The sound,
interface, upgradability and build quality (given the price) are all
outstanding. With high-quality VBR MP3s this unit sounds great. The
included headphones are horrible, but I had no expectation or intent
of using them anyway. Generally I use a pair of Sennheiser HD25
headphones, which are great for air travel. I use the unit almost exclusively with NiMH rechargable batteries.
After a month or so of use, I finally broke-out the AC adapter for a
home listening session. I listened for a while and then went on to
other things, leaving the unit plugged in. A couple hours later I noticed an odd smell as I walked through my livingroom and
quickly tracked it down to the SP100 and AC adapter. They were both
hotter than I ever imagined plastic devices could be without melting
and/or bursting into flame. The rechargable batteries were melted and
destroyed. An alarmed call to Rio's customer service number resulted in them
telling me that use of non-Alkaline batteries in the SP100 was not
recommended. They refused to treat this as a manufacturing flaw or
warranty issue. Some basic electronic testing quickly revealed that 4.5V DC is present
on the battery contacts when the unit is attached to the AC adapter.
Apparently they are relying on the high internal resistance of
alkaline batteries rather than having proper electrical isolation
between the batteries and the external DC input. In this day and age of huge liability settlements I can't believe a
company wouldn't design their devices in a more robust manner. I continue to enjoy using this unit, but have thrown away the AC
adapter to prevent any mishaps given my desire to continue using NiMH
batteries. Be careful out there...
Rating: 
Summary: Really Great Product... When It Works
Review: I must say that when I bought this model I should have done more research. I always check reviews, but went on impulse. Anyhow, I really like the features and sound quality, but after about a month of light listening at home only it fell off my couch onto the carpet. Now we're talking maybe 15 inches and a soft landing on carpet. I never would have thought it was so sensitive, but now it spins the disc and says NO DISC. Not very durable to say the least. I actually already bought the new SP250, which is why I wish I would've researched the SP100 prior. I had a feeling a new unit with an FM tuner would be in stores soon. I would suggest getting the SP250. The FM tuner and better features are worth the extra 25 bucks.
Rating:
Summary: Very good mp3-cd player
Review: This cd player is great for playing mp3s. It stores well over one hundred mp3s on a single cd to play anywhere. At the beginning and middle of each song it copies 2 minutes of the song to it's internal memory; the cd actually doesn't spin while it plays that part. This makes skipping virtually impossible. The sound is very good and there are several different equalizers to choose from. The only downsides to the product is the software doesn't have instructions with it (Adaptec CD Creator 4.0). Plus, when the cd is started, it takes about a minute for the first song to play, while the software loads. After that though, the music is continuous because it only has to load one time. Overall, in excellent solution to having a great variety of music to take anywhere and play anytime.
Rating:
Summary: Quality Problems
Review: After a lot of research I bought this unit rather than others from well known electronics brands, with a lot of trust and excitement. Mi RioVolt worked fine for a short while then started showing problems reading burnt CDs it used to play fine. I upgraded the Firmware to latest verion 2.10 and the probles worsened. After many hours of testing all conceivable settings and brand media wasted, (both CD-R and CD-RW) I contacted Tech support to get an answer that my unit was fine (how can they tell ?) and the problem was with the burner. Many hours and tests with burners later, my Rio does not work at all and am waiting for a reply from Rio.
Rating:
Summary: It a decent player
Review: Mmm. Until recently my opinion of my new Rio Volt has fluctuated daily.
I bought this CD/MP3/WMA player because I have all of my own CD's stored on my PC in WMA format so I don't always have to change CD's all the time etc. I was extremely annoyed when I found out that you can't play Copyrighted WMA's on the player, and as all WMA's are recorded from copyrighted CD's, that means basically that it can't play WMA's.
This is stupid. Rio seemed to push the WMA capability so much, and yet it can't play 99% of WMA files. It's outrageous, stupefying, maddening, crazy and shockingly disgraceful. Needless to say, I wasn't happy.
However, I soon discovered that the Real Jukebox software that comes with the player is excellent at ripping CD Audio into MP3's (although it won't rip WAV to MP3), so, after having a cool shower, I calmed down and converted all my CD's to MP3 format.
I recorded at 96kbps and managed to squish 18 albums (250 MP3's) onto one CD-RW, which I was very impressed with. I can carry all my music around on two CD-RW's, great.
I was also hesitant to buy the player because of some of the reviews on this site, complaining about poor sound output levels etc. This really is a load of rubbish because the sound can be turned up to louder than you'd ever need without going deaf and subsequently begging for scraps of mouldy bread on the streets of London the rest of your life.
Anyway. On to the real bad points. The wired remote is a pile of garbage. Pick it up and you feel as though you're going to break the thing, as if it's a delicate little piece of doggy turd, precariously positioned underneath an elephant herd suspended over it using a piece of fishing wire and a roll of sticky tape.
The central button is very hard to operate due to the one button having 4 operations, and it's hard not to press it in the wrong direction, especially if you aren't looking at the thing. If it's not in view, who knows which way is which?. It's a bit suspect if you ask me.
The carry case is also a pile of garbage. Throw it away as soon as you get the damn thing out the box because it is so poorly designed that the only holes in the case are for the player to fit in, and one for headphones and Lineout jacks. No space for the LCD and control buttons to poke through or anything like that. It's just ridiculous. Sony, Rio aint. But in general, the sound is very good quality, bass is excellent, the headphones are surprisingly good for 'Supplied with goods' standards, the OSD is extremely simple to operate, firmware upgrades are easy to perform. Magic.
Buy it from Amazon because you're likely to surrender a significant amount more money on the high street.
Rating:
Summary: Nice gadget
Review: I'm very happy with my MP3 player, I need all the computer resources for the programs I work with, so I rather hear my MP3's on an external device. The RioVolt was just the solution I was looking for.
Rating:
Summary: Feature rich with high quality construction.
Review: We all know what it does, and that's great. The battery life is good enough, the LCD screen is very readable (though I will never figure out what those *stupid* dancing people at the bottom are for), and the latest firmware updates provide some great improvements in functionaliry and feature set. It's simply a quality product that is worth your purchase if you have need of it.
Rating:
Summary: Nice but not perfect for audiobooks
Review: My RioVolt SP100 is nice, but the startup is slow, the display limited and the accommodation for presentation of spoken content limited. SonicBlue claims to support WMA files, but no note is made of the fact that it does not support the 6.5 Kbps WMA encoding rate. This encoding is excellent for audio books and it can achieve incredible file compression while maintaining useful reproduction. Other encoding rates are supported, but the one I want to use is not supported. The headphones supplied are worthless, the volume is not always adequate for use at the gym, the case supplied with the unit is a throw-away and the placement of the headphone cord jack is very curious. The unit does not support page marks. The unit is obviously targeted to music folks with no thought given to those of us who like spoken content. It has all these shortcomings, but I am back to buy another for my girlfriend. What's better?
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