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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: 4 stars
Summary: Great, just did 150 songs
Review: I think it is great...I do Tech. Support for a CPU manufacturer and when I am cranking those technical emails it is great to keep me going song after song. The only draw back is it takes a few seconds for the thing to start and to get to the next song. No biggy, it is great and the price is getting better. My only comparison would be my Sony player that uses memory sticks. Memory sticks are way too expensive and I can only put about 15 to 20 songs on a 64 MB stick, give or take some. Any ways I just got this one and I am enjoying it. Check out Sonic Blue's web site for firmware updates.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A great product but ...
Review: Everything about the RioVolt is well thought out. The unit is about as small as it could possibly be, the rubber pads on the bottom keep it from sliding either at home or at the gym, the controls are easy to navigate, and the +10 button (which lets you skip forward 10 tracks) is a great idea. The remote control is just the right length--I can keep the unit in my backpack when walking yet still control all of the functions.

If you buy this unit, the first thing you'll want to do is upgrade the firmware. This gives the ability to add custom EQ and, more importantly, skip forward or back 10 tracks using the remote.

So, why only four stars? The unit doesn't support .mp3's recorded at a 48,000 hz sample rate. I had to re-record pretty much my entire collection before I could use the unit.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Great concept, great features, lousy implementation
Review: I picked up the RioVolt almost as soon as it came out. I figured with Sonicblue's reputation in the digital audio world, the ability to play regular CDs or hundreds of MP3 and WMA songs from a single CD -- all in a portable package -- what could go wrong? Several things...

(1) The anti-skip function hardly works at all. If the player is moved too much then you can be sure that it WILL skip. It almost seems as if the player plays out its anti-skip buffer but doesn't refill it during any motion or activity. I thought that the benefit of this type of feature was that it would play from memory while continuing to fill memory from the CD during motion. Apparently not in this case.

(2) The carrying case supplied is useless. It's little more than a slip case with no external access to the buttons on the main unit or a view of the LCD. Good for storage but not for carrying it along.

(3) By far the most serious problem I've had with this player is that I am unable to reliably switch to and play MP3 or WMA files that are near the end of the file list on any CD. For example, if I have a CD with 100 MP3 files and I want to play file #73 in the list, I navigate to the file and select play. The RioVolt will spin for SEVERAL MINUTES before beginning to play the track. Then, when it does finally begin playing, it will play for only a few seconds, pause for several seconds, play some more, and so on. It never catches up with itself and starts playing the track smoothly. I can easily reproduce this problem and have experimented with several different discs, both MP3 and WMA formats and multiple firmware versions. I thought that maybe there was a problem with my RioVolt until I read about this exact same problem in a recent magazine review.

(4) Forget about technical support. I've been trying to use the online technical support email form, only to be told (after filling in a form with a detailed description of my problem) that their web server is out of space.

Maybe the new high-end SP250 or even the low-end SP90 will fix this problem. Or maybe it will be fixed in a future firmware release. However, for the time being, my RioVolt is essentially useless.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: EXCELLENT!
Review: 5 stars. Im very happy with it.
One thing...the headphones are kind of weak....
but you can easily upgrade them. Other than that..
I recommend it.Great performance, great price, great features.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Best invention of the 21st Century yet!
Review: I just got my Riovolt today. Whoa! This thing can handle MP3's, WMA's, regular CDs, everything! The first thing I did was upgrade the firmware. I really don't know what some people are talking about. I'm using a Direct CD disk filled with about 200 mp3s at various bitrates. This thing DOES NOT skip, unless you drop it off a building. I'm only using the 10 second anti skip, and that's just fine. You can set it to 40, also. Basically, if you're not good at burning CDs, learn first and you won't have any trouble. The only thing I'm a little worried about is that the unit uses the laser motor a lot. I solved this by quitting on the Direct CD format. It helps to just burn them normally. I reccomend using a regular CD format rather than Direct CD, which I've tried, because the unit can read the regular format much faster. By "regular", I don't mean regular CD audio. I mean MP3's burned as a standard data CD with a program like Easy CD Creator 5. You may also want to pick up some good NIMH rechargables, because the unit does consume batteries pretty quickly. And, with the insane price of batteries, it's worth it even if you have a unit that is energy efficient. Hopefully, in a future firmware revision, they will allow you to disable the light on the display. It's silly that it comes on every time you hit a button. If you're outside, it isn't needed. The dancing characters are cute for about 3 seconds after you first use the unit. Sonic Blue: NEXT FIRMWARE! LET US GET RID OF THEM! ALLOW THE UNIT TO SHOW GRAPHICS OF THEM BEING RUN OVER BY BUSES! Seriously, though, the few imperfections are enough to deal with. It's well worth the money.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: RioVolt Rocks!
Review: I purchased one a few months ago. If you have the capability to burn a CD, I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't go this route. Go on vacation, you can bring "unlimited" music. You are not tied into the RAM type. Unless you're attached at the hip to a computer, there is no better solution. 10 hours on 2-AA's. It is for real!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Not the best in everything
Review: The stuff is cool, but update the firmware ASAP after you got the player. The menu usage will be 100 times easier, the sound becomes better, user defined EQ, etc.

bad things:
1. The earbuds do not really fit, and are bad quality, so buy a new pair if you have the chance.
2. The 120 sec ESP is not true, especially if you hold the player upside down /it skips a lot then/
3. The carry case is ugly.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Koss's car kit works
Review: First of all, I love my RioVolt! I use it in the gym, and now in my car. A few people in the reviews here said that they wanted a car kit. I found that one available on the website, the "Koss 4.5 Carpack /Cigarette Lighter Adapter and Cassette Adapter", works perfectly. The electrical specs and the plug size are an exact match to the RioVolt's AC adapter, and the cassette adapter's sound quality is much better than the one I tried from Radio Shack

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: This rocks!
Review: Well, this was one of my best buys ever, this thing is really cool, I have a CD with 196 songs in CD quality and with this product I can hear them anywhere (except for plains, in the airline usually make you turn it on when flying, but a hell with them :) ).

The only thing I see missing in this product is the support for recursive directory listing (it has, but is not recursive), less battery consuming (is great with lion batteries, but I don't have of those... :) ) and more user stuff to play with, like playlists (maybe reading them from the CD?).

Oh, just one thing you get 10 or 40, you have a switch to choose, usually you go with 10, caus is less battery consuming, but sometimes you need 40, like when going to run (yep, you can do it if you try the device nice).

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Best I've seen, but...
Review: What others say (about the RioVolt being the best right now) rings true. It's a good product, reasonably priced with better features than pricier models like the Expanium. The display keeps that fifth star in my pocket, though. It's easily large enough to hold six or seven lines of text, but someone apparently thought it would be cool to waste more than one-third of the display on static, useless graphics that repatedly animate and use up power. It is a neat little thing - for about four seconds. Still, as much as that one feature ... most everything else is good.


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