Rating: Summary: awesome bargain Review: I purchased this product on sale at my local Target last month. So far I've had three problems, 1) I dropped it three times from a distance of about three feet and while it continued to play (awesome bufferring and anti skip) for several seconds the disc did suffer some damage as it came free within the device and became severely gouged as it continued to spin. 2) another issue is that it wont recognize more than 93 mp3 files per disc, the manual says that it supports 99 tracks per album, but i haven't had success yet in burning a cd-r with the multiple albums that the player can recognize. 3) I only use this device with the power adapter that came with the device (a big plus), but I did use Energizer Titanium batteries just to test it and it ate them up with in 6 hours of use. I thought that was rather too quick for my taste. The great features include 1)the right price, 2)compact design, 3)ease of operation, 4)nice packaging(comes with fair quality headphones, i do recommend upgrading though, and a AC power adapter), other features include a hold switch(temporarily disables buttons), a DBBS switch (extra bass), a line out port, and the usual programming options. I recommend this product at the right price.
Rating: Summary: Good, low end MP3 CD Player Review: I recently purchased a Koss 3000 series CDR/CDRW/MP3 player. It is very bare bones, but I am satisfied. I have read some of the reviews here. The problem lies in that technical support for Koss is very poor. I too had some trouble burning a CD with MP3's sucessfully. I finally had luck using MusicMatch Jukebox, with MP3 quality selected (96 kbps), and Normal processing selected for encoding (under Advanced menu). My files are organized on the CD as follows: one folder per album, with respective MP3's per album underneath each folder. I read the review about 8.3 naming convention -- my player WAS able to read extended file names, just make sure the leading portion of the file name is unique. For example, my files are named 01(track number)_song title_album_artist.mp3. Again, long file names are OK, including spaces. Anyway, this is a good purchase. I also bought 2 AA NiMH rechargeable batteries and recharger instead of an AC adapter (neither of which came with the unit). All in all a great value, since I am planning to put around 10 hours of music on one CD. Also, I read that some folks are experiencing poor quality sound. I do not notice anything out of the ordinary. Folks, please understand that MP3 can be near-CD quality. The MP3 format will at best closely replicate CD quality sound. Notice the drastic differences in files sizes between an MP3 file and a CD track. That is partially why you may hear a faint echo, or other anomolies -- that is normal and is a trade-off with MP3's. If you don't like the quality, stick with the original CD recording. As for clicking sounds -- try adjusting the sampling rate and/or other settings with your CD ripping software. Now, back to the product... I am happy with my purchase, and recommend it with some caution -- be prepared to spend some time working out the kinks if you plan to listen to MP3 files. Your patience will pay off...
Rating: Summary: Buzzzzzzz Review: I think for the money ... it's not a bad unit. The display is kinda pathetic, but it did seem to play everything OK. I made a MP3 cd of about 150 songs at 160k bit rate. EZ CD creator/Joliet. Long file names. Played all of them, no problem. I don't understand why eveyone else has so many problems. This was my first experience making an MP3 cd. Perhaps the quality of each unit varies greatly???? The one thing that I noticed, that no one else seems to be talking about, is that when listening to a disc there is always a slight BUZZ. As if something is not grounded. This is what caused me to return the unit.
Rating: Summary: Bought it yesterday, returning it tomorrow. Review: I'm new to the world of MP3 CD players, and if this is how they all work, I'm going back to straight CDs. I spent nearly an entire day trying to get a CD-R encoded to work with the darn thing. What frustration. And when I finally -did- get a CD-R burnt that worked with it, the sound quality was reminiscent of a walkie talkie. LAME. There was this weird echo effect present in the MP3 playback that does not exist when the very same CD-R is taken to a desktop PC and played there. Also, the sound quality on CDs is bad, too. FWIW, I used RealJukebox Plus to encode from CD to MP3, and then used CDRWIN to burn the MP3s to CD-R.This KOSS unit is a shame, because I bought the KOSS unit since I was so pleased with their standard CD player, which costed me [price]. This unit, at [price] from my local ... store, is not worth more than [price] IMHO. I'm returning it tomorrow and picking up either the Philips/Magnavox unit, or the RCA unit. But this one is a reject.
Rating: Summary: For this price it's great Review: I've been using it for two months and I must say it's great. I didn't have any problems with playing any of my mp3 cds. I've got more than 20, some of them recorded more than 3 years ago, with music from more than 30 sources. It plays music very smoothly and it sounds great. Hovever, there are some skips during playing, especially when I walk fast or go with tram. Second bad thing is consuming power. Without rechargable accu it would be rather expensive. I didn't experience any problem with scratching cd. I think this player is really worth to buy
Rating: Summary: Not so good Review: It has all been covered here, the skipping, the battery consumption, the total lack of web-support. I thought I was getting a good deal. In a way I did, since it only cost me 50 bucks to figure out that I'll never buy another Koss product again. At least I didn't drop big money on a high ticket item to learn this.
Rating: Summary: amesome Review: just what you are looking for in a great chceep cd player.
Rating: Summary: Not Good Quality Review: Not a very good product. I bought one and a month later it broke. Returnd it and got another one and it broke too.
Rating: Summary: Thanks for the tip Review: Only by reading these reviews did I finally figure out how to make it read mp3s. I had to go back and burn the cd with Toast 3.5.6 because toast platinum throws mp3's intp mp3 mode. The Koss wouldn't read any cd's burned with toast platinum but what is cool is that if you burn the cd with Toast 3.5.6 using ISO 9660 format you can have additional sessions on the same write only cd by using incremental backup mode. Thanks for the tip Dave. It's too bad Koss doesn't tell you this!
Rating: Summary: bargain, if you ask me Review: So many dissatisfied reviews up here, I'm glad I didn't read them before I bought this thing. It took a little messing around (very little) with Easy CD Creator, but I've found that the player does everything advertised. As I type, I'm playing a CD-RW with a dozen subdirectories (it wasn't clear that this is what the instructions mean by "album", but another post here straightened me out on that) containing a total of 112 mp3s. JOLIET format, which somebody said you couldn't do, with long filenames (max. 64 char, I guess), which somebody else said you couldn't do. Sounds fine, not quite CD quality, but that's to be expected. Also haven't noticed the skips or pops people are complaining about, but it's too soon to judge that. I haven't tried pushing the limit on number of tracks yet-- to eager to try it out. maybe that will break it. Also, I haven't been running or otherwise shaking the box (let alone whacking it as some posts here have described) so I can't really speak to the anti-skip or the unfortunate metal plate. However, if you're not planning on working out with this player (or whacking it) and you want to put a Boston-NYC train ride's worth of music on a single, re-writable CD, this is a nifty unit for the price.
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