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Summary: Thanks Boston guy
Review: Thanks, Boston guy... I liked your in-depth review better :) Your review was good. It's making me think twice about getting a Rio Volt, due to the skipness factor. This is what makes MP3-memory players so advantageous albeit the awful prices we have to pay for the unit, and the extra RAM. Hmm, maybe I'll wait for the TDK Mojo.
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Summary: Reviewer From Boston Responds to Seattle Guy
Review: You're right, it's beta firmware. But, don't give people the idea that there is a risk involved in installing it, because I installed it and it works perfectly. I encourage anyone else who installed it to testify that it works and that there is no risk involved. I recently went on a very long train trip and played the unit for 16 hrs. straight with the newest version of the firmware. it works it works it works! But, I have to agree with the people who say that the rio volt skips. it has skipped since the day i bought it. It's absolutely flawless if it's standing still (which is how i mainly use it), and you can definitely move it around a little bit. However, don't even consider buying this if you want to jog with it. It absolutely will not work. However, it works pretty well walking. I find that it will only not skip strapped around your belt if your belt is very tight (no slack). But, in my coat pocket i walk about a half-a-mile and it would skip twice. maybe 3 times. However, it's good at picking right back up again. It works best at the lower encoding rates for skip protection because the unit needs to access the CD less (128kb/s is what most of mine are at). It skips more during my half-mile daily walk when it's encoded at 160kb/s (maybe 10 or 12 times) and I can only imagine that a regular CD may very well be unplayable if you decide to take it on a walk and aren't holding it in your hand to keep it steady the entire time. In conclusion, the seattle guy is right about the firmware being beta, but if it works i don't see what difference it makes. Right? For those of you who don't know, beta means "experimental" from what I can gather. So, I didn't mean to mislead anyone by not telling them it is experimental software. If it didn't work, I would've said so. The thing is, your rio volt can really get messed up if the upgrade doesn't work and become completely dysfunctional. Perhaps the upgrade won't work for certain people. It isn't right to say there is NO risk, but I think it's correct to say there is VERY LITTLE risk. So, upgrade and enjoy! It works so much better after you do and you won't be sorry.
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Summary: Outstanding... worth every penny!
Review: I purchased the Rio Volt a few days ago, it is amazing. It holds hours of skip free music in a compact size while still mantaining high sound quality. The software that comes with it is less than savory however as long as you know how to put mp3's on a disc it's a no-brainer to operate. All in all, worth every penny.
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Summary: help please
Review: can someone tell me how to get to the resume mode please (ladypixiem@netscape.net). Thanks
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Summary: To the person who posted that FTP link to the 1.12 firmware
Review: To the poster who posted "New Firmware Upgrade Ends most of the Negative Reviews, March 22, 2001 Reviewer: An electronics fan from Boston, MA"You forgot to mention one thing: This is Beta firmware. For some people, such as me, I'm willing to take the risk (but then I don't have any right to complain if things go belly up after installing a beta firmware). However, other people may not appreciate the fact that you posted a link to beta firmware without informing anyone of that fact. As such, your review was no help to any neophyte computer/electronic users.
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Summary: dont buy RIO, BUY AVC SOUL PLAYER, it will save u $$$$
Review: RIO VOLT = $179 AVC SOUL PLAYER = $120 ( http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp?invtid=DMP-1 ) They are manufactured by the same people but branded different... just thought i would save u some bucks! =)
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Summary: Resume Upgrade
Review: I absolutely love this product. It is amazingly the best on the market. Someone wrote it doesn't have a resume but that person either is running old software or doesn't know how to turn the feature on. Download version 1.13 from www.riohome.com/products/riovolt.htm. Read the text file so you know how to use the features as they aren't documented with the somewhat lacking manual. Someone else noted a problem w/FF on audio CD's this has been corrected too. Another problem mentioned was playing CDs while the unit is vertical. This sounds like a defective unit. Mine played fine vertical even while tapping on it. I run mine vertical in my car for 2hrs everyday. The Rio is 1 of 2 available that can be upgraded. The others pale in comparison. So many of the cheap ones can't read ID3, choke on directories or can't resume within a track & have no hope of ever doing so. With the Rio if you want a feature write the company. I asked about the resume feature & it was implemented within a week. Maybe it had nothing to do with me but I felt like I had input. Don't waste money on one of those cheaper units like the Phillips or Classic.
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Summary: The problems with the Rio Volt are
Review: Not having enough time to enjoy this product. After researching MP3 players and their relative high cost and definite small memory capacity, I was intrigued by the MP3 CD player concept. I wanted two main uses out my player and they both were to use while traveling. #1 - My wife has always said that I was going to get in car wreck due to changing CD's (I don't have a CD player in my truck so I use a portable). #2 - I'm an avid bicyclist that loves to punish nyself riding 200-mile bike rides in one day. Often while riding by myself on a desolate in the middle of nowhere or slugging up a steep mountain road, music is a welcome source of inspiration. I needed a unit that would not skip and sounded great. Also, I wanted a unit that would display song information and sound great. Also, if possible, relative short space between songs with a good shuffling function. Not asking too much I think. After alot of research (and at first purchasing the Phillips eXpansion unit), I decided to try the Rio Volt. The Phillips had a reputation of long pauses between songs and not much song info (if any). The Rio consistantly got high reviews. I tried it, cancelled my Phillips order (OK, not fair to the Phillips) and boy was I pleased. I did get songs that kept repeating themselves and thought it was the Rio but found it was a software glitch that occured while ripping the CD's to MP3 files. The way I found this (I use MusicMatch 6.0 most the time) was the song legnth. For example, a song that normally was 3 minutes long displayed on the MusicMatch player 12 minutes. On MusicMatch the song would just end. On the Rio, the song after playing would finish and then jump back to the middle of the track and keep doing this 3 or 4 times. The solution was to go back a re-rip the CD on Music Match. I found that I had used Sonic Siren 1.5 before MusicMatch and there was a software bug in Siren's earlier products. Bottom line. My Rio does NOT skip, sounds great, and provides me with a 150 song source with one CD. I've had batteries wear out before finishing a CD. I love my Rio!
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Summary: Good news, bad news
Review: The good news... It really does what it is supposed to. It played my MP3 CD-Rs as advertised, it displayed the track info, it is software upgradeable, the batteries last. The bad news... It skips! You cannot put it on your belt and walk. It will drive you crazy. I rigged a strap to carry it by my chest, it was a little better, but not good. I think I am going to have to return this and get a regular CD player. I hate to change CDs, but I hate skips more.
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Summary: This is one AWESOME mp3/cd-player.
Review: I came to Amazon to try and decide which mp3/cd player I wanted to buy and I saw that more often then not people gave a good review to the rio volt by sonic blue. I think that I made a good decision in following the reviews and buying one for myself. I find that I download or rip mp3s and it is great for me because I can fit a good number of songs onto one cd when I burn them as mp3 files. I believe that I have a maximum of at least 200 songs on one disk but that is because I have other information on the disk. The player is great because I can play cdrw disks as well as cdr disks. The good thing about cdrw is that I can write mp3s on the cd and then later I can change the files whenever I want. One thing that some people thought was not so good about the player was the earphones, but I think the earphones are fine and provide good sound. I also read one review about someone who tried to play the beatles one cd and it did not work but I tried the cd and I found it worked fine. I think that the only thing other than good I could say about the machine is that the output when hooking it up to speakers whether they are small portable speakers or to a system is quieter than I would expect although you can raise the volume and get a loud enough output. My other cd player is a lennex sound which is about five to seven years old and it has no anti-skip memory so I find it skips just everytime you even touch the thing wrong. I was happy with the performance of the rio volt in this area and I have been moving around the unit in order to test this feature and I find that the mp3 player rarely (I do not remember it ever skipping) if ever skips and the cd player rarely ever skips but it seems that certain things will cause the cd player to skip but I believe I have only had it skip about two or three times. I am not trying to discount any bad reviews other people have had but I do want to say that I am very happy with the rio volt that I bought. I would recommend this product to anyone with a lot of mp3 files who would like to be able to take one cd instead of a whole bunch of cds on a trip or to play at home. I think this is a good investment because the other types of mp3 players (solid state players) can play a maximum of about 128 mb of mp3 files which is not even close to the amount that can be found on one cdr or cdrw (650 mb or 700 mb both types play on the rio volt). Not only this but the memory sticks or memory cards are much more expensive then buying packages of cds.
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