Rating: Summary: TOTALLY LOVE IT!! Review: i've had the riovolt sp100 for about 7 months now.i live in san francisco and commute on the bus everyday to and from work. even when i run for to catch the bus, the player does not skip! the play mode features include programmable playlist, shuffle/repeat, etc. along with 5 different equalizer sounds - rock, jazz, classical, ultra bass and normal. i cram about 150 to 200 mp3s in a cd-r or cdr-w and hit the shuffle mode everyday. for music/song variation, i carry about 2-3 cds with about 200 songs in my bag with me (that's compared to ten cds i used to carry with way less songs), and i'm good to go for weeks. the carrying case is awkward.. but there's a remote control that attaches to the headphones, so i don't have to keep taking the player out of the case just to fast-forward a song or adjust the volume. unfortunately, i change batteries every 4 days... my commute is about 30-45 minutes/day plus any additional walking i may be doing that week...wish the battery was rechargeable lithium. there is also a rio car cassette adaptor available at the sonic blue site ... for using the player in the car. ...
Rating: Summary: finest product among MP3 CD players Review: I would recommend it to everyone who is considering to buy a new MP3 CD player. It has awesome sound quality and the battery life is even longer than my old CD player. LCD display is a plus to this product and the navigation option makes a lot easier to keep track of my music. The downside is its ugly carrying case, which I don't use it often. You also might considering to buy another head-phone because the ear-bug is really a shame to this product. Overall, I give it 5 stars.
Rating: Summary: THEY FINALLY GOT IT RIGHT Review: After reading a review for the new RioVolt player, and finding a great deal (...), I hesitantly took the plunge and bought it. What a great decision! The quality and flexibility of this player is light-years ahead of those first slapped-together units. The sound is smooth and very CD-like at just about any bitrate (I have recorded and played CDs at bitrates from 128-320, as well as Variable Bit Rate recordings), and the ability to read ID2/3 tags makes navigating through several hundred tracks much easier, and dare I say - fun? I currently am using it as a substitute for a CD changer in my home system, so it's portability and shock resistance have yet to be tested. An upcoming trip to the Northeast will tell the tale. But if it works as well in the car as it does in my home system, I will consider this to be one of the best buys in portable music. And with prices continuing to fall, I may just go ahead and purchase a spare!!
Rating: Summary: okay...wow Review: This is the best cd player I have ever seen/owned. The sound is amazing, the earphones fit and sound perfect, the price wasn't too bad, great skip protection, it saves battery life, it takes only a few seconds to burn a cd that can be played on RioVolt, contains many different modes, allows for fine tuning of the sound (equalizer with choices of jazz, rock, heavy bass, classical, etc.), and can be used in a car.
Rating: Summary: Amazing Product!!!! Review: this cd player is truly great. i have purchased atleast 4 mp3-cd players in the last month to test them out and find out which one is the best, along with reading multiple reviews. this one is top of the line. although you can't search for songs my letters like others, the lcd screen which lights up is great. the sound quality is great and also you can search through the complete directory and chose which song you want to listen to. it has many cool options like lights off, beeping of buttons off etc. this is great!
Rating: Summary: notes on some alleged problems Review: First of all, i have had this player for about a month. i have to say that i really like this player alot. pros: obviously amount of music per disc anti-skip of 120 seconds reads id tags supports folders!!!!!!! upgradeable firmware cons: it's bulky (what do you expect?) the head phones suck belt holder is not very good now, i've heard problems like the volume does not get loud enough and it skips. The volume: I use this player at night when i sleep (in a crappy two person dorm). i can hear the music quite well with the headphones out of my ears laying on my bed. so, i have to wonder if some people's hearing is a little... um....bad? i do know that some mp3s (the way they are recorded i guess) are quieter than others. so maybe that is the case. Skips: something you should know is that this player does have a bitrate cap of 256 (somewhere around that number) so anything higher than that and it is going to skip.i hope this helps alleviate some fears
Rating: Summary: It's very good. Review: I like this mp3 - cd player a lot. First I gotta tell you that the coolest thing about it is the feature of displaying the digitized dancers on the display pannel. It's just so exciting to see them follow the beats of my music. Another good thing is that it wastes battery really fast so you can experience the joy and excitment of opening and putting new ones every 2-3 days. The earbuds are AWESOME. The name says it all. They're bigger than your earhole so that when you try to put them in, they don't fit. And when they finally go in, you're gonna like it because they have no bass at all so you can save yourself from going deaf. And if you turn it up loud, people around you are gonna hear the music and they're gonna realize how cool you are. All in all a great product with great features. Oh... and sometimes it skips too but it's good because it just knows when to skip. It usually skips during the uncool part of the song.
Rating: Summary: Nice Review: the good: +Good Sound Quality +Tons of functions +Easy Navigation +Upgradable Firmware the bad: -Cheep looking plastic desing (however it is sturdy) -Only 2-line LCD display, the third line is used for silly looking little "dancers" Overall I like this player very much, however, I'll probably sell it and buy its successor, the SP250 because it has a much nicer LCD which fits more information at once
Rating: Summary: Currently the best MP3 portable player in the market! Review: I remember a few years ago when portable devices to play MP3 music files were made available to the public. The first were the RIO's which had the potential to play 10-15 MP3's by downloading them from your computer to the supplied memory card for the device. Of course, back then if you wanted an hour's worth of music you had to buy several memory cards and that was just too expensive. Then a year later, there were portable MP3 players but unfortunately, there were no track listings so if you have dozens to hundreds of MP3's on one CD, you were forced to keep pressing forward until you have the right song. Now three years later we have the RioVolt from SONIC|blue which looks like a very high-end portable CD player but it functions much more than that. It happens to be a portable device that also plays MP3's and WMA's with the potential to play more music formats. Features of this device include the ability to play audio CDs, CD-R and CD-RW's. Supports popular music formats which include MP3 and WMA and since the firmware of the device can be upgraded by downloading the firmware from the company's Website, we may be able to see other music formats like VQF, ASF, QuickTime or Real Audio in the near future. The device also has electronic shock protection up to 120 seconds, runs around 15 hours with 2 AA batteries, includes an AC adaptor, headphones and a leather case. The blue LCD panel features the file folders and songs which helps navigating through songs with ease, an 8-function remote control, equalizer and software for those who don't have CD burning software and audio management. Also, this device supports ID3 tags and audio CD text on the title display. The first thing I did was put in a CD-R which stored many MP3's and plugged the headphones into the side of the device. The first thing I noticed on the LCD screen was the version of firmware the device was currently using. At the time it was 1.13. I went to the following FTP site to download the latest 2.10 firmware. To upgrade the firmware, you just download and burn the file to a CD-R (in its root directory). Insert the CD-R with the new firmware and play the CD. The player then automatically upgrades itself to the new firmware in 30 seconds. (NOTE: This CD-R is used once, so it's best to use a blank CD and record nothing else on it but the firmware. Also, if you are upgrading your firmware, we highly recommend you run on AC power and not battery power. You can damage your RioVolt if the power cuts off during the upgrade). At first, I was dissapointed by how low the sound was maxed out at level-20 until I realized that the headphones is supposed to be plugged into the top section of the remote control and then I was able to get full volume past level-20. The EQ menu gives you several of music settings such as normal, classic, rock, jazz and ultra bass. Depending on how the MP3 was encoded, all I can say is that the MP3's I played on this device sounds great! So, all in all this MP3 and CD portable player is something I have been wanting and waiting for many years to have in my hands. Now that I have one, having to carry a bag or pouch full CD's and switching CD's is now a thing of the past. I can literally backup around 10-12 music CD's on one CD-R using the MP3 format and listen to them with ease on my RioVolt. Highly recommended!
Rating: Summary: Great product! Review: I love this product. Not only can you play normal CDs, but you can burn around 10-15 CDs in MP3 format to a CD-R and play those. I find that putting the MP3s in an artist/album/song directory format works best. The best feature is the inclusion of ID3 reading - it can give you plenty of information on the MP3 that is playing. The best use of this is for travel, I think - you can burn 100 CDs or more to a few disks and have your entire CD collection with you wherever you go and only carry 7-10 disks. The one downside is that the battery life is much less when you play normal CDs instead of MP3s, but if you use it for the MP3s of course this is not an issue. Highly recommended!
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