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Koss CDP3100 CD/MP3 Player with 45/25 Second ASP and Headphones

Koss CDP3100 CD/MP3 Player with 45/25 Second ASP and Headphones

List Price: $99.99
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Cheap MP3/CD player - if you can't afford a TDK Mojo...
Review: The Koss CDP3000 is worth what you pay for it. If you can't shell out the hundred-fifty dollars for an MP3/CD player with ID3 tag or filename support, then consider this one. It has the usual drawbacks, such as that it takes some time to spin up the CD and read the structure (somewhere between 10 and 40 seconds, depending on the CD, and sometimes it gets stuck during this process, but turning it off and them back on fixes this). The manual says it supports bitrates from 32K to 256K, including VBR. I tested a fair variety of different MP3s on it, and everything I tried except those with the new MP3Pro format worked. The anti-skip function is pretty good, but not perfect. The headphones are passable, but most people will want to spend twenty bucks on a pair of Sony's. (If you can afford fifty dollar or more headphones, then you should be able to afford a better MP3/CD player). I've gone through two sets of batteries so far, one lasted quite a while, and the other went very quickly, so I suspect the second set were just bad batteries. The navigation system is pretty good, it sorts by directories on the CD (calling them 'albums'). The random play feature only has one function, which plays all the tracks in one album in a random order, then switches to the next album. This product includes *no* software, and crappy documentation. It does have a line-out, and it includes an A/C adapter. For those who saw my earlier review, the problems I had were due to the way I burned the CDs -- don't use DirectCD to create MP3 CDs, it doesn't create CDs that follow the appropriate standards.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Chokes on Large Files - I'm Returning It
Review: The Koss CDP3000 series is nice - when it works. Problem is, it doesn't work often enough for me to keep it. I wanted an MP3 player for playing OTR (Old Time Radio) programs - usually 10 to 30 minutes each. On two MP3 discs, the player worked fine for about 10 minutes - then would suddenly skip to the next track, leaving the previous one unfinished. The same thing would happen every time I tried to play the disc. On a third disc (with 120 10-minute shows), the player showed the number of tracks, but wouldn't play a darn thing. Without exception, these three discs all played fine in my computer. For what it's worth, the Koss sounds good when it's playing...but if you want to hear how your cuts finish, then look for another player.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Nice
Review: This is a great entry-level MP3/CD Player. ...The Koss doesn't have the flashy case or the large LCD screen, but I still like it better than the Expanium. It is much simpler to use, and it has better battery life as well (the Expanium has only 10 hours). It is also noticeably lighter and thinner than the Expanium, which is also a big plus. It has a slower boot time (the time it takes from when you turn the player on until when the music starts to play) than the Expanium, but there is almost no delay what-so-ever between tracks. ...I have had no trouble at all with any of my burned cds; they all play fine. As for the "electronics fan from New Jersey", he needs some serious help if he can't make an MP3 cd correctly. It is a totally no-brainer process, so don't believe what he says. I only have had two problem this CD player. 1) that if there are any long, noticeable scratches on the CD, the player will sometimes misread these and suddenly go from 3:23 on track 5 to 3:24 on track 6; but that rarely happens. and 2) it cannot read ID3 tags (song name, artist, and album information). However, all in all, this is a great MP3/CD player, and the price is right.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: awesome fabulous object
Review: This is a really good peice of equipment it would be my dream to have it.If i had enough money to buy it which i do i would buy it.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Overall.........Very good
Review: this is a very good product. i can play over 100 songs on this player. i use a re-writable disk too. it reads it fine. once in a while it skips but i think it is because the batteries are low. great product.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Finally was able to burn an mp3 disc that this could read
Review: This is my first experience with an mp3 player. I was frustrated and almost returned the unit, since it would not read any mp3 discs that I initially burned. Perhaps it was simply my Macintosh configuration's fault, but when I set Roxio Toast Titanium 5.02 to burn an mp3 format disc, or Apple iTunes 2.0.3 to burn mp3 format disc, this unit could not read either of them. I ended up having to set Toast to ISO 9660 Level 1 (I guess an older and more crude format, instead of Joliet) in order to burn an mp3 disc the Koss CDP3000 could read, (despite the manual saying it supported joliet format). Once I figured that out, it worked fine, so I guess I will keep it. I ultimately made an mp3 disc with 16 albums (containing 220 songs encoded at 160 bit rate) and it plays fine. I have no experience with the pricier units, (such as TDK Mojo) but perhaps they are more flexible in reading mp3 discs burned in a more modern mp3 format. If that is true, it would have been worth the extra money to avoid the troubleshooting I went through (and wasting 10 cd's in the process). With that problem solved, however, I guess I can give it a decent review since it works.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: good player ..price
Review: This is the perfect player! ... It doesn't read ID3 tags, but it starts up in 6 or 7 seconds because it doesn't have to read all the ID3 tags. That is an advantage of Mp3/CD players that don't have ID3 capability.

Once I got mine, I burned a couple MP3 cd's with about 13 seperate albums (so over 100 mp3's) and they all work fine. The anti-shock is what you'd expect for 40/25 seconds. IT SKIPS IF YOU SHAKE IT FOR MORE THAN 40 SECONDS! It doesn't skip if you are walking with it. Whoever said the antiskip doesn't work must not know anything about antiskip. As for the sound, it is awesome. The base boost makes it a ton better. It plays normal cd's very well, there is no difference between how it plays normal cd's and MP3 cd's except MP3 cd's take a couple seconds to boot up.

Overall, it is the ideal Mp3/CD player because it's cheap, it works, and it has good sound. Go buy it

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: For the cheapskate in you.
Review: This model is currently making the rounds at several big-name retailers (...).

As a previous review mentioned, there is a metal plate on the underside of the player cover, mounted with several metal screws. There doesn't appear to be much clearance between the plate and the disc, and since the plate holds up the (rather stiff) pushbutton controls, I fear that each time you push hard on a button, you're bending that plate a little closer to your spinning media. I haven't lost any discs this way yet, but it may be a legitimate concern. I'm not too worried, though, since the only reason for even looking at this unit is for playing MP3 compilations you've burned by yourself onto ten-cent discs.

The LCD mounted in the middle of the cover only displays album and track number (each folder of MP3 files is considered a separate "album"), but no ID tag data. A minor quibble.

There is a delay of maybe 30 seconds between pushing "play" and actually getting playback to begin. However, if you're trying to play several hours of music without changing media, a few seconds of delay at the start is nothing.

Unfortunately, the MP3 playback quality can be described at best as "iffy". Lots of "chirping", which is not such a big deal through cheap speakers, but really annoying if you're wearing headphones. Worse yet, playback occasionally skips for no apparent reason.

On the other hand, until Sony and Philips start marketing devices with MP3 playback capability at this price point (say, mid-to-late 2002), the bottom of the field is pretty much the exclusive domain of (...) players like this one. If you absolutely have to have an MP3-capable CD player (...) this Christmas, why not save a few bucks towards your next purchase and go with the cheapest the market has to offer?

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Simple, Sturdy, Excelent Quality
Review: While this is a fairly straight forward and basic mp3/cd player, it does everything that it claims to do and well. I have had mine for about a week now and have had no problems with it at all. The anti skip feature is also impressive. I have had several other portable cd players ranging from cheap to top of the line and this unit is by far the best when it comes to the anti skip.

While the lack of Mp3 tag information (such as Title and Artist)being displayed was at first a considered a downside to choosing this unit, I am now glad that I bought on without this feature as it would take longer to begin playing each disk while it scanned every track for this info.

All in all the best audio component I have ever added to $2500 system!


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