MP3 Reviews

Thought I was taking a gamble by looking into compactflash memory with a company i'd never heard of... but on the contrary, this has been exceptionally functional. highly reccomended.

... if you don't want any hassles. You won't have any problems with the product. You also get an individual plastic case, as most compact flash cards come with. But, as with all non-volatile memory, the question is how many cycles will it take before it dies? I guess I'll write another review in about 40 years to let you know.

I bought this card for my Kodak DC215 Digital Camera, and I'm about to buy another one for an upcoming trip. I have had no problems with it, and it has provided me with some of the additional memory I need to take more/higher quality images. If you're looking for a solid flash card, this is definitely a viable option.

These speakers are the perfect companion for a laptop computer. They are small, portable ( I don't even bother with the power cable, I run them on cheap batteries.) and have great sound.

I'm on the road constantly so portability is number one for me. I use them with my laptop to watch DVDs. The only limitation is volume,if you crank it up they will distort. But for watching DVDs in a hotel room they are perfect.

Well done Creative Labs.

I purchased this from Amazon after several hours of "whim" buying study. It seemed these had the best chance of being better than some of the cheapie portables i was familiar with. Much to my delight i was NOT disappointed. Granted with speakers this size you cant expect sub-like bass but actually theres more than i expected. Sound quality was very clear and the "wide" stereo feature is nice. High volume levels will cause distortion but you'll get a good amount of volume before you get distortion. If you buy these thinkin you'll get home stereo sound, forget it. If you buy these wanting a great set of "listen in the hotel room" travel speakers these work great!

I purchased this item from my local store and I'm very satisfied with its quality.
Of course, the sound quality cannot compete with HiFi systems, but for such a small speaker, the sound quality is really good. The frequency response is 150-20k, according to creative. So it is a little dry in the low freq range, as expected. Aside from that, the sound quality is very good. And it's not completely bassless as you might think.
You can get the volume high enough for room of about 20 square meters with decent sound quality. But if you adjust the volume too high it'll become noisy.
In a word, its sound quality is not top-notch. But for such a small speaker, it's much better than you'd expect. For a rough reference, its sound quality is about the same as what you can get for a pair of conventional speakers at the price range of around US$25.
The best feature of this gadget may be its digitalized amplifier. Unlike conventional linear amplifer which will waste a lot of power, travelsound uses a digital amplifier. So the battery life is longer. Creative claims a set of four AAA alkline battery can last more than 30 hours, I didn't count the hours but I think the claim is quite reasonable.

In a word, if you want music on the go, this is the one for you.

I needed a new player and decided to go with a changer (oh, I'm so glad I did. They are so much more convienent than the single disc players). I wanted a quality player that didn't make a spinning noise when playing discs. I was tired of hearing spinning noise at quiet points in the movies. I also wanted a player that had quality slow motion capabilities and progressive scanning.

I did the research, shopped around, and talked to people and I settled on this model from Onkyo. Everything I was hoping for in my player has been realized.

Only complaint is that the remote is not "ergonomically" designed and has no backlight. But that said, the remote is more sturdy and of better quality than some ergonomically/backlit remotes i've had. And the Onkyo remote has more "quick access" remote buttons. A single button leads you right where you want to get to. For example, while watching a movie, if I missed some dialogue, I can just hit the "Subtitles" button on the remote and rewind a little to see it again with subtitles. Hit same button again to turn off the subtitles. So the remote is good too but not awesome in intuitive layout/placement of buttons. But the remote is also the least important thing to me because if it is a serious problem one can always get a universal "high-tech" remote if they don't already have one.

Best DVD player I've owned yet. I'm totally happy with it. i wanted to write this to let others know my experience who might also be wondering about this player. Good luck in your selection.

I did not buy this through Amazon, but I have to let everyone know, it is an awesome product. If you run across the DV-CP701, stay away. It has problems with showing green tint artifacts on backgrounds. The new 702 however has no problems and performs beautifully, especially when paired with the HTR S-760 Component HTiB. Great purchase, if you can find one!

This DVD player has been worth the money. Granted, it is more expensive than many others, but read the reviews on others...they all have problems. The Sony 665 has problems and Consumer Reports wasn't impressed with picture quality. Pansonics have glitches with playback, JVCs are almost as expensive...there is a new Toshiba out that might be worth considering.

The video and audio on this player are impressive...and I've had a Toshiba and Panasonic 5-disc changer in the past. The audio out of this player (digital connection to a Yamaha receiver) is incredible, much better than the others. There is a button for random play on the remote. I read people complaining about the noise on the Onkyo 701...there isn't a noise issue on the 702. People also complained of long times to change discs on the 701 and 702...this is still ture but it is no slower than the Panasonic F87 (which I owned and returned) and the F87 claims to have a fast disk exchange.

Having the 6th disk is nice and ordering it through Amazon/Crutchfield is an added bonus. The player arrived 24 hours after I ordered and I used the free/standard shipping. The item shipped from the east coast, so if you live out west, you might have to wait a day or two.

Great product, no complaints, looks sharp, awesome performace. Highly recommend, despite the price.

This player is amazing small, sleek and beautiful. I have the Philips 401, loved it for it small factor using 8cm cds, but found it a bit too bulky. When I got this, Philips 431, my jaws dropped, 3/4 as small and twice as beautiful. I personally think this is the best deal for money for mp3 players. Here are my reasons:

1. Size. It's true that you can fit 2-3x times more songs on a normal size cd, but the normal size cd player are much too big compared to this. I have the iriver-350 as well, thin and nice but still too big compared to this exp 431.

2. Storage. One could argue that memory-based/hard disk based mp3 players are much smaller than this. But what about the cost? I find the cost for memory/hard disk mp3 players way too expensive. If a cd get scratched, we simply write another cd. But if you hard disk gets screwed up, there goes your couple of hundred dollars. As for the memory-based players, it's too much effort and time to download different songs each time. And for that money that you are paying???

Oh, and did I forget to mention that this wonderful player reads id3 tags as well, so you know what song you are playing!! And with the 480sec skip protection, you can easily bring it with you anywhere :)

I bought this awesome Mini CD/Mp3 player two day ago... IT'S EXCELENT!!! Seriously, don't serch any more. It has hundreds of functions, it works prefectly well. I dicided to buy exactly this player because of several reasons:
1º-It is amazingly small, you can take it around in any pocket
2º-Lots of songs fit in 1 Pocket CD if recorded in Mp3 format (between 40-45 songs, 4 and a half minutes each)
3º-The music quality of Mp3 format is as good as WAV (wich makes it better than a mini Disc that uses ATRAC 3)
In fact I couldn't beleive the amazing sound quality that PHILIPS has put into this particular player; I'm a maniac when it comes to music quality and both the player and the headphones ROCK!
Mini CD/Mp3 players are not common at all but definately SHOULD!
Believe, me if you are looking for the same things I wrote above in a player, buy this one... you won't regreat it; seriously.

Stop shopping, this is the one to get. And this is the store to buy from, with Amazon's top service.

These are the things I like about this MP3 player:

Quality construction, small size, nice layout of controls. It has a slide switch on the back to disable all the buttons, so you won't disrupt playback when it is in your pocket. The skip and search controls act like the ones on a CD player. You can press the forward and reverse buttons to go to the next or previous song. If you hold them down, they scan through the song. There are album forward and reverse buttons to skip directly to the next or previous album on your disc. Albums are a group of MP3's in a directory or folder on the disc, which you determine when you burn the disc. It recognizes and displays title and artist tags in the MP3 files if they are there. It also recognizes Joliet-formatted discs so you can use long filenames for the songs. I recommend keeping the filenames to less than 50 characters long because some players have trouble with very long filenames. This player displays the first 39 characters of long filenames, and otherwise does not appear to have a problem with long filenames. There are 2 levels of bass boost and 1 level of treble boost. The battery compartment is inside the lid underneath where you put the CD. The compartment has a hinged lid, so it won't come off and get lost. A remote control comes with the player that can optionally be used between the main unit and the headphones. Other accessories included are a wrist strap, AC adapter, and one blank disc.

These are the things I like about the pocket CD format:

Pocket CDs are so much fun. This format gives you more freedom from your computer, compared to relying on your computer's hard disk space and repeatedly downloading onto just a few memory sticks. You can actually afford enough blank media to convert your whole CD, tape, and record collection to pocket CDs. Disks are typically 210 MB each and very inexpensive when you buy a spindle, and each will hold 3 to 4 hours of music. I like putting whole box sets of Cds on one or two pocket CDs. The CD's you burn for this will also play in most DVD players, so if you have your DVD player connected to your stereo, there you have another way to listen to your collection.

The best thing about this player is that it works the way you would expect it to. So many times the buttons on electronic stuff appear to be designed by someone from Mars. Also, the player reads the file names and plays them in the order that they are sorted. (No more renaming mp3 to something like 01-001.mp3) Further, the item shows up as an external harddrive on your computer and it allows you to just click and drag mp3s to it. It also functions as a flash drive which you can use to bring files home from work.

All around it is a good item.

i can store more than 40 songs and im very glad!!!!! :)

I am not a whiz with electronic gadgets or computers, but I had very little trouble transferring my favorite CDs onto my personal audio player (PAP). The MusicMatch Jukebox software is easy to use. However, my PC (with Windows XP) didn't allow me to use MusicMatch to transfer my tunes to my PAP (something about newer files on the Lyra that didn't match older ones on my PC), so I just moved files directly by dragging them and dropping them. I accessed the files through my PC's control panel, and the files transferred very quickly. I had no problems at all transferring converted MP3Pro files that way.

The RD1090 has easy-to-use buttons and a control knob. There are twenty settings for programming tracks. I used this feature to mark the beginning song of each CD I've transferred. This makes it easy to scroll from one set of songs to the next. I also used MusicMatch's MP3Pro setting when I transferred my CDs into files, so the song quality is enhanced and the music files are more compressed than they would be in MP3 format. The Lyra delivers rich sound quality, and there are six DSP (digital song profile?) settings: flat, bass, pop, jazz, rock and tone. In the "tone" mode the bass and treble levels can be adjusted to suit listening enhancement. I could tell a difference when I toggled from one setting to another. Since I have different genres of music on my PPA, this is a nice feature.

The Lyra RD 1090 comes with an armband carrying case, a neck strap, and "e.clipz" headphones. The headphones have decent sound quality and are comfortable when clipped behind the ear correctly.

I think this is the perfect way to carry and listen to 8 hours of music. There's also an external memory card slot to upgrade memory (SD and MMC compatible). The PAP's case seems sturdy, and the backlit LCD display is easy to read. I highly recommend this sleek, easy-to-use PAP. If I can figure out how to use it, anyone can!

I started out with a Rio Volt to play my MP3s on the go. What a piece of junk. Then I purchased a Nomad Jukebox. It holds 10gigs of MP3s, but the battery life is short, and I wanted something relatively cheap I could afford to leave in my car. Enter the Samsung MP3 CD player which I found on sale and with a substantial rebate that rivals the price of other portable CD players. It plays my CD-Rs and CD-RWs almost flawlessly. (I blame the few glitches I've encountered on scratches and cheap media.) I listen to audio books and text-to-speech MP3s (as well as music) in my car during my commute, and the last track memory (a.k.a., resume) feature is an absolute must. This player also starts up a lot faster than any other portable MP3 player I've seen. Battery life is good...maybe 8 or more hours using rechargeable batteries. I've owned enough portable music players to know to just throw away whatever headphones/ear buds that are included, and use my own. I'm going to buy another one of these players for use around my house as soon as I see it on sale again and throw out my Nomad.

I bought this player to use during my daily 4 miles of walking around my neighborhood, so the anti-skip feature was important. The player does a very good job with the anti-skip protection. As long as I carry the player above my waist so that my leg movement doesn't jostle it a lot, the player works quite well, with only an occasional minor glitch. If not moving, the player works perfectly.

The player has a 4-line display that gives you a lot of information, particularly with mp3. Battery life is excellent and the display shows you when the batteries are getting weak.

A lot of people complain about the cheap headphones that tyically come with portable players. I personally found the Samsung's headphones (they're the clip-over-the-ears type) to be pretty good.

The player handles my homemade CD-R disks and the commercial CDs flawlessly. It did not work well with my CD-RW disks. I suspect that the problem lies with my old H-P CD-RW drive rather than the Samsung player, since I've had other problems with the drive.

One feature I really like is the "hold" switch. Turn it on and none of the other buttons on the player will work. This prevents accidentally pressing a button (such as the "off" button!) while I'm out walking and it's bouncing around a bit in the carrying case.

In summary, I'm very pleased with this player. For the price I paid, it was a great deal.

Fully satisfied. Outstanding sound quality. Addition of FM would have been better.

If you are getting the Nomad II or IIc get this! The headphones are awsome and fit confertably around your head. the remote is so handy so you dont have to fish your player out of your nap sack. The leather case just makes it look cooler... and it also reduces scractches to your new nifty player. The tape player is good for long road trips (im guessing your car speakers pack a bigger punch than the headphones, but the headphones are very powerful so I might be wrong). Personaly I dont know what i would have done with out this accessory kit. Its a reasonable price for the amount of stuff you get and the high quality of it so i highly recomend this kit.

My Nomad II 32mb came with the items in this package. Creative was able to keep the price of the Nomad IIc down by offering these items separately. For the price, you get a lot. The headphones are very good, although I prefer the sound of my Koss SportaPros. The remote is handy. You can keep the Nomad in your pocket and clip the remote to your shirt, then control the unit from the remote. The cassette adapter lets you connect to your car stereo and the pouch offers some protection from scratches.

I would say that if you need the items included, then the kit is a great buy. You would probably pay more buying headphones and a car adapter. However, if you already have good headphones and own an adapter, or wouldn't use one, then saving the money is a nice option.

It would've been great if these items were included with the Nomad IIc, but then you'd pay more for the IIc. Creative deserves credit for giving consumers the choice.

The Cowon iAudio portable digital audio player is a fantastic device! Here is a summary of the various components.

PHYSICAL UNIT: This is a very small (3 in. tall, 1 in. wide) and light (less than 2 oz. including the battery) unit. It has a LCD screen on the front which displays quite a bit of information, such as the name of the current song (which scrolls across the screen), the time remaining, battery life, memory usage, etc. This information is presented in a compact yet clear manner. The LCD had a back light feature that can be programmed to stay on for a set amount of time. The unit is highly customizable with an interface that is quickly learned. Battery life is about 9 hours on a singe AAA battery. Although this does not sound like much, remember, it is for a single battery.

MP3 PLAYER: The 64 Mb model will hold about 20 MP3s (assuming an average size of 3 Mb). The sound quality is very good. The unit has four folders (albums) to organize your music. Songs can be played sequentially or at random, and you can choose from several pre-set equalizer settings, such as rock, classical, etc. I don't have a lot of experience with MP3 players, but I am more than satisfied with this one.

VOICE RECORDING: I originally found this looking for a digital voice recorder. It does a GREAT job! For the 128 Mb model with no MP3s loaded, you get about 4 hours of clear recording time! The microphone picks up well and there is a level indicator so you know how strong the input signal is. There is a quick key combination that puts you directly into voice recorder mode, so if you are in the car and want to record a thought, you can do it without even taking your eyes off the road. There is one drawback for using this as a voice recorder -- there is no speaker, so you would either need the headphones or plug into an external speaker to hear playback.

ANNOYANCES: I have only a few minor complaints about the iAudio. (1) The small plastic protective cover over the USB plug is hard to get off if you don't have long enough fingernails. (2) You can't connect the USB cable to the player while it is in its carrying case. (3) The ear phones are comfortable and sound nice, but they fit loosely in the ear, easily falling out if you are exercising. (4) The software does rip MP3s from CDs, but it is not the most user friendly interface I have used.

While this may seem like a lot of annoyances, they are all relatively small, and don't diminish from the experience. Overall, this is a great product! I have used the MP3 Player and Voice Recorder extensively, and am completely pleased with my purchase. Note, though, I bought the 128 Mb version, and would suggest that or the 256 Mb version.

This is an incredible product and company! Absolutely the best portable MP3 player in its class. It is very small (smaller than a credit card) but has plenty of storage (choose 64, 128 or 256MB version when you buy). Also has a great FM radio, voice recorder, good sound quality and an excellent display & controls. The product is well made and comes with a case, belt clip, decent ear buds, cables & software. It's easy to drop the player into a shirt or pants pocket.

The software is VERY easy to use -- just drag and drop MP3s or files from your CD (it will automatically convert them to MP3). Click a button and it will look up your CD song titles from an Internet database. If you're interested, it also has a utility program that will convert any animated GIF or image file into a logo you can download to the player. Your custom animated logo displays on the LCD when you turn the unit on. Very nice.

When you download an MP3 file to the player, you can choose any Windows font and size for the song title display. I like the hand script fonts -- they make the display look friendly. The LCD has a blue backlight and you can adjust how long the backlight stays on after a button press.

The MP3 player includes a full equalizer. Separate +/- control of bass, treble, loudness & dynamic bass. You can save your settings under a "User" selection, or choose from several preset equalizations (rock, classical, etc.). There are also lots of other options to allow you to customize how the player works (if you want to).

Read the instructions to understand what the buttons do. Other than that, everything else about the player and the software is simple. The player has a lot of nice options to play with, but it's easy to use right out of the box if you're not a techie.

Jet Audio customer service is unbelievably good. I placed my order at the busiest time (one week before Christmas) and they still shipped the same day. The players were ordered through Amazon from the "New & used" option -- that means Jet-Audio fills the order directly. When you place the order, there's no option to choose a shipping method and Amazon says it could take up to 21 days (yikes!). I placed the order & emailed Jet-Audio to see if they could ship faster. They replied immediately and said the product would ship that day -- I received it two days later (in California). I purchased three players and had a problem with one. I sent them an email and they handled the problem that same day. You just can't ask for better customer service.

Great product, great company, great price ---

JetAudio.com is starting a great promotion to upgrade your MP3 player if you wished you had larger memory size. Check out the link... you basically send in your old one, pay them $x and they upgrade the memory capacity to either 128 or 256. Better than having to buy a new one....

...Things I Like:
The build quality.
Fit and finish.
Good sound at reasonable levels.
Nice, small yet functional remote
Straight forward controls.
The ability to turn the unit off from the remote
The ability to store 30 radio presets regardless of AM or FM
Price ...

Things I Don't Like:
The AZ4000 does not remember where you left off on a track.
You can not turn the unit on from the remote.
The AZ4000 does not read ID3 tags.
Scrolling Text. I find it slow & annoying.
Song titles appear only after the track begins playing.
There are no tone presets.
There is no way to dim or turn off the display (except when using battery power)
There are no auxiliary inputs.

The Basic Package:
For starters, I need to say that I am happy with my purchase of the Philips AZ4000/17 as it meets my basic needs for which I bought it for.
I have yet to find the perfect portable MP3 audio device and the AZ4000 is not perfect by any means, but it is a solidly built machine that does many things quite well.
Most of my gripes have to do with the lack of functions that I think a MP3 machine should have.
The AZ4000 is a solidly built machine whose fit and finish are exemplary for a portable boom-box.
The styling is quite unique and does not look very much like anything else out there.
The controls are straight forward, easy to understand and are tight fitting.
The AZ4000 has a manual volume knob, which I prefer to the up & down arrow buttons frequently found on portables.
It runs on 8 D cell alkaline batteries and it also uses a detachable power cord instead of a wall-wart type power supply which is a good thing.
The remote is small and controls Volume, Source Selection, CD Transport Functions, Tuner Scan and Presets.

...The Sound:
The sound is very good for a boom-box in it's size and price range. I compared it to about 7 other MP3 capable boom-boxes at a local retailer and it sounded better than all that were there, including the Sony Sports ZS-X3CP.
In a small room at moderate levels the AZ4000 does an admirable job of reproducing audio from all 3 sources, CD, MP3 & Tuner.
The sound does fall short of a good mini shelf system with detachable speakers or the Bose Wave CD-3000, but the Bose does not play MP3's and costs considerably more.

Functionality:
The controls on the AZ4000 worked well, as expected. The AZ4000 plays MP3's and CD's quite well, but what surprised me was that it played badly encoded MP3's better than any other MP3 portable I have tried.
When I first began shopping for an MP3 machine, I brought a few CDs with MP3's burned at different bitrates, both constant and variable.
The AZ4000 played all of the MP3 files, and it played a few that none of the other units were able to play, including the Sony ZS-X3CP.

Utility:
Although the AZ4000 is well built and quite sturdy, it's cloth exterior and finer finish makes this machine more of a home machine that can be moved from room to room or used in the garage and patio.
It really isn't an on-the-go beater to toss in and out of the car on a regular basis. For those who need more of an outdoor, weather resistant machine that can take daily abuse, the Sony ZS-X3CP would be a better choice.

Dislikes:
My biggest complaint about the AZ4000 is it's MP3 feature set and considering this is a MP3 music machine, Philips really missed the boat on this one. Unlike many portable MP3 players, the AZ4000 does not remember where you left off on a track. To make matters worse, there is no direct numerical entry or even a times ten (X10) track advance. So if you are 3 minutes into track 145 and have to stop for some reason, you lose your place and to get back is a pain. There are a few other things that are on my dislike list but this one impacts me the most...

I've had this boombox for about 5 months now. After a month or so, it stopped recognizing CD's, both CD-Rs and regular audio CD's. I returned it (just past the 30 day warranty, but a nice rep from pcconnection.com still exchanged it) and my 2nd one has not had any problems whatsoever. The sound is awesome. I usually turn the UltraBass off to conserve battery power, however. This is a hefty boombox (especially with 8 D cells) so I wouldn't want to walk up and down the beach with it all day, but it's nice to have at a picnic. Technical specs say there is a 3 band equalizer (Treble, Bass can be set from -5 to +5) and then there is the UltraBass button (which overrides the regular Bass setting). I don't know if I'd call that a 3-band EQ, but I'm not into marketing... The remote offers every function except setting the sleep timer and turning the unit on. I imagine that you can't turn the unit on with the remote because that would require the boombox to use up some kind of 'standby' power - draining batteries. I paid [$$$]for the unit and compared it to the Sony MP3 boombox at the same price. I like the looks of the Sony more, but I knew that I'd get better bass from a bigger boombox. I also haven't had much luck with Sony portables and FM reception. I really enjoy the AZ4000's radio reception (& 30 presets).

This is the best sounding boom box I have heard in years! Compares only to the Bose Acoustic Wave Music System that cost me ($$$) and does not play MP3.

The MP3 playback can only display the song after it is playing so it can be difficult to search for a song if you do not know the album number and song number. A minor drawback is that it is bigger than your average boom box but the sound more than makes up for that. For me it is all about the sound so for me this is the best MP3 boom box in the market.

Pro's
-Large-enough room to fit my head phones in
-Sturdy-the case is very sturdy in construction, i'm confident my player is safe in there.
-Pockets-Large enough to fit my accessories and enough pockets to keep everything in order.
-Elastic straps-perfect for keeping my player and accessories secured so they aren't fumbling around.
-Looks-the sleek black look is in my opinion very cool.

Cons
-Large-Although i staed this as a pro, this can also be a con. its quite large as i stated, but in my opinion that good, but it can be bad for other.

overall-
great for keeping rio's and other MP3 players safe from getting banged up.

Being the typical music-loving teenager, I have a Rio500 and I take it everywhere. This case helps a lot for carrying around the player, headphones, memory cards, and other acessories. A lot better than letting it loose in my backpack and getting all beat up, and having to dig around for it all the time. It also keeps everything organized, nice for packing to go on a road trip or vacation.

a great case that is big enough to hold your earphones and some mp3 discs. if you have a diamond rio 600 you should get this case