MP3 Reviews

Okay, so here's how this player breaks down:

Pros

MP3's - Great length of play, most sound fine, fast loading

CD's - Standard features, as expected

Durability - Well it lasted a year, see below. Worked after the drop.

Batteries - Nice that you don't have to open it up and pull out the disc to change the batteries.

Sound - digital control is nice.

Cons

MP3's - Doesn't play all songs, some get cut off. I often listen to books on cd -> mp3. This is exactly how windows media player cuts off these same files, when winamp plays them just fine. These are encoded by the lame encoder and should be fine; however, it seems when this player hits a certain thing it will skip to the next track (especially with VBR) or it will continue to play after the track is done.

Sometimes if you play the same file again, it will play fine, which is quite odd. Since this player doesn't allow fast forwarding through mp3's this is really irritating

With no support for ID-3v2 tags and partial support for ID-3v1 the mp3 support still leaves lots of room for improvement. Also, trying to sort files such that they play in a specific order is a pain. I finally had to make the id-3 tags the same as the file names, with 2 leading 0's. Also, when on random, the same file will play twice or three times quite often.

Having only 24 spots for programming isn't sufficient, I use this player every day for 8 hours a day, and stopping to re-program every 30 minutes is unacceptable.

CD's - This player starts playing at the beginning of the track rather than the point at which you stopped. CD's use more battery power also.

Durability - This morning I dropped this on the joint between the top and the bottom. The drop was only about 2 feet, and the top of the clamshell fell off. When I tried to put the spring back in and re-attach the top, the plastic snapped. While I may get another Panasonic, it won't be this model.

Sound - No options other than super bass. The volume is quite low. If you use the headphones that come with it, the sound is a little better, but still it should be louder.

Controls - finding the correct buttons on the player can be difficult in the dark. Controls on the headphones would be nice (and is on another model.)

Overall -
For the price, it's decent, but don't get it if you're looking for a mp3 cd player that gives you real control.

I am very pleased with this player. I have found that I must stay away from Kenwood & Sony, they gave me nothing but trouble. This item, however, has been a dream. The only problem I face is the automatic resume function. Even after I have removed a CD and turned the unit off, it wants to resume at the last track played (even with a different CD.) I wish I could turn that function off. Otherwise, it has been a dream. It is nice and sturdy with lots of functions the newer models don't have. I found my unit at a usually overpriced Sam Goody type store really discounted due to it's production date (some 3 years ago). I snatched it up since it has everything I have been looking for. I would recommend this unit to anyone.

This player is an incredible value. My unit didn't come with any extras, but I'm still impressed. Batteries were not included and the suppied headphones were worthless. Still, the player itself is pretty amazing.When used with any other headphones the sound is loud and fairly clear (not much distortion or crackling). I have used it for various CD-Rs and even MP3 discs with over 200 tracks. It does not have the ability to FF or RW during an MP3 song, but the technology just isn't there yet. However, skipping between songs or albums in MP3 mode is a breeze, and the window display is easy to read. The button layout and controls are very easy to use. Finally, the instructions are extensive -- be sure to read them. When looking for a CD player with MP3 capability, choices are limited. This Panasonic is a great value compared to other major brands.

OK so I bought this last June and have loved it! It has awsome sound quality with some good sony headphones, and you can always turn on the FM. This would be a 5 star review if I was able to add on memory. My player would delete all the files I was trying to send into it after about 3 files. I was using a 64mb SanDisk card which is one of the best. Now I just have 64mb..'Oh well it's better then 32mb like some of the compitition. Its aluminum case feels very sturdy because I have dropped it a few times, and have not lost any sound quality. Overall, if you have the money to get it,then get this player. If you want an awsome player with 128mb and you think you'll use it all, check out the heftier Intel Pocket Concert.

As an owner of a MP:Rave 2200 I found it to be a good MP3 player... up to a point. For me problems arose when I tried to use the Rave with Windows XP. My experience has been a disaster and until now it still does not work properly. What is even more frustrating is trying to get help on the problem from MP:MAN, SonicBlue and Sensory Science the creators and distributors of the MP:Rave. After months of sending E-mails I received only one response which was to ask for further details on the problem. The 2200 could be a great pleasure to use if only its creators were more customer focused. From my experience this is a sad commentary on a potentially great product.

After reading every review I could find for the purchase of my first MP3 player, I chose the Rave 2200. It's terrific. Smaller than I expected, the sound quality is great. I love the added feature of the FM tuner which has very good reception. I use it at the health club and for rollerblading. It's easy to operate. I keep it in my pocket (with a safety pin to hold it in) and can change songs, volume etc. right through the material so I don't have to take it out. It took me a little while to figure out the software and get it loaded (I'm in my 40's after all!) but now I add/delete songs in minutes if the mood strikes me. I've used it daily for over a week and haven't gotten tired of the approximately 1 hour's worth of music it holds, although I've ordered a card for more memory for traveling. I changed to my Sony headphones because I don't like the earbuds and the sound it even better. Definitely the right choice! A gem!

this is my take:

1) yeah the look cool, but all the behind-the-head headphones make it nearly impossible to rest your head on the seat of a bus or anything where you might need to just relax
2) i went through 2 pairs (my first cd player broke down so i got another one that incidently came with the same headphones) and each one ended up breaking on the sides
3) they don't want to sit in properly, each pair had a tendency to get kind of warped and sit funny, and after contorting it back into position a thousand times it just broke

overall: very good sound quality, cool looks, poor design (make sure you have normal head, but then again, i thought i had one too) also, the cord is fairly short

I purchased this item a week ago and so far, I am impressed with it. AIWA's sound quality is always excellent and impressive. But there are some cons that you might consider before buying the product. First of all, the headphone has poor quality earbuds. When I wore it for the first time, it was very uncomfortable and hurt my ears. But after listening to it for about 3 days, I got used to it. There are many pros also. The swoops AIWA headphones are very stylish. Plus, their sound quality is noticeably preferable than any other headphones. Fortunately, amazon offers the same headphone with the remote control which gives more preference. Overall, this is a desirable item. But if you are aspiring for a heaphone with comfort and decent sound, I would recommend SONY's behind-the-neck or clip-ons(which I own and they are very comfortable). But if you are aiming for finest and superb sound quality, give AIWA swoops a try.

I love the headphones, i bought them for a present for christmas and i am amazed at the comfort and quality of sound from such a small set of earphones! You easily forget you have them on! I can't believe i only paid so little for such quality! Very happy!

Pros: (almost) 5 gigs of storage, attractive design, good sound, nice headphones included, software is upgradeable, plays well with iTunes on Mac.
Cons: Many people (including me) have problems with the built-in battery recharger. No battery power display in main menu screens (you have to dig for it). Software is poor in general; you can't search for a song by title or queue an entire artist's library by name; no "queue all" feature; playlists uploaded to the player aren't saved - you have to remake the list on the player. No downloading capability! This is VERY lame if you want to share songs with a friend or backup the tracks that comes preinstalled on the player. Hopefully this will be remedied with future software releases. No forward or reverse scanning - this is very inconvenient if you're listening to audio books or other long tracks and want to come back to the middle of the chapter.
Conclusion: if you can't wait to get a portable hard-drive type mp3 player then this should satisfy you, but personally I would wait for the next generation of models which will have greater storage and improved software.

It is a great device. It is a little bulky, about the size of a CD player, for an active person (hard to run with) but works great in a car or anyother place that isn't too wild. People are right about it [using]up the batteries, but with an AC charger and a DC charger it makes it possible to charge and run anywhere. It has its misshaps with some songs, which happens in the same place (it skips), but deleting and then putting the song back on solved the problem.

As you can tell by the rating and the title of the review, I am one happy camper with my Nomad Jukebox.

Why? Well first off, 6GB of MP3's is a LOT of CD's. Next, because I am a music freak, I bought the 20GB upgrade for the Jukebox (search the web for Nomadworld). Anyhow, the dang thing just runs great, is slick, and now I have 500 CD's to cart around with me (yes 500 CD's on this thing!).

The only drawback is that the battery power get's drained quickly, but Creative Labs has been kind enough to give you two sets of rechargable batteries so you can listen to 8 interrupted hours of music without a recharge.

The software that comes with the Jukebox Ripps CD's in a flash, is easy to use, and makes managing all of this music a snap (thank goodness).

Makes flying in an airplane just fly on by (yes, pun intended).

Get it - it is well worth the money. Why waste your time with a 64 MB MP3 player... uploading, deleteing, uploading, deleteing. This thing will hold all of your music.

I bought my EM-500 last fall and have had to send it back twice now for repairs. For some reason, out of the blue, it just refuses to either turn on, or remain on after a few minutes. There is a power update that I installed when I first got it but it doesn't seem to fix the problem at hand. If you're looking for dependency and reliablity, I defiantly wouldn't recommend the EM-500. I've lost all my data twice now (partly my fault because I didn't do a backup).

I love PDA's (and computers in general, for that matter) and this is an excellent device. There was a time when I swore by Palm's pda's, but while Windows CE (now known as Pocket PC) has evolved to near-desktop power, the Palm has remained virtually unchanged. Of the Pocket PC's available, this unit is the best compromise of size and power. It packs a 150mhz cpu (more powerful than the HP Jornada, less than the Ipaq), 16mb of ram, and an amazing screen capable of displaying 16bit color. The Ipaq and HP Jornada can both only do 12-bit color at best. All of that is packed in a comfortable, small device that feels extremely solid in the hand.

While I do believe the EM-500 is probably the best unit available, it does have a few draw-backs. The miserly 16mb of ram is hardly enough... if you buy this make sure to get a 32mb or 64mb memory card to go with it. My other complaints are minimal: lack of hardware volume control, location of IRDA port... but none of these minor issues really impact the usefulness of the unit.

Definitely a great PDA, and well worth the money

I've been planning for a couple of month to get a Palm, probably a Vx, since a lot of friends had it, I knew it, and seemed great. Just when I was about to buy it, I found out there are better alternatives to Palms, and that is PocketPCs, which are not much more expensive. After a quick research, I decided to buy the Cassiopeia EM-500, and from the moment I received it I was amazed!

Although it's a bit bigger and heavier than a palm, you can forgive this the moment you turn it on and se the marvellous full-color display. I think it's the best display you can find on a PocketPC, comparing it with the Jornada and iPaq.

The organizer features (contacts, tasks, calendar) are like all otehr organizers, but the vivid colors make them look better.. so I find them easier to use than those from a Palm. The touch-screen reacts very well. Personally I prefer the keyboard input to writing the characters. I downloaded the free Microsoft Transcriber which improves a lot the character recognition, but I still stick to the keyboard.

The value of EM-500 comes with the software. Being powered by Windows, it has a large spectrum of applications, like Word, Excel, Money, PocketStreets... And you can download even more utilities, applications and games (even Doom and Quake). eM-500 puts the M in MultiMedia, since it has full multimedia capabilities. This PDA works as a MP3 player, or image viewer, or even MPG player. Also, as a Voice Recorder. The sound quality is OK, and the image quality is amazing for such a device.

The initial memory is quite limited (16Mb) if you plan on loading it with software, music and images, but I bought a 64Mb card, so at 80Mb I guess it's enough... At this moment, Cassiopeia comes with a $100 rebate (which makes it cheaper than the Palms), and with this money you can buy the 64Mb card.

Some flaws in the external design. The USB port cover is completely removable (not attached, like the cover for cards, for example.. so it's easy to forget to put it back, or worse, to lose it. The power button isn't very ergonomic, but I got used to power it on using the action buttons on the front. The IR port is also not very well placed... would have been better to put it at the top, make easier to exchange information with someone else.

So, I'll end with a "Wall-Street" recommandation: STRONG BUY!

I won't repeat everyone elses reviews. My message is this: I wanted to sit in my recliner with my laptop and be able to pick and choose what music was playing on my stereo. I didn't want to use the TV or another clicker to control anything. The Audiotron does a GREAT job! It has a http server built in and I can talk to it with my web browser, pick songs, play them, etc. No other software needed period.

You don't need to load/run any software on your song file server either. Any pc on your network can simply share whatever directory you like and the audiotron can see it and play songs from there.

Great product! I just wish it had 802.11b built in. I had to buy a Linksys WET11 to get wireless connectivity.

I love this device. I have it setup in my living room, connected to my stereo and to a Linksys wireless bridge. The Audiotron can play all of my MP3s from my computer, along with hundreds of internet radio stations, all wirelessly! The simple 802.11b wireless connection easily handles the audio transmissions without problem. The Audiotron has replaced my huge 400 CD jukebox as my most used piece of stereo equipment. Searching for songs is very easy, as the Audiotron can sift through MP3 tags with ease, finding music by author, album title, music type, song title, etc. Well worth the cost!

The lightbulb, the telephone, the automobile- pale in comparison to this invention. For true, (no, I mean TRUE...) audiophiles, there is nothing that can compare to the ability to dial up ANY song you are in the mood for. Think of any song you feel like listening to and it's there. What else could you want from life?

This product worked very well for the first couple months that i had it. However, now i am having extreme difficulty in operating it. It began while i was loading an mp3 from my computer to the player. About half-way through my power went out for a mere second or two, causing my computer to restart. I have tried using the restart button, but that has had no effect. If anyone knows how to fix this please e-mail me at Nyranger72@aol.com.
Other then my problem though i would recommend this product to anyone. A friend of mine has the same product and his is working exceptionaly well.

I bought this mp3 player because i needed something mighty. I needed something to store all my music. And this little monster did it all. It is a bit big. But that's about it. If you think that the battery lifes is not what it should and you want longer battery life, turn the backlight off. It's easily made in the menu. Then your batterylife lasts longer. I have no problems with this one. Just this: If you connect your player to your computer and you notice that the battery life decreases in very short time, do this: Take Out the Battery and shut the hatch. Now connect the powercable to your player and it should go on automaticly. You will then notice that a different icon appears on the left of the down of the screen. That's the icon for telling you the player runs from the power from the wall socket. Then plug it in to the computer and no battery life will be taken. Very Good player !!!

To tell the truth, I haven't started the real test on this mp3 player. So far, its has a bunch of features to suite most people. I already know that I'll be buying a different headphone for it, its only nomal to expect this. I just bought this jukebox, so when I get more time with it I'll write a good review.

BTW, just to clear one thing up. You can shuffle a playlist. It has a USB 2.0 connection so you know its pretty fast. It takes about 2-3 seconds to transfer a song. I'm using Windows XP Home edition on my Dell and so far I haven't had any problems with installing or using the software. In fact, the software is quite easy to use. Just plug and play.

I found this player to be quite nice until it died. The user interface is good and it played MP3's without problem. Unfortunately, it only lasted about 1-1/2 years before dying. This is with moderate use in an office environment. Absolutely no harsh handling at all. I guess it is a testament to the quality Aiwa puts into their products. Needless to say, I won't buy another Aiwa product again.

I bought it two weeks ago. I use it as an audio CD player most of the time because it has no anti-shock for MP3 CDs. What is good is that it has a support for CD-R and CD-RW discs. Batteries are enough to play like 4-6 audio CDs with anti-shock feature turned on. I like this CD player but nobody told me about absence of anti-shock for MP3 CDs when I was to buy it. This thing disappoints me. But what is really good is that even without anti-shock turned on it works rather pretty when you walk.

The little toy does exactly what you want it to do, it plays MP3's and playes audio cd's, plus you can look, select and even read albums and guess what the mp3 tag and the file name (the dot matrix screen it's like a banner)
So I give a hell if the EASS doesn't work with the mp3's, so what the car kit is just heaven, the little buddy eats and drinks batteries not like the instruction manual says (10 hours yeah right), so just plug the ac adapter or the car adapter, or charge, yes it charges batteries (rechargeble).
The reading that is a little slow but is has to detect if is a mp3 disc or audio cd, but in mp3's you can see every album, and if you put the resume, you can stop and turn it off, and when your feeling in the mood for music again just push play and it starts in the song you last heard whitout reading (only when its pluged or it has batteries, if not it reads the whole cd again).
You hear the music, low sound it isn't on this baby, high volume and really deep (it has 2 levels of deep sound), so buy this discman is cheap and cool, plus your not going to put it to play in a rocky road or in the wild and savage world (must be insane, instead of that throw it to the floor then if that is the use your gonna give it), is just for home and car use, plus it jumps ancd it resume in a moment (1 second) and plays the song or mp3 just where it got cut.
Look is not perfect, but is better than most of the others.

Tip buy a cable and plug it to your stereo is a loud sensation (AUX or VIDEO L-R).

That's the sound you'll hear about every fifteen seconds when listening to an audio CD in this player with the G-Protection set to position "1" and running off of two AA batteries. Switch to house current using the 4.5V AC adaptor and the chirps are less frequent because the CD drive motor no longer continually spins up and down (an energy saving feature when using batteries), but they still do occur. Although the interval of annoying chirps is longer with the G-Protection set to "2", sound quality may suffer. For some odd reason, there is no way to turn off this audio artifact of the antiskip algorithm. This regular electronic chirping is quite obvious on quieter pieces of music, and it can even sound like a badly played note. It totally interferes with the listening experience. If you have access to an audio test CD, play a track with all output bits set to zero, and you'll notice that the chirping is gone, suggesting that this audible artifact is the result of an engineering defect in the anti-skip implementation. Note that the chirp seems to occur when the G-Protection circuitry is buffering content, such as periodically or when the motor spins up and down, rather than due to DC motor noise or any disc surface defects such as scratches, dust, or fingerprints.

This unit's cheaper cousin, the D-NF610, suffers from a similar G-Protection artifact, although in that case the problem is continuous (albeit relatively subtle) noisy cackling primarily in the left channel that significantly reduces the sound quality of the material being played. Both units were promptly returned, as neither unit's unique antiskip circuitry artifact is something that the listener should have to endure. A four-year-old Sony Discman D-T405 sounds MUCH better than either unit and has no such CD playback problem, whether the Electronic Skip Protection is on or off.

The headphones used to test this unit were the rather nice sounding Sony MDR-E888 earbuds, which have a rather wide frequency response. Other headphones also allowed the chirping problem to be heard, although cheaper ones with less frequency response might not reveal the problem quite as well.

Pros:
-The specs on paper are GREAT! This _should_ have been one awesome piece of hardware!
-Includes AM/FM/TV/WB tuner, which is highly desirable to avoid having to carry two separate units
-Above average sound quality for the tuner; even the CD player sounds good when it's NOT chirping!

-Seems quite sturdy, although heavy
-Option to use rechargeable batteries, with recharging through the included AC adaptor

Cons:
-Free annoying electronic chirping bird included at no extra cost! :-(
-Although the specs state that MP3 files up to 320Kbps can be played, in practice this is very much hit and miss. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn't. 256Kbps is better, but also very unreliable. Presumably that's why the manual highly recommends that MP3 files be recorded at 128Kbps. Yes, the lower bit rate seems to work fine, but the sound quality is obviously compromised, although not as badly as one might think.
-The included wrist strap is totally impractical for many activities, not to mention this unit is rather heavy at 12.2 oz (w/o batteries). A belt strap is badly needed, but with this player's bulk and unique button location, you may be best off fashioning your own with a nylon luggage strap.
-No backlit display
-Most definitely not for audiophiles who expect decent quality sound

Other: At the time of this writing, if you call the toll-free Sony Network Portable Audio Support Line and enter the model number for this unit, your call will be disconnected. In order to speak to an agent, answer "I don't know" when prompted for the model number by the automated voice response system. Neither Tier I nor II technical support were aware of the sound quality problems of this unit, but that may be because of its recent arrival on the market.

Sony - Please fix this antiskip audio artifacting, and you'll have a very sweet product indeed!

I bought this CD-player about 2 months ago and Im really happy with it.Sony Mexico doesnt have this product for selling in Mexico, and i dont know why, thats why i bought it via deremate.com(like ebay.com) because I liked all the features of it.

Now, I havent realized of that "chirping" until today i read these reviews.So, I put my dns921f on test: I put a MP3-full CD with songs at different constant bitrate.There I have a 3:59 duration classical guitar song recorded @ 192kbps and 44.1Khz, so I played it at the medium , and I realized that there were strange sounds (not exactly chirping, its like a quiet "ffsss" sound of 0.7 secs aprox., like the sound when you change the frequency on a radio when looking for a radio station) The sounds appeared 3 times:
@ G-protection 1:
1:13
2:17
3:21
@G-protection 2:
1:14
2:17
3:22

But then I heard the entire album of that song while surfing the web and I didnt realize the sounds were there...

that's the only "but" i found for this anyway GREAT CDplayer!
i have even walked outdoor with it under heavy rain, dropped it when i was driving and I braked hard and the player flew away due to the centrifuge, hit the dashboard and fell to the floor, but the music didn't have any skip!!!!.

This is the first time that I have bought myself a CD walkman. Being from Sony, this player lives up to its name and the sound quality is amazing. My main considerations before buying this player was that it plays MP3s too. Surprisingly though they do not mention the fact that this unit can also be used as a recharger unit for the NiMH batteries (Batteries are not supplied with the unit though). An AC adapter is also supplied although the sonystyle website does not indicate that. The radio part (AM/FM/TV/Weather band) all works great. The unit is great to handle and the design is pretty ergonomic. I just tried out some sample ATRAC tracks on a CD-RW disc and the quality is decent. All in all this unit rocks! I'd definitely recommend it.

I've owned several other MP3 players. Actually, I've owned many items and this is the first time I ever felt compelled to write an on-line review. The reason is: the product is superb for what is currently available. No matter what you read, the MP3 player works fine for both MP3 and WMA files - even though some poor quality MP3's do not work well on the player. With the included 64 kB MMC card, I can get about 10-11 songs at 96 kbps. There is an additional slot for another card so that could be easily doubled and is perfect for workouts and jogging. Another excellent feature is it's compact size and weight. This player won't tug on your shorts or have to be strapped to your body with heavy duty straps. It is extremely light and smaller than the two dimensions of a credit card. Downloading music to the player is slow but this can be remedied by purchasing an adapter to directly download to the MMC card.

Extremely happy customer for over a year!!!

Works great with WindowsXP!
This is my first MP3 player so I don't have much to compare it to but I dont' have anything but good things to say about it. If you have WinMediaPlayer 8.0 then you don't even need the software that comes with it, it just plugs and plays with WMP8.0, although I've heard good things about the software as well.
I really like the headphones and the 64MB card. I've bought another 64MB card to go with it and since I convert all my music to WMA format, I generally can fit about 50 songs on the two cards - more than enough for my needs.
It never skips, has great sound, seems fairly durable and is small and lightweight. If there's anything I might want to change about it is to either have rechargeable batteries come with it or else an power adapter for during downloads. Other than that, it's been great!

This MP3 player served me well for two years until (because of my clumsiness) I broke it. It worked beautifully, able to play both MP3 and WMA files with ease. Loading files onto the player was a breeze, as was initial setup of the software. The headphones that it comes with are comfortable and have a good amount of volume capability. A great MP3 player, I'm now trying to find a replacement but am finding it difficult to find another that measures up. I miss you, my iPAQ.