[fjhuerta]

I finally got my grubby little hands into the Expanium 103 (after the infamous photo contest). The Philips guys took a whole month to give it to me; some supply problems at the warehouse, they told me. 1 month for an Expanium? Well, it's ok. I got it for free, anyway

Packaging.

The thing comes in both a blister pack and a carton box (so much for environmentally friendly packaging - they make a lot of noise about that in the actual manual). The actual Expanium is protected by a foam bag, and physically separated of the rest of the package by tabs on the box. Pretty nice.

Content.

It's loaded!!! Car adaptor, wall wart, earphones, tape adapter and the actual Expanium are included! Plus the manual, warranty and some leaflets about other Philips products. I can only say I am surprised so many things are included... the only things missing are a set of AA batteries (2) to power it. Very good job, Philips!

First impressions.

Just one look at the Expanium and I got the right impression. Turned it over, and lo and behold, the sticker confirmed my suspicions. It is made in China, it looks like it and it feels like it. It's made of cheap, silver painted plastic with a centerpiece that tries to look like brushed aluminum. It comes out looking as a CD Player you might buy in Rite-Aid for $19.99. Very flimsy... the earphones and the tape adapter are much, much better made.

It's loaded with outputs. I would have been very happy had I found a digital output, but hey, it's a portable. It has a line level output (yipee!), a headphone output (with a very weak 3mW output, suitable only for earbuds), and a 4.5V power input.

The test.

I love it! I love it! I love it! Say buh-bye, MD!

Sorry for being so harsh. I am just sick and tired of the excuses Sony has for their MD products. They have a 600+ MB MD, which potentially could kick Expanium butt. But they don't release it. Only their newer models have LP2 or LP4; I bought my MD last year and all I can play are 80 minute MDs.

True my MZ-R900 looks like a thousand bucks while the Expanium looks like a flea market bargain. But when it's time to spend my money, I'd rather have bought the Expanium.

Why?

Well, I ripped a couple (100?) of my CDs using EAC, then encoded them into 160-320 KB/sec VBR MP3s using LAME. It was a painful experience; slow, cumbersome... and I had to title my MP3s myself! (using Tag&Rename... highly recommended software). But when I plugged in my Expanium to my medium sized, medium-Fi system (Luxman amp, JBL-LX44 speakers), something immediately made sense. From the moment I pushed the "Play" button, while looking at the MP3 tracks being loaded into the index memory I just knew I'd like the thing.... and like it I did.

Track access is much faster than in the MD. Disc loading is about on par with it. Sound quality... I felt it was a bit *better* than my MD. Yes, better. It could be because the Expanium has a dedicated line output, while the MD has to be adjusted via software in order to get such output using the headphone out.

I have a problem with my MP3s, though. They still come out a bit metallic sounding, even after the careful encoding I used. I cannot determine if the Expanium is the culprit, or the actual MP3. The MD's I use don't sound like this. I have to assume MP3s are still no match to a good (Type-R) home recording MD system.

But... oh, does this thing rock. Big time. It might not have that last ounce of purity an audiophile would look for, but who can blame a cheap, discman-sized wonder that can put a CD-changer to shame? Burn your CDs, never worry about damaging them. Play them in your car (no, it never skips), take it out, plug it in your stereo and enjoy 6-7 hours of great audio, put it in your bag with your TA (using, yet again, a line out instead of a headphone out) and your Etys and take a transatlantic flight, change discs and do it all over again.

Conclusion.

Even with its slight sonic deficiency, the Expanium is a very, very good product. It has all you need in one box. It totally kicks MD's ass (except for portability.... but you'd have to pack 6-7 MD's with you to equal 1 CD of MP3 music, which kinda nullifies the advantage). While used in your car it won't skip. You will be surprised about how much enjoyment it can bring skipping albums, songs, etc. in so little time.

It looks cheap, true. But there is nothing cheap about its capabilities. Highly recommended.

 

[Braver]

nice review! almost makes you rethink your loyalty to MD

pics?

 

[dhwilkin]

Wow, that thing looks pretty tempting. And it's cheap, very nice.
Quote:

fjhuerta said... I have a problem with my MP3s, though. They still come out a bit metallic sounding, even after the careful encoding I used. I cannot determine if the Expanium is the culprit, or the actual MP3. The MD's I use don't sound like this. I have to assume MP3s are still no match to a good (Type-R) home recording MD system.

Did the metallic sound occur even if you played normal CDs, not mp3s?

 

[Onix]

OKAY. How about normal CD's? How does it sounds like? Have you used it with the MS-1?

 

[fjhuerta]

So many questions left unanswered... but I have been playing with the thing for a while. This is what I found.

Update on sound: Haven't yet heard the Expanium on my TA, but I discovered something about my setup. It has too much treble! The metallic sound is due to my JBL's titanium tweeters. I have grown used to the softer sound of my DefTech aluminum tweeters, so when I pulled out my dad's old speakers and amp, I didn't remember how it would sound. The Luxman amp, as far as I can tell, was a very "hot" performer for its 30 watts RMS, and treble was overstated (I liked it a lot when I was a kid!). So it's a system thing, not an Expanium thing.

Performance on MP3 tracks: It... well, it's like a computer sometimes. It has skipped a track once, and another time, the MP3 sounded as if it were a scratched CD track. Two errors are not that many, but my MD, CD and LPs never have those kinds of errors. I can expect them from my PC, but not from my audio gear.

Stay tuned for my MS-1 / Ety / X-Cans / TA evaluation...

 

[Peddler]

Just got an Iriver2 CD/MP3 combo

Fuller review to come but my initial impressions are favourable.

Not really had the chance to have a proper play with it yet.

 

[fjhuerta]

Here is the missing part of the review...

How does the thing sound with headphones?

Admittedly, I took the time to get used to the Expanium before the final, definitive test. Because, seriously, how many of us would use the Expanium as a hi-fi component? Not many. It would be extremely useful at a reunion, just as a CD changer would. It's a versatile package, but for us, headphone listening is what matters the most.

After careful consideration, I selected Alan Parsons' "Try Anything Once" as the media to be played. It's a fantastic sounding CD; Super Bit Mapped, 20 bit gold CD, excruciatingly well recorded ("Test the limits of your CD player", says the sticker on the front). Oh, it's also good music, BTW. The tracks were "Breakaway", a semi-jazz piece with a repetitive percusion pattern with lots of detail in it; "Wine from the water", a male vocal piece with synths and a very well recorded electric guitar, and "Re-Jigue", a full orchestral composition with very defined transients and low level detail. The MP3s made from this album were done using EAC and LAME, with the highest quality settings at a VBR from 160-320 Kb/sec. The headphones used were the Alessandro MS-1s, using a 1/4->1/8 gold plug from Radio Shack. I could have used Etys or 580s, but I just knew 5mw wouldn't go very far (and neither would a TA).

BTW, lying around in the same CD I had a 128 Kb/sec file. This was an unreleased, 1976 song by The Alan Parsons Project, which was just recently made available by the guitarist of the group, Ian Bairnson. I was shocked from what I heard... if my own encoded songs were a CD, this was more like an FM broadcast. I am not sure if this was because of the encoding mechanism or because of the low bitrate, but one thing is for sure. You won't see me using 128 Kb/sec anytime soon.

Here it goes.

Expanium, no amp, MP3 recording: First thing I noticed was how hissy the output is. Or so I think. It's very easy to see why. The Expanium's way of telling you it's changing tracks or albums is via a soft "beep". Well, the "beep" is hissy, and I think it does add a bit of noise to the overall mix. Sadly, this is the output most users will listen to most of the time. Happily, they won't care (we are not "most users", thankfully).

On to the sound. First thing I noticed is... distortion. Breakaway's steady rythm was clearly depleting the Expanium of power; every beat was accompanied by an audible "thud" from the amp. Turning up the volume only made matters worse; sound became congested and undynamic (what a surprise... not!). Anyway, details were mostly good, and the separation was OK. There is also a 2 second gap between songs, just like in any MP3 player. That's not so good with thematic albums, where one piece flows into the other.

On "Wine from the water", the cymbals sounded a bit dull and lifeless. I attributed this to the encoding mechanism, though I was surprised at how dull they were. The cymbals in this piece are hard hitting and fast; but with the setup, they were mostly boring. Another thing; the vocals exhibited sibilance at high levels. It bothered me a lot. Lows were muddy. But there was no metallic sound at all (which is good).

Re-jigue was a surprise. The orchestral work has better low end (since it is not always present, I assume it wasn't taxing as much the amp). At the beginning, there is a low level timpani sound. They almost weren't present in the sound mix, and there was something else. Sonic grunge? Dirt? Pollution? I wouldn't know how to express it, but the low level passages weren't clean at all. It was as if they had some sort of very, very low level noise in the mix, which made the experience not too enjoyable. Not terrible, mind you.



Expanium, Total Airhead, MP3 recording: WOW. What a difference an amp makes. I was shocked by the difference. No, really. If you have an Expanium, or want one, you do want a Total Airhead, or any other amp. They work wonders. No joke.

Dynamic range jumps tremendously. Sound congestion is almost non-existant. Since you are using the line output, no hiss is present from the "beeper". "Wine from the water" is a whole new song with the amp. There is a dynamism and a sense of pacing completely absent in the last setup. Details come out loud and clear, and the bass line sounds authoritative. No compression whatsoever.

Breakaway is snappier. The sense of rhytm is a lot stronger once again, and the detail is enhanced. Pretty much what applies to the last song applies here.

Re-jigue is still a surprise to me. It's still lifeless and dull, even with the amp. There is, once again, the sonic "grunge" in the low level passages, only clearer. Yes, the amp is doing its job, and it's retrieving the worst of the encoder (I guess). The initial timpani sounds loud and clear this time, though. There is a hint of very low level hiss, too. Something is clearly amiss here.

Expanium, Total Airhead, CD: Would there be a difference as dramatic as last one?

I started with Re-jigue. There is still something missing. Yes, it must be the DAC fault. There is no sense of separation between the instruments; it sounds like a mass of sound instead of separate entities. My home system (the Pioneer 96/24 DVD-525 and X-Cans V2) is clearly superior on this track. Nevertheless, the sonic grunge has disappeared, and the hiss too.

The similarities between the MP3 and the CD on the Expanium are striking (at least to me, more on that later). So similar, in fact, that in the pop tracks there is practically no difference between the CD and the MP3 setup. Then again, they aren't close to my home system.

Conclusion:

I, ((sign your name here)), devout MP3 hater and lover of all those things complicated enough for me to understand, dig the Expanium tremendously...

Yes, I am an MP3 hater. I approached this review thinking that the format was an instrument of the devil, created for the sole purpose of making our audiophile lives a living hell. That thanks to MP3, SACD and DVD-A wouldn't stand a chance. That MP3 was technologically equivalent to carving stones with a bird's feather.

Well, I was wrong. MP3, when done right, can be enjoyable enough to stand head to head with MD's ATRAC. I am now confident enough to use my Expanium wherever I go.

And yes, I think I just decided to leave my MD on early retirement. The only thing it has over the Expanium is its ability to record, and I don't usually do that on the move.

Sony... shame on you. It could have been so much better. Just ask Philips how.