[neil]

I read an old discussion from July about MP3 combo portable CDPs. I've gotta be honest -- I'm moving towards this type of purchase really soon and would like to know if any of you Head-Fi'ers have one and have an opinion.

My motivation is being able to squeeze all Radiohead albums on a single disc. My Billie Holiday collection all on one disc. I mean, how cool would that be? And I mean, this stuff can be done at very high bit rates. Speaking of which, do these things support VBR? I'm going to do some homework and let you all know what I find -- but any personal experience dialogue with these things would be swell.

 

[Tim D]

No...but I'm interested too...I saw some Aiwa ones I think, and Philips second generation Expanium (which forgoes the blocky square look and looks like the typical CD player).

Unfortunately its hard to find real reviews...unfortunately a lot of Mp3 product reviewers don't focus on much besides the pure functional aspects and how it looks. Would rather not have to deal with returning blister pack items.

 

[gorgon_123]

i've always found the Hardware reviews over at www.mp3.com to be pretty useful. The "latest and greatest" MP3/CD player is the Riovolt SP250 - check out: http://hardware.mp3.com/hardware/individual/3763.html

Haven't heard any first hand experiences with it so far but the original Riovolt has excellent reviews (check the mp3.com message boards).

The advantage this particular player has over the competition is that is has upgradeable firmware - meaning it can evolve as your needs change.

I think perhaps my next purchase will be one of these puppies.. but that will probably be in late November or so. Those pesky debts are catching up to me

 

[Tim D]

I hope their reviews are better than how they review headphones which looks as informative as the average electronic e-tailer. I like how they got a pair of Sony700DJ's from Sony to review and it got the highest rating possible. And if I remember correctly a person who made fun of their reviewing measures was threatened with lawyers.

MD reviewers typically don't focus too much on sound either...but at least MD standards are much higher, and they still do a better job with reviews than what I've seen from typical Mp3 reviewers who would praise anything that sounded as "great" as their SBLive.

 

[lini]

I recently bought one of Philips' new Expaniums - the EXP201, which is still on offer for US$ 99 at Good Guys. I didn't try the mp3 stuff, yet (which I'm not too interested in, anyway), but in general the player makes a good impression - and even without yet being able to make a direct comparision, I already have the feeling that it sounds better than the SL-CT570A. The stock headphones are - as always - a little on the dumohbassy side, but to my surprise not too bad. And I've also tried it with the SR80, which it drives fine (and really plenty loud, if necessary!

). I think it has a little more juice than most regular pcdps around, because it's not so much optimized for battery life - but I don't care about that, actually (tried it with 1600 mAh NiMH mignon cells from my digicam, which seem to last for more than 5 hours...). And I guess, real mp3 fans will miss a proper id3-tag-display, which I don't care about either. Apart from that it's a compact but not too leightweight unit and easy to use - and it's having a real pot (no digital volume control), switchable ESP, switchable bass enhancer (off, slight, a bit more - seems quite ok to me) and a combo headphone/line-out (no optical out, though).

Greetings from SF!

Manfred / lini

P.S.: I tried to contact Philips for information on the output power of the headphone jack, but either I was to dumb to use their web form or they just didn't reply. There's nothing to be found in the manual on that topic, so I can't tell a proper spec for this...

 

[Tim D]

Back when I choose my old SL-320...the Philips portable CD players were right up there in terms of competition...but things might be different with the trend of Pana's being battery sippers.

Philips has some of the better transports I believe. And I wouldn't be suprised at a beefier headphone amp as well. They also really never miniturized their players since I think they are all AA type players. Personally I think battery life on the 460-570 AAA series kinda sucks without the optional AA battery pack.

 

[Peddler]

I have recently 'borrowed' a Rio Volt CD/MP3 combo with the intention of seeing if the sound quality was on equal terms to my current Discman - the Sony D-915.

It's certainly a competent player when playing both regular CD's and MP3's. The only real problems are...

Skipping - The Rio Volt skips - especially when playing regular CD's. Basically it's not a touch on the Sony which doesn't skip at all - period! MP3's still skip - although not as much. This is because the disc spins up, loads so much data into RAM and then spins down and plays from RAM. The only problem is that when it spins up again, if the player is moving, it will almost certainly skip. Note that it skips when I'm walking - not jogging.

Battery Life - when compared to the Sony especially, the battery life is not as good - probably equal to a four year old discman.

Build/Design - Without a doubt the Sony has to be the best designed portable CD player on the market. The Rio is too thick and cumbersome in comparison.

Sound quality though is very good. If you're looking for a player which is likely to be used in a more static place, it's a good choice. Plays just about anything you want to throw at it (although not anywhere near as good as the Sony at playing less than perfect discs).

I have decided to return the Rio Volt to my friendly Argos and get the new Iriver 2. Similar form-factor to the Volt but with many of these issues resolved (hopefully)!. The headphone output is rated at 12 mV output (more than twice that of my Sony), has a better remote control with LCD display (very handy when navigating through the huge amount of files on MP3 discs), has better skip protection (although still not perfect from what I can gather reading the few reviews of the unit) and allows multiple playlists to used so that you can restore the right track order.

The one thing I really would recommend the Rio Volt (and hopefully the Iriver 2) for is sound quality. Although I suspect I could tell the difference between my Sony and the Volt, the differences are not that great considering the potential advantages this new format offers.

I hope this helps.

 

[jeremymayf]

i have had the volt about, wow i can't remember-this is getting bad, well, over six months anyway, and peddler nailed it well. the only thing is i really haven't experienced any skipping, but mostly i use it around the house. it's pretty good late night in bed with the ety's-don't disturb my girlfriend, lots of tunes right at hand, and sounds good-so long as bit rate is over 160--will play VBR which most of my mp3's are VBR192. i use nihms with it and am satisfied with batt. life. If you're in the market now iwould say get the iriver 2. Firmware updates have been surprising regular and useful. When i first gotthe player, it did not have resume, now it remembers and resumes from the last 10 cd's!