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Hardware

MP3/CD Players Reviewed 194

Posted by CmdrTaco from the and-it-fits-in-the-palm-of-your-hand dept.
nd writes "It seems the MP3 CD players (previously thought to be complete vaporware after literally years of delays) are finally starting to hit the market. IGN has posted a review comparing the Mambo-X vs. MPTrip. Both players are discman-like in appearance, and play CDR/CDRW's containing MP3 files."
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MP3/CD Players Reviewed More

MP3/CD Players Reviewed

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  • mobile MP3s - processor not required! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You can get them for your car:

    http://www.crutchfield.com/

    goto "car products" then "in-dash CD"

    models by Aiwa and Kenwood

    J

  • I don't think I conveyed (sp?) my point well enough. CD/MP3 players are fantastic, in a home stereo setting, but in my opinion, not at portables.

  • Wrong! The reason we pay so much for CDs is that the <b>profit margin</b> has to be maintained, all the way down the corporate structure. From the record company, to the wholesalers, to the distributors, everyone has their hand out. The artist? The artist gets an average of <b>$.80</b> per CD, the rest goes to the middlemen.

    As Chuck D said, don't believe the hype.
  • No, they won't. At least not at reasonable prices. Think about how they charge for CD's now...

    Now think about how little work goes into making a comp...

    Now, repeat after me the capitalist mantra:

    profit margin.....profit margin......profit margin
    $.02
  • And what do those middle men do? Sell the records to radio stations. Throw kickass parties so somebody buys the record. They do the recording. They do the engineering. These people have made their living creating music as well, do they not deserve a paycheck too? The label has lots of costs that you don't see, costs that are just as real. They also spend millions on the bands that don't make it, but still got a big label contract and yes, it comes down to the all mighty dollar. Surprised? Not I. People need to make money to live, sad but fscking true. So don't be afraid to support these people who you've never met, will never meet, but do the engineering on track 8 of that CD you like. Or the people that gave it to the radio station so you could hear it for the first time. Or the people that threw the party so the Rolling Stone guy would review it and you read about it. Regardless, the only way you knew about the artists you like (aside from napster/theft) is through the people the industry created. Should those people go homeless because you don't want to pay for music you could steal for free? No. Get your own clue.
  • OK I got tired of waiting, so i just called them and asked.
    The guy tells me the first shipment of ~1300 units arrives late August. Since there's a backorder of ~1400-1500 as of today (7/11/00) the SECOND batch arrives a month after.. so I'm looking at placing an order mid - late september.
  • There is a directory mode.
    Documentation sucks, but if you play with it enough you can figure it out.
  • I love mine and use it constantly.
    Sure the design could use a little work, but it's one of those things where once you get used to it, you've got it down.

    Just another learning curve.

    After using mine for the past four months, I have absolutely no gripes about shelling out the $120 for it. I would do it again in a heartbeat.

    ~Chris
  • whether for or against napster, the more important issue is that mp3 is a degredation of cd which was a degredation of analog. my fear is that as these technologies become pervasive the better quality standards will go away. i would rather have my 20 minutes of music per side of 180 gram vinyl on a Linn lp12, or 72 minutes per cd on a mark levinson cd player anyday.
    as an artist i would be more offended that people were not hearing my music as it was meant to be heard than that they were hearing it for free. If the louvre offered free admission to anyone wearing darkglasses would you take them up on it? i would rather pay for quality. Find a way to get fast free records through gnutella and you will have progress. now all you have is change for the worse.
  • That rules it out for me. I'm ripping my personal CD collection at 256 bps with VBR. Yes, I have to use that bit rate. I intend to rip my entire collection to a 60 gig drive on a server I built for that purpose and hardly ever touch my source material. 128 bps just sorta wears me out after awhile. I don't know exactly why I don't like it much but I definitely prefer the way my high bitrate tracks sound. When I want to take some of my server music on the road with me, the player has to be able to handle any mp3 I throw at it. 196 bps is not going to get it. These files are hugh enough as it is. I'm not going to be satisfied with lower bitrate rips to make some cheap consumer electronics happy and I'm not keeping multiple bitrate versions around. I'll check these out again when they can handle my stuff.
  • Anybody else notice this? "A footnote: the player cannot read MP3s that exceed a 196 Kbps bit rate." This is lame - some kind of attempt to stop you from getting too close to real CD quality?
  • I happed to own the "mptrip" or whatever it is really called (the actual player has no real brand on it, just says 'MP3') and I find having the CDR as media to be really convenient. You can buy blank CDR in bulk for under 40 cents a piece and burn discs like crazy. The player finds Mp3 even on mixed data/mp3 CDRs, so if your friend has a CD with his backup or whatever on it, you can just pop it in. Another great thing is that I can put the CD into anyones computer and play it. How many people have minidisc hooked up to their PCs?

    _joshua_
  • Wake me up when I can get:

    An LCD screen with SOMETHING that even remotely resembles a way of keeping track of 100+ tracks
    Great battery life
    A nice system for recording voice notes to myself (which, happily, is available to some extent)
    A system that won't die if it hits a single bad MP3 or a single non-MP3 file
    A way of making 10 or 20 bookmarks to the start of each set of tracks
    A +10 and -10 button for track selection


    And while I'm asking, I guess I also want a pony...

    GlowingSpleen
    Niftyness.com makes my feet hurt.
  • Does anyone know if the MPTrip is available in the UK or Europe, and if so where? I've spent some time looking now but can't seem to find any being sold in the UK. Thanks.
  • the article says that they support CDRW, which means UDF.
  • How come no one has mentioned the Adam's player yet. It plays all the same cd's that these 2 do, and it playes vcd's all versions (1, 2 and 3). available at mp3 solutions [mp3solutions.com]. Its a little more expensive, but I got mine last week, and its great. Plays the vcd's on my tv flawlessly, and it hasnt skipped on me yet. Its case is strong, came in a kinda shoddy box, but so what. Ive had no problems with song navigation, it shows them like "Title 01 Track 01 00:20" where the first # is the directory, second is the song # from that directory and the third is the time. Its very nice.
  • Seems like you can hit Next twice-and-hold to skip forward through songs, but Preview thrice-and-hold to skip backward through songs... But Thanks for the info!
  • I have been checking Crutchfield every day on the AIWA CDC-mp3 and have NEVER seen it in stock. I assume its not TOTAL vaporware, but I won't know that until I hear from someone who actually has one.

    I wouldn't exactly call it "available"

    -M

  • Just did a little check on amazon- box set of 4 led zeppelin cd's is going for 62.97- knock off three dollars for the extra cost of the additional cd's, and you're looking at 59.97 (american).
  • If you have a tape player in your car, just get one of those CD->tape converters, and you have your solution! Does anyone know what you could do if you had a Cd player in your car though? They ..uh, wouldn't have AUX in would they?

    50 seconds of 'buffer' (or as they say, anit-skip) is great for cars. It's too bad the better MPTrip didn't come with the remote... With 200+ songs on one CD-R, you'r gonna want that to type track number in and move between the songs! If you had your favorite CD-R in a car, I'm sure that you'd memorize some of the numbers of your favorite songs!

    Rader

  • I ordered my MP3 CD thing about 2 months ago, no word yet.

    Funny enough people on e-bay auction where to get information on where to buy these things.

    amazeing.

    -Jon
  • That doesn't matter on the current crop of MP3/CD players. They don't even give you file names. Just track numbers.

    When I can see the name of the song I'm playing, THEN I'll buy an MP3CD player.
    -----------------
    Kevin Mitchell

  • I'd just LOVE to carry one of those around in my pocket :P The big difference between what you posted and the new mp3 cd players is the size, and the price.
    -motardo
  • you still don't get it. The lavish parties, the free CD's to the record stations (CD's aren't sold to radio stations, BTW, they're given away as "promotional copies"), that's all written off the corporate taxes. The money that's paid to the new, undiscovered bands that get the "big label contracts" isn't a gift, it's a loan to the band based on future profits, from albums that have yet to be recorded. If the band makes it, the record company gets their money back, with interest...if they don't, it's another write-off. Not that they spend that much on them to begin with, see Sheryl Crow's speech at the Grammy's, a few years ago.

    Meanwhile, the engineers and staffers (who BTW I *have* met, and within whose ranks I used to number myself) get paid chump change, while the corporate execs and the shareholders rake in big profits. Have you ever seen a *studio engineer* riding in a limo? Get real! Spare me the rhetoric about engineers going homeless, and instead ask why Edgar Bronfman, Jr., the grandson of a bootlegger, is a multimedia tycoon.

    Learn a little bit about how the media industry works. A big hit movie, like "Coming To America", for example, TO DATE still has not shown a profit on the corporate ledger, despite hundreds of millions of dollars flowing to the studio from theater showings, video rentals, promotional items, and the like. It never will. That's how the business is set up, in movies and music.

    I'll support the artist. I'll buy the new Public Enemy direct from Chuck D for $8.00, knowing that he'll get approx. $7.50 of that--I'd rather give him $8, knowing he'll get most of it, than give $15.99 to Best Buy or Tower Records, knowing that at most he'll get $.85 from them.

    I didn't initially suggest that you get a clue, but from your response, I think you'd better first figure out the name of the game.
  • This is great and all, but why not burn regular CDs?!! I mean, it's better quality than an mp3?! This whole mp3 thing is just branding gone awry. Its an opportunity to make your company seem like it's jumping on the internet or new technology band wagon. Up the stock prices, eh boys?

    kick some CAD [cadfu.com]
  • I know the name of the game, and I will not budge from my point of view. You conveniently neglected to mention how much radio stations pay to BMI and ASCAP to pay the royalties on the music that they receive for free. I spent a year as a music director for a radio station, so don't tell me I know nothing, alright? Just because you choose not to like the industry structure does not mean it is okay to steal from it. That's what I mean. See Courtney Love's speech on salon.com. She does get it. So buy the CDs artist-direct if you can, but if you can't, don't go and steal it: that guarantees they get nothing.

  • These look awesome. Unlike before when you could only put 80 minutes onto CD, you can now put roughly the equivilent of 8 CDs onto one disk.

    You must be blind not to see the effect that Napster is having on how we listen to music. These players are the result of an explosion of mp3 popularity. Once things like this are widely deployed (still waiting for a car stereo version), we're going to see sales on this stuff (including CD-writing equipment) sky rocket.

    You see, when ever I hear some artist cry about how Napster is stealing the food out from his children's dinner plates, I laugh my fucking head off. Because if you're independant enough to come up with your own opinions, you begin to understand that they are nothing but money grubbing thiefs. They don't care about their "intellectual property", or "artist's rights". All they care about is their green pocket liners.

    It's sad, but technology like this, allowing you to put even MORE music onto a CD, will never make it into the music recording industry. It's just a way of selling more product for less.

    And don't you start with the "holier than thou" attitude, calling me a pirate, or an intellectual property thief. Have you ever thought that maybe just because something is illegal does not necessarily make it immoral?

    Keep everything in perspective. Metallica no longer produces good music. They don't need to. They're just selling a name now. And people are just now beginning to wake up and realize it. Hey, I agree, Metallica is a great band, they're just obsolete now. People have stopped buying their records, and Lars is pissed that he's not god anymore.

    Honestly, I applaud these companies. They are pushing us into our new music revolution.

  • For my Apex DVD player I burn them ISO9660 with the MP3s in album named directories, but these might be more limited.
  • I don't recall whether they mentioned it...

    But the MPTrip does support VBR. Although the track display will freak out...
  • Here [slashdot.org] is the article you're refering to and here [aiwa.com] is the info on it from Aiwa.
  • MD will probably die fairly soon. It is Sony's child. And we all know what Sony did with Beta...

    I am very leery of buying a MD player/recorder, not necessarily because of the recording quality, but because I'm afraid I'm going to cough up $200 for the next Betamax. Feh, I say.
  • I'm assuming that they're the same manufactured item being sold by different companies.

    The Genica and the MPTrip are both the same player from a company called Dragon State [sasdragon.com.hk] with different logos slapped on.
  • RCA's coming out with a MP3-CD player with the first item on your list. Not sure about the rest though. Someone in the MP3.com Forums [mp3.com] posted some pics.
  • Both Philips [philips.com] and RCA [mp3.com] appear to be working on MP3-CD players. I heard Casio is too, but I can't seem to find any info on that.

  • 10 Hours, Random Access (Score:3)

    by Skip666Kent ( 4128 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2000 @02:03PM (#939681)
    The 10 hours is significant NOT in the sense that "I can listen to music for 10 hours straight, oh boy!" but rather in the sense of variety. You could spend a week without ever changing that cd, but hearing a tremendous variety of music all the while, even if only in twenty-minute bursts as you ride the bus to and from school or work.

    Cost is not even a consideration. You have to look ahead a bit, and see how quickly these devices (cdburners and such) are becoming ubiquitous. Granted, at present it's largely a mid-upper middle class thing, but that is already changing rapidly. It's like when people used to think the idea of a 'personal computer' was laughable. Things with this sort of power get assimilated quickly.

  • Variable Bitrate decoding is most important for high quality music. Judging from the "gangster rap/script kiddie" style review, I would imagine that these guys don't know what it means.

    Any review based on "How thin the plaster is" will not be respected.
  • Well what happens when i download three new songs and want to listen to them in my car on the way to work? TOO BAD with these players. With my nomad or little MD player, I can just throw those new songs on in no time and not have to compile and burn an entirely new disc.
  • Ok..When will I be able to pick up one of these cheap puppies at my local Best Buy or Circuit City??? I am prone to impulse buying -- and do not really trust to order something that may OR may not show up within a varible time frame of 6 days or 6 months.....(I would sure hate to be put on a waiting list -- and when my unit arrives, the 2nd gen's are already shipping....Hell, I don't mind being a pioneer -- I would just like the comfort of knowing that I would get to drive the thing around a few blocks, before next years model comes out.....)

    Bottom line -- these things will remain vaporware until I can buy one "Off the shelf"....And play around with it a day or 2 before it becomes obsolete...

    IMHO
  • I had pretty much the same experiences... Since I had my old plain sony discman with no shock protection, I just took the AC adapter from that. The ear buds broke on me a couple weeks ago... the wire from the one just came right out from the rest of it... I love the ni-cad battery charging feature. I keep the AC adapter near my bed with some old PC speakers so I can use it to listen to old radio shows and it charges up the batteries while I sleep. One thing about those old radio shows, they were recorded at 22Khz, and the player uses 44.1Khz, so I had to do a lot of re-encoding but music files are pretty much all 44.1Khz and anything 192bps on down to 32bps plays fine. Even VBR files play ok, even though the counter goes crazy heheh. What I would like to see in the next generation is a screen that would tell you what exactly you are listening to so I wouldnt have to make printouts of the directories. Also perhaps more randomization functions so that you can have it not only play a random song, but not play two songs from the same album in a row. But, at the price it was, even if the cheap earbuds and useless adapter didnt come with it... it would still be worth it. I love the thing! I mean... 14 hours of music on a single CD!!

    _joshua_
  • Thanks, brutha.
  • The pair batteries lasted me around an hour. I've tried this with about 5 different sets of rechargeable batteries, and didn't get any better results. Maybe they meant 10 hour playtime with audio, not mp3 cds? Am i the only one with this problem? Is there a some sort of big, long lasting, rechargeable battery that i can just plug into the ac in on the player? Anyone know?
  • I don't think you need to worry about the whole "betamax" issue, since MD has been around for several years. Japan has had it for longer than we have, and incredibly popular there (I was just in Japan several weeks ago, and everyone headphones connected to an MD player coming from their bag).

    I personally wouldn't buy an MD player. The only benefit I see is the small size and possibly the inexpensive (when compared to flash memory for portable MP3 players) storage medium. I think I'll stick with my CD player, and pick up an MP3/CD player when they start supporting ID3 tags.
    -----------------
    Kevin Mitchell

  • Most of the files I got from http://www.fission.net/otr/archive.html but there are some pay places like rusc.com and one at http://www.oldtimeradiovault.com that has soooo much that if I had a large bandwidth I would sign up for a month at least to grab files (Which they do sell the whole set of 97 CDs or something which is insane!) Then if you have the player you just decode and re-encode the files... but there has to be a simple command line way with mpeg123 that I havent bothered to mess with yet, maybe next batch. They have a free ftp, but is as slow as hell.

    _joshua_
  • I actually ordered this thing from Crutchfield over a month and a half ago! (www.mp3.com has a story on it, and they reported it was due out in June) needless to say, June is GONE and they are STILL out of stock. it is supposed to ship as soon as they get it. BUT WHEN!? The Aiwa web page advertises it, but there is no actual release date!.. hrrrmmphff!!!
  • Yeah, but let's see you play MP3s directly from that tape.
  • ...now that you can have like 10 hours of music on a disc. The energizer bunny is runnin' scared!

    Gotta get one of these for my car!

  • I don't see anything there about places to buy it. A lot of these so-called MP3/CD players have web sites but cannot be purchased.

    Do you have a link to a place that's *SHIPPING* these?
  • Check out reviews (well, previews, technically) of the Aiwa [ign.com] and the Kenwood [ign.com] in-dash players at IGN.com as well.
  • I'm sorry, but portable MP3 cd players? For three-digits?

    If you need a CD burner to make MP3 cds for these, why not just burn a real audio CD of your favorite mix and use it on your trusty old discman? Fewer songs, true, but you can just burn more cds. Having fewer tracks on a CD is an advantage, especially if the MP3 cd players like these don't have track listings.

    sorry. I'll just save the $200 and buy a 10-disc changer for my car...
  • My biggest pet peave with MP3 CD players is that they defeat the purpose of the MP3 player concept in the first place. MP3 players (i.e. the Nomad & the Rio) are so popular, not only because you can load free music on them, but with a USB connection you can do it quickly and easily. The whole concept of doing things quickly and easily makes it so convienient! I know if I set Napster to download a file (from an artist that allows his music on the system of course!) and then I jump in the shower, by the time I get out and changed, the files is complete and I can just toss it on my Nomad in a minute flat and go! I don't have to WAIT for a damn CD to burn (new or continuing an already started session). I think it's ridiculous to have to burn a CD full of files and wait and then keep coming back and burning new sessions everytime I get 1 or 2 new songs. And besides, much like mindiscs, isn't one of the advantages of an MP3 player that the music won't skip? With a CD based MP3 player, no matter how shock resistant is says it is, it's based on a system that can't handle jostling, and skips are bound to happen. Not only that but by the time you get a ton of music burned one CD, it's simply a pain to go through all the tracks to get to where you want to be! My plan, get a regular player, get a very large flash card, and encode at 96Kbps.
  • A friend I recently bought two of these badboys - after much waiting, we got them in the mail. His turned out to work great - the review is correct in that the headphones and the buttons suck, but the sound rules. 11 hours of music on a cd is great. It has a cool directory mode thing where you can burn you mp3s in certain directories and play only from that directory, so you can make a nice mix of dad's jazz, grandpa's polka, and mom's heavy metal on one cd and not worry about listening to each others "crap". My unit, unforutantely, had a laser error or something, but MPTrip has a great return policy and I'm anxiously awaiting a non-defective unit (had to pay my shipping charges only). My friend's is sweet though.
  • the kenwood is available, but the aiwa has been put on delay until August...
    -motardo
  • there's also a product called phatbox that's not quite out, but looks neat. i submitted it as a story a while ago, but was rejected :(
    anyway, it replaces your cd changer, and has a 5 gig cart on it (laptop HD).
    they had a working version at the mp3 summit, so i'd assume they're coming out soon.
    check it out here [phatnoize.com]
  • sorry, bad url. right one is:
    www.phatnoise.com [phatnoise.com]
  • I picked up a MPTrip from Easybuy2000, I wasn't impressed by this unit at all, I was hoping to plug it into my car stereo for some sweet driving music, but the line out quality was the shits. So I sent it back to EasyBuy requesting my money back (they have a 30 day money back guarantee)I sent it back within 2 weeks of recieving it, and haven't heard a thing from EasyBuy. Despite my repeating Emails. Money well spent. heh.
  • these sound like ass. I made the mistake of buying one, before I could afford a good 6 disc changer.
  • Oh, I forgot to mention as well. The unit itself I could not get to skip, but I could however cause it to turn off. (yes, turn right off) by "twitching" it in two different directions. Slight hand movement and the thing would turn off. As well some MP3's caused it turn off.

    Maybe I just got lucky enough to get the Microsoft "feature" Enhanced version. ;)
  • Care to offer any Kenwood hunting tips?

    You're the first person I've heard that's gotten one for less than ~$650.

  • But for those players that support CD-RW, that isn't an issue. Just stick your CD-RW disc back in your computer, add your new songs (or delete the ones you're tired of), and away you go. After all, these basically are first-generation players that are bound to be improved on when/if they catch on big time. Look at how far the DVD player has come since it was introduced.

    Come to think of it, this is probably the only real use I can think of wanting a CD-RW for. Wouldn't CD-RW and CD MP3 players be a kick-ass combination?


    --

  • A) Delphiauto [delphiauto.com] will be installing these things into GM cars over the next year or so.

    B) cat-5? why? IEEE 802.11 wireless is the way man. Of course, this could lead to drive-by downloading... ;)

  • > as an artist i would be more offended that
    > people were not hearing my music as it was
    > meant to be heard than that they were hearing
    > it for free

    Silence is just a very, very low quality mp3. You really want that?

    Ryan
  • > How in the Hell do you cluster a cd player?
    Surround sound, silly.
    Ryan
  • Hmm. You're right - why settle for the convenience of carrying a few cds to get 500 or so tracks, when I could lug a fat cd wallet around with me? It's so much easier to flip through 25 cds labeled "Husker Du", "Minor Threat", "Tom Waits", "A3", &c. than it is to pick between "Shit I Like", "Shit My Girlfriend Likes", and "Shit We Both Like". And if I want 10 hours of maintenance-free shuffle play for a party, well, hell - I should just buy a bigger CD changer, for a few hundred dollars, and toss out my POS Apex.

    Can you try a little harder with your trolls, in the future?
  • I don't doubt that they prebuffer the files, don't get me wrong, but a buddy of mine had a CD/MP3 player from Pine Technologies and it didn't seem to work very well in that respect on a car ride we had.
    The Jukebox is the dream, I agree! However early reviews show that sorting through directories on it is a pain.
  • There are a reviews in mp3.com's hardware section (hardware.mp3.com) of the aiwa and the kenwood (though the majority of the "reviewing" is done by user comments in the aiwa thread). Based on those comments, the kenwood is much more expensive but not worth the $350 price difference (apparently it doesn't have a detachable face, which seems odd).

    The reason the aiwa is temp. out of stock is that they scrapped their design and decided to start over sometime earlier this year, delaying their release until late june/august.

    Crutchfield and buyitnow.com are the only 2 places I've been able to find the aiwa cdc-mp3 online, both for the same price ($299).

    They do support ID3 tags but not CD text, and play CDRs and CDRWs. The neatest little gadget, though, is the steering wheel remote ;o)

    Supposedly a guy on ebay will sell you a place to find it cheap for $1, also.

    -nicole
  • How about instead of calling me names and copping an attitude, you speak to me with a well thought out logical argument, or at the very least, don't be a pussy and post anonymously you chicken shit.
  • A review of the MPTrip [zdnet.com] says that it won't play MP3's that exceed a 196Kbps rate... That probably means no VBR either.
    --
  • Yes and Yes. You can do Joliet or ISO9660. I got mine a month ago and I like it. (the MP3trip). I was needing a portable CD player, so I figured spend a little extra and get one that also plays mp3's. I don't abuse my hardware, so I figure it doesn't have to be the most durrable. Actually, even though it looks cheap, it's well constructed, just kinda generic.
  • Freshgear (ZDTV) did a review of MP3Trip months ago and it has been available on easybuy2000.com since then. Did slashdot just miss this one?
  • I had my CD full of Metallica songs from Napster [napster.com] and I was ready to rock ass.

    Oh, boy, here it comes...

  • Well... what I think they meant was the portable MP3-CD players are starting to hit the market.

    Component players have been avaiable (as you said) for quite some time now. Hell... there are even quite a number of DVD players that will also play MP3 CDRs/CDRWs. And some of these DVD players are cheap.

    In fact, Apex makes one that only cost about $150 that plays DVDs, VCDs, audio CD/CDR/CDRW, and MP3 CDR/CDRW. I couldn't find a price on the Terratec website, but I'm betting that the little booger isn't as good a deal as the Apex player. (The Apex player also allows you mess with the CSS and region codes for DVDs!)

    Sir Poopsalot

  • A friend of mine recently purchased an MP3 player (I'm not sure if it's one of the two that was reviewed... it might have been the MP-Trip), and it has a big problem decoding anything above 192kbps encoding. The player barfs and decides not to decode it at all. I've heard that it could have been a cheap hardware decoder onboard, but I'm not sure.

    Anyone have similar problems, or know if these two mp3 players can encode anything above 192? Personally, I try to encode at > 160 bitrate, because if I run 128k mp3s out from my PC through my relatively high end stereo, it sounds like utter crap. If I were to purchase an mp3 player, may it be portable or set-top, would probably be run through my stereo at one point or another, and if it sounds like crap, I won't buy it.

  • The reviewer forgot to mention that the Mambo-X is supossed to ship with VBR decoding, display the ID3 info and be able to see mp3s not the in the root directory. Any maybe someother stuff I can't remember.

    The VBR is what sold me on it, I would hate to rencode some perfectly good 128-192kbit songs just to put them on a CD.

    btw: I don't think either run linux

    -Jon
  • Well, without an LCD screen to display the text, support for playlists (or ID3 tags) would be pretty much worthless. Wait for the next generation, I suppose.

    If I were to buy one of these, or the in-dash [slashdot.org] models, I'd mainly want to put it on random play. Make a few CD-RW's with a common theme or band for each one, stick 'em in, listen to 'em for the entire three hour drive back home.

  • 50 secs of antiskip? (Score:3)

    by havardi ( 122062 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2000 @03:55PM (#939722)
    50*12.8K=640K That's all *I* need.
  • I'd like to see you take that thing for a jog and see how long it lasts.
  • Sure, and you take your DVD drive everywhere, eh? Hey, my HD and WinAmp can do what MPTRIP does to -- I guess it does suck.

  • Be honest. When was the last time most of us went for a jog?

  • Sharp [sharp-usa.com] has a product called Voquette that connects to a MiniDisc player and allows playback of various sound formats, including MP3. It also includes software for sending files to/from your MD player.

    Here are the relevant links:

  • MPTrip / EasyBuy2000 impressions (Score:5)

    by Viking Coder ( 102287 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2000 @10:36AM (#939740)
    I ordered my MPTrip over a month ago, called back recently and was told that it had shipped. Called back again, and was told it hadn't shipped, and they had in fact lost my order. After complaining loudly, they agreed to ship me another, with no handling charge. So, I finally got it.

    The first thing I noticed when I opened it was the EUROPEAN AC ADAPTER. Thanks, you jerks. I'm pretty sure that I'm a freak accident on their part, but still - what a kick in the pants?

    I've played several MP3-filled CD-R's in it, haven't tried any CD's or CD-RW's, yet. The first I tried, I had made the stupid decision to fill the CD with MP3's, all in one directory (all from the same band - why not?) It can only play the first 77 songs in the directory, of about 120. So, don't do that.

    Then I discovered that there's a Next button, but no Previous button. I can't go BACK one song. (I think I might be able to, by hitting Preview twice in a row.) The buttons are kind of crappy, but they work just fine. The Play / Pause button is the smallest one on the thing. The rubber feet on mine are of different heights, so it doesn't sit level. The ear-buds are kind of sucky, but they're not that bad. So what? Buy another pair, and you're good to go.

    But, it does play MP3's from a CD-R, and it sounds good. AND it DOES NOT SKIP. I've done the "shake and bake" on it, while listening, and no audio degradation. I also dropped it on the floor, hard enough for it to open the case and drop the CD-R on the floor, but it still runs just fine.

    All told - imagine a $40 CD player. Yeah - seriously - that bad (except it sounds good - it's just chintzy material, bad design, etc). Then, make it play MP3s off of CD-R's (and supposedly CD-RW's). And that makes all the difference! =) Mine is definitely worth the $115 I put in it. I can run with it, and have a LARGE selection of random music to listen to. And I can have a nice on-the-plane distraction (my ENTIRE music collection in a 24-CD-R case). So, just ignore the crappy quality, and enjoy the hours of good-sounding tunes, and you'll be fine.

    When some respectable company finally comes out with a good-quality model, I'll undoubtedly buy it, even at twice the price. I want a Previous button pretty badly. And an LCD that actually shows the ID3 tag would be REALLY REALLY nice. (Also being able to use a Playlist would be very nice.)

    Final review : 3 out of 5 stars. Does what it's advertised to do - PLAYS MP3 CD-R's, and seems like it's not going to break or otherwise fail. It just doesn't have ANY bells or whistles that you'd expect. NONE, okay? It just PLAYS, it doesn't do anything else!!! Oh yeah - I've had it for 28 hours, and it's already got MASSIVE scratches on it's crappy gold surface from carrying it in a backpack with CD-R's in their cases. =(

  • The Mambo-X just started shipping recently. A lot of unlucky people had these on pre-order since last year. The Mambo-X review was the more interesting part of the article, as it was compared to the MPTrip
  • Kenwood is going to run you $649, from Crutchfield.

    ---
  • The Expanium is the player I've been waiting for - I cancled my MamboX preorder (whew - that review came just in time!).

    From looking at the Expanium website (light on details but still informative) it at least supports VBR and encoding up to 320kbs, also has some nice features like 8 second scan, and 100 seconds of skip protection at 128kbps. It also says it will play for 10 hours on two AA batteries, so at least it'll last a whole CD!

    No mention though of handling playlists or other important details, but at least it will be pretty solid compared to the efforts produced so far.
    Amazing how hard it is to break into the consumer electronics market, you would have thought good portable players would have been out some time ago.

  • Philips to unite MP3 and CD technology (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12, 2000 @10:51AM (#939773)
    The Register [theregister.co.uk] recently had a story, "Philips to unite MP3 and CD technology" [theregister.co.uk], where it detailed a new CD/MP3 player that Philips have on the go. Philips call it the Expanium [philips.com]. They even have a free beta that you can sign up for to test the rather nice device...

  • My review of MPTrip/Genica (Score:4)

    by zealot ( 14660 ) <xzealot54x@y a h oo.com> on Wednesday July 12, 2000 @10:54AM (#939775)
    I got the Genica mp3 player (http://www.genica.com/MP3-CD.htm)a month ago... and this player looks exactly like and has the same exact features as the MPTrip, so I'm assuming that they're the same manufactured item being sold by different companies. I've had the opposite impression of the reviewer: I had no problems song navigation and not having track names (what do you expect for $100?), but sound quality is pretty bad. The best mode is normal (all the rest really are bad sounding), but even then the sound is extremely tinny. The only reason it doesn't bother me that much is because I use it in my car with one of those cassette adaptors and I can adjust my car's equalizer to even it out. But I wouldn't recommend it to those who are gonna use it with headphones.

    The skip protection is terrible, both for audio cds and mp3s.

    Finally, I have problems with it reading cdrws. The best part of having one of these is the ability to burn a cdrw, and when you're tired of those songs, just erase it and burn more. I have an HP cdburner and some high quality maxell cdrws, and a great deal of the time when I turn the thing it on it says it can't find any files, and then the times when it can find them it has trouble playing them. It'll play them with lots of skipping (not due to the player getting banged around, it just has trouble reading the files). It's really frustrating when you turn it on to listen to some music and it tells you it can't find the songs.

    Here's a cnet review: http://electronics.cnet.com/cgi/crunch/FReview2.as p?ptable=MP3_Players&PID=1000063

    Maybe I should try to return mine...

  • Effect (Score:3)

    by bguilliams ( 68934 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2000 @10:12AM (#939776)
    I wonder what the effect of this will be on the current MP3 wars. If people own devices that play MP3 CD's, perhaps the record companies will start releasing massive compilation CD's for reasonable amounts of money.

    If they feel that they are able to make a buck off this technology, they may change their tune.
  • Has anyone heard any news of products using MD as the storage medium?

    I've been thinking about getting a sharp 722 MD player, but no one even allows you to digitally transmit audio to MD, everything goes through a converter when they're compressed on input.

    It would be really nice to buy $2 md discs (at 140 megs each) and use that for mp3.

    It would be much nicer than CDR or even those players using Clik drives IMHO.

    -js
  • Both these players (well, actually maybe only the Mp3-trip) seem like good products... but now I wanna know what other companies are developing! Does anyone know any vaporware rumors about a Mp3 discman that:
    • Doesn't choke and die on non-Mp3 files
    • Has an LCD to display the ID3 tag or filename
    • Supports VBR
    • Sounds good (I've heard conflicting reports on the mp3-trip)
    • MAybe... just maybe supports playlists? *wish*

    Sarcastic replies welcome!

  • I'm gonna pick up one of the MP-Trip models - I need something cheap with a capacity greater than a CD - 650 MB with 128 kbit per second is about 10 cds of music - woo hoo!

    However, it'd be reaally great if they played multisession CD's (which I don't see listed as an ability) so I can add MP3's at any time - better yet, it'd be great if they supported UDF so I can just drag-and-drop arrange/take off/add files at any time. Sadly, that isn't here yet... in the meantime, I'm just going to enjoy what I get.

  • Re: Check out crutchfield (Score:3)

    by CMiYC ( 6473 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2000 @10:45AM (#939799) Homepage
    Crutchfield [crutchfield.com] has the one from Awia and the one from Kenwood. You can order the one from Kenwood (I called its $649)... the one from Awia changed from "Available in June" to "Temporarily out of stock." There sales-people are equally unhelpful as their web page about the status of it...but at $299, it sounds a little better to me than the kenwood....

    ---

  • MpTrip...well...before that (Score:3)

    by Umbro2 ( 9955 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2000 @10:54AM (#939802) Homepage
    I got an MpTrip player for my birthday in May. Back then they were labeled as Generic MP3CD players. Other than the front logo they're spitting images of each other (mine just says "mp3" rather than "MpTrip").

    I really enjoy listening to it the music sounds great and I practically never have to switch CDs. The one truly negative comment I have is the keys are slightly hard to press. Once you press them they work but some are small and must be pressed rather hard to register. Maybe they've fixed this since then though I doubt it. Its a flaw with the overall design (switches being located on the lower half and buttons on the upper half).

    The instructions that came with it were unintelligible. Until now I had no clue it was capable of 500 seconds of voice recording, though of what use this I don't know. I did glean from them that if you record your songs in directories labeled "directory1, directory2..." that you can play just the songs in that directory. Of course you also have the option of playing randomly, just a single song, or all of them sequentially.

    I do reccommend buying another set of earphones, the earphones it comes with can be rough on your ears after extended periods of time. And at 100$ you can certainly afford a pair of earphones and still have spent less than if you were to purchase a competing player.

  • the MPTrip is ISO9660 so it supports directories w/ no problems. It actally functions better w/ directories since you hve the option to play an individual directory (a tough task find the directory though w/ the lack of names displayed)
  • How about the Terratec M3PO [m3po.net]? It's out there for at least half a year AFAIK!

    Okay, a little concurrention ain't bad as we always say...

  • Speaking of which, wasn't Aiwa going to release a car CD/MP3 player, or is that vaporware?

  • Since we're chatting about portable sound, anyone know of any good in-car or in-dash .mp3 players? Not a portable you plug in, but something you actually install in the vehicle?

    My dream one day is running a CAT-5 cable out the the car and downloading!

  • I was also a little confused with my MpTrip not being able to go back a song. The buttons are a little mislabeled. Preview, is really like Previous. If you hit it once it brings you to the beggining of the track and if you hit it twice it goes back one track. If you hit it twice and hold it, it scrolls backwards through the songs. Same deal with Next, two taps and hold and it scrolls forward through the songs.

  • These are also available for Car Audio (Score:5)

    by Rurik ( 113882 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2000 @10:23AM (#939834)
    Aiwa makes their CDC-MP3 [crutchfield.com] and Kenwood has their eXcelon Z919 [crutchfield.com]. These are in-dash head units that play mp3s on cds, like these, but have been available for awhile. Not too expensive (well, the Aiwa isn't), and pretty sharp graphics.
  • Since we're chatting about portable sound, anyone know of any good in-car or in-dash .mp3 players? Not a portable you plug in, but something you actually install in the vehicle?

    My dream one day is running a CAT-5 cable out the the car and downloading!

    Empeg [empeg.com] is what you want. Better start saving now, though. They ain't cheap.

    -Isaac

  • According to this page [easybuy2000.com] the MPTrip barfs on any files that aren't MP3s. That means you can't have m3u playlists on the disc. I was all ready to buy one of these things until I read this the other week, but then I concluded it would be too much of a hassle when I read this. I probably would have even bought the thing had it been built to just skip non-MP3 files (lack of playlists isn't a huge deal to me), but it dies when it encounters one. I think it would just be inconvenient to have to burn two seperate MP3 cds every time I make one - one for my MPTrip and one for computers I encounter or future mp3 cd players that aren't differently enabled. Arghh... maybe I'll break down and buy one anyway - I just want one so bad.

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