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MP3/CD Players Reviewed
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."
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.
-- From my Best Friend (Written to me over ICQ): "i was gonna go to a party...but i had to reinstall windows"
Wrong! The reason we pay so much for CDs is that the profit margin 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 $.80 per CD, the rest goes to the middlemen.
As Chuck D said, don't believe the hype.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." --Ben
Now think about how little work goes into making a comp...
Now, repeat after me the capitalist mantra:
$.02sig not found
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.
So there I was. Naked. In a refrigerator. With a potroast on my knees. Smokin a cigar. That's when it got REALLY weird.
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.
------
Let me give you the lowdown
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.
stay frosty and alert
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. 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!
Education is the silver bullet.
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
--"You can lead a man to knowledge, but you can't make him think."
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).
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
this is my sig.
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.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." --Ben
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
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.
So there I was. Naked. In a refrigerator. With a potroast on my knees. Smokin a cigar. That's when it got REALLY weird.
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.
just my blog and pix
I don't recall whether they mentioned it...
But the MPTrip does support VBR. Although the track display will freak out...
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Here is the article you're refering to and here is the info on it from Aiwa.
Tomorrow will be cancelled due to lack of interest
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.
This is a Chao. A Chao says "Mu."
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 with different logos slapped on.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
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 posted some pics.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Both Philips and RCA appear to be working on MP3-CD players. I heard Casio is too, but I can't seem to find any info on that.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
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.
**>>BELCH
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
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
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.
Wah!
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 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!!!
....move along....nothing to see here....
Yeah, but let's see you play MP3s directly from that tape.
Username taken, please choose another one.
...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!
just my blog and pix
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 and the Kenwood 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.
-- From my Best Friend (Written to me over ICQ): "i was gonna go to a party...but i had to reinstall windows"
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
Check out ZDTV's informative review of the MPTrip player - it'll give you some more information on the device. I would say the MPTrip is more than worth the money myself...
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
sorry, bad url. right one is:
www.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.
Open Source Time and Attendance, Job Costing a
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.
Open Source Time and Attendance, Job Costing a
You're the first person I've heard that's gotten one for less than ~$650.
Frogs are primitive animals - so the occasional extra toe is not that unusual. But this is very unusual.
A) Delphiauto 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... ;)
- passion
> How in the Hell do you cluster a cd player?
Surround sound, silly.
Ryan
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).
;o)
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
Supposedly a guy on ebay will sell you a place to find it cheap for $1, also.
-nicole
A review of the MPTrip 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?
Free as in speech, free as in beer, or free as in lunch?
Oh, boy, here it comes...
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
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
this is my sig.
If I were to buy one of these, or the in-dash 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*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.
With the 500 second memo function, i believe the MpTrip encodes MP3's as well. It uses the same memory for skip protection as for the memo.
considering how CRAPPY the memo sounds-- I find it easy to believe it encodes at 12.8kbps
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.
I have a catalogue for Tiger Direct sitting on my desk right now. It has info on a product called the I-Jam 833 (IJ-833). It plays MP3's burned onto a Cd, but doesn't give much info. I tried to find it on their website, but couldn't get any where. Any one have more info?
Dionysus vs, Socrates! The greatest battle of all time!
Would not be of sufficient quality to distinguish between the two.
Vermifax
Vermifax
Logout
Do you think your unit is not as good as the later generations?
I have tried to make my MpTrip skip.. I've smacked it repeatedly to the point of watching the CD inside come to a stop, yet it has never skipped.
Does your Unit have a jack for a remote control?
They seem to have changed the design a bit and mine does not have one.
Actually, so that my post gets moderated up :) maybe I should also note that thinkgeek has a similar product, though for a little more money.
They're putting dimes in the hole in my head to see the change in me.
My MPTrip arrived last week after about 3 weeks of waiting, and as most people have said - it basically works and is probably the cheapest MP3 player on the market at $115.
I've only used it with CD-RW's and have not had any of the problems people have been talking about... all written with Nero on my Yamaha 6414S burner.
My only beefs with it are that it doesn't show ID3 tags and it feels kinda plasticy, otherwise it's the best bang for your buck you can get for portable digi-music.
Care to offer any Kenwood hunting tips?
Uh... go to Crutchfield's Website look under the Kenwood CD-In Dash Players, and look for one that is like really expensive... but says CALL for the price. I don't remember the model number, but I'm sure in the description page it says "cdr/rw mp3 player."
If you call Crutchfield, their automated system says the price is $649
---
Be honest. When was the last time most of us went for a jog?
Sharp 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:
A cow-orker of mine bought the geneca(sp?) $99 mp3 player - it has no text display of the files in the cd at all it shows track numbers, and if I remember correctly, it can only go upto 999 songs per disk. He also could not play mp3's that were anything other the 441khz, 16bit, stereo. This is bad becuase he had old recordings of radio shows. The mambo-x seems _much_ better, with a wireless remote, text display (afaik) and has an equilizer. I'd buy one, but they're all out of stock _everywhere_. Repeated requests to see of the mambox has the same problem as the geneca player have gone un-answered.
da w00t.
da w00t. mtfnpy?
Don't settle for the first generation of MP3 CD Players. So far, all of the entries in the market have been by the small Taiwanese and Korean companies that managed to pull off the biggest rush job in getting their players out to market. As a result, the first generation players are of poor quality and have substandard feature sets.
If you have the patience, hold out until the big boys start hitting the market with their own players.
RCA has recently announced an MP3 CD player that features a multi-line display and ID3 tag support. When you have 650 megabytes of random MP3s on one disc, this sort of information is essential to finding what you want quickly and effectively. Some info can be found on it at here
Phillips is coming out with their own MP3 CD player, the Expanium, which is slated to ship around August. The player seems to have much more comprehensive support than the first generation no-name models, and offers support for a wide range of bitrates (32-320 kbps, while most current ones only go up to 192). More info can be found here
If you do not wish to wait for the next generation of MP3 CD players, but still crave massive storage space in a portable shell, check out the PJB 100. The latest model features a 6 gigabyte hard drive, 10 megs of buffer memory, and a USB connection for around $700. Specs and more can be found here and here
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. =(
Education is the silver bullet.
I got mine a month ago. Yea, had to wait a month, but it's nice. It cost a little more then a portable CD player, but not much. I needed a portable, so I thought I'd give it a try.
It's more a "generic" look/feel then "cheap". It feels pretty solid. To add to the "generic" feel, they give a generic power adapter (one that has multiple plugs and multiple voltages made by a company wiout a name).
One neat feature is it recharges batteries. It says don't use the power supply with normal batteries in it, but if you have rechargeable batteries in and hook it up to the adapter, it recharges them. Nice touch I thought
A beowulf cluster of cd players? How in the Hell do you cluster a cd player? Kent
Check out crutchfield... they have both of the ones from Awia and Kenwood ($299 and $649 respectivly). You can order the kenwood, but the Awia is "out of stock" (I've never seen it *in* stock)
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It may be enjoyable for YOU to purchase MDs at 2$ for 140 megs. However, I enjoy purchasing sub 1$ CDs which hold at least 4.6 times the music.
I had an MD player it was wonderful. Then came MP3CD players. Now I own an MpTrip and couldn't be happier. My MD player held a max of 65 mins (17 tracks or so) of music. Where now I have more than 100 tracks on my MpTrip. On top of that it takes me 20 mins to burn a CD where it took me 65 mins to create a MD.
Come on, lets get at least 650 megs per MD before we start going wild over it.
Both are in dash MP3 CD players.
Anyone have any experiance with either one?
License: By reading this you are agreeing that you agree with me.
I juste order one this morning, before the post on /. :) I bought the MPTrip. Except the missed ID3 reading, I hope it's a good thing :) For 115$+8$ for the shipping, it's cheap for a such device, and I'm sure that's it,s better than paying 200$ for a RIO with an hour of MP3..
The reason we pay so much for CDs is that there are engineers, production staff, graphic artists, promotions staff etcetera that need to get paid for their work. The collected works of Metallica would need only graphic work and promotions people. Piece of cake. Cheap as hell. They'd probably charge $30 for it...but that's a lot of albums.
So there I was. Naked. In a refrigerator. With a potroast on my knees. Smokin a cigar. That's when it got REALLY weird.
Do all of the mp3s have to be in the root directory of the CD? Also, what type of long filename support do these type devices commonly have. Do they support m3u playlists?
-Scott scott@surrealistic.org
Kenwood is going to run you $649, from Crutchfield.
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Sony has 650MB MDs for its video camera that uses MDs. Sharp has developed 1.2GB MD, but I believe it's only in the lab. Search for the articles on www.minidisc.org.
I just wish the format was more open so that good data I/O for them could be developed. It would kick the ass of most removable media. Imagine a programmable DSP (change the codec) based on MDs.
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
"Both players are discman-like in appearance, and play CDR/CDRW's containing MP3 files."
-Legion
Where do you get yours? I hadn't even thought about radio shows when I've been downloading mp3s
Vermifax
Vermifax
Logout
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I just can't figure it out. Just about all the really nice digital toy ideas (digital cameras, pdas, MP3CD players, whatnot) are of a consistently crappy quality.
;-)
on the other hand, the old school, analog versions of a lot of these toys, even on the consumer level, are of a much higher quality -- irregradless of price.
can anyone explain this? Why do manufacturers of digital toys have such a lack of regard for quality?
(i know, they are used to the _software_ business...
adrien
adrien cater
boring.ch
Point and Grunt
Do any of these play CD-RW's?
Is Joliet format supported?
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
for MY brain, i use FIBER CHANNEL!
I got the correct adapter, got it in three weeks, and it does have a previous button (labeled preview).
Man! 9 hours of music sittin' on my hip. That's music! I really love my MPTrip.
I agree with the chintzy plastic bit. It does look cheap. But hey, it does what it says it would.
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"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
MD isn't deployed by a single company. Besides, how can you not prefer Jaz or even better, Orb drives to slow and comparatively small CD-RW drives? CD-RW is just a technologically inferior product. It is a clumsy hack, and the performence (especially the write performence) reflects this.
My MPTrip seems to just ignore Non-MP3 files. I'm not 100% positive, because the CD-R I have with non-MP3's also has all of the MP3's in one directory, which is a no-no. So, it can play 77 of the 120 songs just fine. I'm almost positive the problem has nothing to do with the M3U's and EXE's (WinAmp and AudioCatalyst) that I've got on it - it's just the directory-length problem. So, as long as you put each album in a seperate directory (no more than 20? files), you should be okay.
Education is the silver bullet.
Nah it doesn't really barf on non mp3 files. At least mine doesn't (got it about two weeks ago)
well, my dream was always to run a cat-5 to my brain and downloading... but that would be nice too.
"I don't need a compass to tell me which way the wind shines." - Mr. Furious, Mystery Men
The Register recently had a story, "Philips to unite MP3 and CD technology", where it detailed a new CD/MP3 player that Philips have on the go. Philips call it the Expanium. They even have a free beta that you can sign up for to test the rather nice device...
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.
s p?ptable=MP3_Players&PID=1000063
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.a
Maybe I should try to return mine...
He said, "You'll be able to tell your grandchildren that you helped assemble the first NT supercomputer," and I cringed.
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.
We must respect evil, and we must make evil respect us.
Pros:
Cons:
- LCD - no song titles
- Does not play mp3's exceeding 196kbps
- Plays only the first 80 songs in a directory
- UI - for example changing the directory is ridiculously hard!
- Cheap looks & feeling
- Sometimes starts playing from the last directory
- Sorting - doesn't understand long filenames, sorts 'em sometimes in a weird way
- "Manual" - it's four small pages written in very poor english
- No playlist support
- Poor sound of the voice recording
- When playing normal CD's, disc spins 1x speed - no buffering (may skip)
However, I'm quite happy with the machine and haven't had any problems with Mp3 CD's containing other files.---------------------------
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I got lost in space.
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
It's not "like" a Previous button, it is the Previous button. Someone in China made a mistake, and they haven't corrected it yet. I'm also dismayed a little bit by the arrangment (Next appears before "Preview").
I think that this is really cool, pushing the music business forward (or backwards) depending on how you look at it. Obviously, this will mean that piracy of MP3's is just elevated to a new higher level, with pirates burning music cd's with 10's of albums crammed on to them.. But also, it will mean music companies can SELL more on one disc. For the consumer, its great news. You can carry 1 discman about instead of one discman + cd holder. Cool.
The specs say that it supports only 196 bits/sec.
I must be really out of touch but since when did they improvise so much on mp3 technology?
I don't like that it uses special propretary cartriges. There's a seperate programmer that attaches to your computer to write the cartriges. I also got the impression you can't read from a cartridge, only write or erase. So it can't be
used for sharing. I think the cartriges are expensive too.
I'd go with a cdr or cdrw unit. In a year or so there will probably be mp3 cd changers for cars. So you can have 6500 minutes of music on 10 cds.
How cool... Now we can put music on little laser discs and listen to it in our cars and other places too!
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
Sarcastic replies welcome!
Wah!
My other first post is car post.
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.
Weird I have had mine for 2 months. Works great, cheesy buttons and don't let it sit in your car under extreme heat.
-kris
...is the 12-disc changer in my car be able to read MP3's off CD-R's. That would be like a thousand songs at my command. Can you imagine a beow-...never mind.
Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
Hey, all. Just looked at the specs for this thing...
Is there anything this product does that a $5 audio cable and a copy of [insert your favourite free mp3 player here] won't do?
My other first post is car post.
Here's a link to "EasyBuy2000.com".
Please note I know NOTHING about this online retailer, I'm just posting a link I saw on another weblog earlier today.
Slightly disreputable, albeit gregarious
Crutchfield 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....
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I've owned a Netdrives Brujo (http://www.netdrives.com)since I first read about them ages ago. It's been absolutely wonderful putting ONE cd into the unit for 10 hours of pure tunage satisfaction. I'm in the process now of burning my 450 music CDs to mp3 so that my bookshelves are full of books instead of cds. 10 music CDs fit on one mp3 cd. MP3s at 192kbps sound incredible, and also save me about 3ft in book shelf space! I'd recommend the Brujo to anyone looking for a good addition to their home theatre/component system.
All the IPO companies are watching their stock tank.
You're right all of them are. Not just the open source companies... People finally wised up and realized just because a company's business involves computers, it doesn't mean it's going to make money.
If many-eyes-made-better-code Open Source would make a profit.
You wanna compare stats to IIS and Apache? Or ASP and PHP? Let's see which comes up the winner... Open Source isn't about profit and companies that try to make profit off of it probably won't. However, my company makes a very nice profit developing inter/intranet solutions for customers using open source products... Solutions which are faster and more stable than they would be using Windows or MS products...
Josh Sisk
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)
heh. You'd stop at gas stations not only to fill up your fuel tank, but to plug in your Cat 5 and dl another batch of music.
Better yet of course, is to mount a microwave dish on top of your vehicle attached to a GPS receiver and some servos that keeps it pointed at the companion microwave dish that your ISP uses to feed you data. But the cost on that one might be a tad prohibitive...
It's not the lack of support for playlists that bugs me so much as the fact that I can't have any files on the CD other than MP3s. I'm not expecting the MPTrip to be able to utilize these other files, but I would like to have the option of having them available in the event that I have access to a computer. Playlists are just one type of file that I could think of which would be useful to keep on my mp3 cds. I might also want to store videos for a particular band if I were making an mp3 cd compilation of all their albums I own. Or I might want to keep a copy of xmms on the CD so that I wouldn't need to go through the process of downloading it if I ran across a computer that didn't have it. The MPTrip should ideally just ignore files that it doesn't recognize (including playlists for the time being) so that these things would be possible.
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Free P2P Backup, Windows & Linux
My Apex DVD player can do that also. And then of course there are several car players that can do that also. Not big news here.
"If you insist on using Windoze you're on your own."
You've obviously never actually visited mp3.com, go ahead, give it a try.
Okay, a little concurrention ain't bad as we always say...
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
Speaking of which, wasn't Aiwa going to release a car CD/MP3 player, or is that vaporware?
just my blog and pix
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!
bun-fhuinneog agam!
7/10/00
Dear Mr. Reinhold: Production of the CDC-MP3 was delayed, but commenced within the last week. Units should be shipping to retailers by the end of the month.
Regards,
Terry Shea
Griffin Public Relations (for AIWA AMERICA)
This is way late! Car MP3 players are already here. Check out the following: Aiwa CDC-MP3 and reviews can be found here and here and here and buy it here Kenwood eXcelon Z919 read about that here I can't wait to get that Aiwa one so I can listen to tons of my CD's without taking them with me on those longs trips! Kirch
Diligence is the price of Freedom
Is here.
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.
$115 isn't _that_ bad though.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I've been using it for 9 days now and not one problem. Some people say they are big, but i can squeeze mine in my pocket. It's the greatest!
-Compenguin
The *UNofficial* word from Crutchfield (since it varies every time I call) is that Aiwa hasn't begun shipping the damn things yet. I have tried to get ahold of Aiwa to see what the deal is, but I've never been able to get in contact with someone who has the answer (always the "Oh, give me your number and I'll have someone call you" line). But if it's any consolation, I've heard (from what little material is actually available) that the aiwa unit is superior to the kenwood. So I guess it's worth the wait....
I have the exact same player and mine has never skipped. I haven't jogged with it yet but I assume that would be the ultimate test.
It was a bit of a problem when I installed it in my car. I used only a 1 amp converter and whenever I hit a bump it would shut off. After a few bumps I figured out that skip protection draws more than an amp and my new 10 amp converter works great.
Aiwa makes their CDC-MP3 and Kenwood has their eXcelon Z919. 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.
I bought mine about 1 month ago and it arrived without a hitch or delay. I bought this for the purpose of playing MP3's in my car. In preparation and anticipation of such a contraption, I installed a car stereo with an auxiliary RCA input several months ago. So the day came and it played perfectly.
Well at least until the battery died - 2 hours later! After several sets of batteries I decided that a "perpetual" power supply is what I needed. I went to Radio Shack, yes, Radio Shack, and bought a 12V 700mA to 4.5V converter for the MPTrip. That was a flop. The music would play for a while but would die. I got a different one (in case the first one was defective) No luck. I think the power supply simply did not have enough juice to maintain the discs spinning motion.
Frustrated, I returned the Radio Shack converter and went to a local Fry's and bought a 12v to 110v converter (The ones that look like car audio amps) I connected the MPTrip's 110 volt power supply and it has played properly ever since.
I took it on a trip to Palm Springs and San Diego (I live in LA) and that's when the $115 paid for itself. The fun of playing 169 songs and never getting to hear all of it in a 2 hour trip was swee-at. OK, my front seat was a mess and tangle of audio and power wires. Sigh. Next step the Aiwa MP3 player!
The problems: After my trip to San Diego, the CDR that I left inside the player for a couple of days wouldn't play and would register as NO DISK on the LCD. After much frustration, I finally took the CDR out, wiped it against my pants a couple of times, and it played after that. Maybe I can market these pants as a CDR player. heheh.
Another problem is with some MP3s. Some MP3 simply won't play or will skip around. I haven't had time to determine what the cause is. I can only surmise things like variable bit rates, the supposed 192kb ceiling.
All in all - I would recommend it - for the price - and that there is no competition (in price)
According to this page 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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Free P2P Backup, Windows & Linux
In what format do you have to burn the cd ?
Joliet ?, can you have directories ? or all
the files at the root ?.
Thanks
OverLord
Why should the audio be resampled and converted? There was a reason it was encoded at a low hz and bitrate.
da w00t.
da w00t. mtfnpy?