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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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
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.
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_
...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
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 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.
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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.
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 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:
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.
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.
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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
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.
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
Sarcastic replies welcome!
Wah!
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.
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 $299, it sounds a little better to me than the kenwood....
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I really enjoy listening to it the music sounds great and I practically never have to switch CDs. The one truly negative comment I have is the keys are slightly hard to press. Once you press them they work but some are small and must be pressed rather hard to register. Maybe they've fixed this since then though I doubt it. Its a flaw with the overall design (switches being located on the lower half and buttons on the upper half).
The instructions that came with it were unintelligible. Until now I had no clue it was capable of 500 seconds of voice recording, though of what use this I don't know. I did glean from them that if you record your songs in directories labeled "directory1, directory2..." that you can play just the songs in that directory. Of course you also have the option of playing randomly, just a single song, or all of them sequentially.
I do reccommend buying another set of earphones, the earphones it comes with can be rough on your ears after extended periods of time. And at 100$ 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)
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!
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.
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.
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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