My $.02
I personally own a Sonic blue Rio Volt and really like it. I've never heard
of the iriver, but oh well.
Things I really like about the Rio Volt
1. 10 hours of music per CD (with 128bit mp3's).
2. doesn't use some weirdo proprietary storage device that they'll stop
manufacturing 6 months from now.
3. Can play regular CD's. This weighed heavily into getting a CD based
device. I'm not going to carry an mp3 player and a CD player. Invariably,
I go some where and someone's got a CD they want to listen to...
4. supports different bit depths on mp3's. My advisor got a cheaper CD
based mp3 player and it just assumes that everything's 128bit. His 96bit
hotel California mp3 sounds like "Alvin and the chipmunks do the eagles
greatest hits"
5. has a recessed switch to disable the controls on the unit. You don't
know how many sets of batteries I killed in my Sony Discman because I'd put
it in my backpack and the buttons would get pressed and it would play Ride
the lightning over and over.
6. The controls are good but a bit esoteric. I've got a CD with the
complete works of Pink Floyd on it, organized as "albums as subdirectories"
so its got ~156 songs. Until you understand the controls (or read the
instructions) finding a single song is a bit mind bending.
7. It has a 40 second cache so the battery life is pretty long.
Things I don't like about the Rio Volt:
1. The volume sucks on it. The ear bud headphones are just a complete
waste, unless your dumbo. You'll want a pair of headphones with their own
gain volume.
2. The battery cover opens easily, not really a big deal, but annoying.
3. Can't recharge batteries in the device. My old discman does this, why
couldn't these guys?
4. Those stupid dancing people and that spinning CD icon (which looks a lot
like the fan icon on the front of a Sun E1000 fibre array). I would have
ditched the people and made the text display larger so you could put more
info on it. (in the same vein I would have dumped the stupid fan icon and
put "FAN BROKE" but that's just me...:)
I'll bring my mp3 player with me to the next wlug meeting so anybody who
wants to check it out are welcome.
Tim.
-----Original Message-----
From: Sands Fish [mailto:fishsands@yahoo.com]
Sent: Monday, December 03, 2001 7:46 AM
To: wlug(a)mail.wlug.org
Subject: Re: [Wlug] MP3 Player recommendations
A little more depth on the Sonicblue Rio Volt SP250:
This is the model I was going to (and still might)
purchase, kuz you can't be a cool dork w/out a
portable mp3 player. ;) When I dug a little deeper
into this model, I came across it's European
counter-part, the iRiver. It is, of course, a little
more expensive. Essentially, it's from the same
company who OEM's the RioVolt line, but the trick is,
they water down their products for the American
market. There are a few things that the iRiver has
that the RioVolt doesn't.
1.) LCD on the remote control. I don't know how much
this interests people, but it's a nice little feature.
Also, I believe those stupid dancing people that
everyone so widely hated do not appear on the iRiver.
2.) I've been told by people experienced in both
players that there are much more frequent firmware
revisions for the iRiver. Oh, and this is a good
place to mention that this is the feature that made me
wanna buy it. As patches/fixes/upgrades are made for
the player, you can d/l firmware upgrades, burn them
to a cd, and run them in the player. One thing that
really interested me is that, on the iRiver site
http://www.iriver.com/english/imp250.htm
they mention the potential implementation of the OGG
Vorbis format, which I'm a big fan of, (no royalties
threatened like MP3.) This is something I haven't
seen mentioned for the American version, but who
knows.
One other thing I should mention. You'll need a power
converter for this model. :)
If anyone does end up with this player, please post
your impressions on the list. I haven't completely
made up my mind yet whether I want to pay more.
Sincerely,
Cheapskate Sands Fish <x><
--- "Charles R . Anderson" <cra(a)WPI.EDU> wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 02, 2001 at 03:00:26PM -0500, Andy
> Stewart wrote:
> andystewart> Christmas is coming, and I'm thinking
> about asking Santa for a portable
> andystewart> MP3 player. Of course, it needs to
> work with Linux.
>
> You to, eh?
>
> andystewart> Judging from the looks of the CDs which
> I've ripped into MP3 files, 32 MB
> andystewart> of memory looks like it might be a tad
> small for a single CD, while 64 MB
> andystewart> looks like it might do the trick for
> loading up around 2 CDs worth of
> andystewart> music. Is this a fair assessment?
> Since I use compact flash for my
> andystewart> digital camera, any MP3 player that
> uses this medium should probably get
> andystewart> extra consideration, I would think.
>
> Personally, I think the memory-based MP3 players are
> way too expensive for how
> many songs they can hold. I'd rather have a
> CD-ROM-based player, since a CD
> can hold about 10 hours of music. Also, you don't
> have to worry about
> Linux compatibility, since it will take any standard
> ISO9660 CD-ROM which you
> can burn from Linux just fine. The other type of
> players, based on hard drives,
> are also too expensive for my taste, and who needs
> to store 100's of hours of
> music on a portable device? The CD-MP3 players are
> the "just right"
> price/performance right now.
>
> The latest CD-MP3 players have come a long way since
> the Genica 1st generation
> units. By far the best ones I have found are these
> two, since they have
> excellent navigation capabilities, which you'll need
> to navigate the hundreds
> of songs on a CD:
>
> Sonicblue Rio Volt SP250
> TDK Mojo
>
> Check out their reviews on http://music.cnet.com/ .
> They both got Editor's Choice.
>
> --
> Charles R. Anderson <cra(a)wpi.edu> /
> http://angus.ind.wpi.edu/~cra/
> PGP Key ID: 49BB5886
> Fingerprint: EBA3 A106 7C93 FA07 8E15 3AC2 C367
> A0F9 49BB 5886
> _______________________________________________
> Wlug mailing list
> Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org
> http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug
>
>
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Buy the perfect holiday gifts at Yahoo! Shopping.
http://shopping.yahoo.com
_______________________________________________
Wlug mailing list
Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org
http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug
HI gang,
Christmas is coming, and I'm thinking about asking Santa for a portable
MP3 player. Of course, it needs to work with Linux.
Judging from the looks of the CDs which I've ripped into MP3 files, 32 MB
of memory looks like it might be a tad small for a single CD, while 64 MB
looks like it might do the trick for loading up around 2 CDs worth of
music. Is this a fair assessment? Since I use compact flash for my
digital camera, any MP3 player that uses this medium should probably get
extra consideration, I would think.
Any thoughts or recommendations will be greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
Andy
--
Andy Stewart
Founder
Worcester Linux Users' Group
Worcester, MA, USA
http://www.wlug.org
