MP3 Players Review

RioVolt SP50 Portable CD/MP3 Player

Customer Reviews

I've never used this CD player, so ignore my review..

I was going to explain the logic behind Skip-protection on these CD players. The "45 second" skip protection is really 45 seconds of buffer memory. If it says 45 seconds for a regular CD, you can figure out how much memory the buffer is. For a regular CD, a second is 16-bits times 44100 sample/sec, divided by 8-bits (per byte), per channel. So 88200 bytes times two channels (left/right), which comes to ~172Kilobytes per second. If you have 45 seconds of buffer memory, that is approximately 8 megabytes. Translated, for your mp3 files: Take you bit rate, divide it by 8, to get the rate in kilobytes, then divide 8 megabytes by that. So 128Kbit = 16Kilobytes, 8000KB / 16KB per sec = 500 seconds of anti-skip protection. It's possible (and I don't know) that that's for just one channel, so at least it's half that, but at most its 8.3 minutes. Half, sounds about right. So if you are playing mp3 files, you will get better anti-shock protection. Another side effect of mp3 players is that the decoding process takes less power than spinning the disk. IF the CD only needs to spin the disk every 4 to 8 minutes, your batteries will last longer with mp3's than with regular CD's. The downside is that all mp3's are of lesser quality, encode at 160Kbit (Dual-Stereo, VBR). Don't do Joint-Stereo it sucks. I don't know if with many mp3 encoders there is that choice anymore. VBR = Variable Bit Rate, it means the audio converter balances quality with bit-rate over the CD, so where bits would be do nothing for some quiet areas on the disk, they go further toward the areas where there is audio. CBR encoded mp3 applies the same number of bits per frame, so every second has the same amount of sound quality (sound loss), but there are times when VBR can sound better than CBR, because savings in one area can be applied to make a higher quality in another area. Other formats like WMA and Sony's ATRAC, have different ways of storing the information, and may compress the audio much better with higher quality. Note that some companies hold patents of encoding processes, MPEG was the only one that was available in "Open Source".. MP3 was a off-shoot that deals with low-bit rates, generally not what you encode CD audio to. Audio books require WMA DRM, because its a patented process that is illegal to circumvent (if not impossible). But anyone can decode mp3's, not everyone can decode WMA DRM, except Microsoft. Oh another quality of mp3 files, each second of a mp3 file is split into chunks, each chunk has a 4 byte header that specifies the encoding of the chunk (I'm writing a mp3 utility), anyhow, if you seperate the ID3v2 header from the front and the 128 byte V1 header from the back, all that is left is these "frames", which supposedly can be mixed, cut, spliced, all without re-encoding the files. In the encoding process it's very easy to equalize the audio because its stored in a frequency/time format rather than amplitude/time. So all one needs to do is filter out the frequencies before they are converted back to waveforms. Also the length of the audio can be increased, decreased, and the pitch can be changed, independent of each other. This is just something you get for free with the mp3 format..

Reliable basic player

I have used this player for more than a year. The only thing that has broken is the little window showing the disk turning. This can be pushed in relatively easily, so I had to super glue it in. Other than that, everything still works properly. I only play Mp3 CDs on this. Sound is good. I got a car kit to play in cassette players and in the car. The bass boost needs to be turned off to do this or it will distort. No equalizer, but my experiences with other players are that the preset equalizers are pretty much useless- they only degrade the sound in slightly different ways. The bass boost really makes a difference. I almost always use the random play mode only, which works well (a truly random mix that doesn't repeat the same songs). Otherwise, navigation is confusing- I can never remember what sequence to punch the buttons, which aren't labeled very well for this. I just memorized the sequence for random play. The ID3 tag information scrolls as the song plays. It will sometimes skip when bumped hard, but does not skip when just sitting still, which I've found some other players do. That's a plus for this player. It has a hold switch (called Lock), no resume feature. No backlight, which is a drawback if you listen in the dark and punch in songs a lot. It has no belt clip- why don't they put removable belt clips on any of these things? They're supposed to be "portable," right? All in all, a good player but a bit difficult to navigate.

Made in China, and it shows

What is wrong with this player:<p>The volume control knob is messed up, right channel comes on before left.<p>Line-Out refuses to work<p>No remote, and it would be easy to put one in<p>This player feels like it's going to split in two.<p>$.01 per unit and the screen could be back-lit<p>Navigating your songs is next to impossible if they are not in folders, and it only plays <br>in the order they were burned (leading zeros are required)<p>High bit-rate (160kbps) reduces the anti-skip to around 50 seconds, down from 120.<p>If it's moving when it gets more MP3 data, it will skip and pop (loudly)<p>Adjustable EQ is a bass boost switch, sounds like you're listening through a blanket<p>Eats batteries as a light snack, no matter the type<p>Good luck with tech support, it's outsourced to India, they have thick accents and are clueless, and the number is a long-distance call!<p>Do not buy this player!

Can't beat the price

I bought the SP50 for [cheap] after mail in rebate. It plays any mp3 disc i throw at it. The only thing is the headphones just plain [horrible]. But for the price get some better ones.

Cheap and it works

OK, a few things that the description for the SP50 lies about:<br>1. The display is not backlit.<br>2. You can not add a remote.<br>3. There is no EQ.<br>4. It does not come with burning software, but you can use anything that can burn a MP3 CD (most any good burning software).<p>That aside, this is a good, cheap player. Navigation is a little sketchy, you have to select a track in a folder to jump to that folder, but the manual doesn't tell you this. The CD comes to a complete stop during MP3 playback, and spins back up every 120 seconds to save batteries. If it's not spinning, you have to wait about 3 seconds for it to spin up and get data. Most players do this, even the iPod does it (it has a hard drive so it kind of has to). Throw away the included earbuds, they [are poor quality], which is typical.<p> If you need a cheap player that you don't care if it gets dropped/smashed/soaked in napalm and set ablaze, and can play MP3's, get this player. It even comes wih batteries.

Keyword : rio