plays mp3, wma, CDR, CDRW, reads whole directory structures, reads ID3 tags, random play/shuffle, AC adapter included, remote contol

kinda big, cheap build quality, display has big letters and stupid animation, cheap carrying bag

Last year I started encoding my cd collecting into mp3 and burning them onto CDR's to be able to listen to them at work (or on any pc for that matter, I burn a copy of WinAmp on every CDR as well).
Just bought the Rio Volt last month and I love it, I'll buy another one for my girlfriend. The Rio enables me to listen to my cd collection when I'm on the road.
So far I have had no skipping problems, but I have only used it on planes, on the beach, at home, in the car (still have to buy an Aiwa Car stereo MP3 cd player), so I haven't jumped around while using it. And I only listen to mp3, no regular cds.
Updated the firmware to 2.01 before I started to use it, you can download it at www.riohome.com. Sound quality is fine at 128kbps encoded with the Fraunhoffer codec.
Volume is OK; I never listen to it above 15 (it will go up to 20), maybe the people complaining about it should check their mp3 encoder settings?

Similar Products Used:

regular Sony CD player

Half the price of the MP3 Players with HDDs.
Sound quality is as good as most portable CD players and MDs. Headphones aren't any worse than the cheap ones that always come stock on portable audio devices.
Each CD can hold about 700 minutes of music at 128kps.

Takes a bit long to load up the CD.
Slight pause when jumping through tracks.

If you're an audiophile, go ahead and buy a $500 player. I bought this for around $145 including shipping and tax, $129.95 w/out at buy.com during a 1-day special, and it works fine for me.

The 1/2 second pause between tracks is minimal... not much more than the pause between mp3s on a computer player like Winamp.

It doesn't skip at all when you play MP3s. If you play normal CDs, get a normal CD player! Some guys below complain way too much. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to rip a cd, encode the files, and burn them onto a CD.

The remote works fine. One person who reviewed it below said that he has to confirm on the actual player... I think he's delirious.

This player isn't as good as the players with HDDs, but it's less than half the price. The Archos Jukebox is close to $300 with a 6GB HD... I don't have 6GB worth of mp3s!

Similar Products Used:

Other Rios, normal CD players.

Plays MP3s from CD - No strength over other players. ID3 Support, backlit LCD, upgradeable software

Skips (even sitting on table), poor vol. levels, small LCD panel, ID3 tags cut off, line out isn't a line out.

I've been waiting for MP3 CD players to go mainstream ever since that Genica player showed up on Ebay about a year ago. The day before I left on a bus ride to Phoenix (19hrs each way), I figured that the trip would serve as a good test of this player. I settled for list price at Circuit city since I was pressed for time. At first, it worked fine. I was happy with the plain ability to bring days worth of music on a few CDs. I also quickly and easily updated the player software to 2.01 with a 300kb file and a CD-RW. However, as I used it more and more, I began to notice its many flaws. First off, the LCD, while a significant improvement over the Genica type of players, which only list track numbers, only displays two big lines of text. Not only could the text be smaller (esp. on an easily read backlit display), but more frustrating is the fact that a whole line as large as the other two is wasted by some foolish animation of a human figure randomly "dancing" around. This LCD could easily display 5 or 6 lines of text. Furthmore, since the player does not (of I haven't gotten it to) support M3U playlists, I had to encode albums in the format of track-artist(not necessary though)-song. With long artist names (Our Lady Peace, Rage Against The Machine) the ID3 tag entrys, which scroll across the LCD at a snail's pace, get cut off before the end of the title. The volume levels are good in a quite space, but on the bus, I had a hard time hearing.
Listed so far are simply nit picky problems I noticed. Following are the real kickers. In practice, I found the battery life to be around 7 hours, or half of the listed time on Rio's site. A few days after I started listening to it, I noticed that with MP3s, the player would occasionally (once every few songs) skip, although it would sound like garbled music for a split second. Rio's site said to reset the RAM, which I couldn't figure out how to do. Listening even more, songs began to cut off midway, and the player would skip to the next song or simply start the same song again.
In short, I am completely dissatisfied with this product and will be returning it in a few days. Since Philips is comming out with 5 new MP3-CD players towards the end of this year, I am more than happy to wait. I give this product 2 stars for value and 2 for overall simply because it can play MP3-CDs. If you can, wait for the competition to get a little more fierce (read wait for philips to hit the market), and listen to CDs for now.

Similar Products Used:

None

plays mp3s...remote...

battery life

Battery life sucks when playing regular cds. I get less than 10 hours. I don't use the remote much. I think it decreases the sound quality too.

eq sucks.

Upgradeable firmware & plays CD-RW

shoddy construction & useless carrying case

At first I was debating between the Phillip's CDMP3 player and this one. The upgradeable firmware insured that it would note become obsolete in a month (Memorex CDMP3 player). When played before I updated the firmware the player had issues with skipping, loading time, and a relatively low maximum volume. It also made a lot of mechanical noise. After the firmware update all these issues were improved. The one complaint I still have with the player is it's very cheap construction. The top doesn't close securely so dust and dirt gets in while it's playing, especially if in a backpack. The remote was a great feature until it broke (2 months of casual use). The earbuds have poor sound quality. Although I'm not sure if it has to do with the headphones themselves or the Line Out jack because other headphones give a similar hissing noise. But to be fair, tt does everything it was advertised to do. I am very pleased with the battery consumption (only with ESP 10 sec), and it is definately worth the money.

Similar Products Used:

Rio 300 & Memorex MP3/CD Hybrid

Plays cd's that were burned by Direct CD. Firmware upgradeable user interface.

output and sound quality

I think this is a great player technologically speaking. The big problem is the sound quality and output of the player. I tried my Grado SR-60's on this player and the sound was edgy, thin and very fatiquing to listen to for an extended amount of time. Also, the Volt could not drive the easy to drive Grado's to a sufficient volume most on most music.

I still don't know if the poor sound quality with the Grado's was a result of the players low output or if it was the sonic character of the player. Another thing that may contribute to the poor sound quality is the very thing that makes this such a great player; the features. All of the electronics may be futzing up the sound a bit.

I didn't expect much of this player considering that I bought it mainly to listen to mp3's downloaded from the internet. I did however find the sound fatiguing with good cans, so I ended up buying an inexpensive set of Koss Sportapro's that were recommended to me on Headwize.com. They aren't the greatest phones, but they really are a good match for the Volt IMO and highly recommended for the Volt. The bloated bass and rolled off highs work with the Volt. They are also more efficient, so I can drive them sufficiently off the Volt.

I would give the Volt a 5 star rating on Technology and a 2 or 3 possibly on sound quality.

BTW.. I was making the sound comparisons with regular cd's. The mp3's sound even worse as would be expected.

Similar Products Used:

Classic

Definitely a good CDMp3 Player. A brand name you can trust has finnaly come out with a product that is sure to lead the market. This is the one to buy.

Has given me some weird problems once or twice when using AC Adaptor. LCD screen has text that is too big, with too few characters displayed at one time. 4-5 second delay between songs on Mp3 cd's. LOW VOLUME! LOW! I AM MAD.

Well, I was very skeptic about this whole CDMp3 player genre. I had really loved my Diamond Rio 500, and I actually wanted to wait until I could afford the Creative Jukebox. However, I just could not deal with its astounding price and supposed horrible battery life. I really didn't know or trust any of these noname companies coming out with this new CDmp3 technology, but once I heard Diamond (now Sonic Blue) had one, I got it that week immediately.

Well, I am impressed with the player. It will work with 700mb CD-R's and CD-RW's. I could fit about 150 full length songs on it. The player is attractive, the size of my normal Sony cd player (not the compact cd player size that is becoming popular today though.) It comes with a very fuctional remote, an OK pair of headphones (who uses them anyways.). The unit suprised me by supporting an LCD screen.

This thing really does last around 13-15 hours on 2 AA batteries. While I believe there is a problem with their "anti-skip" methods, the cd actually stops for 2 minutes with data loaded into the player. I believe this is the cause for the unit's delay between songs, 4-5 seconds. This can get annoying.

The player loads up the mp3's very fast and does a good job allowing you to search through a CD-R/RW's directories. The LCD text is unnecesarily big, allowing only a few characters on the screen. This is inconvenient because my mp3's are in the format of "## - Track Title" and I can only see "## - Tr" at a time.

The player is overall very good except for one major drawback. VOLUME. This player is very low on volume and it is getting me really upset! No where near the max volume on my Sony CD player from even 2 years ago. While I techinically could convert my mp3's to be of higher volume, they would be distorted. Hopefully in a future firmware for the player this will be adressed because it really is pissing me off.

Yeah. Firmware. This player can be upgraded online simply by burning a cd-r/rw with some files. They add certain necessary feature not found in the retail package such as Resume, a "Beep" audio indicator, speed of text, up to 999 songs, etc. Unfortunately SonicBlue won't even give you any firmware releases except for the original on the page for the device on riohome.com. I had to search around and eventually found a site with 1.12fr Beta drivers. This is inconvenient. Sonic Blue, please provide your customers with a website with up-to-date drivers/firmware. This should be adressed.

This player has acted just a little strangely. I was um..lets say *intoxicated* one night and had the player with me, and the morning after the batteries were dead. I don't know why, I remember shutting the player off, but oh well. I took the batteries out and used the AC Adaptor, and the player would start up, show the tiny dancing figure LCD screen, and had some text saying "iRiver" and shut off. This happened repeatedly..It stopped after a while but still. I mean what the heck was going on?

Even with its problems, this is the only CDMp3 Player I would buy besides Sony (Which isn't out yet.). Its a brandname you can trust, they came out with the first very commercial mp3 player and have been constantly doing the best in the business. However this player loses a star simply because the volume does not go up past what seems like 50% volume on my Sony Player. What gives?

Similar Products Used:

Diamond Rio 500 mp3 Player, Sony Discman ESP2

MP3 capability, upgradable firmware, EQ's

SKIPS SKIPS SKIPS like there's no tomorrow. Long loading time, poor headphones, useless carrying case.

Let me preface this review by saying that I'm currently on my second Rio Volt. I purchased one two months ago, used it, returned it, purchased another one, and have been using this one for about two weeks.

To be fair, the reasons I like Rio Volt:

1) The upgradable capabilities are a BIG plus. HUGE. To know that certain features can be added with a 2 second download and burn is a great relief, as I know the player has less chance of becoming obsolete.

2) The mp3 capability is also obviously the main reason for buying it. It was great to take 15 albums by the same artist, encode them and burn them to one disc, and have that to listen to. Quite convenient.

3) The display, while a bit complicated at first, was very helpful in navigation- especially with the ID3 tags.

4) Different EQ's, including a new "user-defined" EQ (with version 2.0)

Now, the reasons I am returning my second Rio Volt:

1) This is the main reason- the damn thing skips WAY too much- almost constantly. I heard there were some skipping problems with mp3s, but I'm not even talking about mp3s. I'm not even talking about CD-Rs. I'm talking about regular CDs. I set the shock protection to 40 seconds and it still skips constantly. I do not jog with the thing, but I do a lot of walking in my daily commute. In order to keep the player from bouncing around in my bag/jacket pocket, I generally keep a hand on it at all times to keep it stable. However, even doing THIS causes it to skip every few seconds. The only time I can guarantee no skips is when it's sitting on a flat surface- and guess what? That's not why I bought a portable player.

2) The thing eats up batteries, even with skip protection turned off. I use it a total of maybe 1.5 hours total per day, and I don't know why batteries are dead after 3 or 4 days. Unacceptable.

3) Carrying case? Don't even go there. :-) 100% useless.

4) The remote, while a VERY cool feature, is difficult to control. I was intending to use it quickly, while walking, to change songs. I wind up having to stop what I'm doing to stare at the remote to see what I'm doing...then I have to pull out the CD player to confirm it.

5) Loading time, and again, not even for an mp3 disc, but for a store-bought, professionally-manufactured CD, is way too long. The thing takes up to a minute to load.

Some people love this player, and more power to them. I'm an optimistic person and was very eager to receive my second Rio Volt, hoping that my first one was just a "bad egg." I think that they're the first company to really put out a functional mp3/CD player, but being the first, I think there are just some bugs that need to be worked out. I personally can't keep a player that skips this much- it's just way too unreliable for my needs. I can deal with not having an mp3 CD player for now- technology will eventually bring about better players. Until then, my personal opinion is to steer clear of the Rio Volt- unless you plan to have it sit on a tabletop whenever you use it.

Size, Case, useless earbuds

This is my first MP3 player, and I'm blown away by the ability to put almost 200 tracks on a CD, with near CD sound quality. I won't dwell on MP3 stuff, but I couldn't hear much difference between 96k and 128k, but I would like to test the WMA at 64k and see what that sounds like. Have not had any trouble playing ANY CD-R I've burned and I use cheap Office Depot/CompUSA CD-R's.

This unit is a tad bigger than I would of liked, but not cumbersome. Supplied earbuds are useless, throw them away, I use a set of Sony MDR44 fold up vertical in the ear and they sound very good (have also used my MDRV6 - also sound VG). Don't know where the comments of low volume are coming from, I usually keep mine set at 10-13 which is about mid range. EQ works well. Software (when you finally find it on the RIO FTP site) loads easily from a CD-R and the added features have worked very well. I like being able to drill down through the folders. Battery life has been excellent, it's cool the way the CD loads up the buffer and shuts down the CD - plays out and spins back up again. Dancing figures are annoying, hopefully future software would allow you to turn them OFF!

Unit works as advertised If this is how you play your MP3's on the road, you won't be dissapointed.

Similar Products Used:

none...new to MP3