Mike Walker
Doesn't pull punches
- Joined
- Jun 25, 2001
- Posts
- 541
- Likes
- 14
Well I've finally given up on trying to find a portable cd player with a decent fm tuner (the Panasonic unit I ordered from J&R DID NOT!) So I've turned my attention to my other interest lately...mp3 cd players.
You may have read what I wrote about the portable unit from RCA that I bought from Radio Shack a couple of weeks ago (I HATED IT! LOADED with glitches!) As I'm writing this, I'm listening to an mp3 disc I burned tonight with 17 albums on it (!) on my new Philips Expanium EXP201 that I paid all of 99.95 for at my neighborhood Wal Mart.
First of all what it doesn't do. There is NO ID3 tag support. NO titles or album names are displayed. But I haven't found that to be too much of a problem, as it's easy enough to switch from album to album with the dedicated (when playing mp3 discs) album plus and minus buttons (actually folder to folder is a more accurate description of this feature than "album to album").
So far, so good. The sound quality is as good as any mp3 player I've heard. It supports ALL bitrates between 32kbps and 320kbps, plus variable bit rate. I almost entirely use VBR encoding. Just as with my RaveMP 2100 solid state player, it doesn't like to do forward and backward search on VBR files. When searching backward, the Philips FREQUENTLY jumps back seven or eight songs, even back into the previous album, and turns on the DBS bass boost to boot! Well, with this class of product it seems that there ARE some firmware issues with all of them. This certainly isn't as annoying as some of what I heard with the RCA! (loud pops between tracks, muting of the first 5 seconds of the first song in each folder, etc.)
Wait...a minute or so ago the player suddenly jumped from the middle of the song it was playing to the first of the next. But after running it back to the place where this "glitch" occured, I can't get it to repeat (the mistake). So I guess it's just one of those things!
The album I'm listening to, a "rip" of my DCC (Digital Compact Classics) gold cd remaster of "Court and Spark" by Joni Mitchell sounds shockingly good for mp3. And I'm INTIMATELY familiar with this album...having listened to it over and OVER since it's release in 1974! All the little details I've memorized come through clearly and in proper proportion.
The overall sound SEEMS TO have a "warm, velvety" quality...which many would describe as "tubey". That's exactly what it reminds me of, a great tube amplifier, with everything positive and negative that this implies (perhaps slightly over-ripe bass, midrange that's "warmer" and more "glowing" than perhaps is strictly neutral.) But wait, that's what this cd sounds like! It was mastered using a classic reel to reel deck with all tube output circuitry. In other words, the warmth and "tube magic" if you will of the reel to reel's playback electronics are there in all their glory through this 99 dollar mp3 cd player from Wal Mart. That's pretty high praise, isn't it?
(The pressure of my Sporta Pros is pushing my glasses frames into my skin! OUCH! Time to change to the MDR-V6!)
I'll write more later. So far, this unit is certainly a lot better than I expected. Yes I do miss ID3 tag support, but probably not as much as many people because I'm visually impaired (retinitis pigmentosa), and have trouble reading the damn little displays anyway!
You may have read what I wrote about the portable unit from RCA that I bought from Radio Shack a couple of weeks ago (I HATED IT! LOADED with glitches!) As I'm writing this, I'm listening to an mp3 disc I burned tonight with 17 albums on it (!) on my new Philips Expanium EXP201 that I paid all of 99.95 for at my neighborhood Wal Mart.
First of all what it doesn't do. There is NO ID3 tag support. NO titles or album names are displayed. But I haven't found that to be too much of a problem, as it's easy enough to switch from album to album with the dedicated (when playing mp3 discs) album plus and minus buttons (actually folder to folder is a more accurate description of this feature than "album to album").
So far, so good. The sound quality is as good as any mp3 player I've heard. It supports ALL bitrates between 32kbps and 320kbps, plus variable bit rate. I almost entirely use VBR encoding. Just as with my RaveMP 2100 solid state player, it doesn't like to do forward and backward search on VBR files. When searching backward, the Philips FREQUENTLY jumps back seven or eight songs, even back into the previous album, and turns on the DBS bass boost to boot! Well, with this class of product it seems that there ARE some firmware issues with all of them. This certainly isn't as annoying as some of what I heard with the RCA! (loud pops between tracks, muting of the first 5 seconds of the first song in each folder, etc.)
Wait...a minute or so ago the player suddenly jumped from the middle of the song it was playing to the first of the next. But after running it back to the place where this "glitch" occured, I can't get it to repeat (the mistake). So I guess it's just one of those things!
The album I'm listening to, a "rip" of my DCC (Digital Compact Classics) gold cd remaster of "Court and Spark" by Joni Mitchell sounds shockingly good for mp3. And I'm INTIMATELY familiar with this album...having listened to it over and OVER since it's release in 1974! All the little details I've memorized come through clearly and in proper proportion.
The overall sound SEEMS TO have a "warm, velvety" quality...which many would describe as "tubey". That's exactly what it reminds me of, a great tube amplifier, with everything positive and negative that this implies (perhaps slightly over-ripe bass, midrange that's "warmer" and more "glowing" than perhaps is strictly neutral.) But wait, that's what this cd sounds like! It was mastered using a classic reel to reel deck with all tube output circuitry. In other words, the warmth and "tube magic" if you will of the reel to reel's playback electronics are there in all their glory through this 99 dollar mp3 cd player from Wal Mart. That's pretty high praise, isn't it?
(The pressure of my Sporta Pros is pushing my glasses frames into my skin! OUCH! Time to change to the MDR-V6!)
I'll write more later. So far, this unit is certainly a lot better than I expected. Yes I do miss ID3 tag support, but probably not as much as many people because I'm visually impaired (retinitis pigmentosa), and have trouble reading the damn little displays anyway!
