MP3 Solutions MP3 CD Player (Page 2 of 3)

Posted: August 20, 2000
Written by: Dan "Tweak Monkey" Kennedy
Product provided by: MP3Solutions.com
Retail price: $179.99

Initial Impressions

To test this puppy out, I decided to make a CD of some of my favorite MP3s. I hadn't burned a CD full of MP3s for a while, so I figured I may need a couple extra CDs to hold all the songs I wanted. But I was wrong -- after I had added all the songs I actually wanted on the CD, there was still another 60 MB of space. So I added some songs I really didn't care for too much, simply to have them on the CD. I fit a total of 235 MP3s to the 650 MB CD. At an average of 12 tracks/CD, this is about as many songs as a fully-loaded 20 disc CD changer could handle. Not too shabby. :)

I realized immediately that the directory system was going to be confusing. My CD only had four directories, but one directory had a subdirectory within another subdirectory. I forgot to read the instructions for the MP3 player, first, but I figured I had made a mistake. You see, the MP3 player can move through directories, but it can't simply go from directory to directory. You have to go up or down in the tree, a directory at a time.

To make things more confusing to newbies, the display only indicates the number of a given song or directory; it doesn't tell you the name of the song or directory. But this is okay, as I quickly learned, because after a while it's easy to understand and follow this system. I just wish I had burned each group's album to a different directory. This would make it just like a CD changer.

It looks just like a CD player, but it's not.

Performance

Judging only from what I've heard on CD players, PC MP3 software, and portable MP3 players, I can say with some confidence that this product sounds as good as does the comparable MP3 on Winamp, blasting through my MidiLand 4100 speakers. The sound quality is clear and crisp, but with these little earbuds it lacks bass or significantly high quality. To test the quality better, I plugged the MP3 player into my MidiLand 4100 speakers. The quality was perfect as far as I'm concerned. It sounded just as good as Winamp did when it cranked the MP3s straight off the hard drive.

The earbuds that came with the MP3 player are obviously only packaged with it so it's a full product out-of-box. If you really want to hear this product shine, buy some better headphones after you receive it.

So, how is the anti-shock compared to a typical portable CD player? Well I can't say for sure what revolutions have been made in this technology over the last few years, but I had a Sony discman with 50 second or so anti-shock, so that's what I'll use for a comparison. You could beat the hell out of it, walk with it, jump with it -- hell I even went skateboarding with that discman and it rarely skipped. And guess what? This MP3 player's anti-shock is much better! I tried to make it skip for about a minute by vigorously shaking it and smacking it around. It didn't skip once. Eventually I hit it so hard that the CD came off the spinner. It still played for a while before it cut out. This is an ideal feature for car stereos or travelers.

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