Customer Review :
Value for money : RioVolt SP50 Portable CD/MP3 Player
Well I'm beginning this tell saying that this is a cheap Mp3/Cd player. Keep that in mind. For the 40$(after rebate) this one costs, your are unquestionably buying something that doesn't have the features of it's more expensive brothers. What I have to say is it unquestionably is worth its money. On the covering it looks nice but it feels a exiguous cheap, as the cover doesn't "lock" into place but moves slightly (not causing any problems). There is an analog volume control, head-phones out, line-out (to associate active speakers, plug it in your soundcard, or for the car-kit), bass operate (normal-boosted, sorry no equalizer here), a lock switch that disables the buttons on the cover, which are used for controlling the
device (play, stop, ff,...).
When it comes to using the Sp50 I must say I was surprised. I plan it would be a unquestionably difficult thing to browse straight through songs, but that's not the case. The Lcd display (no backlight) can cope up to 2 lines (13 characters each) plus extra info about the play mode, battery meter and file type. When you hold the player with both hands it's unquestionably easy to find the mp3 you are seeing for, only using your thumbs. You can browse your mp3s on a cd whether alphabetically (entering up to five characters), or by folder. Creating playlists (up to 64 mp3's) is unquestionably a highlight that you won't (or even can't) use, as it's not that easy. The random playback mode (entire cd or exact folder) comes in handy here. While playing, the Id3tag data (artist, title, album) +#kHz & #kbps scrolls on the first line while the current folder/mp3 amount and duration are at the second one.
I have tried about 15 mp3-cds and the only qoute (beeps while playing) was with one album encoded at 192kbps (I guess it was a qoute of the codec used, as I re-encoded it using lame's codec at the same bit rate and now plays flawlessly). Also I have yet to find an unsupported bit rate, having tested mp3's from 48 to 320kbps and Vbr.
Anti-skip protection works quite well at mp3's, but you have to bear in mind that there is only a 2Mb memory (which means 4 minutes at 64kpbs, 2 minutes at 128kbps, 1 exiguous at 320kbps, 45sec for audio Cd's). That means that the player renews its buffer every 2 minutes when playing at 128kbps, so you can shake it for 2 minutes, leave it alone for 10 sec. Shake it again...
The sound advent out of this gismo is what some might find problematic. Yeah the earbuds are low ability (they can be replaced, I use the headphones of my older cd-player). There is a exiguous white noise (hsssss) and a sound (eeeeee) when the player buffers the mp3 to the memory (that lasts 5 sec. Every 2 minutes at 128 kbps). Both of these are only audible when using the Sp50 indoors at low volume (or when it's unquestionably quite nearby you). When you increase the volume, they disappear and commonly when using the Sp50 outdoors (where you are supposed to use a transportable device) the covering noise is mush louder. The line out however produces clear sound, the only "bug" here is that the bass highlight doesn't sway the line out.
At last, battery life is quite good; I got about 6 hours on good alkaline batteries (that was with a lot of browsing and changing Cd's, I guess at continuous playback you could reach the 10 hours sonicblue promises). My old Ni-Cd rechargeable batteries give about 2 hours of continuous mp3 playback plus 1 hour of audio-Cd (which is sufficient for my every-day use).
lowest line, the Sp50 is an uncostly mp3-cd player not lacking basic features. If there was no qoute with the sound yield I would absolutely advise it, but if you want some ability at this section you have to [spend more].
