Home > Consumer Reviews > RioVolt SP100 Portable CD/MP3 Player with 120 Second Anti-Shock

I recently had a chance to test-drive two different MP3-CD players, the RioVolt and the Philips Expanium, and in the end, the RioVolt came out the clear winner.

When evaluating MP3-CD players, there are two things to keep in mind: first, that this technology is still in its relative infancy, and allowances will have to be made before the companies figure out exactly what works and what doesn't. Second, MP3-CD players aren't an industry-created standard; they are a response to something that consumers originally designed and made for themselves (MP3 encoding and the idea of storing loads of MP3s on a disc). Therefore, it makes sense that companies with relative inexperience in the market - Philips for instance - are going to lose out to Rio, who's been in the MP3 game for a couple of years.

The RioVolt is a nice-looking package, pleasantly round and silver with blue trim. It's got all the standard features - a window so you can see your disc spinning round and round, a hold switch, and the option to choose a 10 second skip buffer or a 45 second skip buffer.

There are several things that make the RioVolt stand out: it has a digital volume control, instead of an analog wheel, which is nice, and it has a backlit window, so you can see what you're doing in the dark (car trips, subways, etc.) In addition, it reads ID3 tags, which means you get to see the title of the song you're listening to - something the Philips player doesn't do. And, as a coup-de-grace, the Rio will read CDs made with Adaptec DirectCD - something other MP3-CD players will NOT do (and, unfortunately, often don't tell you they won't do on the box).

I tested the RioVolt for two weeks, and it preformed well the entire time (and hopefully, it will continute to do so!) The sound it produces is clear, even on MP3s ripped at lower than 128 KBPS quality, and it has no problem reading up to 320 KPBS songs (for all I know, it goes higher, but I don't have any higher-quality MP3s to test it with). I tried it with three different kinds of headphones, and on all of them the higher-end sound seemed to suffer a little, especially on songs where there were rapid treble spikes. Again, that could be an artifact of ripping, and not the player itself. The RioVolt is also upgradable, which other MP3-CD players are not (I would highly recommend getting the 1.13 upgrade from Rio's website). Unfortunately, you have to waste an entire CD-R to upgrade, but it's a small price to pay for a product that changes with the times. Additionally, even on 10-second anti-skip, dropping the player from 4 feet in the air (a little higher than my waist) didn't cause it to skip at all.

Of course, the RioVolt does have its flaws. The lid seems a little flimsy, and the stop button (located on the bottom of a "wheel" control panel, like some VCRs use) has to be pressed just right in order for it to work. If you change your ID3 tag, say in WinAmp (to remove "Various Artists" and replace it with the actual band name), the RioVolt still reads the "Various" tag, which is a bit of a pain. The biggest flaw, though, is the crummy headphones - you might as well leave them in the box and buy another pair. Mine only played correctly out of one side, and the other side died in less than an hour. The last item of note is the strange remote control, which I suppose could be useful, but adds another two feet of wires for you to tie in knots and catch on things. I found I didn't really need it anyway, as I just set the player to "shuffle" and let random effects take their course.

Will there be better players in the future? Undoubtedly. Is this the best player available right now? Hands-down yes. If you've gotta have the latest and greatest, or (like me) want a way to make your massive music collection portable without having to lug 100s of CDs around, go with the RioVolt. You won't be disappointed.

The first MP3 CD players were picky about what discs they would play and lacked any features beyond bare-bones playback. But these products have matured quickly, and after seeing Sonicblue's Rio Volt, we're ready to say that MP3 CD players have arrived. Aside from an awkward carrying case, we were hard-pressed to find anything wrong with this player. Best of breed To put this device through its paces, we burned a number of test CDs, which included MP3s and WMA files with a wide range of bit rates. We used CD-Rs, CD-RWs, discs with everything in one root directory, discs with songs organized in folders, and a number of different burning preferences within the included Easy CD Creator Standard 4 (for PC) and SoundJam (for Macintosh) software packages. Much to our surprise, the Rio Volt handled every disc that we threw at it with aplomb. It's also only the second MP3 CD player we've seen that reads ID3 tags (the Pine Technology D'music SM-200C being the first). Without ID3 tags, you have to plod through 150 songs on each CD using only track numbers as a guide, so we consider them a necessity. It's also the only such player to play WMA files as well as MP3s and audio CDs. But there were many other reasons to be impressed by this newcomer. The +10 button, which lets you jump ahead ten songs, makes navigating more than a hundred songs much easier. You can also group your songs in folders, since the Volt lets you navigate within directories, unlike the other players that we've seen. A Shuffle mode lets you skip around between all the songs on the CD-R, while the A-B mode is useful for looping any section of audio. We were as impressed by the player's form as we were by its function: The understated, rounded design is starkly modern compared to those of other portable MP3 CD players, which often look like prototypes. Skip the skipping The Volt collects 120 seconds of audio from MP3/WMA discs and stores the sound for playback in a flash-memory buffer. When playing back standard audio CDs, you can choose between 10 and 40 seconds of antiskip protection (40 seconds consumes more power). While walking around with the device in a bag, we encountered an occasional delay when fast-forwarding between songs on an MP3/WMA CD. However, once the music started playing, skipping was not a problem. If we can single out one problem with the Volt, it would have to be the carrying case, which must be threaded through your belt if you want to attach it to your hip. (The player itself doesn't have a belt clip.) While the player is in the case, you can't tell which song is playing or whether the player is on or off, since there's no display on the remote control. But at $..., the Rio Volt has to be one of the best portable audio values around. Unless you really need a very small, light MP3 player for exercise or travel, multiformat CD players such as this one are the way to go, since they're cheaper and hold many more songs on a single CD. Some other players cost a little less than the Rio, but its ability to play every type of MP3/WMA CD-R and CD-RW that we burned definitely makes it your best bet.

I got the Rio Volt after many trials with different MP3 portable players. I wanted a unit that would hold lots of music, so that ruled out the solid-state memory type players. So, I was down to either MP3CD players or harddrive based units. I went through: Pine D'Music's SM-200C MP3CD player (cruddy sound, short battery life, skipped badly), Creative's Jukebox (good sound, lots of storage, short battery life), and Archo's Jukebox 6000 (tinny sound, some hardware/software problems, decent battery life). Then I got the Rio Volt and that's what I've been happy with ever since I broke it out of the bubble packaging. This player does it all, you can put CD-R or CD-RW in it. It supports multiple formats of discs (ISO and DirectCD being the two biggies). It supports multiple encoding bit rates (up to 320kbits). It supports variable bit rates. Its firmware is upgradeable easily so that it'll support future standards. The little remote control is handy. It sounds great and best of all I can get 14-15 hours on a pair of AA batteries! If you are not using your MP3 portable while exercising or during physical activity then the Rio Volt is the machine for you.

There are already too many good reviews about this product. I don't want to be offensive, but my feeling is some of the enthusiastic reviews must be from Sonicblue insiders. Otherwise, many of them should have already pointed out those shortcomings I am gonna tell you.

I used to own a Philips EXP103 for 6 months, and I was pretty happy with it. I wish I haven't seen all these extremely good reviews, otherwise I won't sell my exp103 for this Rio volt. Of course, as all other reviews said, this player does have fancy looking and something really cool (ID3 tag display, remote control, etc...). But here I am gonna talk about something it disappointed me:

1. Background noises. The background noise of this player is much higher than Philips EXP103 (although exp103 also has static noise). It's annonying especially when you listen in the eveing at low volumn. And you can also hear electric plus noises ("po") at the begining and the end of every mp3 files

2. Can't read out some discs. It's not like someone says that this player recognizes all kinds of CDR/W discs. It works fine for my MP3 discs, but can't read out an audio CD (Beatles - One) I burned. This 80mins CD works fine with all my CD players and philips exp103. I tried two identical copies of this disc, Rio Volt failed both. I don't have other 80min audio CDR to test at this time, so I am not sure if that's a common problem of rio volt. By the way, this player has no problem with my other audio CDRs (all <74mins).

3. IMHO, the sound quailty of this player is inferior to Philips exp103. It's partially because of the crappy headphone comes with it, which has no bass compared with the one of exp103. A low-end Sennheiser HD433 (<$30 including shipping) will do a much better job.

4. This is never mentioned by other guys before, probably my bad luck. When listen to audio CDs, the 40sec ESP mode gives much worse sound quality than 10sec mode. It's so obvious if you switch between these two modes while playing. It seems to me like a badly implemented loss-compression algorithm. I only experienced this problem with audio CDs.

I used to have a RIO500, too. Compared to memory chip based Rio500, both sound quality and backlite display of this player are actully degenerated. I suspect that Rio volt is just an OEM product Sonicblue grabbed to fill the market gap. Their next version could be better. If I had a second chance, I won't sell my exp103 for rio volt. I'd rather wait till other major companies join in this market.

Very good product. I have used it to play lots of music in the last few days and it's been nice. I'll just hit the highlights for all you consumers out there:

* Can play a metric buttload of music - I have my entire collection of music on 2 CDs now. I have just been experimenting with Microsoft's WMA version 8 and I'm sure I can fit the entire collection on one disc at near-cd quality. This is amazing for portable players. I am absolutely sure that more will appear in the next year or so with this capability, but for now, there are only a couple on the market that can perform this task.

* I had a party a couple of days ago. I hooked my Rio Volt through my stereo (very easy through a little adapter I already had), inserted one of these (300+ songs) digital media CDs and hit shuffle. I didn't worry about music the rest of the night. During the party I looked over at my friend and said, "You know, if we left it on, this would still be playing this time tomorrow and we wouldn't even hear the same song twice." Pretty cool, huh? Who needs a 100 disc CD changer?

* The unit itself is not indestructable. I wouldn't drop it on purpose or anything. Plastic, but durable plastic. The remote, I fear, may break some day, too. It looks very nice.

* It does skip. I'm a runner and jogged lightly with it this morning. When it was in my pocket, it skipped a couple of times. The 120 second skip protection means it will skip a little in 120 seconds. I saw a product with 8 min skip protection! Well, that just means it'll start skipping in 8 minutes. :) CD players just skip, as of now. In a few years, they won't. I didn't buy an all digital MP3 player because they don't hold as much music, but I hear they don't skip at all. The good news is, that when I ran with the Volt in my hand, it didn't even skip once.

* The dancers on the screen you've seen and heard about? Yes, they're pretty annoying if you sit there and stare at them, but if you're doing that, you probably should stop the music and see a doctor.

* The navigation system is awesome. Just burn a CD using your regular file folders on your computer and they show up on the Volt! I have organized my MP3s by author for years and they transfered like a dream. I LITERALLY just cut and pasted the files, burned the disc, and popped it in the Volt. Now it's just up and down the list, to the song you want (ID3 tags and lables are fully compatible), and BAM, you're there.

* The headphones are not that bad. They're a little tin-ny, but not cheap headphones. I have another set of headphones, and it does sound better with them, but that's minor. I'll still use the ones that come with it when I'm out.

* The Equalizer has several presets that are very nice. You can also adjust the equalizer via the "user defined" setting ( I haven't needed to).

* 8-15 hours of battery time is not bad for an MP3 player.

* The firmware upgrade was easy to install and use, although it did cost me a CD. Who cares with all the features you get! Plus, Rio is coming out with these upgrades all the time and I am thoroughly impressed with that. Slowly, the music electronics market is starting to keep the pace with things like graphics cards for you PC. I will enjoy my Volt for a good long time.

* It comes with a couple of nice CD burning programs. These were an upgrade for my computer and added a few features I didn't have before.

* I have a few audiobooks and have transfered them to disc using a disc-saving compression and now don't have to carry around the 20-30 discs per book. Nice.

* Overall, if you're considering buying a portable CD/MP3/WMA player, you can't go wrong with this one. This is just about top-of-the-line.

93% rating - A