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

The product gets 4 Stars for not making this website more accesible to its users:

ftp://ftp.sonicblue.com/pub/rio/riovolt/

This is where you get the new firmware upgrades, and the only place I found out about is through an Amazon.com reviewer because they (the company) is still listing their newest version as 1.08. So, if you all had this before, you'd see almost no negative reviews (besides the fact that the stick figures continue to be annoying). Here's what I copied and pasted that the new firmware upgrade does (I installed it on my player, am listening to a CD as I type, and can testify that the upgrade works perfectly):

[by the way, i have only one beef with it now: the plastic really is flimsy and cheap. Are you an optimist? then, this makes it lightweight, at least. Seriously, though, it's good enough. Don't worry.]

-Directory tree hierarchy supported on Navigation.

-Recognizes up to 999 tracks.

The following six items can be toggled by holding down the EQ button for more than 1.5 seconds. Select different menu items by pressing the FF and RW buttons on joypad, and select options using the Play/Pause Button. Also, the EQ button can be used to select the different features, by holding this button down for more than 1.5 seconds between choices.

-RESUME. With Resume enabled, the unit will return to the same file and time after stopping or powering down the unit. All settings are returned with Resume set to ON when the RioVolt is powered back up, and using the same CD.

**Shuffle settings are saved when powering down unit, NOT when Stopping a track.**

-SPEED SCAN. 1x, 2x, 4x, 6x. This controls the speed when scanning through a track in forward or reverse.

-BEEP control. With Beep turned ON, you will be prompted with an audible beep when certain buttons are pressed. By default this will remain off, unless turned on.

-LIGHT control. When ON, light will always remain on when external power

adapter is used. When OFF, light will behave the same as when using batteries.

-EXT control. When ON, [MP3], [WMA], [CD], and [ASF] are displayed. When OFF, these are not displayed.

-TAG control. When ON, ID3 tag information is displayed. When OFF, the file name is displayed.

I got this fascinating gadget for my birthday a few days ago, and I've found it to be almost the perfect tool for any serious MP3 music collector that wants access to his/her music on the road.

THE POSITIVE
1) As most people know, from other reviews, this player plays both, "normal" music CDs as well as CDs with MP3s in them. The cool thing I found about this is that I didn't need to do any tweaking to the way I had my MP3s coded or named. I used MusicMatch Jukebox as my ripping software, and whichever default values it came with fitted perfectly the Rio Volt, meaning that the palyer recognized the tracks, as well as the name of the songs, which is displays in its LCD screen.

2) Want shock proof? Tested it in my car, and while riding my bike. When I played 'normal' CDs the performance, I have to admit, was just OK (nothing out of the ordinary). But when I played MP3s, due to the way it operates, it was flawless. There was one big exception to this (which I HAVE to note): if the MP3 song you're playing happens to have any sort of sound 'artifacts' (see NEGATIVE #2 for details) you're not going to enjoy the playback as much... Anyway: the way it works is, it takes music in chunks of 20 minutes or so and reads it off the CD. Then it sends it to its memory, so what you're listening to actually comes from the memory, not from the CD directly, which makes it pretty much shock-proof. This concept has been in use several years to provide that buffer (or whatever it's called) of several seconds that traditional CD-players have, when the lens skips the CD (due to a bump, for example), giving the CD enough time to recover, by continuing to play from memory. The difference is that here, this memory amounts to several (some 20) minutes of music, so the CD stops spinning a few seconds after you press play, which is also very good in terms of battery usage.

3) The navigation scheme it offers to find songs takes almost no time to learn, and offers enough information in the LCD screen for the user to be able to move 'around' the CD with ease. 4) Not too expensive. Just a little more than plain MP3-only players (the ones that that read CDs), and considerably less expensive than others such as the Nomad Jukebox, which dies at 6GB (what is that? 8 CDs?) with this one, you're limited to your collection of MP3 CDs! Not bad, ah? ;)

THE NEGATIVE
The Rio Volt in fact has very few flaws, namely (from worst to, most tolerable):
1) When you are listening to MP3s, and you press the STOP button, not only does it stop. When you press play again, it goes back to the very beginning of the CD. This can be VERY bad, if you happened to be listening to one of the very last tunes in your CD! This, I have to say, is not nice!

2) If you happen to have 'noisy" (or should I say jumpy) MP3s (you know what I mean...) you will run into disturbing moments with the Rio Volt. You need to make sure your MP3s are 'clean' which at times can be a little challenging, depending on your sourcing for them. What will happen is that, while reading the MP3s to store them in memory, it will 'think' that the noise in the MP3 was caused (perhaps) by a bump on the road, and will retry to read it for as long as you can imagine, literally KILLING the song from that point on. However, if you have a clean MP3 collection (not an easy thing to have, in fact), this will be a minor thing to bear with.

3) The case that comes with the player!! Rio people: you guys ran out of ideas? It's just awful. And worst, it doesn't have any 'windows' so you can accidentally (I did) hit the Play button and have the player working while you don't even suspect it is, which combined with disadvantage #1, can prove very annoying and battery-sucking.

4) The ear buds, which (as I had read before) are very uncomfortable. These, of course are easily replaceable.

Honestly if it were not for the #1 and #2 negatives, I'd give it a five. The other two negatives I can easily live with.

I've read several reviews form people who say that their unit skips...I personally can't verify that in the least. I do quite a bit of mtn biking with my rio volt in a fanny pack on my waist, and the unit has only skipped 5 or 6 times. This is doing some serious biking, jumping logs, etc., so I can't really agree with people who have it skip during just walking. Possibly they have defective units or bad cd burns. I am using the latest firmware: ... (I have not used it with any other versions so I can't attest to that being a problem). There are some issues with the player:

1) With the remote, you cannot switch modes of play i.e. shuffle within another directory.

2) Battery door seems flimsy, although it hasn't broken after nonstop use >20 battery changes (NiMH).

3) Display could have more lines for navigation...but that doesn't affect me much because I always use the remote.

4) Earbuds are crap, don't even consider using them, they feel like they are going to rip open my ear. I have an old Sony set I bought for ..., so no biggie.

All in all, this is a great player for ME and what I use it for. I can put one cd with 275 96kbs wma files, and ride all day, without worrying about batteries, changing cds or anything.

The Riovolt CD/MP3 player is what any music lover would want. I'll list the pros and cons so you won't have to read into this review and read between the lines.

Pros:
1) Plays CDA, MP3, WMA music files (which means about 10 hours of MP3 per CD and over 24 hours with WMA's and also means all your old CD's are not obsolete)
2) 15+ hours of playback with MP3's (I got 17 hours with regular Duracell batteries)
3) Backlit LCD display with scrolling text (navigation is easier and text is easy to read)
4) Upgradable firmware (for you philistine purchasers, new menus are added so you can customize your Rio)
5) 8 function remote (also adds more slack to the cord)
6) Lineout port (allows you to hook the Rio up to a stereo and listen to it through speakers)
7) A/C adapter provided

Cons:
1) Earbuds provide good sound quality, but for a music lover, better headphone are recommended (for the average listener, they are acceptable)
2) In-line remote (would be better to have a wireless remote since the in-line remote restricts the distance you can go from the Rio)
3) Battery life is decreased if CDA (regular CD's) are played (batt life while listening to CDA's is = 7 hours
4) Car kit (tape adapter and cigarette lighter adapter) not provided
5) ID3 tags not displayed
6) EQ can only be customized to a certain degree (bass and treble can be adjusted when you get the upgrade from riohome.com but the mid range cannot be customized. This is not a major drawback though, as sound quality is not compromised)

Overall: There seem to be a lot of cons. Despite this, the Riovolt is worth the price. It is user friendly and is a must have for anyone who wants a quality CD player. The pros outweigh the cons and I feel the Riovolt SP100 is better than the rest, since I have play tested some of the others. Of the 5 I have tried, the Riovolt is the best.

I've never owned a portable Mp3 player before, nor a portable CD player so I was on an unknown field when I went out to see which one to buy. I read a lot of reviews and came to realize I couldn't afford to buy a player only to face the need to buy a pile of memory cards for it - my collection of digital music climbs above 2 Gigabytes. So I decided to buy RioVolt. And I have to say I was pretty scared if I had wasted my money. So far it seems like I haven't, thank heavens. :-D

The bad things first: it's not completely silent. The CD will spin and stop a few times during a couple of songs, that will generate some noise. I haven't been bothered by it since it can't be heard through the music that well. Nonetheless, it is still there. In addition to this, I hear a small mechanical "tap" noise in the beginning and end of each song, no matter if it's a burnt or a normal audio CD. I don't know where it comes from and it doesn't bother me that much, but I can understand this can be a big problem for those who want to listen to continuous music. It doesn't annoy me if I'm outdoors, but it can be a bit of a problem if I'm listening to music in a silent room. These two are the two "biggest" problems I can think of. It's also clear, since it is a CD player, you can't wave it around as much as you probably could a solid memory player, that's why I encourage everyone to think twice what purpose you're buying your player for. If I really want to nag, the package of this thing is horrible. It took me forever to get the player out of it. Also, since I live in Scandinavia, the AC adapter that came with the player is virtually useless, but that's my problem. (batteries, woohoo! :-)

The good things, well, it definitely does what it promises. It plays Mp3s and Wmas from both CD-Rs and CD-RWs. I was very, very worried about the song skipping issue I read about in other reviews but so far, I've seen absolutely no skipping at all. I'm also very thankful of the little case that came with it, I can stick the player into it and put it into my bag without having to worry about scratches and the player opening on its own. Although the player is a bit big, enough to fill my palm completely, it makes most buttons pretty well accessible. The fact that it can play playlists and has a few EQ choices are good things, too. But the best thing is...the CDs. I was able to put 400Mb worth of music on one single CD (that's somewhere around 4 normal CDs) and I still had 300MB left on the CD-RW for extra songs! I don't know what could ever beat that. I hate changing discs. :)

The bottom line... I don't know about other people and how well RioVolt fit their needs, but I got what I wanted. Who knows, there might be lurking problems I haven't noticed. But right now, I'm happy with my player. I hope this helps those who are having a hard time trying to choose a player. :)