Koss CDP-3100 Personal CD/MP3 Player with Lid Top Digital Controls

Amazon Customer Reviews

(3 out of 5)

Cheap MP3/CD player - if you can't afford a TDK Mojo...

The Koss CDP3000 is worth what you pay for it. If you can't shell out the hundred-fifty dollars for an MP3/CD player with ID3 tag or filename support, then consider this one. It has the usual drawbacks, such as that it takes some time to spin up the CD and read the structure (somewhere between 10 and 40 seconds, depending on the CD, and sometimes it gets stuck during this process, but turning it off and them back on fixes this). The manual says it supports bitrates from 32K to 256K, including VBR. I tested a fair variety of different MP3s on it, and everything I tried except those with the new MP3Pro format worked. The anti-skip function is pretty good, but not perfect. The headphones are passable, but most people will want to spend twenty bucks on a pair of Sony's. (If you can afford fifty dollar or more headphones, then you should be able to afford a better MP3/CD player). I've gone through two sets of batteries so far, one lasted quite a while, and the other went very quickly, so I suspect the second set were just bad batteries. The navigation system is pretty good, it sorts by directories on the CD (calling them 'albums'). The random play feature only has one function, which plays all the tracks in one album in a random order, then switches to the next album. This product includes *no* software, and crappy documentation. It does have a line-out, and it includes an A/C adapter. For those who saw my earlier review, the problems I had were due to the way I burned the CDs -- don't use DirectCD to create MP3 CDs, it doesn't create CDs that follow the appropriate standards.

(4 out of 5)

Very good little unit

I gave it 4 stars but it could be 5 stars for the price. I've used a few players jwill, casio, memorex at the time they all cost a lot more than this and it beat them all. The rio at the time was much more. It was much better but it cost alot more. The lowdown on this unit:

Good:
No skips walking, biking, offroad biking, driving
plays dozens of different mp3 types, bitrates, media, burners
plays VBR up to 320kb or so
much better than all the others mentioned above except rio.

good navigation through directories

The bad
eats batterys. Usually seems to be 2 hrs. max was 5 hrs straight with kodak gold batteries.
no wma
no id3 tags.
no packet written disks
dont drop it. (i'm on my second one)
will not play r3mix mp3s reliably. I think its just to much compression processiong for its little cpu.

Bottom line
You can now get rio's for around less than they were with full id3 support
and the low end sp50 rio for about less as well. I haven't used the specific model but I hear its very good and based on much of their earlier model. I would go for the rio unless you get this koss really really cheap.

(4 out of 5)

awesome bargain

I purchased this product on sale at my local Target last month. So far I've had three problems, 1) I dropped it three times from a distance of about three feet and while it continued to play (awesome bufferring and anti skip) for several seconds the disc did suffer some damage as it came free within the device and became severely gouged as it continued to spin. 2) another issue is that it wont recognize more than 93 mp3 files per disc, the manual says that it supports 99 tracks per album, but i haven't had success yet in burning a cd-r with the multiple albums that the player can recognize. 3) I only use this device with the power adapter that came with the device (a big plus), but I did use Energizer Titanium batteries just to test it and it ate them up with in 6 hours of use. I thought that was rather too quick for my taste. The great features include 1)the right price, 2)compact design, 3)ease of operation, 4)nice packaging(comes with fair quality headphones, i do recommend upgrading though, and a AC power adapter), other features include a hold switch(temporarily disables buttons), a DBBS switch (extra bass), a line out port, and the usual programming options. I recommend this product at the right price.

(4 out of 5)

Good, low end MP3 CD Player

I recently purchased a Koss 3000 series CDR/CDRW/MP3 player. It is very bare bones, but I am satisfied. I have read some of the reviews here. The problem lies in that technical support for Koss is very poor. I too had some trouble burning a CD with MP3's sucessfully. I finally had luck using MusicMatch Jukebox, with MP3 quality selected (96 kbps), and Normal processing selected for encoding (under Advanced menu). My files are organized on the CD as follows: one folder per album, with respective MP3's per album underneath each folder. I read the review about 8.3 naming convention -- my player WAS able to read extended file names, just make sure the leading portion of the file name is unique. For example, my files are named 01(track number)_song title_album_artist.mp3. Again, long file names are OK, including spaces. Anyway, this is a good purchase. I also bought 2 AA NiMH rechargeable batteries and recharger instead of an AC adapter (neither of which came with the unit). All in all a great value, since I am planning to put around 10 hours of music on one CD. Also, I read that some folks are experiencing poor quality sound. I do not notice anything out of the ordinary. Folks, please understand that MP3 can be near-CD quality. The MP3 format will at best closely replicate CD quality sound. Notice the drastic differences in files sizes between an MP3 file and a CD track. That is partially why you may hear a faint echo, or other anomolies -- that is normal and is a trade-off with MP3's. If you don't like the quality, stick with the original CD recording. As for clicking sounds -- try adjusting the sampling rate and/or other settings with your CD ripping software. Now, back to the product... I am happy with my purchase, and recommend it with some caution -- be prepared to spend some time working out the kinks if you plan to listen to MP3 files. Your patience will pay off...

(4 out of 5)

Nice

This is a great entry-level MP3/CD Player. ...The Koss doesn't have the flashy case or the large LCD screen, but I still like it better than the Expanium. It is much simpler to use, and it has better battery life as well (the Expanium has only 10 hours). It is also noticeably lighter and thinner than the Expanium, which is also a big plus. It has a slower boot time (the time it takes from when you turn the player on until when the music starts to play) than the Expanium, but there is almost no delay what-so-ever between tracks. ...I have had no trouble at all with any of my burned cds; they all play fine. As for the "electronics fan from New Jersey", he needs some serious help if he can't make an MP3 cd correctly. It is a totally no-brainer process, so don't believe what he says. I only have had two problem this CD player. 1) that if there are any long, noticeable scratches on the CD, the player will sometimes misread these and suddenly go from 3:23 on track 5 to 3:24 on track 6; but that rarely happens. and 2) it cannot read ID3 tags (song name, artist, and album information). However, all in all, this is a great MP3/CD player, and the price is right.