Home > Consumer Reviews > RioVolt SP90 Portable CD-MP3 Player with 120 Seconds Anti-Skip

If you want a blue SP100 without a remote and backlight, just flash upgrade your SP90 with the SP100 firmware. Just download the SP100 firmware and do the following:

1. Rename the IMP-100.HEX file to SP-90.HEX
2. With a Hex editor, open this firmware file and change the IMP-100 to SP-90 in the first line and resave the file.
3. Burn a cd with this new SP-90.HEX file in the root directory.
4. Place the cd in the player and turn it on.

You now have a blue SP-100 that supports playlists, has shorter gaps between songs, user eq setting, faster load times, etc. And from now on, you can just flash this player with any SP-100 upgrade without having to edit the firmware as you had to do this one time.

The SP-90 is a GREAT BUY now that you know it can be upgraded.

Well, for the price this is a great player, but here are some things the SP100 has and this doesn't:

1. Most important: firmware upgrades. This feature has a lot of power and it gives the older unit a lot of new features, like playing playlists and improved programming, and it's actually very important, because if there will be a future audio codec that will be popular like OGG vorbis or even MP3 Pro, and if it will replace regular MP3, then you can be sure that Sonic Blue will have a firmware upgrade for your player. (By the way, the best place to download the upgrades are from the iriver site (which is the original company that menufactures the RioVolt), and not the RioVolt site becuase the iriver upgrades work fine on the 'Volt and they come out much faster. Lately the Rio team hasn't released any upgrades at all, but the iriver team is releasing them all the time.

2. Remote control: I don't use the SP100's remote much, but I do use it a little, and it's very convenient for walking on the street and just skipping over the tracks you don't like without taking the unit out of your backpack.

3. LCD backlight: very important for me, as I use the player a lot at the Army at night and it's pretty useless without the backlight, because then I can't browse for the album I want to play.

Anyway, you should get this player if you can't afford the extra money for the SP100, but if you have about $175 to spare you should buy the new SP250, which has an 8 MB buffer and a really neat LCD display and FM radio, a charger, NIMh battries, and improved features AND it supports firmware upgrades as well, and in general is much improved over the SP100 as well as the SP90. It is the perfect player, if you can afford the price!

Well I guess it's my turn for a review. I purchased this for... from Amazon.... I mainly wanted it for the mp3 feature.... I particularly did not like the head phones; they were average to say the least. The sp90 could use more bass. It has a preset bass level, but it's useless. I decided to upgrade the firmware to the sp100 2.10 version just for the heck of it. I really didn't experience problems w/ mine before doing it. I experimented a little and shook it to see how much it would skip and compared it after I upgraded the firmware. I put the upgrade disc in and it took maybe 10-15 seconds to upgrade. I immediately place a cd in and started shaking and doing the same thing I did w/ the player when the original firmware was installed. Believe it or not, it only skipped once compared to it skipping everytime from that height w/ the original firmware; I dropped it about 3.5 feet onto my bed. I'm happy w/ my purchase, especially for the price I paid.... Just burn the image on cd and insert the disc in the player. *Note, try this at your own risk, I won't be held liable; I'm just helping out. I'm told it already worked for a couple of people I sent it to. File size is 335kb. I hope this helps. Please vote on this so that other people can benefit.

The SP90 has met/exceeded my expectations. I have a Nomad II MG mp3 player for jogging/vigorous sports, so I was primarily looking for a replacement for a 10 yr old Sony Walkman CD player that finally expired.

My key selection criteria were price, sub-$ [money], ability to play mp3/wma and of course std audio-cds. I wasn't looking for a high-end unit with tons of gizmos -- if you want such a player, look elsewhere.

FYI - I did the firmware upgrade (sp90hack), see earlier reviews for details, and without any exaggeration, it was quicker and less challenging than getting the player out of its inpenetrable packaging! I would recommend implementing this upgrade.

*Pros*
- No skipping whatsoever, and I've put it through its paces; walking/running with my dog, cleaning house with all the motions associated with vacuuming, dusting, ironing, etc.
- Great sound (clarity). I'm currently using a $[money] pair of Sony headphones.
- Simple interface.
- No problem reading audio discs or mp3/wma discs that I burned (all at 128 bit rate as recommended). I see some reviewers have problems with this - perhaps more a function of their CD burning software, not sure. Also, many reviewers recommended burning at 1X, 2X. I had 2 audiobooks (8 hours each) I burned to a single CD each. Each audiobook had 8 CDs. I burned the first book onto a single CD at 2x speed. Kinda time consuming and since CD-Rs are only a few cents I burned the 2nd audiobook (8 CDs) onto a single CD at maximum speed based on pre-record test, at least 4X. I've had NO problems playing back this disc either.
- Good battery life. For audio CDs I only got around 6-8 hours, but playback of mp3 discs I'm getting 12-15 hours.

*Cons*
- Big letters on LCD truncate the file information, or you have to wait for the ID tag to cycle.
- No backlight. I knew this going in, but may be important for some.
- No officially supported firmware upgrade, but workaround as mentioned.
- Appearance. Not very stylish, unsophisticated. I wouldn't say it looks like a toy, but more geared for the teen market.
- Entire unit is that hard/brittle plastic, including the buttons. I would have preferred rubberized controls.

You get what you pay for. A very good quality CD/mp3 player without frills for around $[money] (after rebates), and since some new models are hitting the market, I imagine you'll be able to pick the SP90 up for around $[money] within a month or so.

I've been using this player for 3 days now. I will separate my review into Pre-Upgrade and Post Upgrade.

Pre-Upgrade
The CD takes a while to load, almost 10 seconds. That can get annoying. Also, as you change songs, it takes 4 seconds to load the song which also got to me after a while. As for anti shock, it skipped for me in certain situations. If you just shake it, it won't skip but when I took a stroll it skipped a few times. If you rotate it upside down and back, it will skip. It doesn't even save your previous EQ settings and playback settings (Shuffle, Repeat) and you have to keep setting it. Combined, with slow song loading times, I start to regret purchasing this product and not the SP250.

Post Upgrade
I burned another CD with the hacked firmware and plopped it into the player. It took about 5 seconds now to load the MP3 CD. Now it only takes 2 seconds to switch between song. And I'm happy to inform it has never skipped once for me yet. I noticed the CD stops spinning after the song plays for 10+ seconds, I guess it's starting to really use the Antishock and store the song into memory and also save energy. It never did this before the upgrade and constantly spinned the CD. It also now saves my previous settings.

I'm very please with the performance of the player now that it's been upgraded. I wish the load times could be even almost instantaneous but CD players can't even do that yet. Other than that, I wish they could improve the aesthetics of the player. The pictures look nicer.

I can't recommend this player unless you are going to upgrade the firmware. The player performs horribly unless you do the upgrade. With the upgrade, this player is a real gem and at a very cheap cost.