Home > Consumer Reviews > Virtual Reality Sound Labs VRCD400-SDU

Pros:
Amazing set of features
Price
Customer Support

Cons:
Nothing is done right
Sound is blah-blah
MP3 navigation
Placement of controls

I admit, I thought I could get away with buying a generic eighty dollar stereo. I was wrong. This stereo is great for the guy who doesn't mind using dollar store headphones and can listen to radio stations from the other state. However if you want to ever have a respectable sound system, you do not want to build off of this stereo. I used it for three months. The beginning was awesome, mainly because I was used to listening off an FM transmitter. This wears off quickly however. Most people who rode in my car told me that it seemed like there was something muffling the speakers. I spent hours trying to make it sound nice, soldering, re wiring, and tuning the EQ, but it was ultimately a battle lost. I spent twice this unit's price to buy another stereo, and it was worth every penny (and I'm a poor college kid). My aftermarket speakers come to life now, and I've got nothing but compliments on how crisp everything sounds.

There's also the annoying feature where the music starts over from the beginning of the song every time you change sources or power the radio on and off. I didn't think it would be all that annoying, but it is outright painful.

Don't plan on doing anything other than shuffle for your MP3s, it's way to complicated and slow to navigate through the folders. Somebody also thought it might be a good idea to have the titles slowly roll out, that guy needs to be fired.

I would like to point out, that the customer service on this stereo is outstanding. They replaced it once within three days when it broke.

Sorry to sound like a whiner, I really, really wanted to like this radio, but it's not worth the trouble. If you're on a budget, I'd recommend buying a low end pioneer or sony xplod.

I like this product enough to buy a second one for my second car. The OOBE (out of box experience) is great - the manual is accurate, clear and concise. It plays the two most popular formats (WMA, MP3) and accepts a SanDisk, audio jack, USB, and music or MP3 CDRs. AM and FM reception is as good as any I've run into. Another reviewers comment that it isn't a good starting point for a premium car stereo system may be true - I'm not familiar with high-end systems. However, OOBE with no user mods is very satisfying, and the large feature set meets all of my requirements.
This is the best deal for <$90 I've seen. If you buy this, you won't be sorry!

At first I was a bit skeptical of how good this stereo would be, given the $80.00 price tag. I have to say though, that this CD player has better sound than the $300.00 Aiwa CDC-MP3 HU that was already in my truck! It has every feature I could ever need, including RCA pre-outs for my sub. The ability to take my music on thumb drives and SD cards is by far the biggest advantage of this unit. Before I installed this stereo my truck was FULL of CD's. I was always getting new music and trying to burn new compilation MP3 CD's so I could have all of it with me, but it was just too much to keep up with. With the SD/USB media, I can shuffle whatever albums I'm into that week onto the card and save myself a lot of time burning discs and money spent on CD's. I would definitely purchase this product again.

That being said, there was only one downside to my purchase of this product. The first unit I received was defective and would not read USB or SD cards at all. Roadmaster said that I had to swap the unit where I purchased it (Target). I ended up taking it back and purchasing the second one from Walmart. The second one works great, but the static sticker on the face plate removed the gloss from the face plate itself, leaving it permanently foggy in places. Once I can get that part swapped out for a new one I will be a happy camper. I would definitely recommend this product to anyone who wants a great sounding system but doesn't want to spend a lot of money.

I bought this radio mostly for its SD card reading ability and because the reviews were generally positive. SD cards can load VERY slowly if you have a lot of tracks on them. The control layout is acceptable, but not great. Sound seems fine, but I'm no audiophile. Fairly often (maybe 1 in 4) it forgets which track you left off on after powering down, which can be an annoyance. Additionally, this radio does not recall where in a track you stopped. This makes it difficult to use with podcasts, especially when combined with its slow fast forward (only 2x speed). This means that if you stop most of the way through an hour podcast, it goes right back to the beginning. Consequently I use my ipod via the aux in input to listen to podcasts. Sometimes the jack needs to be jiggled when the audio goes out. I've tested and it's not the cable. Rarely with more than about 80 tracks on an SD card, the radio will start playing static. If you've turned it up to listen to a quiet podcast, this can be extremely loud! Power cycling the radio and then skipping tracks until you reach the one it left off on fixes this, but it's still annoying.

Basically, think about what you need in a radio. If you like longer podcasts, go with something else (although user's manuals and reviews often neglect to mention anything about track position saving, so good luck). If you just want to listen to music or short podcasts, and don't mind some minor glitches, then this system could do the job for you. Now that we have very tiny USB thumb drives, the SD card reading feature is a lot less important.

Anybody know an USB mp3 radio that remembers position in the last track?

I purchased this product and within a week the SD and USB slots would not work. CDs kept getting stuck in the unit and the when these situations occurred the display read error 13. I contacted VR by email about the issue to see it there were any user fixes. There wasn't, so I contacted the seller for a refund.