Home > Consumer Reviews > Rio Volt MP3 CD Player

I bought this player about a year ago, and I am extremely pleased with it. If you're thinking about buying a personal stereo, compare your selection with 10 of the Rio Volt's key specs:

1) Plays CD's. - no 'synching' or software installation needed. Any computer that can burn Mp3's will do.
2) Plays CD's. - 650MB per disk, disks are cheap, burners are fast, literally unlimited capacity. CD format isn't going to change anytime soon - unlike the array of storage cards.
3) Plays CD's. - You take 20GB Apple iPod on holiday. You buy a cheap chart CD from a shop. Good luck.
4) Plays WMA files - higher compression, better quality than Mp3 - 300 songs on a disk for Window's users.
5) Supports directory structure. - copy that folder with album containing subfolders onto a disk. Browse by category/album/song on the player.
6) Uses 2 AA batteries. - You're on holiday playing Mp3's with your rechargeable iPaq. Good Luck.
7) Plays Mp3/WMA files - Song loads, plays, disk stops spinning for duration. caches next song so no spin-up and seek. Less power used.
8) Remote control. - Bury the player in your coat/bag.
9) Resumes play from point of stopping - Also after batteries are changed and with a several disk memory.
10) Supports file names. - So you know what you're listening to.

Some downsides (trust me, they're livable - no surprises):

1) LCD 'dancing maniacs' animation is guff.
2) A bit cheap feeling (because it is).
3) Has to 'boot-up'. Takes less than 30 seconds from totally off.
4) Ditch the headphones (all players come with poor headphones).
5) Case is crud. (Don't use it.)
6) Comes with software. (Please God don't install it.)

That's it. For me, the WMA support is great, as Windows doesn't seem to come with an Mp3 ripper program amazingly enough (I may be wrong, but doubt it). For the price, it's an absolute steal. Go buy it now.

You read the reviews, you open the box, and you dont know what to do first. Do you use the remote, do you just plug in the headphones or do you connect to the Hifi.
Let me tell you it matters not what you do first, because every test you set this little piece of hardware, it shines through with flying colours. (Except the volume-not being loud enough which if you've read the other reviews you will already know this can be fixed by downloading the upgrade)

OK onto the serious matters, Quality. Yes I can't fault the sound or the design for that matter. It plays 20 to 20,000 hz which is more than ample for the human ear. A nice selection of EQ settings. (As well as a user defined addition in the upgrade)
I am currently in the process of moving all of my old vinyl onto the pc (there are programs out there to convert wav to mp3) as so to compact an entire collection and have it at your fingertips.

There are one or two downsides to this product. These have been pointed out by previous reviewers but most importantly for me, is firstly the inability for Rio to include a car charger (I am on the road for 10 to 15 hours a day with music playing the whole time) and secondly which seems more serious the fact I have as yet NOT been able to track one down. Please email me if you know of such an item.

That being said, the remote is not as bad as some would have you believe....it does all I'd expect from a remote and fits neatly over the car indicator switch etc.

As I approach the end of this review, music eminating from my new toy, this is still one of the best little sounding items in the house, and in the few days I have owned it, have become more and more fond of it. And I was extremely fond of it in the first place.

My impressions after two weeks of use:

- The fact that you can lump over 160 songs onto one CD is great. More than 12 hours without hearing the same song twice. This, and the firmware upgrade facility more than make up for some of the more annoying "features".

- Overall build quality does not feel too substantial, even a bit flimsy in places (battery cover and remote) but it is capable of taking some knocks. Don't expect to throw this one around like a discus though.

- Download and apply the firmware upgrade as soon as possible. It adds some much-needed features, and immediately makes you realise why it's worth shelling out more for the firmware upgrade feature.

- Battery life seems to suffer severely when in shuffle-play mode. I get about 9 hours of play out of two duracell batteries.

- Current display settings allow for only two song titles to be shown at a time, with only the first 12 characters visible when scrolling through the tracklist (if you switch displaying file extensions off...these are displayed at the beginning of a name, rather than at the end). A problem when you've got many songs by a band with a long name and are trying to find one specific one. You have to wait for the name to scroll, which can be a bit tedious.

- No scrolling in the song listing menu by keeping buttons pressed. If you want to see your titles one by one you have to press the play/pause or stop keys repeatedly to scroll. There is a +10 button which advances your list by ten songs, but as you can only see two song names at a time it's easy to miss the one you're looking for.

- Shock protection works well once the MP3 is played into memory, but knocks and vibrations during the read phase can still cause skipping and long delays between songs. Don't expect the kind of shock protection you get with modern discman players.

- Useless "dancers" take up the lower part of the display. These are permanent, and are best compared to one of those Donkey Kong handheld games from the 80's, i.e. they simply flash on and off. Even though they do seem to be linked to the rhythm of whatever song is playing, they're useless.

These faults are not major, they are merely things that stop me enjoying this product to the full extent it is capable of. But overall this is a great product, and I'm very happy with it. My discman has been sitting on a shelf gathering dust since I got my Rio Volt...why carry 24 CD's when three will do the job quite nicely? The sound quality is excellent even through the headphones the Rio Volt is supplied with. I hook it up to my car stereo and it's excellent for long trips, and I've had it playing the music for an entire party better than any CD multichanger. One of my better purchases which will eventually replace my minidisc player and discman (once I've got all my music encoded and on CDR's).

Having read all the reviews for this product I eventually gritted my teeth and purchased it. Let me tell you though that it was a purchase well worth it.

Having already gained quite a large mp3 collection I really did not want to convert them all back into audio formatted CD's. This player plays them all! MP3Z! CD's and it's just non stop action.

The headphones have a fairly long cable but once you wind it up and tuck it away they are okay. Although if you are a base freak like I am you will find the head phones that come with it rather tinny so I purchased other super woofer base headphones.

The time period on the batteries really boggled me though having gotten at least 15 hours of play time with MP3 cd's.

If you don't get this product you are really loosing out. Those fancy mp3 players that download music are limited compared to this little baby. Besides if you are fed up with your mp3 and go into a music store and come out with the latest hit on cd you can just place it in this bute and away you go.

The Riovolt has excellent facilities, good MP3 handling, useful ID tag display and a pleasing design, BUT!
It's letdown is it's audio output. I tried several sets of headphones to improve upon the supplied in-ear set. Many of those I tried were larger ones, because I like my music loud & bass-heavy. The Riovolt just could not cope - It's output is so feeble that my MP3s were being drowned out by passing traffic even at full volume.
Another quirk with the audio output is that the inbuilt EQ allows you to increase bass or treble, but only at lower volumes! If you increase the volume to the maximum, the EQ pans out so that at high volume (if thats what it can be called) the sound will ALWAYS be flat and lifeless. I reckon that this is because the EQ & amplification are being handled digitally, rather than EQ occurring before amplification.
My final gripe is again about the output - this time the LINE out. Connect the unit to your HiFi and observe - The output from the LINE out is very, very weak. The volume control still affects the LINE out too (it shouldn't), and the end result is having to crank up the volume on your HiFi to get a decent volume, which isnt healthy when those loud 'clicks' between tracks kick in.

Conclusion:
If they'd stuck on a cheap headphone amplifier rather than relying on some combined chip, and sorted out a correct LINE output, this would be a near- perfect player. Oh, and I wish they'd ditch those stupid LCD dancers on the screen.