Home > Consumer Reviews > Rio Volt MP3 CD Player

I bought the Rio Volt MP3 CD player a month ago. Initially I found the output volume a bit low compared with my portable CD player. However, you soon start to realise the advantages of being able to carry your entire music collection around with you in a few 4-CD carry cases, and just plugging the unit into the nearest HI-FI unit, computer speakers, Car stereo etc. A decent pair of headphones is a must for portable use. The ones supplied are OK, unless you want a lot of bass. I tried the remote control but found it just too fiddly and not really necessary. Buy a good carry-case for the unit and use the main controls instead. I like the LCD scrolling screen and on-board software, but wish they hadn't put on the grooving elves - bigger function displays would be more use to us over-40's! The firmware upgrade is easy. Overall - well worth the money

Had my RioVolt for several weeks now and is well worth the 150 quid.

- 9ish Albums on a CD, encoded with VBR

- plays 70min/80min/CDRW/Branded unBranded and Overburnt with no problem

- firmware upgrade is great

- would like to see the dancing 'things' gone in the next BIOS revision

- size is not bad, though the physical quality is not upto a Sony CD Player, bit plasticy

If you have a CD writer, are happy at encoding MP3's and want to listen to music without carrying lots of cd's this is a great unit.

OK, if you're seriously thinking about buying one of these you should first read ALL of the reviews here on Amazon, as they raise many good points. I just bought one a month or two back, and I'm a little disappointed. Here's the facts:

The features are good. It plays every kind of disk. Firmware upgrades are easy. Track navigation is easy. The display is very readable. It NEVER skips or jumps. It's quite small, and only needs two AA batteries to run (rather than 4).

On the down side: The sound quality is NOT good enough, as follows....

Several other Amazon reviews allude to this point, so let's be clear about it: if you're sitting in a quiet room or at your desk at work, the volume is adequate. However, try getting onto a bus or walking down the street and it's a different story. Not loud enough. If all you want is some background music while you work then it's fine, but if (like me) you want to really immerse yourself in the music, to lose yourself in it, if you expect some real performance from your disc player, then the Rio Volt's lack of volume is as frustrating as Chinese water torture.

The equaliser settings are effective only at low volumes. Bass in particular dissappears alarmingly as the volume is turned up. You're left with two choices for sound quality: quiet and acceptable, or loud(ish) and tinny.

The depth of sound is also disappointing. Even at low volumes the bass is 'boxy', meaning that you can hear the notes but the lower frequencies are lost: similar to listing to FM radio - you can hear the bass notes but they don't 'thump' the way they should. I swapped the supplied earphones for some top of the line Sony Fontopias, but still the bass is too close to the midrange frequencies.

My previous CD player was just a cheap thing, but even so it was streets ahead in terms of sound quality, bass reproduction and volume. I'm baffled as to why some other reviewers have called the Rio's sound quality good.

Using a cassette adapter I played my Rio Volt through my car sterio, and that was fine. The stereo was able to boost the volume and the bass. Great. But for portable listening I had to resort to buying a volume booster (from www.boostaroo.com) which helped a little (though it does add an annoying hiss).

Another point worth making: it claims 15 hours of battery life. I'm using rechargeables, and I'm lucky to get 4 hours out of mine.

So, in conclusion, the Rio Volt is great from the point of view of features, and the sheer convenience of having 15 albums on one disc, but it probably ought to have been better designed for the sound quality. Maybe if it ran off 4 batteries rather than 2 it might have had the extra oomph it needs.

One good thing though: these MP3 disc players seem to be really taking off, which means we can expect the big-name manufacturers like Sony and Panasonic to begin manufacturing them soon. My advice would be to wait until they appear, as they'll likely put sound quality first.

In a nutshell, the colour scheme, design and quality makes it look and feel like a very entry-level player. On the up-side, it does play MP3's, read ID3 tags and sounds good, and the upgradeable firmware is a good idea, but I just was not happy to keep this unit. The design and especially colour scheme makes it look like a teenybop's 'My First CD Player'. Most importantly to me, build quality seems to be just cheap (though I have to say I did not have it for long, maybe it is actually more robust than the impression I got). Half the LCD is used up with weird dancing figures that serves no purpose and should have been done without. The buttons' function again feels cheap, as does the hinge mechanism part that keeps the lid open, and battery contact springs. The carry bag is rubbish. IMHO, not worth it unless it was priced as an entry-level product. I strongly recommend, if possible, trying out and playing around with a unit first before buying.

Having purchased this as a skiing companion I was absolutely DELIGHTED.

Yes I can complain about the remote (to small, poorly finished, consigned to the bottom of the suitcase after a day), The battery life (I only got about 8 hours - but It was -10c so that obviously did not help) and........

Otherwise nothing but praise 13+ hours of my favourite Audio on one CD, start the CD going whilst queuing for the morning gondela and then a day of non repeating music, I could not ask for anything more.
Even the skip mechanism was superb, I have being skiing for a long time, ski hard, ski bumps and in two weeks I only got it to skip three times.......

If you are a skier ..... buy one
If you into any other outside sports......buy one
Or If you just like to listen to ever changing music on the train......just buy one.

A note to Rio - Sort out the remote guys.......