DURABRAND CD-96 Personal CD Player
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Similar in Portable CD Players
- CD-R/CD-RW Playback: CD-R/CD-RW
- Bass Boost: With Bass Boost
- Anti Skip Buffer: 60 sec.
- Supported Formats: MP3
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Wow, it?s so? Adequate.
Pros
Dirt cheap MP3 and CD player. Impressive sound quality.
Cons
Poor battery life, poor anti-skip.
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
It's cheap, it play's MP3's and Audio CD's. If you want to make music with you, but Audio CD's are too passe, and you're poor, this is your machine.
What this thing does
Sure, it looks like a regular personal CD player.
It works just like one too. Even play's CDRW discs.
But this little CD player packs a "secret" (for those who didn't read the packaging too well…)
It also play's MP3 files.
A very functionalist MP3 player
The Durabrand name is closely associated with inexpensively manufactured home electronics that you can buy at your local Wal Mart. This MP3/CD player is no exception.
As an MP3 player, you load up a CDR or CDRW disc up with MP3 files, pop the disc into this player, and hit play. The Durabrand CD/MP3 player then reads the disc, sees it as an MP3 disc, and begins to play the first MP3 file it can find.
The controls work just like a CD player, hit next to skip to the next song, back to skip backward. Hold the buttons down to fast forward the song, and rewind, respectively.
Groundbreaking…
As a CD Player
This really is a more exciting personal CD player than MP3 player anyway. As a CD player, it supports CDR's and CDRW's, which is a feature most people who download music on the internet (in any manner you so choose,) really look for.
Especially the CDRW support, since it's a real waste to make an audio CD that you're going to want to dump in a week anyway when you literally have to dump the disc and get another one.
The player features a 60 second skip protector (which is sort of only present because of the MP3 playing feature,) which is generally pretty good about keeping the music going in your car.
As for walking with it, I wouldn't be so kind…
Skip protecc---c----c---c—shon
This player features an approximately 60 second ESP buffer which will take a minute of music, load it into a little memory buffer, and then play out of that buffer while continuing to read more music off the CD.
Actually, all electronic skip protectors work like that.
The ESP system on this is enabled by default when playing Audio CD's, and on all the time when playing MP3 CD's. The buffer is, however, not very good at its job. Sure, when playing an Audio CD in your car, the periodic bump and shudder of the road probably won't phase this thing when you're driving around with it on the seat beside you.
However, get out of the car and walk around with this thing, oh… another story.
After about a minute of casual movement, you're music may or may not stop, or begin to break up. If you hold still for a few seconds, the CD player can generally catch up, refill the sound buffer, and continue playing your music.
MP3 CD's are another matter. If you walk while listening to an MP3 cd, you're music will almost definitely stop at random points during your jaunt, and only resume when you hold still long enough for the buffer to refill.
Another problem with walking around with this sucker in MP3 mode is that when a read error from the disc occurs (which is much more likely when moving around anyway,) the song you're listening to might distort and warp. The MP3 song might even skip entirely, only to progressively resume its proper placement later (and after a good holding still.)
That's generally only when the player is in your pocket or something. If you hold the player, the distortions are much less likely to occour in either case.
The EQUALIZER!
This player features a 6-mode digital equalizer (which only works in MP3 mode, or in Audio CD mode with ESP on, which it should be anyway.)
The equalizer is pretty high quality, producing some nice sound improvement across the board when activated. That's not bad, considering this player is less than $30.
There is also a secondary bass boost switch, which does what it advertises (boosts the bass, DUH!). It nominally affects the sound by boosting the bass, which may or may not conflict with the equalizer setting you choose, and produce distortion.
But as long as you use lineout, distortion and sound quality loss can be minimized…
Outputs
Very few CD players I've owned had more than one audio output, and they were all cheap players like this one.
Which is unfortunate, because multiple audio outputs are a good thing.
This player features an amplified headphone audio out, and an UNAMPLIFIED Line out socket on the side.
You may use both simultaneously if desired, another nice feature.
Audiophiles on the cheap will recognize the line out as a good feature because it means you can connect amplified speakers and reduce amplification distortion on your music. However, if what I just said was all Greek to you; never mind then. The headphone out port is more than enough, and works all the same.
Slow forward, or slow reverse…
Outside Audio CD mode, the fast forward feature is quite lacking. First of all, you can't preview the audio as you fast forward through it. The audio silences entirely as the song skips forward. It also skips forward at an extremely slow speed. It takes a good 15-20 seconds to fast forward through a minute, and with no preview, that leaves a lot of press-and-guessing.
The same applies for rewind. No preview, and its slow as hell.
Display
In MP3 mode, the display cycles (slowly) through the songs number on the disc, the file name, the artist (taken from the meta information stored in most mp3 files,) and the song title (also stored in most songs.)
The display is oval shaped, and what you see is scrolled character-by-character through the diminutive display.
But it functions.
In Audio CD mode, the display does what every other CD player in the world does; track number, and time index. Nothing special here folks.
MP3, or else.
This CD player does not tolerate non-mp3 files… if you have a non-mp3 file on the disc, chances are the player will reject the disc as "invalid" (a special error condition) if even 1 file doesn't have an mp3 extension.
This isn't too problematic; it's an MP3 player. Not an AVI or a TXT or a WMA player. MP3's. As long as you make sure you're not transferring documents on your MP3 player, I mean it's not an iPod, you'll have no problems listening to your music here.
I haven't tested M3U play lists. I probably never will.
Quality
Being so dirt cheap has its downsides, and that includes being a bit shabby in its construction. Mine died when the CD spindle-motor assembely simply stopped functioning, not able to spin its discs anymore, and, well, making this a paperweight.
It received only nominal physcical trauma during its lifetime... Oh well, what do you want for $30?
Summary
This is a dirt-cheap CD player, and a super dirt-cheap MP3 player. Sure, the anti-skip feature is terrible, and not really anti-skip as it is a delay of the inevitable. It's not spectacular on power either, this is mostly due to the drive motor powering the CD reader (and why MP3 discs use less power than music CD's).
Sure, it looks like a regular personal CD player.
It works just like one too. Even play's CDRW discs.
But this little CD player packs a "secret" (for those who didn't read the packaging too well…)
It also play's MP3 files.
A very functionalist MP3 player
The Durabrand name is closely associated with inexpensively manufactured home electronics that you can buy at your local Wal Mart. This MP3/CD player is no exception.
As an MP3 player, you load up a CDR or CDRW disc up with MP3 files, pop the disc into this player, and hit play. The Durabrand CD/MP3 player then reads the disc, sees it as an MP3 disc, and begins to play the first MP3 file it can find.
The controls work just like a CD player, hit next to skip to the next song, back to skip backward. Hold the buttons down to fast forward the song, and rewind, respectively.
Groundbreaking…
As a CD Player
This really is a more exciting personal CD player than MP3 player anyway. As a CD player, it supports CDR's and CDRW's, which is a feature most people who download music on the internet (in any manner you so choose,) really look for.
Especially the CDRW support, since it's a real waste to make an audio CD that you're going to want to dump in a week anyway when you literally have to dump the disc and get another one.
The player features a 60 second skip protector (which is sort of only present because of the MP3 playing feature,) which is generally pretty good about keeping the music going in your car.
As for walking with it, I wouldn't be so kind…
Skip protecc---c----c---c—shon
This player features an approximately 60 second ESP buffer which will take a minute of music, load it into a little memory buffer, and then play out of that buffer while continuing to read more music off the CD.
Actually, all electronic skip protectors work like that.
The ESP system on this is enabled by default when playing Audio CD's, and on all the time when playing MP3 CD's. The buffer is, however, not very good at its job. Sure, when playing an Audio CD in your car, the periodic bump and shudder of the road probably won't phase this thing when you're driving around with it on the seat beside you.
However, get out of the car and walk around with this thing, oh… another story.
After about a minute of casual movement, you're music may or may not stop, or begin to break up. If you hold still for a few seconds, the CD player can generally catch up, refill the sound buffer, and continue playing your music.
MP3 CD's are another matter. If you walk while listening to an MP3 cd, you're music will almost definitely stop at random points during your jaunt, and only resume when you hold still long enough for the buffer to refill.
Another problem with walking around with this sucker in MP3 mode is that when a read error from the disc occurs (which is much more likely when moving around anyway,) the song you're listening to might distort and warp. The MP3 song might even skip entirely, only to progressively resume its proper placement later (and after a good holding still.)
That's generally only when the player is in your pocket or something. If you hold the player, the distortions are much less likely to occour in either case.
The EQUALIZER!
This player features a 6-mode digital equalizer (which only works in MP3 mode, or in Audio CD mode with ESP on, which it should be anyway.)
The equalizer is pretty high quality, producing some nice sound improvement across the board when activated. That's not bad, considering this player is less than $30.
There is also a secondary bass boost switch, which does what it advertises (boosts the bass, DUH!). It nominally affects the sound by boosting the bass, which may or may not conflict with the equalizer setting you choose, and produce distortion.
But as long as you use lineout, distortion and sound quality loss can be minimized…
Outputs
Very few CD players I've owned had more than one audio output, and they were all cheap players like this one.
Which is unfortunate, because multiple audio outputs are a good thing.
This player features an amplified headphone audio out, and an UNAMPLIFIED Line out socket on the side.
You may use both simultaneously if desired, another nice feature.
Audiophiles on the cheap will recognize the line out as a good feature because it means you can connect amplified speakers and reduce amplification distortion on your music. However, if what I just said was all Greek to you; never mind then. The headphone out port is more than enough, and works all the same.
Slow forward, or slow reverse…
Outside Audio CD mode, the fast forward feature is quite lacking. First of all, you can't preview the audio as you fast forward through it. The audio silences entirely as the song skips forward. It also skips forward at an extremely slow speed. It takes a good 15-20 seconds to fast forward through a minute, and with no preview, that leaves a lot of press-and-guessing.
The same applies for rewind. No preview, and its slow as hell.
Display
In MP3 mode, the display cycles (slowly) through the songs number on the disc, the file name, the artist (taken from the meta information stored in most mp3 files,) and the song title (also stored in most songs.)
The display is oval shaped, and what you see is scrolled character-by-character through the diminutive display.
But it functions.
In Audio CD mode, the display does what every other CD player in the world does; track number, and time index. Nothing special here folks.
MP3, or else.
This CD player does not tolerate non-mp3 files… if you have a non-mp3 file on the disc, chances are the player will reject the disc as "invalid" (a special error condition) if even 1 file doesn't have an mp3 extension.
This isn't too problematic; it's an MP3 player. Not an AVI or a TXT or a WMA player. MP3's. As long as you make sure you're not transferring documents on your MP3 player, I mean it's not an iPod, you'll have no problems listening to your music here.
I haven't tested M3U play lists. I probably never will.
Quality
Being so dirt cheap has its downsides, and that includes being a bit shabby in its construction. Mine died when the CD spindle-motor assembely simply stopped functioning, not able to spin its discs anymore, and, well, making this a paperweight.
It received only nominal physcical trauma during its lifetime... Oh well, what do you want for $30?
Summary
This is a dirt-cheap CD player, and a super dirt-cheap MP3 player. Sure, the anti-skip feature is terrible, and not really anti-skip as it is a delay of the inevitable. It's not spectacular on power either, this is mostly due to the drive motor powering the CD reader (and why MP3 discs use less power than music CD's).
