Rio Volt SP150 Personal CD Player

When it works, the Rio Volt SP-150 sounds very good, especially with a good set of headphones. However, the one I got only worked, somewhat, for a day or two before it started acting stranger and stranger. The biggest problem is that the volume control buttons stop working and start changing the replay and tone settings. Sometimes all the buttons stop. Plugging in the headphones can change the settings. Pulling the batteries stops the problem, temporarily. And it has has major tracking problems if you use it when walking, or even in a car.

Update: I think I have a clue as to what is causing this problem. The buttons for the volume, etc., are about the size of a pencil eraser and only rise about a millimeter above the surrounding case. Since my fingers are somewhat larger than a pencil eraser, they naturally make contact with the case when I press the buttons. And the natural tendency is to pick up the unit and squeeze the buttons. This apparently produces contact by the case with the circuit board inside, causing crossed signals with the other buttons. I have been experimenting with pressing the buttons with a pencil and with my finger nail while holding it gently or leaving it sitting on a table, and this seems to be preventing the problem. More later.... (updated update: the volume control no longer works and is stuck on max. When pressed, it activates other functions, at random. I give up.)

The problems are so erratic that I suspect that static from the rapidly moving CD may be scrambling the processor at times, such as when it is dry - when it was raining the other day, I did not have a problem. Perhaps static from the car ignition or other RF interference may be a factor? ....

It refused to read the first CD I put in, and has had problems with several commercial classical CDs and home recorded CDRs. Sometimes it will not read the track info at all and just keep spinning, even after the LCD goes off, and even after I open the cover. The only way to stop it is to pull the batteries. And other times it will not read some tracks, but do fine on others. But about 90 percent of my CDs work fine. I am going to try exchanging it.

Update: I returned it they gave me another one, which did the same thing, though a bit less. Plus an odd defect arose: the menu button temporarily acted like the equalizer button. Pulling the batteries corrected this, but it bode ill for the flash ROM. So I got a third one. This one was slow to read my test disk, an Archiv classical CD, but it found it after about 15 seconds. The same disk works fine in all my other equipment, starting instantly in my Philips desktop stereo, for example. However, upon observing the disk spin with the top of the RioVolt open, the edges looked like it was slightly off center. The Rio is very quiet and smooth when spinning, so perhaps it is designed for a lower tolerance for wobbly disks. If so, this is not good. At any rate, I am keeping it.

Update 2: While playing a CDRW with WMAs, I started getting nonsense characters on the LCD when I used the buttons. Then the buttons stopped working entirely, including STOP and volume. The only way to turn it off was to pull the batteries. Tried again, and same thing happened. Pulled the batteries and put in a regular CD and it worked. Put the CDRW back in, and it worked for a while. Then it froze in mid-WMA. Hit stop and started track again. This is one weird product.

The player works well at home when connected to my hifi. But when connected to the car stereo it behaves erratically. Sometimes the music will stop in the middle of the track, yet the counter will continue, or sometimes it will freeze, and sometimes the music will fade in for a second or two then stop for about 10 seconds, and repeat this. Sometimes it will stop in the middle and restart the track on its own. This is on WMAs and regular music CDs. Sometimes I can restart the track, sometimes, not. On WMAs it has stopped in the middle of a track and switched to another piece on another directory. Tbis happens even when the car is not moving, so perhaps it is due in part to electrical interference. But movement could be part of it. It seems the laser has trouble finding the point where it left off after storing the music in memory. And when I listen with headphones at home, the volume control sometimes stops working and starts switching other functions, like the tone control and repeat options. (By the way, this was a new product, not refurbished.)

The player automatically turns on when I plug in the headphones or the cord connecting it to the stereo, using the headphone output. I wonder if the car cord, which produces statics when wiggled, is sending spurious signals to the player's CPU, causing the erratic behaviour.

There appears to be a quality control problem here. The first player also displayed nonsense characters on the LCD for some problem CDS. The second had a problem with the buttons behaving erratically. The third works the best (famous last words).

Another problem is that it does not seem to read variable bit rate WMAs - I have read that it does not read VBR MP3s, either. And it does not return to your place in an MP3 track when you turn it off for a while. There was a firmware upgrade that corrected this, but this recently purchased unit came with v 1.0, and the company website claims that there is no software available, though it used to be.

I tried e-mailing support, and got an e-mail telling me to download an update on the firmware from their website, not providing any address, though. A second e-mail from a person told me there is no firmware. Not so! That was the whole point of the design, and any webpage description of the model will tell you otherwise.

I urge everyone who has bought one of these to e-mail customer support and ask them politely to post the upgrade software on their website, or at least e-mail them the upgrade; it is less than one meg, I believe. If they say it does not exist, e-mail back and suggest they check again. Better yet, e-mail them for the upgrade file before buying it!

In general, the sound is good, with especially good bass - not just pumped up bass, but real, deep low-frequency bass. The treble is good, too. There is also good detail and no noticeable background hiss.

The sound is a bit thin, stringy and harsh when playing CDs through a good hi fi - mostly on strings and vocals. However, where the player excells is playing high bit rate WMAs, 160 or 192. Here the sound is truly excellent, and I am comfortable using it to play classical music with a good hi fi, one with a class A amplifier. I guess the DA converter for CDs is just average, which is to be expected given the cost, but the processor works great with WMAs. I have not tried it with high bit rate MP3s - I compared them to WMAs a while back and concluded WMAs provide superior sound and stereo separation.

The volume is adequate on classical CDs. On home recorded CDs or WMAs where the volume has been "equalized" the sound is significantly louder. However, sometimes it seems to overload the electronics and result in distortion.

It looks like I am getting about five or more CDs per set of NIMH batteries. The WMAs would last a lot longer. I got about 90 minutes on a set of nicads. I have not heard any skipping from movement of the set. There is no display of the bitrate for MP3s or WMAs, nor of time remaining on a track. It has a "line out" for stereos, but it is not a true line output because it is affected by the volume and tone settings, and has slightly less sound level than the headphones (I wonder how many people complaining about the low volume are mistakenly using the line out). You can easily adjust the backlight time to 0, 1, 5 or 10 seconds. Bass and treble can also be customized. For CD ESP there are two settings, 40 and 160 seconds, but no off setting; and no adjustment for MP3s, which run several minutes from memory.

I am glad the controls are on the unit; I would just lose or break a remote. And I am glad it looks cheap because I don't want to tempt someone to take it from, say, my car. It looks a lot like the cheapy $15 players, mostly because the cheap ones have imitated Rio's design.

The headphones are great - if you like the sound of 78s played through a morning glory horn Victrola. This means they are certainly adequate for listening to the old Jean Shepherd radio shows in MP3 I downloaded off the internet. For music, I use Radio Shack titanium-coated driver headphones made by Koss, available for $40 - $20 on sale.

The Rio Volt SP150 is a good portable, with good sound from CDs and great sound from WMAs. But without the software upgrade it has a lot of bugs.

I would be much, much happier with the SP-150 if I could upgrade the firmware. Anyone have the updated software they could e-mail me?