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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 65 responses total. |
mcnally
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response 34 of 65:
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Oct 14 10:15 UTC 2002 |
I've got one of the FM-transmitter doodads that I use with my iPod on
car trips. It seemed to work pretty well on my trip from Washington
down to Utah and around the national parks of the southwest but it was
a complete failure on a later road-trip from western Michigan to
southeastern Minnesota via Chicago. From about Benton Harbor, MI,
to Madison, WI, the device wasn't worth using -- about every 20 minutes
I had to retune to an unused frequency as I came within range of some
new low-power FM station.
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mcnally
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response 35 of 65:
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Oct 14 10:17 UTC 2002 |
re #30: For that price I'm presuming you didn't get the black model with
the larger display, extra buffer memory, and FM tuner. That's the only
Rio/Volt model I'm familiar with, but I liked it. The lower cost models,
though much more attractively priced, seemed decidedly not as nice.
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md
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response 36 of 65:
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Oct 14 11:15 UTC 2002 |
When is somebody going to invent the stylusless cartridge for playing
vinyl? Maybe not a cartridge, exactly, but some sort of optical device
for reading the grooves on an analog vinyl recording. Or has it
already been done? The idea of having to run a diamond-tipped needle
through the grooves every time you want to listen to an old favorite
seems more and more primitive and destructive of the medium, given
current technology. How hard could it be to come up with a simple
inexpensive device?
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davel
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response 37 of 65:
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Oct 14 12:41 UTC 2002 |
I've wondered about this, too. But it will take more than just a cartridge,
as the needle controls the inward spiral motion of the cartridge as well as
vibrating. You'd need something to make the tone arm pivot at the proper rate
to keep the cartridge pointed at the right point on the groove.
I also have to wonder whether something couldn't be designed with a *wide*
cartridge that would read the entire side in one revolution. Might be
simpler.
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krj
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response 38 of 65:
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Oct 14 14:01 UTC 2002 |
My recollection is that the laser turntable *was* done; however, it was
in the late 1980s, when the market for $10,000 turntables was shrinking
fast. I will grub around later today; I saw something on the web
about it.
Mike in resp:35 :: My RioVolt model is the SP-90, blue case, seems to have
the larger display but no FM tuner, and I'm not sure about the buffer
size.
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jep
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response 39 of 65:
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Oct 14 14:45 UTC 2002 |
re #32: Urp. Thanks for pointing that out, as I'd completely
overlooked it.
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keesan
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response 40 of 65:
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Oct 14 16:04 UTC 2002 |
John, we probably have a car tape deck and if not, Kiwanis has lots of used
ones cheap, probably a lot cheaper than buying a new gadget for transmitting
FM to your car radio. THe last time he fixed someone's tape deck it was so
they could play CD's with it.
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jep
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response 41 of 65:
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Oct 14 17:49 UTC 2002 |
Why didn't I think of that? I'd have to ask for help installing it,
too. I'm no good at cars. Thanks, Sindi!
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other
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response 42 of 65:
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Oct 14 23:15 UTC 2002 |
I used to have a cheap tape deck boombox in a car with only an am/fm
stereo. I hardwired the battery terminals of the (9v) boombox to the
ignition of the (12v) car, and the difference didn't seem to have any
effect, but I saved a lot on batteries and I could play cassettes in my
car...
(until some jerk in Jersey City broke in and stole the boombox)
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jep
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response 43 of 65:
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Oct 15 14:57 UTC 2002 |
I could use my boombox and a cigarette lighter adapter, I suppose.
What I really want, though, is to be able to play MP3 CDs in the car.
It'd be a compact way to take a lot of music when we're traveling.
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krj
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response 44 of 65:
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Oct 15 18:25 UTC 2002 |
Meijers had a MP3/CD playing boombox from Philips.
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jep
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response 45 of 65:
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Oct 15 19:58 UTC 2002 |
A boombox? Do you know how much it was?
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krj
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response 46 of 65:
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Oct 16 03:24 UTC 2002 |
About $100, I think.
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tpryan
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response 47 of 65:
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Oct 19 21:15 UTC 2002 |
The Philips MP3/Cd boombox also allows firmware upgrades,
which I think could mean support of .ogg files later.
I have the silver/little blue RioVolt Player, SP-100, IIRC.
I downloaded one firmware update for it, and got better functionality,
like being able to resume where I left off, on up to ten disks it
remembers for me, either in MP3 or CD modes. It and the mostly black
one with FM tuner are the only ones with upgradeable firmware.
The next part of desirabilty is being able to forward thru
an MP3 selection/file. Currently it only supports the Gong! function,
going to the next file.
Sony also makes/made an MP3/CD boombox.
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orinoco
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response 48 of 65:
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Oct 22 17:38 UTC 2002 |
(I guess it was only a matter of time before "boombox" and "firmware upgrade"
wound up in the same sentence, but jeez...)
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krj
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response 49 of 65:
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Jan 6 02:33 UTC 2003 |
resp:30 and subsequent:: I've decided that I'm not all that happy with
the RioVolt unit I got two months ago. The sound is fairly "dead" coming
out of it, compared with all the recent Sony CD portables I've
used, and also with Leslie's Koss portable. This seems to be
something in the audio output stage, because it doesn't matter if
I'm playing audio CDs or MP3 discs.
Has anyone been able to compare the sound quality of the different
CD MP3 players? They aren't usually sold in ways which allow you to
audition them any more.
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scott
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response 50 of 65:
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Jan 6 05:58 UTC 2003 |
Dunno, but I can loan you a test CD with various tones at various frequencies.
It's the reason I didn't buy a Sony this time around.
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tpryan
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response 51 of 65:
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Jan 10 23:27 UTC 2003 |
I got the PSX100 RioVoit portable. The mostly silver with blue accents
one that plays CDs and MP3. If this is your model, maybe we can do a
side by side comparision to see if it is the unit or the model or maker.
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charcat
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response 52 of 65:
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Feb 3 09:36 UTC 2003 |
I recently bought a sony cd-mp3 walkman with g-protection and car kit
for around $100 and have been quite happy with it. No skips at all. It
is my 5th cd player and all the other skipped on gravel roads (first mp3
player). I just leave it on random play, better than radio and no
commercials.
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dbratman
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response 53 of 65:
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Feb 4 17:53 UTC 2003 |
My CD player with car kit has a skip-protection feature you can turn on
or off. When on, it loads ten seconds ahead into memory. When using
the player with batteries, as in sitting and listening when not in a
car, one can turn the feature off: you don't really need it, and it
eats up the batteries after 2 hours instead of 8.
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mcnally
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response 54 of 65:
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Feb 5 01:39 UTC 2003 |
Wow. I'm trying to figure out what about that feature could possibly
cause that much increased battery drain..
On newer hard-drive based music players like my iPod the memory buffer
is actually a battery savings feature. Of course it's a lit bigger --
32MB in the iPod's case, which is usually sufficient to allow it to
fill up the buffer and then put the hard drive to sleep for twenty
minutes or so.
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dbratman
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response 55 of 65:
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Feb 9 13:37 UTC 2003 |
Keeping an extra 10 seconds continuously loaded in memory, I suppose.
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mcnally
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response 56 of 65:
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Feb 9 15:02 UTC 2003 |
I don't see how 2 hours' worth of memory refresh could consume as much
battery power as running the motor, laser, and op-amp for another 6 hours.
That's what puzzles me..
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dbratman
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response 57 of 65:
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Feb 12 12:25 UTC 2003 |
I have no idea what activities consume how much power, so I am not
bothered by this. I have battery-operated devices that seem to run
forever, and others that run out of juice constantly. I have a little
voice tape recorder that runs faithfully on 2 AA batteries, and I have
flashlights that seem to die regularly on 3 or 4 D cells. I'd have
thought that keeping the tape running and recording my voice for hours,
together with rewinding, playback, etc., would take as much juice as
shining a tiny weak light occasionally, but apparently not.
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ball
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response 58 of 65:
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Sep 6 04:45 UTC 2006 |
Today I found myself window shopping for an MP3 player. I say "window
shopping" because it's a luxury item that I shouldn't buy at present
even though they're certainly more affordable than they used to be.
In the past I've thought about Proporta's MP3 player because I could
load up one or more multimedia cards (MMC) with MP3 files and it
should just play them...
http://www.proporta.com/F02/PPF02P05.php?t_id=1187&t_mode=des
...judging by the description it may even work directly with NetBSD.
Today though I've been looking at Sandisk's m2x0 series. The m250 (2
Gbytes) and m260 (4 Gbytes) both cost around 5 cents per megabyte,
which is about the same as blank MMC cards would cost me for the Pro-
porta. In effect I would be buying USB flash storage and getting a
free MP3 player with a backlit display.
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