RioVolt review

I use the 'Volt for Old Time Radio (OTR), so my review will be biased in that direction. I do play mp3 music audio about 10% of the time, and audio CDs maybe 1% of the time.

What ya get

The RioVolt is available at Amazon.com and at several other places, though you may encounter a brief backorder during the early days. I ordered mine from outpost.com and got it in about 2.5 weeks. It is well worth the money, and I've donated my MpTrip to my wife.

Firmware: The Volt I received on 15 Mar 2001 was shipped with firmware 1.09f, which I quickly upgraded.
Software: Two CDs were shipped with the unit: Disk 1 includes RealPlayer, RealJukebox, Adobe Acrobat and pdf documentation. Disk 2 includes Adaptec/Roxio's Easy CD Creator 4.x and DirectCD.
Headphones: buds
Remote: cleverly designed, although seems a bit flimsy
Power Supply: wall wart 4.5v positive center, 3.5mm plug. Auto adapter is available from Radio Shack (Part #273-1801).
Case: with belt loop
Batteries: 2xAA Duracell, included. Use NiMH and a MAHA charger instead, and save mucho dinero in the long run.

Media compatibility

Verified: 74min CD-R, 80min CD-R, 74min CD-RW
The Volt happily flashed firmware from an open cd-rw (mastered).

Filesystem compatibility

Played: ISO9660 Level 3 (DirectCD closed to ISO9660). This is a Great Leap Forward.
Played: Joliet - both open and closed single-session disc
Played: Joliet - both open and closed multi-session disc (Mode 2 / XA)
Played: DirectCD CD-RW. This is a real shocker.
Did not play: Open DirectCD CD-R. Attempted to spin up several times; "No Disc".

Mishandling multisession discs

Here's what I tried: 

*Volt with 1.20 beta firmware,
*Disc A: open cd-r with three previous (non-firmware-related) sessions.
*Disc B: open cd-r with one previous (non-firmware-related) session.
*Disc C: open cd-r with only mp3s on it, used to put in the Volt
	to get it to say what the firmware version is.

1.  Burned a fourth session on Disc A with the 1.13 firmware on it.  Removed all
other files from the layout (ie, the firmware is now the only thing in the
root directory)

2.  flashed [down] to 1.13.  Put in Disc C and verified 1.13 firmware.

Note: Volt reported 7 files on Disc A (those from earlier sessions)
which it should not see.  This means it does not handle multisession
discs correctly.  See below.

3.  Burned a fifth session on Disc A with the 1.20beta firmware on it (overwrote
the 1.13 file of the same name).

4.  Flashed.  Put in Disc C, still showed 1.13.

The Volt does not appear to read the entire TOC when looking for firmware
update files.  It stops at the /first/ instance of the firmware it
finds in the root directory.  This may be related to why the Volt takes
longer times to read multisession discs than single session or DAO discs.
And is the reason I use a caveat like "Unless the Volt is doing something
unorthodox I don't know about yet."

5.  Closed Disc A.

6.  Flashed.  Still shows 1.13.  Discarded Disc A.

7.  Burned another volume onto Disc B with the firmware (ie didn't import
the previous session). Volt correctly finds the volume and upgrades
to 1.20.

8.  Added a third volume to Disc B, with only mp3 files on it. Volt does not 
see firmware, plays the MP3s.

Bottom line: if you are going to flash your Volt, do it with a CD-RW (if your firmware is recent enough) or write another volume to an old cd (even a coaster will work) and use that.

Praise

Full fast-forward and rewind, at speeds from 1x-6x.
flashable firmware is a godsend
Resume features is a boon to OTR listening. If the batteries die while playing and I swap out the batts quickly, it seems to resume where left off. If I drag my feet it resumes at the beginning of the current file.
Sucks up most any media and filesystem.
Spin-down preserves battery life, and is particularly efficient at low OTR bitrates (my casual observation is that the Volt spins up every 6.5 minutes or so on 32kbps OTR files.. 10+ hours on a set of NiMH batteries is real.

Nitpicks

silly dancer animation on panel
earbud 'phones - throw them away or use them for night-time (pillow) listening.
shipped in hard plastic 'bubble' instead of box
A 'voice' EQ setting would be nice for audiobooks and OTR
would like a built in beltclip. I've put a carabiner on my case which allows for easy transitions. Note: this works best for people who don't walk around alot, because the unit swings more and may skip. It works for me because I sit most of the time and walk around for relatively brief periods.
volume level is low for some people's tastes. I find it varies immensely by headphone; my Sony MDR-W14 are painfully loud with the volt, even though they were not $$$ headphones. My other cheapie phones here in the house sound low and a bit muffled with the volt.

Resources

Alfmeister's review
Firmware downloads
Portables forum on MP3.com -- much RioVolt info
RioVolt homepage

$Id: riovolt.orb,v 1.5 2003/02/02 04:45:13 mouse Exp $

This page best viewed with a monitor.

You can if you are not a spammer.

Amazon.com 100 Hottest Books, CDs, Videos, and DVDs.