Digisette DUO-MP3 / VR-100 MP3 Player

Digisette DUO-MP3 / VR-100 MP3 Player
Manufacturer: Digisette
Product Type: CE

Editorial Review:
Product Description
It looks and works like a cassette, but it's actually a revolutionary digital audio player. Bridging the digital and analog worlds, the patented DUO E-Cassette Player allows you to download and listen to digital audio books, MP3 music, and more, right off the Internet.
Amazon.com Review
Digisette's Duo-MP3 portable MP3 player, designed also to be usable with conventional cassette players, comes close to being an excellent digital convergence product, but its limited memory capacity and high price really hurt its overall value.

Although the MP3-Duo is shaped like a standard audiocassette tape, that doesn't mean it looks bad. The sleek bare aluminum housing with black accents is attractive and adds a measure of ruggedness to the device that plastic can't match. A compartment for the included rechargeable battery is on top, along with a small power switch. There's a headphone jack on the side for listening to the Duo-MP3 without a cassette player, plus a narrow port for the interface cable that links the device to your PC via the parallel port. An included CD-ROM contains software that let us easily send MP3 files from our computer to the Duo-MP3. A typical MP3 file is about 3 to 4 MB, and it took an average of 50 seconds for the parallel port interface to transmit that much data to the unit.

The controls located on the face of the Duo-MP3 are very disappointing. Two buttons are used to raise and lower the volume, another button is used to stop tracks, and a fourth button is used to play tracks. The play button can also be pressed while you are listening to a song to select one of four preset equalizer settings, although two of the presets made all of the music we listened to sound muddy. Selecting tracks requires the use of two hands, as they require holding down one of the volume buttons and pressing play. It's an annoying setup, and there is no LCD display on the front of the device to let you know which track is playing--an unforgivable omission on a portable MP3 player.

Fortunately the sound quality is good--as long as you are listening with a better set of headphones than the tinny-sounding earbuds Digisette supplies. Listening to high-quality MP3s in our car via the cassette player sounded virtually indistinguishable from listening to the same tracks on CD, although there was some hiss that is unavoidable where tape heads are involved. It is very easy to use the MP3-Duo in a cassette tape player. We just turned it on, popped it into our tape deck, and accessed tracks by pressing fast-forward and rewind on the cassette player. The included rechargeable battery pack will keep the unit powered for up to six hours.

Considering the high price of this player one would expect to get a lot of memory, but sadly this isn't the case. The built-in 32 MB holds little more than a half hour of audio, and upgrading (via a 32 MB or 64 MB MultiMediaCard) is expensive. For the money it is possible to get a much more full-featured portable MP3 player with an LCD display, extra memory, better controls, and a car kit with a cassette player adapter. --T. Byrl Baker

Pros:

Works in any cassette player
Small design
Good sound quality--especially if you use better headphones or a good cassette player

Cons:

Paltry amount of memory, and upgrading is expensive
Limited controls
Slow file-transfer interface

Amazon.com Product Description
The Digisette DUO-MP3 gives you the best of both worlds when it comes to enjoying digital audio. You can use it as a stand-alone portable MP3 player with its included earphones. And with its digital-to-analog converter and magnetic tape emulator interface, you can also insert it into your car stereo, portable boombox, or home cassette deck. Its solid-state electronics provide for a skip-free audio experience, while the slim, lightweight aluminum case provides the utmost in portability.

The DUO-MP3 comes with RealJukebox, enabling you to easily convert your CDs into MP3 files. It automatically fills in album title, song title, artist, and genre information into the MP3 file.

The DUO-MP3 comes with 32 MB of memory, expandable to 96 MB using MultiMediaCard flash memory. The rechargeable NiMH battery allows uninterrupted use for up to 6 hours. It comes with a 1.2-volt rechargeable NiMH battery, a battery charger, earphones, a parallel 18-pin PC-compatible computer cable, and a CD-ROM with RealJukebox software.

Average customer rating: 4.0

ITS A SONY

Similar Items:

Western Digital WD800BB 80GB 7,200RPM Ultra ATA/100
Memorex DVD+R 16x 4.7GB 100 Pack Spindle

SONY AW-Q170A-B2 BLACK 18X DOUBLE & DUAL LAYER DVD+/-RW (White box)

Manufacturer: Sony
Product Group: CE
Binding: Electronics
ASIN: B000H80JLU

Related Categories:

DVD±RW

DVD±RW

Customer Reviews:

ITS A SONY.......2007-02-28

Would have given 5 stars but it doesnt write RAM discs. Not that i care... but i like options. this makes the second sony writer ive owned.
Quality Quality Quality. ive had it one day and i love it so far. My dru820 is going on 100 Successfull writes NO COASTERS!!! Sony is the only way to go.

Electronics:

Electronics

Electronics

Consumer Electronics

Intl Laserjet 8550GN Color 24/6PPM 128MB 3.2GB HDd Spa 220V

Acer AL1913W 19" LCD Monitor

OLYMPUS MR-500i m:robe 500 20GB Digital Audio Player and Digital Camera

Compaq Evo Notebook N620c - Pentium M 1.6 GHz - RAM : 512 MB - HD : 60 GB - CD-RW / DVD - Gigabit Et

Lenovo ThinkPad T60 8741 - Core 2 Duo T7200 / 2 GHz - Centrino Duo - RAM : 1 GB - HD : 80 GB - CD-RW

Fujitsu Siemens LifeBook S7010 - Pentium M 1.7 GHz - Centrino - RAM : 1 GB - HD : 60 GB - DVD

Victor Dual-Power Pocket Calculator

Lenovo ThinkPad G41 2886 - Celeron D 320 / 2.4 GHz - RAM : 256 MB - HD : 30 GB - CD-RW / DVD - Win X