Customer Reviews

Digisette DUO-64 64 MB Digital Audio Player

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

1. This product was advertised as working in any cassette deck. It does not. It will not work or not work well in any standard tape deck on any german auto (audi, volkswagen etc) I was told I might improve the situation with a small square of cellophane tape, not what you wish to hear when you just dished out 240 bucks

2. The first item sent to me was defective. it took 5.38 hours (my phone counts minutes )of support with both audible and digisette to figure this out. support ran from very helpful to pleasant but not very knowlegeable.

3. The directions are very poorly written. Set up is more difficult than you would imagine. Audible and digisette are partners yet there softwar is not only uncompatible, it actually will crash your system if both are open on your desktop for any period of time. the support people tell you this 4. the device is very confusing. with only one small amber or green indicator, status of the device depends on how long the green light is flashing, whether the amber light blinked once or twice etc..... making the whole operation of the device more of an effort than needs be. especially when the device works differently in different tape decks. I was told just to put it in and fiddle with the deck's controls and i would figure out what they did. Even when functioning the dvice will not let you listen to data stored on the flash card. The setup instructions i received from the support on the phone, involving formating of the memmory etc.. were COMPLETELY different that those in the directions

5 summary. Cool design, great idea, poor execution. in talking/e-mailing other "satisfied" customers, I found that they were only satisfied because the device would play a little music when they put it in their deck. EVErY ONE (21/21 so far) were having contiuing problems with the device but have just resigned themselves to the limited functionality.

SAVE YOURSELF>>>>>>>>DO NOT BUY Support at Audible told me off the record they have many problems with this product and she would recommend an Iomega zip player. Thats what I am going to try next.

Well, I read some of the reviews before I bought this, so I wasn't totally sure that it'd be any good. However its great. Contrary to some people's experiences I have had no problems connecting it to my PC through a USB hub. The software installed seamlessly (on XP). At a sample rate of 96KHz for MP3s I get around 2 CDs onto it at once and they sound great. It plays fine in the car cassette player (which is what it was intended for). You can skip tracks backwards and forwards using RW and FF controls on the cassette player. It goes into power standby mode if you leave it switched on when you leave the car. It takes next to no time to download tracks. And you can use it as a standalone MP3 player.

Only two grumbles:

1. It would be nice if it came off standby as soon as the spindles started turning in the cassette player (it doesn't, you have ot take it out and press the play button once).

2. Don't try and upgrade the software that comes with it. I spent 3 frustrating hours trying to sort the mess out before I used the XP 'revert to previous state' feature (boy, am I glad I upgraded to XP).

All in all, a neat, easy to use product that delivers on its promises.

I purchased this device to help ease my daily commute by listening to audio books. I already own an Archos 6GB Jukebox for my mp3 music files, and while I love the capacity allowing me to carry a variety of music, it fell short for audio book content. The primary problem is the lack of a bookmark feature.

When I found the Digisette DUO-64 I was intrigued, as it seemed to address exactly the problem I wanted to solve. I read the reviews and went ahead with the purchase, and am very satisfied. One point not very clear in the literature is that a separate bookmark is maintained for each file on the device, allowing you to have multiple books or other content (magazines, newspaper, etc.) active at the same time. Battery life is excellent for spoken audio content and the 64 MB memory allows for around 15 hours of audio book content in Audible format 2.

This misses 5 stars only because of the slightly touchy navigation within and between programs, but with practice it can be mastered both with the buttons on the device and your cassette player controls. Given the small size, I don't think an LCD is feasible, and for my purposes is unnecessary.

For audio book content this player is unbeatable in features and convenience. As a standard MP3 player it is still a great product given its small size and large capacity (up to 128MB with an extra 64MB MMC card).

This is a great product. It is exactly what I wanted.

I spend over an hour driving back and forth to work every day and I wanted a product that would give me control over this time. Before getting the DUO, I mostly spent my time listening to public radio. The trouble with this is that I would catch the last 15 minutes of a really interesting show like Fresh Air or This American Life. Sometimes I spent the entire drive flipping between stations looking for something interesting.

With the Digisette I can download great programs and listen to them whenever I want. I now look forward to my commute.

I also have a ReplayTV Digital Video Recorder at home and think this product accomplishes the same thing for my commute. I love it.

Another comment said that it does not work in German Cars. I have tried it in my BMW and in a Mercedes and both of these worked fine.

The only reason I don't give this product five stars is that fast forwarding and rewinding is very slow. If I want to get to the middle of a one hour program I have to hold the fast forward button down for over five minutes. This gets really tiresome. Digisette should copy the ReplayTV unit and add a button that will fast forward 30 seconds every time you push it.

Everyone that listens to national public radio in their car should buy this product. Everyone that buys books on tape should buy this product.

I cannot say enough bad things about this device. It works sporadically, the fast forward and reverse only operate at 2x, it does not jump forward and backward between tracks (even though it is supposed to). Customer service is terrible. The product is so aggravating that I threw it out. I am a very "computer literate" person, and my problemns were not due to user error.

I bought this mp3 player for it's small size and becuase I have an older vehicle with a tape deck and don't want to lug around my cds and it works great for it's purpose. The battery life is a bit exaggerated but I don't have all of the cords I had with my RCA Lyra.

When I tried this player in my car the first time, I advanced to the next track by using the FF button per manufacturer's directions and noticed that it only advanced a few seconds into the song. Since my deck also had a music seek system which allows me to advance to the next song on a cassette with the touch of a button, I pressed the FWD seek then PLAY just to see what would happen and voila, it advanced to the next song. On another deck without the music seek function, there was no way to jump from one track to another without popping it out of the deck. The inability to skip between tracks is one MAJOR complaint about this product but I found a way around it. Other than that, it's acceptable though overpriced.

There's a lot of room for improvement on this mp3 player, I would either wait for another product to come out similar to this or hope that Digisette will improve on some of the pet peeves mentioned by other buyers.

All in all, this a great product without a clear competitor. People in the market for an extremely small and lighweight MP3 player who value the ability to play MP3s in their car will be happy with this product so long as they are willing to put up with the few small inconviences that come with using a product that's ahead of its time.

The pros:
* Very small size and light weight
* Great sound quality
* Can play your MP3s in any tape deck

The cons:
* The software that lets you move MP3s from your computer to this device is not very mature and doesn't support convienences like playlists
* The carrying case is cheap and does allow for easy access to the controls
* The earphones it comes with are flimsy
* The volume control should be a dial instead of a push button

I was Looking at the Rome player and found too many poor reviews to warrant purchasing it. However the reviews in this site on this device prompted me to look into Digisette. After a little scare with 2nd day shipping (really not worth it) I recieved it. The firmware upgrade to listen to WMA isn't necessary, it supports WMA out of the box. Purchased some Sony headphones to accompany it and Whammo! great audio on the go! Works in my standard Chevy Tahoe tape deck, rew and ff work great! Now to add some of the MMC memory to it and see how it works.

The DUO-64 was the perfect solution to my 1-hour commute. A CD player was too expensive and books on tape are difficult to swap while driving (and talking on the cell phone and drinking coffee...). The Audible service lets me download books and use my drive time wisely. I can also load music from my CDs.

There are two minor drawbacks. First, the DUO Manager software is hard to use. It's important to do each step in the right order--start the software, turn on the DUO, then plug it into the USB. When that doesn't work, undo everything, turn it off, press and hold the play button to reset and try it again in a different order. Second, the rewind feature when used on books only allows 2X rewind. It won't rewind faster or skip to the beginning of a chapter, as it will skip songs on a CD.

Otherwise, it's a well-made, small device that fits my needs.

UPDATE: My DUO failed after about a week. The folks at Digisette were very helpful and I had a new one in a few days. So far, it works well.