Customer Reviews

Go Video Rave-MP AMP256 256 MB MP3 Player

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(18)

 

 

I'm starting to collect MP3 players like some people collect stamps. I've owned a Grey Whale (256Mb flash player), a Rio Cali 256, a Creative Muvo2 (still), and now this Rave MP. I've also had MP3 ability with my Handspring Visor (via a Soundsgood module) and two Sony Clies. Let's just say I'm converted to digital music.

I bought this one because the price was super low, a one-time offer at a big box retailer. They were in and out of stock, but I finally scored mine and here's my take.

For the price, it's near-unbeatable. The LCD screen is extremely readable, not a small feat considering the miniscule two-line display of Creative's Muvo2. Navigation is quasi-semi-para-intuitive, meaning once you play with it you'll get it. The nav pad is a standard d-pad with a center push button for activating choices, and it has slightly stamped tactile cues for function (FF, REV, Play/Pause, Stop). You might need to brush up on your braille to use this in the dark, but you can visibly see the cues as well.

First and foremost is sound quality. It's loud and clear, but not an overwhelming experience. It decodes WMAs and MP3s (per my own observations) and the LCD display makes good use of showing you song info in a flash... no scrolling, finally. As a player, it accomplishes the mission. FM tuning is not going to impress your friends with its DXing aplomb, but it pulls in stations outside 100% and within a building if you give it half a chance to find a signal.

Cool features? Oh yeah:
-FM line recording, although I can't imagine getting four
hours of Howard Stern on it;
-twenty radio presets;
-USB 2.0 connectivity as a removable drive, which makes music
synchronization fast and simple (use any music manager you
wish, including Windows Explorer);
-uses a single AAA battery and gets 12-14 hours from an
alkaline battery (use a rechargable and get about 8-10);
-and the reason I bought this, SD/MMC card capability.

The last point is worth discussion. I carry a Jump Drive Trio so I can read Memory Sticks, SD, and MMC cards, but also to carry a 1Gb MMC card with my system essentials and recovery tools. I have 384Mb free on it even after stuffing WinXP's two service packs on it, so I starting thinking about an MP3 player that would also handle cards.

The Rio Cali/ Forge line would have been my first choices, but the Cali is not recognized as a removable drive (you must use Rio s/w to xfer files) and the Forge is expensive (although it is now recognized as a removable drive). I stumbled upon the Rave MP from a friend who scours the web for deals. I took a shot and well, this is now my new card reader. It read my 1Gb MMC card with no problems, and that's my acid test.

I'm not crazy about the price point, because it's a little too close to the Rio Forge and Rio sound quality is generally superior to most devices. However, if you catch this on sale, you absolutely must give it a try. It's a slickly-designed, sharp little toy that packs a ton of features in a small package.

Fred

Pros: Great features like expansion SD/MMC slot enables total storage of 256MB(onboard) + 512MB(SD card) = 768MB(total); allows navigaton of music by artist, album, etc., which is an unusual but very nice feature for a flash-based player; easily understood controls; good sound quality; nice holder for use while jogging, biking, etc.

Issues that tech support has told me will be fixed with new firmware scheduled for release in December-2004: 24-second start up time when fully loaded with music; won't recognize more than ~113 files

Cons: Not a show stopper, but the first unit would occasionally refuse to power up properly. I returned it for a new one and so far I am not having this problem anymore.

Drag-and-drop support: When connected via the USB port it looks like a disk drive, so you can simply drag-and-drop your music without installing any SW onto your machine. If you have added a card to the expansion slot, it looks like two separate drives -- one for the internal memory, the other for the SD/MMC card.

If the new firmware fixes the problems as committed, then I would rate this player 5 stars instead of 3.

For those newer to digital music, I think this is a great player and I'm very happy with it. I had purchased an entry level MP3 player a couple years ago and gave up on it and returned it.
When I was looking to stick my toe in the water again, this player caught my eye. I liked it's looks for one. It is easy to transfer music to because even if you don't use any other software like Musicmatch, it appears as a hard drive and you can just click and drag music to it and create folders just as you would with any other drive. This unit is also Microsoft Playforsure compatible which helps ensure you'll have minimal compatiblity issues with download services, etc. I haven't had any problems with Musicmatch or the Microsoft sites and their downloads. Also, I thought the supporting web site (http://www.rave-mp.com/sitemap) did a competent job of providing at least basic info like online pdf copies of user manuals (in case you lose yours). They also provide the capability for emailing questions via the web site which is nice.
The unit comes with headphones that I feel are pretty comfortable and have acceptable sound quality. The unit includes an armband which I haven't used yet and a belt clip which I REALLY like that I'm using a lot. The part of the belt clip that fits behind your belt is made of metal and feels very sturdy. The player snaps into the plastic frame of the belt clip easily, securely, looks good, and all controls are still nicely accessible.
Speaking of controls, I found the controls to be easy and intuitive.
I really like the LCD screen as well. The backlit screen has good contrast, displays a fair amount of information, scrolls the title if it is larger than the screen so you can read the entire title of the song, and is very spiffy looking with white text on black background.
I have not experienced the problems mentioned by other reviewers. I do not have long boot times (but it appears to be related to the number of songs on your player) and since I do not have more than about one CDs worth loaded on my player at this time that would explain why I haven't had that as a complaint. Obviously, I have not hit any software glitches with having too many songs, etc, either.
Today, I bought an SD card with an extra 256 of memory so I may enventially load enough songs to hit these issues. The SD card inserted without a hitch by the way.
Overall, I really, really like this player. I haven't had a single problem.
I'm using this player on my commute to work (I take the bus) and it's working out great for me.

I bought one of these and the sound was great, everything seemed great. Then after a few weeks of infrequent use the screen just went dead and a line went across the bottom of the screen. It played music fine I just wasn't able to tell what song I was playing. I e-mailed their customer support which promised a response within 24 hours. Two weeks later and still no reply. It is a good thing Costco is so good at taking returns. The return desk at Costco mentioned to me that they had many of these returned for the same problem.

So far the only feature of this product that has worked is the 90 day warranty!! The first day I used the player it worked great (about 4 hours). Tried to turn it on the next day, and it wouldn't come on. Did the battery out-in thing to reboot. That worked twice. The 3rd time it would not power on, no matter how many times I rebooted. There is a firmware update on the company website, but that didn't seem to make any difference. I am now waiting for my replacement unit from the company.
On the upside, the sound quality was great, I found the display and menus easy to read and navigate, and the design is nice. Reading through the other reviews, there seems to be some all or nothing going on with the product quality. I'm really hoping my new unit is problem free.
I guess for the low price, it may be worth the gamble, especially if you are willing to (potentially) wait through the warranty-replacement process to actually end up with a working player.

I got a Rave-MP Sport for my birthday over a month ago. At first I was really excited to have this portable player, but my joy was soon replaced with frustration and irritation. Here's the good, bad and the ugly:

GOOD:
Sounds fine to me as long as the MP3 files are encoded at 128 bit or higher. Having a radio tuner included is nice, but I haven't really used it much so far. I guess it would be handy for checking the news or listening to sports, but I mostly listen to mine in the car or when I'm working out... and I have radios in both of those places.

The size is a plus, since it can very easily fit in a pants or shirt pocket. Since you can lock the buttons, you won't have to worry about inadvertent bumps interrupting your music.

BAD:
Even with the 256MB model, it only held around 70-75 songs. I suppose you could fit more if you encoded the songs at lower quality, but that's not acceptable to me. Even with this low number of songs, it takes about 30 seconds for the player to power-up each time. You'd think it was smart enough to index the files after you upload new tracks, then it would not need to do this every time you turn it on. That's not the case here, and every time you use it you'll have to wait for it to read every file in memory before you can play anything. Because 75 songs was a pretty limited selection, I decided to buy a 512MB SD card. Now I have almost 200 songs on the device, but the boot-up time is almost unbearable. In most cases, it takes about a minute before I can push play to start listening to music.

Another annoying problem is that transferred songs don't always carry all of their ID3 TAG information to the Rave-MP. I had meticulously gone through all of my music and attached Genres to all of my songs. I had assigned every song in my library to Drive, Workout, or Mellow. After I transferred my selected songs to the player, MANY of them were not included in their proper genre, but instead a dozen ended-up as "(12)", where there were 12 songs grouped as a genre of their own for no apparent reason. Songs in this group varied across all artists and assigned genres... so I have no idea what caused the player to do this.

THE UGLY:
As frustrating as the slow startup and genre issues are, nothing frustrates me more than when the device just quits responding. Even though it is playing a song and seems to be running smoothly, sometimes I want to skip to the next track, use the menu, or power-down the device... and it won't respond to any of the buttons. The only option is to take off the cover and remove/replace the battery. To get back to where you were, now you have to wait a minute or so for it to boot again. Grrrrr.....

SUMMARY:
This is the only portable MP3 player I've ever used aside from a few minutes with my nephew's iPOD. His booted in just a couple of seconds every time. I now his cost three times as much, but it also has THIRTY times the storage. The bugs in the firmware of this device are unacceptable, and there needs to be an upgrade issued ASAP. As of today there is still no mention of any of the issues I've mentioned above in the support area of the company's web site. If they eventually release an upgrade that fixes these issues, then this product is a great purchase. If they don't, then I would strongly recommmend buying something else.

If only the company can get their acts together. This player excels in many areas, but fails on some very common tasks.

I am running firmware ver 2.053.

This company is the first one smart enough to invert the LCD display, so the background is black and foreground is white. This is a simple inversion in the logic that controls the LCD (hardware engineer here :) The end result is a super crisp and very readable display in ALL lighting surroundings, even under the sun.

The OS is respnosive and user friendly. Battery life does not meet the claim, but come close.

Here are the serious drawbacks:

1) crappy sound quality, even with my own high end headphones. We are in the 3rd or 4th generation realm for MP3 decoder chips, there is no excuse to have such lousy sound quality. The sound can be described in one word - weak. I've seen base line reference design from MP3 decoder IC companies that sound way better. Even if you just copy their reference design, you would have a better product.

2) the included self-retractable USB cable is NOT USB 2.0 compatiable. Why include it as a bonus accessory and claim it' s 2.0 compatible is beyond me!

3) the include headphones are rock bottom as they come. it's like you are listening to a tin can. There are a lot of inexpensive earbuds on the market that produce way better sound than these guys. It clearly shows the marketing people and/or engineering people behind this product is either too dumb to know better or just plain don't care.

I was looking for something compact with an SD slot, that wasn't too expensive. This player fits the bill perfectly. Other players may have certain advantages, but for the money, I don't think you can beat the MP 256.

Pluses are nice small size, decent battery life, easy file copy protocol, intuitive controls and organizational menus, and with a 512MB card, enough memory for 13 CDs. Transfer times were quick via USB 2 cable and I like the dedicated lock switch so settings don't get messed up while you're working out.

On the minus side: takes a longish 20+ seconds to boot-up, occasional glitches at start-up, requiring battery removal, maximum volume a bit low for my taste, somewhat tiny control buttons.

I highly recommend this player and don't think there's a better value around. Far nicer than the Rio Sport I purchased less than a year ago. With a one gig card, would prob hold about 20 CDs, which should be enough for most of us. If the new firmware fixes some of the little operational glitches, this player would rate at least 4 stars.

I had this Rave-MP AMP 256 player for a week, when it started to hang on the start-up screen. Tech support told me to remove the battery for at least 2 min. This worked a couple of times, then it was format the media by using format. That worked once.
My advice is to pay the extra $20 and go get an iPOD shuffle or something else, as this device is bound to just give you troubles.

I bought this player expecting some level of quality and a player that would hold up from a year until high capacity (2GB+) flash players were more readily available and affordable. I was truly disappointed in the Rave MP on the first day. Used is at the gym on a stationary bike for 20 minutes, later would not turn on, changed included battery with known good then it locked during power on, did not unlock in an hour. Sent unit back. Also, poor construction, cover doesn't line up with body, belt clip/holder design seemed like an afterthought not part of the player design or the ergonomics. **** I wasn't expecting much, a working MP3 player that could last a year - this player does NOT deliver