Customer Reviews

Soundfly SD WMA/MP3 Player Car Fm Transmitter for SD Card, USB Stick, Mp3 Players (iPod, Zune)

5 star:		(466)
4 star:		(170)
3 star:		(39)
2 star:		(29)
1 star:		(23)

 

 

I bought this unit with a specific purpose in mind using the RDS functionality. I just recieved this unit yesterday and it is pretty impressive considering the low costs and RDS functionality.

1. Sound - This is tricky. The sound is good using USB and SD cards as your source. However, the sound is great when you use the Analog input(2.5mm input I would have expected the sound to be better with USB/SD cards. I was blown away when I played my Sony MP3 player thru the input jack. It sounded great. 4.5 Stars here)

2.) Power - This is powered by a 12v cigarette lighter plug. I wanted to use it in the house and power it from an AC outlet. I used a litte converter specifically designed for that purpose. On other units, as soon as you plug the unit into AC, you get a nasty little hum, and sometimes static. When this unit, it is very clean, no hum at all. Five Stars for that)

3.) Ease of Use - This unit has a very simple display that can be cryptic if you don't read the instructions. It is easier to use via the remote control,than the buttons on the unit. Most notable is the equalizer display which also doubles as a Volume Unit VU) meter. The instructions don't mention that, but that is how it works. There is also a volume control on the remote, but not on the unit itself. You can save up to 7 FM freqencies in memory and use the remote to scan the frequencies, pretty cool.

4.) RDS - This is the feature I was most curious about. The instructions say that RDS only works with the USB memory port, however that is not true. It also worked with the SD card port too, which was a nice surprise. The SD card hides away neatly. When you use a USB Flash drive, the flash drive sticks out and takes away from the compact form factor. The unit displays the name of the Song, track number and folder name. It also displays " Musicfly" intermittenly when a song is playing via SD or USB use. It displays "Musicfly" continuously if no song is playing. I am assuming this is an advertising splash screen from Sound Fly). Didn't see anyway to get rid of this.

Here is another operational quirk not mentioned in the intructions. If you decide to use the Analog input, but leave a USB or SD card in the unit,t he unit will keep playing and displaying the Song information on your RDS radio screen even though the audio switches the Analog Source. This was actually a plus for me because it means I can search through memory cards while listening to another audio source.

5.) Transmission Range - This is the only area where I was dissappointed. In all fairness to Satechi, it is advertised as a personal transmitter, and is probably not designed to transmit very far. That being said, I have other personal units that will transmit over 75 ft. line of sight) with no problem. This unit may give you 15 ft, but operates best within 10 ft of your radio. If Sound Fly would add just a little bit more power to this unit, it would be a great unit.

Summary -- The sound is great on the Analog input jack, Sound is good using SD or USB input. The remote control is very useful and adds some functionality that you can't do with buttons on the unit. don't loose your remote) It can be powered with AC/DC converters sources without the worry about HUM and interference. The RDS display works well if your radio is so equipped. I have only been able to find, 1 other RDS capable transmitter(Kennsington) and it is for the Ipod only and costs twice as much as this one.)
The only downdside for this unit for me is the transmission range, but that should not be a problem for anyone using this in a car.

Would I buy another one ? Yes

Update - 8/14/08

I did finally take this unit out an use in my car driving around town and it worked flawlessy most of the time. The only propblem, as I mentioned earlier, is power. You get a litte bit of hiss on the radio at various times, and I also noticed that if you pass another car that may be using a similar device, you will get interference from that passing cars' transmitter. As we use to say in the old days of CB radio, other transmitters just " step all over" this device. I don't have this problem with my VR3 transmitter. So again, if Satechi would add just a litte more power, this would be a 5 Star Unit.

Update - 11-10-08

This unit is great and has quickly become my favorite player transmitter. The sound is great and I only seem to have interferrence in heavy traffic or downtown Atlanta) settings. This unit is so easy to use. I also want to correct something I stated earlier, you can adjust the volume without the remote. You just have to press the right sequence of buttons to do it. I plan to order two more of these for Christmas Gifts.

Update - 10-21-09

Still love this transmitter. Take it with me when traveling because it works great in rental cars. Only issue now is not a problem with the unit, but local issue. CDC( Center for Disease Control uses the 87.9 frequency for low power FM Emergency Broadcast. Anytime you are within about 3 miles of the CDC, all you hear is the CDC announcer. I had to program an alternate frequency for use when I travel near CDC now. The only problem is there are not that many open frequencies above 88.1 in the Altanta area anymore. 87.9 is still your best option in most places.

Update 09/21/2011

Still using this product and it still works great. I am using it in an older truck now that only had a am /fm / Cassette Player Head Unit. This is a very easy way to get alternative music. Still wish this had just a little more power, but other than than that, it is a good transmitter and only one of 2 or 3 that I have found that have RDS capability.

I ordered this curious thing online to solve one of my most insane driving frustrations, ADVERTISING! Instead of corporate tripe interrupting my peace of mind every few songs, I set my home PC to record choice streams for hours on end all night and save them on my SD card. Who hoo! For less than the cost of a new radio for 3 vehicles, and without the hassle of carting around a bunch of CD's life is good!

The sound fly works like it should, like you'd expect and it's really simple, intuitive. I can play MP3's off my cell phone with the little adapter cable they include. The plug in unit is flexible for easy visibility, though the only drawback might be the red LED display is washed out in bright direct sunlight. I find this a very fair trade off for the ease of visibility at night. I plugged this FM transmitter into my car and could receive the signal in my truck 2 or 3 parking spaces away, *more* than good enough! I do not need Blue Tooth so this is perfect for me. After reading the minimalist instruction sheet, I realized I had to name my music folder 'MP3' and put the files in a subdirectory, then the Sound Fly automatically can search and skip to where I want. I love the Bookmark button on the remote since my files are sometimes 500m or more, it saves where I stopped it and restarts without having to fast forward 2 or 3 hours.

My unit arrived in an astonishingly short 3 days. I had a small inconvenience with the nifty remote control being inoperative, but I must absolutely commend Satechi and their people in San Diego for being VERY VERY prompt, trusting and sincere in their customer service by promptly sending me a working replacement. I got email replies from them within 24 hours or less. I'm sure the bad part situation was one of those darn one in a million things that just happens. I highly recommend that you can trust them to deliver what they offer...a good product and professional service. I should also say the USPS did their job too, they surely could have lost it for us! If you misplace or lose the remote yourself, the unit is still quite functional, though you lose bookmark and fast forward functions.

I'm a happy guy! Thanks. W. Wilson
PS. You might like Somafm or RadioParadise, two of my favourite streams that have NO advertising.

UPDATE March 15 2010
Still working great. Here's a couple things I wish I had been able to know before I bought it. It can accept USB drives, the socket is on the bottom edge, center. The audio cable is a MINI stereo style on the left side near the top and the supplied cable is kinda short so I bought an extension at my local radio rip off store...so I could look at my BlackBerry to select files without bending my face to the dash. If you have the audio cable plugged in, the USB and the SD sources will not play and this *may* cause you to panic and think the unit died...which it hasn't! You HAVE to understand and follow the file folder structure and it's limitations or it won't play. Top folder should be 'MP3' or 'mp3' . I have not used 'soundfly' which is suggested also. There is a VU meter function, when music plays, the display ramps up and down with the beat. It WILL work without the remote, but not as nicely. When fast forwarding/ or reversing it has several speeds, indicated by display maquee style with a bracket which roughly imitates an arrow (A really nice feature) The unit will remember the last song playing when the power is turned off, but it will start at the beginning of the file again. If your file is really really long, you will prefer using the book mark feature to make it start at the same point within the file when it powers up. If you pull out the USB or SD card, it will forget your place and have to initialise again, which I should mention can take like 30seconds with a big card. I used an 8gig SD and it seemed like forever for it to scan and index / initialize. The limit I think is 500 files so anything more than 2gig is kinda overkill in my opinion. I just keep several 1gig cards with different genres of music on them. You can hot pull and insert the SD or USB cards. Switching SD cards while driving is okay and easy to do. The SD card inserts from the right side with a positive spring loaded catch feel, no doors, covers or fumbling. The unit is pretty rugged. The head tilts to accommodate your socket angle / visibility and after all this time of yanking it still holds its place without drooping. My one gripe is that it doesn't fit all lighter sockets tight. I have to do the *fold up a receipt into a little shim and insert it as I plug in the unit to the car* trick. Maybe it was intended for foreign/ etc cars. I drive a Malibu, a Chevy P/U and a Saturn and a F-550 and they all are a loose fit. One road bump and it loses power. One paper shim and it will run all night, playing away looping around to the beginning of the file list again and again. It gets a bit warm, but not hot. Reception is very good. I don't use the presets, I leave it on 87.7mhz. I really like this player...I wish it had bluetooth..., and presume the bigger/ newer one is just as good. The company service was excellent. Buy it new and get the warranty. My remote was replaced promptly (see prev in my review).

UPDATE Dec 23 2011

STILL works great! Leave on all night and car still starts!
STILL annoyed the lighter socket fit is loose, have to shim it with paper.
SILL love the thing.

I've had an VR3 FM USB Car Transmitter for two years. It had no remote unlike the Soundfly, but I loved using it. However, there were things that I found most

frustrating when using it and I didn't realise this until after I'd purchased it.

VR3 MP3 Player FM Transmitter frustrations:

1) It wouldn't remember where I last was listening to.
2) I couldn't fast forward nor rewind. Arrgh! You could only skip between tracks. This was frustrating because I have a habit of rewinding to listen to parts of my audio tracks again and again and of course I can't fast forward through averts. It was especially frustrating because of point 1 above as I would always have to start listening from the beginning of a track. Particularly annoying when listening to long tracks.
3) No remote - Please note most FM transmitters don't come with FF or RW functions on the remote's either.
4) It was white and it was ugly.
5) Limited frequency range. A lot of these devices only allow you turn use the upper and lower FM frequency ranges.
6) It takes USB dongles and SD cards but the SD cards are limited to 2GB.

Now for the Soundfly SD:

1) The SoundFly SD remembers exactly where you were last listening to. This is so refreshing as I can just turn off the car and when I next climb back in and start the car, with the SoundFly SD plugged into the car lighter socket, it just starts right of from where I left last. Awesome! Bear in mind I have a new model car less than four years old, but a lot of these devices just die when a car is started and the device has been accidentally left in. I've not had a single problem with using the Soundly this way, and I believe I have no reason to worry about it. You even have a bookmarking facility.
2) I can fast forward and rewind to my hearts content. Even with the remote.
3) The remote is is actually quite handy, especially when driving. You can certainly use the controls on the device itself, but the remote is easier. It's not too difficult to remember the position of the keypad buttons, so using the remote while driving is quite easy. Don't crash.
4) This FM transmitter is black. The device itself is a heck of a lot more attractive than the VR3 I have. It's even smaller.
5) You can tune into all the FM frequency range in single steps, so there's no shortage of places to find a gap in the FM range. The Soundfly can remember up to seven bookmarked spots. As for the strength of the FM transmitter, it's certainly no worse than the VR3. But unlike the VR3 I have a much broader spectrum of FM frequencies to try to find a clear spot. Much better.
6) The device takes USB dongles & SD cards. But this device takes the High Capacity ones up 32GB.

Other points to note. You can also connect your iPod or MP3 player via the supplied cable. You also get a 10A fuse. In case you can't figure out what it's for, and it's not stated in the instructions, the device has a fuse inside the part that pushes into the lighter socket. That should blow before the device does. Handy if you leave the device in all the time. If the device stops working, check the fuse. You unscrew the end. The instructions are clear, but one point of note is that it doesn't show you how to change the fuse.

I'm so happy with this FM transmitter and highly recommend it to anyone who'll listen. The only thing I can think that is lacking with this is Bluetooth. I would love for this device to be able to communicate with my phone or Bluetooth headset (if I had some), or or an MP3 player that had Bluetooth.

I purchased this to play Podcasts in my vehicle while traveling. I had a few question I couldn't find the answers too, so, after using the Soundfly I thought I'd post the info I would have liked to had before I bought.

And Yes I will buy another one of these for my other car.

1. Memory Limits - The instructions manual says your can use up to a 32 GB thumb drive or 32 GB SD memory card. I purchased and use a 8GB SDHC memory card and a 16GB SanDisc Thumb drive. Both work great.

2. Folder Limits - The manual says you have to create a directory structure with no more than 10 folder and you can have about 50 files per folder. (I haven't tested this but it's in the manual) I just copy my mp3s into the root of the memory card and let it go.

3. The FM transmitter works very good in my car. I did NOT have to set the FM channel because it has a strong enough signal to override the local stations without static.

4. If you turn off the Soundfly it does not save your place in the mp3 you are listening to but it does remember what mp3 you were listing to and will starts playing it from the beginning when turned back on. It has a bookmark button on the remote that might save your place but you would have to remember to do it manually.

5. The remote works, is small, but uses IR. It is line of sight. It was not a problem in my car. The remote has a FF, RW, Skip forward, skip back, Folder, bookmark, play and pause. There is more but those cover most everything you would want to do.

Over all it's a good product at a good price. The only down side so far is the lack of a meaningful display. The display is only 3 or 4 digits. Unless you know the order of your mp3's navigation would be hard.

Purchased this for my Chevy which would require $150 in adapters from Crutchfield to install a regular radio/USB/CD player. Also a bit of metal work on the dash, to say nothing of losing the rear DVD system.

I'd install a Sony in dash unit, if it were easier (I've done that on cars with normal "DIN" radios). This device is frustrating as it has all the capabilities I want, but has not worked reliably or consistently.

This device will play WMA and MP3 files over the car radio and show some track info on an RDS equipped radio. This aspect worked fine for me, and had moderate audio quality.

I was very disappointed with the fast forward, reverse, and bookmark functions - all very useful to me when listening to an audiobook. Typically the device will lose where I was in the book. Turning the vehicle on/off is problematic with the device locking up sometimes as well as inconsistently retaining the last position.

To work around the problems I found hitting pause, the bookmark on the remote, and powering down the device before shutting off the vehicle works about 80% of the time to keep the place I left off when I restart the vehicle. The remote's consistency has been about 60%.

Overall 3 stars because I can listen via my radio, but find the frustration factor high.

I never thought I'd find one that works as well as this unit.
Very strong FM signal covers up all but the strongest FM stations.
Two different type of bulk storage chips as well as playing MP3 and WMA formats.
excellent sound from external players.
Has the ability to select different folders.
A little cumbersome selecting an appropriate FM frequency as you have to scroll thru the entire band to get to the one you want, but once there, you can enter it into memory. Not a big deal, I guess.
For the price, this unit delivers.

I bought this for its ability to select folders because all the other FM transmitters that I know only let you switch to the previous/next song which is a real nuisance considering how many files (thousands, actually) you can now put on a USB drive.
I found that
1) you can not really select folders - you can move to the previous/next folder. Well, still not bad.
2) for me it only reads the first 19 folders and after that goes back to the first folder. I tried to rename folders, remove spaces and dashes from the names - nothing helps, it still only reads the first 19 folders.
In the specifications I found that "Sound-fly SD supports up to 10 subdirectories and plays 50 music files per subdirectory, totally 500 files." This is a very disappointing limitation...
But in any case, this is the best FM transmitter that I have found so far.

I've tried a half dozen or so FM transmitters over the years and had given up on ever finding one that really sounded good and didn't suffer from static or radio bleed through. Saw an ad for the Soundfly transmitter and read the user reviews. Nearly every reviewer recommended it, so I bought one to try. Sure enough, it lived up to all the favorable reviews. Installation was quick and simple. I've had it on the same frequency since I got it and never had a radio station bleed through or static problem. I've played it mainly with SD cards loaded with my favorite MP3s at anywhere from 96kps to 192kps. The quality of the music sounds at least as good as the best FM radio station and often rivals burned CD quality. I've played the SD cards directly from within the Soundfly player and also through my MP3 player plugged into the input port. I think I prefer the direct method because there seems to be more uniformity to the sound quality from song to song. Playing through the MP3 player allows more volume and somewhat more dynamic bass but I find myself having to make more adjustments to the volume, bass and treble from song to song in order for the bass or volume to not become overwhelming. I leave the Soundfly in the lighter with an SD card in the transmitter and when I turn the car on the transmitter comes on automatically and begins playing my music. When I get back in the car after a stop the music picks up at the start of the last song that was playing when I stopped. I wish I'd known about the Soundfly long ago but at least I've got it now and can enjoy about 400 songs per 2GB card on long drives without having to change CDs often like in the past. I got one of these for my wife's car as well and will probably get more for family Christmas gifts. This is one product that performs like it should and the price is very reasonable.

I've tried several fm transmitter products (Belkin, DLO Transpod, Monster) in the past and had come to the conclusion that the technology would never work for me either because I was in the Chicago area or because the antenna in our two Hondas just weren't placed well for them to work correctly. The primary car this was aimed at was a 2005 Honda Accord, which, if you have XM radio in, you cannot add any external inputs to. So a non-integrated FM transmitter was our only option. Like I said, I couldn't get one to work and was just figuring that we were going to have to live with the deficiency.

Then I tried the SoundFly and all of my expectations changed. I just pluged it in, plugged in our iPod using the included audio cable, tuned it and our car stereo to the same channel and it worked immediately. Even when didn't have any music playing through it, it blocked out the static and partial reception of the radio station I had it set to. It isn't completely silent. It makes a slight background static sound every now and then that sounds like blowing air but there is no harsh static or interupting radio feeds at all. Actually, it reminds me of the brief static you get sometimes when your XM radio loses the satellite.

The unit isn't flawles. The cord it comes with is too short (but a new, longer one is just a few bucks). I haven't tried plugging cards into it so I cannot comment on that. I have only connected an iPod touch and a Blackberry Storm to it. The remote has many functions. It would be great if they actually manipulated the iPod or phone, but at this price I didn't really expect that. I think that they may have a higher level product that has some of that functionality.

Overall, I am very happy with the Soundfly (although, the bar was set super low by some of its competitors who have been marketing junk for years now)

I ordered a Soundfly device and wasn't sure what to expect. When it came, I tried it out and it worked faily well, but it seemed like the transmitter in it wasn't powerful enough. Shortly after the device arrived, I got an email asking me how I liked it. I replied that it worked pretty well, but was somewhat unhappy about the occasional fuzziness. Shortly after that, I got another email saying that they were sending me a different one and it included a pre-paid return label.

So now I tried the new one and it works great! No fuzziness and the music sounds great. I would recommend it to anyone. It is especially good for me since I don't have an iPod and didn't really want one. I just wanted to play MP3's in my car that only has a casette with the radio. This is perfect.