I am finally the proud owner of a portable CD player that can also handle MP3 files. The Pine D’Music SM200C I ordered back in September has finally shown up. I’ve had it about a week now. At long last, all the CDRs I’ve burned can now be used elsewhere besides my computer room. Since you can burn 650MBs or more onto a CDR — the equivalent of around 180 songs — these players are definitely the way to go. From what I’ve read, the best players right now are the Phillips Expanium and the Pine. I chose the Pine because it recognizes MP3 IDs, which I assumed would make it easier to navigate through all that audio.Firstly, despite what the box says, the player only recognizes the MP3 ID song title, not the artist & song titles. The box is also not terribly helpful about using the player. There are no instructions included, but luckily I already knew I had to hold the Play button down to turn the player on (the Stop button, however, is also marked as “Power Off”). The player is sleek and light, looking like any other portable player, but capable of much more. There are only a few buttons on the player’s lid, and most of them are pointless. The five preset EQ settings don’t really improve the sound that much; most people are too impatient to bother with the ten-second Scan; the Anti-Shock can not be disabled with CDRs; and with that much material to choose from, a Repeat button seems particularly pointless. Navigating through that wealth of material is done through a dial-like cross button: Back and Forward to the left and right, Play and Stop on top and bottom. The player has a Hold feature, located by the headphone plug, but, surprisingly this does not disable the Open latch.
One place where the Expanium greatly excels over my Pine is in its anti-shock protection. The Pine only features five seconds of protection, adequate for listening in the car perhaps but not good when moving about. The player handles bumps well when placed on a cushion or held in the palm of the hand; but it can be easily jarred on countertops, pausing slightly. The player has been able to handle all the CDRs I’ve fed it, with MP3s from 128kbps to 320kbps. (The clock feature behaves a little oddly at 320kbps, ticking off in double-time!) It does have occasional trouble recognizing song title IDs — oddly mostly on the CDR provided with the player! This is usually more true with the junky files found on Napster than those from binary newsgroops or perhaps the ones you make yourself. Speaking of things coming with the player, the box also includes rechargable batteries (which must be recharged in the player), earbud headphones, a wall adapter, and a CDR of anonymous MP3s and a CDR of Music Match software.
As I mentioned, the Pine’s standout feature is its ability to recognize MP3 ID song titles. This certainly aids in navigating one’s way through the vast forest of songs. The LCD window is rather small, so only a portion of the title will show, but each song title crawls fully across the window once at the start of each track or when the pause button is used. If you’ve burned your MP3 files in different album folders, the Pine will recognize them and keep your tracks separate, but, unfortunately, you can not access the start of a particular album. The only way to advance through tracks is by hitting Next, to go through them one by one, or to press the Play/Pause button and hold the Next button down firmly to jump forward ten tracks. The Pine organizes album folders and the songs contained therein alphabetically, so it’s wise to pay attention when naming files or tagging songs.
The Pine is not perfect, it can certainly be improved. The shock protection is supposedly already increased in the upcoming upgrade, and next year’s player from RCA is supposed to display even more tag information. Personally, I would love to see a Random Play feature (this must be difficult to achieve though, since even the eagerly awaited RCA player has Random Play only for regular CDs). But, the Pine is great place to start. It’s only $199 and beats the crap out of those more expansive memory-card players that can only handle a handful of songs.
I hope to test the Expanium some time, and, like everyone else, I await the RCA. But for now, I’m quite pleased with my Pine D’Music SM200C.
