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FWIW, MP3 Players Posted by Justin VanAbrahams [Email]  (#32) [Profile/Gallery]
(more from Justin VanAbrahams) on Mon, 30 Sep 2002 08:32:38
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Ya'll may recall that I inquired about MP3 players a little bit back. Well, unable to decide on a unit, I bought three - a Blaupunkt MP3000, a Pioneer Premier P740, and a Sony CDX-MP70. I figured with all the cars kicking around I'd put them to use anyway...
The MP3000 is the little brother of the San Jose. It's missing a few features (like remote, preamps, and changer controls) but the actual logic and electronics are all the same. This guy was probably the fastest between tracks, but I don't think the sound quality was up there with the other two. Also, the display is so bright it's painful at night. You can order a dimmer display, but that seems like a hack and not a real fix. The search was for my '86 900S, and even in the lower DIN slot the lighting was so bright as to be distracting at night. A decent unit, but definitely showed it's price tag in the end. I sold it to my roommate. :) I paid $180 for it as Costco.
The Pioneer P740 was by far and away the cleanest-sounding of the three. The SFEQ and all the other sound-shaping tools are incredible, the display is fantastic, and the interface easy to use. The pop-up volume knob is just plain silly. Track seeking is PAINFULLY slow - 2-5 seconds between tracks. It's annoying in regular play, and exceptionally annoying when looking for a particular track. The non-auto-scrolling display is only a minor annoyance to me - I know what's on my CDs and usually in what order, so I don't tend to use the display anyway. On the upside, the drive mechanism is the quietest of the three - perhaps that's why the track search is so slow? At any rate, I ended up installing it in my Alfa. I paid $250 for it on EBay.
Finally, the Sony. The Sony was the best mix of everything, and the most expensive by like $100. Ouch. Track seek is ultra-fast, and it's faster between folders/directories than the Blaupunkt. The display is dimmable and color-switchable (7 colors!) which is pretty nice, though why someone would want a purple display is beyond me. The white/blue/green/red colors work quite well, however. It's very readable, auto-scrolls track names, and is simply huge. The EQ7 is not as nice as the Pioneer's two EQ modes (no sound positioning), but does the job quite well. The interface is simple, easy-to-use, and the volume knob the best feeling of the three by far. One thing missing is preset buttons for the radio - setting and retrieving presets is a minorly annoying, but they were sacrified for the big display... If you listen to the radio a lot you may find it annoying - it hasn't bothered me so far. Sound quality is not up with the Pioneer's, and I detect a slight hiss when playing MP3s during silences - that is, dead-space between tracks isn't dead. :) It's close enough, however, that unless you heard the two side-by-side there would not be any complaints. The drive mechanism is truly loud when doing repeated searches or jumping between folders, but the slide-out tray is utterly skip proof, even in the lowered 2-door with 16s. In the end, this is the unit that made it into the 2-door. Part of the decision was based on the availability of a 10-disc MP3-capable CD player from Sony - with 11 MP3 CDs in the car, I'm not hurting for music! The head unit itself was $350 on Ebay...
Hope this helps someone out there...
-Justin
posted by 64.166.4...
, Mon, 30 Sep 2002 08:32:38 <-- Viewing This Message, Mon, 30 Sep 2002 19:18:14
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