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By Kelly Lu (kellylu@onepc.net) - February 28, 2001

Infobox

What? DMP-CD100 Product Page Who? D-Link Home Page How much? $119 USD (ESP) D-Link Online Store

A few weeks ago, we introduced you to the Genica Tavarua, the first hybrid MP3/CD player released about a year ago that takes advantage of CD-R technology to allow the user to take about 150 songs with them on the road. We had liked the Tavarua quite a lot, and had recommended it as a must-have for savvy audiophiles, but at the same time, we had also complained about annoyances such as it's large size and major problems such as its extremely short battery life.

Today, we travel through time to the recent days, past a vast range of other MP3/CD players that have been released by a handful of companies throughout the past year or so, to the newly released MP3/CD player from D-Link: their DMP-CD100. D-Link is not a new company in the technology sector; they've been around since the early days of computing and have mainly specialized in networking for most of their existence. They're the number 1 maker of networking hubs and the number 2 maker of network interface cards in the world. It was not until the past few years that we've witnessed D-Link aggressively expanding into new markets, such as the rapidly growing digital audio/video market. Products such as the DSC-350 3-in-1 digital camera and the DMP-CD100 MP3/CD player that we're looking at here today are clear examples of this.

Utilizing regular CD-R's, all MP3/CD players on the market now utilize the same method of delivering music to your ears: they play so-called "MP3 CDs." These CD's contain MP3 files that are commonly burned onto CD-R discs and enable the player to play about 150 songs, each at about 4MB in size or 3-4 mins in length. This type of medium has a huge advantage over the conventional MP3 player that uses, for example, 64MB of built-in memory, which can only hold about 15 or so songs. Unfortunately, the fact that you must burn your MP3 files onto a CD-R or CD-RW disc first also poses a downside to these types of players as it means that you must own or have access to a CD burner for you to take advantage of the player's MP3 capability. Most, if not all, MP3/CD players on the market now can play regular Audio CDs along with MP3 CDs.

So, how does the new D-Link DMP-CD100 stand up against our previous encounter with the Genica Tavarua? Read on to find out...

General 1 Bit D/A Converter Digital Filter 8 Times Over-sampling 3 Spot optical Pick-up Auto CD-DA/MP3-CD Detectable Media Type CD-DA CD-R Accessories AC Adapter Headphones User's Manual

Power Source AC Adapter: 4.5V DC Battery: 3V Alkaline or Lithium Rechargeable (AA 1.5V X 2) Other Dimensions: 136mm(W) X 155mm(D) X 29.5mm(H) Weight: 200g

By looking at the specs of this D-Link player, you really don't see anything that stands out. Much like the Tavarua, the DMP-CD100 does have an LCD screen, but only for displaying the track number and not the actual song title, which is quite disappointing to see since so many other products released before the DMP-CD100 included such a feature. Also like the Tavarua, the D-Link player is advertised as only being able to play CD-R discs and not CD-RW discs. If you've read our review of the Tavarua, you'll have found out that it was able to play from CD-RW discs even though Genica had not advertised it in their specifications. It will be interesting to see if the D-Link had followed the same path of Genica in not advertising their player's ability to play CD-RW discs or if it just really didn't have the ability to do so.

After looking into the player's features, I've found that D-Link had neglected to include some other common features into their spec sheet. Some examples include the DMP-CD100's ability to play regular Audio CD's, D-Link's unique T-button (used for skipping through your MP3 tracks), a bass-boost and a rather small 10-second anti-skip.

Much like D-Link's other digital multimedia products that we've reviewed in the past, the DMP-CD100 came shipped without a box and, instead, in a plastic casing. I have nothing against this type of packaging, but I find that putting a high-tech device in a plastic casing rather than a box makes it seem like something you would get off of a supermarket rack rather than an expensive luxury you can purchase from Future Shop.

Either way, included in the package is a user's manual, an AC adapter, a set of ear buds and the actual DMP-CD100 itself. D-Link was also nice enough to include a pair of AA batteries for use in the player as well.

The manual is very well done and explains, quite in depth, everything you need to know about working the player. The instructions in it goes so much into the extent of explaining things in detail that it will, for example, take the user step by step in opening the player, putting the CD in and pressing the play button.

Unfortunately, contrary to the quality of the user's manual and much like the Genica Tavarua, the included ear buds were no match for my own Panasonic ones. Sounds coming out of the included ear buds were weak and had absolutely no depth at all. I wish manufacturers of audio products would take more effort to bundling better headphones or ear buds as it really saves the consumer the money and time of getting better ones for themselves. Besides, better headphones will certainly give the customer an improved opinion about the sound quality of their products.

Upon looking at the MP3/CD player unit, I was quite happy to see that it was somewhat sleeker in size than the Tavarua. I had complained about the large size of the Genica MP3/CD player, so the improvement in this area by D-Link is fondly accepted by me.

The basic function buttons for the DMP-CD100 are well placed in two crosses on the top of the player, along with the small LCD. Also, there is a headphone jack on the side of the unit for plugging in your headphones and a line-out jack for plugging the DMP-CD100 into your home stereo or theatre system. Overall, the DMP-CD100 boasts an attractive and unique design.

First up, I was, overall, quite pleased with the sound quality that the DMP-CD100 outputs when playing a regular audio CD. The basic audio CD functions such as repeat and randomize worked as they should and the bass boost feature worked great. Furthermore, the D-Link player didn't insert a 2-second gap between the tracks that the Tavarua had, which is nice to know. Overall, the audio CD playback is comparable to any other regular CD player on the market today.

As for MP3 playback, the experience was also quite enjoyable--although somewhat disappointing at the same time. The playback quality was great and the bass boost actually worked flawlessly compared to the Tavarua's equalizer presets, which made "farting" sounds when set to bass boost. What was disappointing for me, however, was the fact that the player was unable to deliver on D-Link's claim that the DMP-CD100 is able to play MP3 files encoded between 32Kbps to 320Kbps. Most MP3 songs found today are encoded at 128Kbps, which provides extremely high quality audio, but there are those few that are encoded at 160Kbps, 192Kbps or maybe even 256Kbps. The DMP-CD100 was able to handle those encoded at 160Kbps without a problem, but it was not able to play 192Kbps MP3 files properly. This creates an annoyance where, in order to get the songs encoded at the high bit rates to play on the DMP-CD100, one would have to down-sample them on their computer before burning them onto the CD-R's.

For our review of the Genica Tavarua, we had conducted a little test to see what types of CD's and burning methods worked with the player. With the D-Link DMP-CD100, we did the same test, and these are the results:

It's unfortunate that the DMP-CD100 lacks the ability to play from a CD-RW disc but it's good to see that the DMP-CD100 has support for reading multi-session CD's. The lack of CD-RW support means that you will have to use a new CD-R disc every time you wish to change songs and can't delete old songs. On the other hand, the multi-session support is nice to have because it allows you to add new songs to a CD without having to use a new CD-R every time.

Moving along, I tested out D-Link's little T-Digit feature, which is built into the DMP-CD100. Since most people will be putting more than 100 songs onto their CD's, it would be very annoying if they had to repeatedly press the "Next" button to reach, for example, song 143. Genica developed a method for their Tavarua player that basically requires the user to "double-press" the next button and then hold until they reach the desired track number. This worked out very well and I had like it quite a bit. D-Link's T-Digit, however, is a little different. To use it, one would press a button (labeled "T-Digit") to reach a little menu and then, through a few button-strokes, you can change each digit of the track number that you want to switch to. For example, if you wished to switch to track 143, you would press the T-Digit button, set 1 for the hundreds digit, 4 for the tens digit and 3 for the ones digit. As you can probably notice, this method takes quite a bit longer than Genica's approach, and, after I tried to use it a couple times, I found it to be very ineffective. It can be useful if you're currently on track 2 and you want to go to track 130, but overall, I still prefer "double-press" over T-Digit.

Finally, I had tested the battery life of the player to find out how long it will last if you decide to take it along with you as you travel around. To conduct this test, I used alkaline batteries made by Energizer and set the volume on the player to an acceptable level. I then ran the player by playing an MP3 CD, and found out that it lasted for a total of 7 (!) hours before it just shut itself down. This is excellent battery life, especially when compared to the Tavarua's measly 1.5 hours. Furthermore, the addition of a battery recharger in the player means that you can get up to multiple hours of continuous playtime over and over again with just a single pair of Lithium batteries. I must give the DMP-CD100 extra recognition for it's outstanding battery life.

The D-Link DMP-CD100 is, overall, a very nice addition to any audiophile's collection of gadgets. Its ability to handle regular audio CD's as fit as any other high-end regular CD player along with its ability to play MP3 CD's makes it an excellent value at only about the same price that one would be able to buy a high-end Discman for. It includes some "common" features found on all MP3/CD players, such as the ability to play from multiple types of CD-R discs, but also includes some of D-Link's own creations. One of which is their T-Digit feature, which allows the user to skip through their CD by inputting the track number, digit-by-digit, which, I found, to be quite ineffective. Fortunately, the D-Link has its long battery life going for it to help it stand out from the rest; I can't stress enough about how surprised I was to get a whopping 7 hours of playtime out of it! This makes it an excellent choice for users who travel a lot and want to take their music with them, which, of course, is what the DMP-CD100 was designed for in the first place. Because of this, the D-Link DMP-CD100 is now my new choice for playing those MP3 files away from the computer.

Pros Flawless regular audio CD playback Excellent battery life Support for multi-session CD's Built-in battery recharger Cons T-Button ineffective in its purpose Included ear buds produced poor sounds Unable to play MP3 files at rated bit-rates (problems @ > 192kbps)

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