The first feature that I tested out was the regular Audio CD feature, since, at that time, I didn't have any MP3 CD's made for testing yet. Unfortunately for this first experience, I was overly disappointed. I stuck in the audio CD, pressed the Play button and after a few seconds of loading the tracks, music was streaming out of my ear buds; so far, so good, right? Wrong! What I noticed when the player was finished playing the first track and was about to skip through to the second track was that it repeated the last 2 seconds of the first track before it moved onto the second. This created a 2 second gap in-between all the tracks and I wasn't sure why this was happening because I had burned the CD using Disc At Once (DAO) and none of the other players that I've tried this audio CD in gave me this 2 second gap. Although this shouldn't be a problem for casual listeners, it could be very annoying for some, especially when playing those "dance mix" CD's where the music from each track flows into each other.

Other than that, the player played my audio CD fine. The sound quality was excellent and is right up there with any high-quality Discman and the bass-boost feature did its job very well; however, what I was the most impressed about was its ESP. I took the player as it was playing, shook it, banged it and smashed it and not once did the music stop or even skip a beat. Awesome!

Following that, I set aside some time for my very slow (6x2x2) burner to burn a CD filled up to the edge with MP3 files. After the CD was completed, I stuck it in, pressed play and after waiting a few seconds for the player to index all of the files, it was playing my MP3 files. Wow! I thought...

Curious to find out what type of CD I could play properly on this thing, I burned some more CD's, each using different settings found in Adaptec Easy CD Creator 4.0 (i.e. 1 session on CD, multisession, DAO recording, etc.) and different CD types (650MB CD-R, 700MB CD-R and CD-RW). The following is a chart of my findings:

I was quite impressed about the flexibility of this device when it comes to the different types of CD's that it can play, especially when it comes to it being able to play CD-RW's! Even though it's specifications didn't say that it could play it, through some testing of my own, it played my Acer CD-RW disc perfectly fine. This means that I won't have to waste multiple CD-R discs each time I wish to change my "to go" songs collection and that I will just be able to dedicate a CD-RW disc to the player! Excellent!

I had mentioned above about how the bass-boost feature did a very good job in accenting the low tones when playing an audio CD, but, unfortunately, I was very disappointed when it came time to test out the multiple preset EQ modes for playing MP3 CD's. Genica had included 5 preset modes that are supposed to enhance your audio: normal, extra bass boost, bass boost, treble boost and extra treble boost. Sadly, these settings ended up distorting the sound so much that it rendered them downsides of the device rather upsides. For example, when turning on the extra base boost or even the base boost, it added a distinct "farting" sound to the deep bases and when turning on the extra treble boost or the treble boost... well, who would want to boost the treble anyways? It stings your ears!

I was also quite impressed with the amount of thought that Genica has put into their product; they thought of everything! For example, imagine having to skip through 150 songs by repeatedly pressing the Next button. Not fun eh? Well, the folks at Genica have solved this problem by adding a feature into the Tavarua that will quickly skip through tracks if the Next button is pressed twice and then held down. I found this feature to be very useful and quite easy to use once I got used to it.

Aside from the rapid skip, they've also added support for directory playing. This means that before you burn your CD-R's full of MP3 files, you can copy your MP3 files into different directories and the Tavarua will be able to play through all of the files in any directory of your choice. This feature can enable the user to, for example, copy multiple albums onto a single MP3 CD-R and then can pick which album they would like to play. Very cool! Unfortunately, it does take a while to get used to browsing directories as it requires quite a few button-strokes, but, like the rapid skip feature, once you get used to it, it becomes a very useful feature. Of course, one can always choose to have the Tavarua disregard the directories for simplicity's sake.

Finally, a few days ago, I got a chance to test out the Tavarua's recording feature. By simply plugging in a microphone and flicking a switch on the side of the unit to "Record" mode, one can record up to an amazing 8 ½ minutes of audio! Although the sound quality wasn't the best possible, it's quite amazing how much you can store in 50 seconds of anti-shock memory. There is, however, a downside to this feature, as after you record what you want, you must keep the unit on for it to retain that recording. During this time, you can either play it back (through speakers or headphones) or play it back while recording it into some other source such as into an MP3 file if you plug it into your sound card's line-in or microphone jack. Either way, it's a neat little addition to an already feature-packed player.

Warning: Low Battery Life Ahead
I had mentioned before about how Genica had included a bright warning sign in the box, but what they should have used the warning sign for is to warn the user about the Tavarua's terrible battery life. To test out the batter life of the Tavarua, I purchased some regular Energizer alkaline batteries (you know, they keep on going and going and going and going… you get the point) for the task. Running the unit at a normal volume level and playing an MP3 CD straight through, the Energizer ran the unit for a total of around 3 hours. That's not so bad, if you think about it... but I haven't finished yet! After running the unit for only 1 ½ hours, it began to take incredibly long to switch from track to track (sometimes 5 seconds, sometimes up to a minute or two!). So, sure, you can still get sound coming out of the unit after 1 ½ hours, but there would be these huge gaps in between songs. Thank goodness for the built-in NiCD battery recharger!

On to: Conclusion