It's a very simple player with well laid-out, quite large buttons for us thick-fingered folk. The sound quality is excellent, and the supplied headphones easily reproduced the sound crisply at the maximum volume level (and they also provided a generous length of cord). The regular playing modes are included: repeat one, repeat all and random, and the built-in equaliser presets include pop, rock and classic (which provides the richest listening experience).
The E-Sounds' LCD crisply and brightly displaying the song number, elapsed time, playing mode, EQ setting and battery level. This player comes with only 32MB of standard on-board memory, but can be pushed up to 64MB with a SmartMedia memory card.
A parallel interface is used to transport songs to the player. The E-Sounds' software interface is exactly the same as that used by the JazPiper (reviewed in December 1999) and is well designed and easy to use. An attempt to upload a file from the player to your PC is frowned upon - a message is displayed stating that what you are doing is "an infringement against copyright laws".
The build quality of the E-Sounds player is also almost identical to that of the JazPiper, using sturdy unbendable plastic; however, it does lack a belt clip.
E-Sounds MPIOX/MP3 Player
Price: $259
Distributor: Sound and Music Promotions
Phone: (03) 9569 3834
URL: www.mpzoo.com
