Great Entry Level MP3 Player (Diva MP3 player)

Member Name: naffcaff

Product:	Diva MP3 player
Date:	21/05/02 (2739 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Tiny yet sturdy, Expandable With Extra Memory Cards

Disadvantages: Some Features Hard To Access, Below Average Bundled Software

MP3 is still largely an undiscovered secret for music lovers. OK, so CDs will be with us for a long time, but if you feel the need to carry a varied selection of music around with you, MP3 is the road to take.. MP3's are audio files which, although ten times smaller than CD type audio files, are virtually indistinguishable in quality. In the early days of MP3, the files could only played back on a computer, but the last few years have seen portable MP3 players arrive on the market. The Diva MP3 player is an excellent introduction to this new concept in audio

The inbuilt 16mb of memory will only store about 15 minutes of CD quality audio, so I expanded mine with an additional memory card. The Diva takes standard type I and II compact flash cards and can handle up to 1gb if your budget can stretch to the extra expense.

There are a number of ways to get the music onto the Diva. Your PC will need a USB socket. You can either copy your existing MP3 files over to the player, or using many of the encoder programs around (MusicMatch Jukebox was included on my Diva installation CD) you can copy tracks from any of your existing CDs and encode them into MP3's.

The bundled Diva Loader program, which is used to transfer the MP3s to the player isn't brilliant and sometimes fails to realise the Diva is connected. However, if you look in "My Computer" or Windows Explorer, you will find it appears as another drive, so you can copy files over as you would between any other drive. (Incidentally, you can also store ordinary PC files on the player and transfer them between PCs - ie: use it as a Compact Flash reader/drive !)

The sound quality is average. There are different modes of equalisation, but I would suggest investing in a decent pair of earphones as the ones supplied with the player are poor, as is the usual case with bundled earphones. I recently replaced mine with a pair of Koss "The Plug" earphones
and it made the world of difference.

For basic playback, the Diva is simple to use, but as the controls share buttons, accessing the advanced features can be fiddly and complex. The other annoying feature is the fast forward facility which only seems to forward at around 3 times the speed. Accidentally release the fast forward button for a split second and it skips onto the next track - infuriating if you are forwarding through a 30 minute track.

Gripes aside, the DIVA is smaller than a fag packet, yet pretty robust and is a good all round player which I use daily and wouldn't be without.

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