Way back when, I posted something about my girlfriend who needed a new car stereo (her factory CD player was flaking out), but she had zero interest in an Empeg (too much money, no decent computer for ripping, etc.). So, I ended up talking her into getting a Jensen MP3510 (currently $200 at Crutchfield). It's a fairly basic CD player to which they bolted on support for MP3-CDs. It was the cheapest MP3-CD player out there.

Well, after having swapped cars with her for a while (my car only seats two and I needed more) and playing with it, I can give a basic review.

- The electronics suck. On some CDs, it plays like you'd expect. On others, the front speakers cut out entirely and the back speakers have no bass. It's repeatable! On top of this repeatable issue, the same flaw also surfaces intermittently with any source material (radio, normal CD, or MP3 CD). I don't know if it's a flaky install, flaky overheating electronics, or flaky software.

- The MP3 business is strange. I burned a CD with 12 albums worth of MP3 files, one per subdirectory. The first one showed up as "disc 2" as if it were in a CD changer or something. For about half of the files, it showed the ID3v1 title, for the others, it showed the filename. I have no idea why it could read the tags from some files and not others. (My Empeg, of course, has no such problems.)

- Worse yet, in MP3 mode, all of the other stereo features go away. Random play? Gone. Disc skip (as in a changer)? Gone. The radio preset buttons at the bottom, which for a normal CD turn into function buttons, turn into seek buttons. You can punch in an absolute track number.

In summary, if this is supposed to be the killer car stereo of the future, we've got some sadly deluded marketing people out there. Anybody else have experience with these things? Wow am I glad to have an Empeg instead.

One of my coworkers got a Rockford Fosgate MP3-CD player, and it was actually pretty decent compared to what you've described. Not too expensive, either.

What's interesting about MP3 in consumer devices is that it was adopted by the no-name Taiwanese manufacturers before the Japanese companies. Imagine if Jensen developed the first CD and player and Sony, Philips, etc. all had to play catch-up. I think that's what happened with MP3. You have garbage coming out first, and Sony has to use that as a benchmark. The Aiwa (Sony crap brand) unit is a perfect example. It blows because it was probably modeled after Taiwanese dreck. Ultimately, the crappiness of these things affects the public's perception of all MP3 products. People probably see MP3s as a Napster-music-stealing-toy instead of a viable recording medium like us empeggers see it.

So, what happens is people that could benefit from MP3s don't buy these products because they think they're beneath them. The people that do buy them are mostly Napster users and they don't have the money to buy a >$200 car stereo. Hence, the target market is losers.

Now that Sony is making an hard drive-based in-dash compressed music stereo, it costs $1500 and doesn't use MP3. It doesn't even try to associate itself with MP3. This is because they're trying to tap the market that Empeg couldn't. People that should have the empeg, but think they have to steal music in order to make use of it. Also people that don't know a CD ripper/computer from a hole in the wall.

Of course, this is all my opinion. This is also my last post as an addict. #699.

That Jensen is now going for like $130 if that and dropping fast. It doesn't look nice either.

One of my coworkers got a Rockford Fosgate MP3-CD player, and it was actually pretty decent compared to what you've described. Not too expensive, either.


I had both the awia cdcmp3, and the sony mpx450 before I could affors an empeg. I was fairly happy with the aiwa, but traded it in with my jetta only because it didn't match the dash lights in my new car at all (looked pretty good on the old green VW dashes). I was most unthrilled with the sony. No id3 tags, only the first 8 letter of the file name, and it used to overheat constantly. For the $300 I paid for it, it was well worth the money.

The Rockford Fosgate is the best one I have seen yet besides the short lived Alpine CDA-7878, which had the alpine DSP unit built in, but for some reason its already off the market. My roomate has the sony, and its a POS. I have heard the Aiwa was decent but couldnt find anyone that had one so I could play withit. I found most of these while on my MP3 search, ofcourse all outdone by the empeg.

Back when I used to have thoughts about mp3s that didn't involve an empeg, I looked at CD MP3 players right before the alpine came out. The alpine was priced at more than twice what the other mp3 players were selling for, and close to empeg prices. I realize alpine is a good brand, but the MP3 feature has a tendacy to attract geeks more than car audio people.

That would be my first guess as to why it's already off the market...

Matthew

That was my guess too, I was ready to buy it at 700, because I am a complete audiophile, but I can see where the average consumer sees the rest at 250 to 500 and would ask why the hell should I pay 700. But like I said it had the full alpine dsp unit (sells for 1000 seperately) already built in. it was a very impressive unit.