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The package we received came with the
following contents:
-
Cabo MP3 Player
-
Earphones
-
Parallel Port
Data Cable
-
Two AAA
Batteries
-
Software CD
-
Manual
The package comes with pretty much
everything (even batteries). Unfortunately, it does not come with a
carrying case like the Pine D'music does, but it does have a belt
clip which is probably more useful and practical then a carrying
case.
The manual is very well done.
It provides a lot of pictures and step-by-step instructions on how to
use this player along with the software it comes with.
Speaking, of the software, I was amazed at the quality and easy of
use of Best Data's software. Here is a quick overview of the
software provided:
First and foremost, there is the Cabo
Desk software, this is the main program which allows you to download
and erase MP3's/Voice recording on the Cabo Player:
Click for a full size image
As you can see, the interface is
fabulous and its functionality is no less spectacular. It could
not be any easier; all you do is drag your songs from your hard drive
(top of window) to the bottom of the window (empty space in image above) and that's
it, the program will take care of the rest. At the bottom left
portion of the screen, the program tells you how much of the players
64MB is used up and how much is free. If you had a 32MB SmartMedia
card, it will also tell you how much space you have free on that as
well. The program allows you to download MP3's, WAV and TEL
(Telephone Book) files to the player. Another nifty feature of
this program is the ability to modify the MP3 ID3 just by right clicking
on the MP3 file. The player uses these ID3 tags to display the
song title and artist on the player's LCD display. The program
also has a simple to use telephone book program to create your address
book. Here is a shot of that program:
Click for a full size image
Finally, Best Data also included a couple
of extra goodies. Cowon's Jet Audio is a wonderful multimedia
player. It plays CD's, MP3's, WAV's, MIDI's, Real Audio Files,
Windows Media Files, Sun Audio Files and Apple Audio Files. It has
a mixer, awesome spectrum analyzer and 3D, Wide and Reverb effects that
sound very cool. In my opinion this is the best multimedia software deck
I've ever seen. The other piece of software Best Data included is
a trial version of Zlurps Encoding software. This software will
allow you to take CD's and covert them to MP3's to store on your Cabo
MP3 player. It has CDDB functionality so you don't have to type in
the artist and song title for the songs you encode. Here are
screenshots of both of these great programs:
Jet Audio Multimedia Deck |
Zlurp Encoding Software |
| Click
on any image for a full size view |
As I alluded to earlier,
the transfer rates on this player are very good which surprised me
because it still used the parallel port for its method
transfer. Here are the times for download music to better
explain the speed:
5.07MB MP3:
Time: 30 seconds |
Full 32MB Trial:
Time: 3:52 |
30 seconds for a 5 MB MP3 is more
than acceptable, it's excellent especially for a parallel
port!! Keep in mind that this is using ECP mode on the
parallel port, which can be chosen in your computers BIOS
setup. Just under 4 minutes to fill up 32 MB of memory is just
amazing; it actually makes erasing and downloading new songs
practical, whereas it was a dreadful task with the Pine D'music.
Next thing on our list is to examine
the players sound quality. Two words: Absolutely
Amazing! If my life depended on it, I could not tell the
difference between this player playing 128Kbps MP3's and a high-end
Discman playing a CD. The high quality (gold plated) earphones
that are provided produce excellent sound and are very comfortable
on the ears. In case you're curious, the earphones are made by
Leemax and one cable is longer than the other for two reasons, so
two people can listen at once without hitting each others heads and
so you can quickly tell which earphone goes in the left and ear and
which goes in the right ear without looking at them each time.
The DSP effects worked wonderfully as
well; the four choices: Normal, Pop, Rock and Classic provided good
balances for bass and treble and one of them should work well for
any type of music out there. It would have been nice to have
discrete treble and bass controls, but I'm more than happy with the
sound quality as it is. The repeat button has some nice
features as well. There are four modes as well: Normal
linear play, Repeat current song, Repeat All and Random. The
Random feature is especially useful when you want to mix up the
songs and surprise yourself.
The Voice Recording all worked very
well. The optimal recording distance is about 70cm away from
the player. This is great for people who have to record random
notes and hate writing stuff down on paper, its especially good when
you're in the car and you suddenly remember something you have to do
:)
| Sound
Quality |
95 |
| Design |
92 |
| File
Transfer Speed |
95 |
| Installation |
95 |
| Software
Quality/Ease of Use |
95 |
| Price |
75 |
|
Overall |
91 |
The Best Data Cabo MP3 player is
definitely a remarkable player. The  built-in 64MB of memory
and expandability to 96MB makes it much more attractive than earlier
32MB players which were limited to only a small amount of
music. The file transfer rates are incredibly fast and the
software bundled with this player is outstanding. Sound
quality will blow you away; it is even better than some portable CD
players. The only downside to this player is its somewhat hefty
price tag, but other than that, you'll be hard pressed to find a
better player.
New Award System:
90-94 = Silver, 95-100 = Gold
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