Now that I know what the things are called (thanks), I did some searching, and it’s impossible to find one for less than 90 bucks. Which is almost five times as much as I spent on my car stereo. To hell with that. Maybe I’ll get lucky on Ebay.
From some GQ searches, it seems that certain brands of regular audio CD players will also play mp3 encoded CD-Rs. Now if I can only find one for under $50…
One thing to be aware of, just because something says it plays MP3s, it will likely not play ALL MP3s. Example: I have a deck in my car made by AIWA that plays MP3 files, and it won’t play Variable Bit Rate MP3s. And as far as I can tell, there’s no way to upgrade it. Also, it doesn’t play WMA files.
The RioVolt, though, can be upgraded to new software downloaded from the maker’s website. It aleady plays every type of file I have, including WMA, but there are new formats being worked on like MP3pro and Ogg Vorbis.
I’m all about cheap electronics, so I’m not too worried about variable bit rates, etc. I just want to load a CD-R up with a few hours worth of MP3s, hit random, and not have to worry about switching tapes in my car. My music collection consists primarily of vinyl, so I’m not really concerned with having the latest stuff.
In fact, I just won a floor model on Ebay for $47. Pardon me while I go do a little dance.
Well, good luck with it. My brother spent $100 for one right after x-mas, and it’d only read the first 10 of ~150 mp3s on several different cds we tried. So he brought it back.
I have a Philips EXP103/17 that plays audio CD’s and will recognize MP3’s and CDRW’s. I paid about $150 for it earlier this year. So far it has worked just fine, but if I make a CDRW with both MP3’s & WAV files, it will only recognize the MP3’s. I’m gonna try putting the different types of files into separate folders (which the player will also recognize).