Digisette Duo-32 AR-100

CNET editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 3.0 stars Good
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 6.0 (3.0 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Jesse Berney
• Reviewed on: 11/21/2000

This cassette-shaped MP3 player adds a new dimension of convenience to digital music, not only letting you carry MP3s wherever you go for headphone listening but also allowing you to pop them into any tape deck to be played like a normal cassette. While it's not the first such device that we've seen by any means, Digisette's Duo-MP3 player sounds good through headphones or a cassette deck, although we still don't think that 32MB is enough memory.This cassette-shaped MP3 player adds a new dimension of convenience to digital music, not only letting you carry MP3s wherever you go for headphone listening but also allowing you to pop them into any tape deck to be played like a normal cassette. While it's not the first such device that we've seen by any means, Digisette's Duo-MP3 player sounds good through headphones or a cassette deck, although we still don't think that 32MB is enough memory.

Tape Shape
From a distance, it's hard to tell the difference between the Duo-MP3 and any regular cassette tape, unless the device has the set of headphones or the parallel-port cable coming out of it. The player packs a lot of features into such a small size, including a slim rechargeable battery and a slot for a multimedia card. However, you'll be itching to get one of those expensive memory boosts since the device holds only 32MB--about half an hour--of music.

What's more, the Duo's small controls were difficult to use. There are buttons for Play (which also toggles through a few preset equalizer settings), Stop, and Volume Up and Down. To go back and forth through tracks, you have to use the Volume buttons in concert with the Play button. Added to this is the Duo's lack of a display, making it hard to navigate your playlist. There's also no way to rewind or fast-forward through parts of tracks, which can be a pain, especially if you're listening to any kind of spoken-word media.

We found the Duo-MP3's sound superior to that of similarly designed (yet cheaper) Unitech Electronics Rome and the Human Information Technology Camp MP3 Player. In addition, we liked the Head Control switch, which allows you to choose between three different positions for the magnetic area that delivers the signal to your cassette player's head. That way, you can experiment to find out which setting works best with your cassette deck.

Software a Drag
The software that comes with the player seemed slapped together without much thought. To find tracks on your computer to download to the player you must browse through your drives by folder--and if you usually access your music through desktop shortcuts or something similar, there's no way to find it easily. You can't open a window and drag the files into the software, and adding and deleting tracks to the device is only possible by right-clicking, which is convenient but nonintuitive. Continue reading

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Recent user reviews

• Average user rating: 2.5 stars out of 9 reviews
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