I'm not familiar with this brand and was ready to write them off because of that but the feature set blows me away! The slow-down feature is handy for me because I'm a bassist and this helps to learn complicated bass parts to songs! I'm soooo glad that I watched your excellent and comprehensive video review!!!! I will definitely get one of these CD players mainly because of your video!!! Thank you!
Thank you for your video… took me back into late 90s and early 2000s. I actually did not know how the antiskip worked - so thank you for mentioning how that feature worked!
I think the holes on the front in a circle configuration are a microphone for the bluetooth phone operations. That would be a good reason for a mic installation.
I have the Journey ; it was cheap, and okay for the price. Not amazing, in fact I wish something better, quality wise, were available. Come on SONY give us another !!
I bought one of these from Amazon and it's amazing. It made me start buying CDs again. The only thing I can't get it to do is gapless playback. I listen to a lot mix CDs where one track continues straight into the next and this device puts a half second pause between tracks.
There's NO excuse for a modern CD player to not play gapless..... stupidly, if you look on Amazon at some really expensive CD decks, some will actually advertise 'Gapless Playback' as a 'Feature'... I'm sorry, that's just SO wrong! If a CD player can't play a CD without shoving a gap into it after every track, then what good is it? It didn't happen 40 years ago with many of the original first players; there's no excuse for it now... 😠 My late '80s inexpensive Sony doesn't do it.....
I used to trade mad live shows back in the day. In most burning software in the 90s and early 2000s you could set the amount of gap between each individual song. Definitely check the settings in your software to see if you can alter this option.
The fact that the buttons light up and the screen light up is superb. We have a special needs child that does not see well. He messes with buttons until he get use to the unit. Hold button on back is a must. He hits that button too much on the ones on the front.
The one thing that I do not like about a lot of these modern portable CD players is that they are bulky when they do not need to be. I'm sure making them less bulky would add to the cost. That said, I would give up the fancy packaging and extra features which most are a novelty at best for a smaller more compact size.
Speeding up and slowing down SSD memory audio would be handy for audio book playback. Mostly it would be to speed it up, as I do for spoken word UA-cam clips at 1.25× speed.
The player's 79.3MHz FM transmit frequency option would only really used in Japan, or the "Student Band" in China. Most FM radios only tune 87-108MHz, like that Studerbaker.
I got the Discover for free for review and I was really surprised how great it sounded. I didn't use the record feature because I don't like mp3 quality audio. But it supported the Lossless Flac files I put on the micro sd card.
Nah, not really. It's nice to have these features, but it's just adding tiny, cheap, basic commodity electronics to a portable CD player that's thicker than models available in the 1990s(which already had long anti-skip buffers, and often a wired remote & LCD inline with earphones/headphones). Or you could get more extreme with the Sony D-NE20 in 2004, which was half the thickness of this player, supported ATRAC & mp3 playback from a CD, and up to..100 hours of playback on one charge (from a thin battery)
Thanks for the review. I'm looking at purchasing one of these, but I can't find any information on the DAC or if it uses compression when storing anti-skip data in memory. If I knew that I could plug this into my stereo and have uncompressed playback it would be an easy buy for me, but without that I might just get an old Sony discman that I'm more confident about.
This is picky, but the option to turn off the the anti skip RAM playing feature would be nice. FM broadcasting is a blast from the past. That old Crosley Revolution portable sound burger clone also broadcasts on FM. Great video, as usual. Double A batteries would have been nice too.
@@Recordology : Yes, the quality of the RAM is SO very important, and the bitrate it works to as well.... I bought a portable cD player a couple of years back with a transparent lid (I thought it looked cool), and did the Bluetooth/FM thing as well, but the compression from the built-in RAM was terrible; it sounded horrid..compressed and distorted - it had some decent 'reviews' on Amazon, so yeah.....never again!! 😂 These KLIM devices look interesting; it'd be nice to hear some actual direct-feed from at least one of them... 😉
Рік тому
@@stevesstuff1450 Then again, it's possible that the RAM is essential to it sounding good. Years ago I had one of the first portable players with that anti-skip feature and it did have the option of turning it off... but the player sounded BETTER with the RAM enabled. (It decreased battery life, which is probably why you had the option of turning it off.) I think it had less jitter when playing from RAM than if you played directly from CD, which makes sense because it's easy to get timing right if the data is coming out of memory.. It only had a few seconds worth of RAM so the disk was always spinning.
Very helpful review. It nicely supplements the information and reviews on their website. I think the Journey model would be better because sunlight reflecting off the rotating cd through the window of the Discovery could be very distracting in the car. If I hadn't bought another brand of player already your review would have been very persuasive. Thanks.
Hi again Record-ology, Many thanks again for your continued features,of all those fantastic products,that I continue to enjoy on your channel-But I have one little question that you didn’t mention in your video…. -How is/are these units powered-do they have a built in rechargeable battery ?? -I see in those accessories provided with these CD players,there seems to have been a 3.5mm cable provided with these units-do they have a line output ???
Great vids and recommendations! Maybe you can help. Coolest thing about the older portables were that they could be plugged into a wall with the right whatever volt power output. Are there any that still have that option?? I need to plug one of these into the wall. Not a computer to recharge it. Am i missing something? Haha I keep finding rechargeable ones and looking at the back of these on the ads are nearly impossible. Any input would help greatly. Thank again for all your hard work and comprehensive vids.
Thank you for these reviews. One thing I find very annoying about modern CD players is the gaps between tracks, probably related to the buffering an spin up/spin down. Have you come across any moderately priced CD players that offer gapless playback?
a thing i didn't understand is: what's the difference between the two? one has the possibility to listen to the radio and the other one doesn't? or did i miss something?
I would love to find a CD transport or player with digital out in this size package with a power supply to use with my ifi Zen signature can And DAC stack headphone amp.
Nice looking and sounding, however, I feel I should mention a few things. I'd assume the 'speaker' is actually possibly a microphone, as I'd assume the speed control is (for karaoke) - it might be that you can record yourself singing to the music? I am guessing, however. The FM reception would probably have been improved (and would have picked up more channels if the headphones were plugged in; usually they act as the antenna also. The other thing to mention was a slight faux-pas, on your part. The FM broadcast from the CD wouldn't be picked up under the 88 frequency, due to the fact the radio you were trying to get the broadcast on didn't start until the 88 mark. (You seemed to be looking at the AM band when trying to tune it in). Incidentally it could be possible to transmit the sound from one of these to the other, perhaps; if you wanted to do so (thus meaning two people could listen to the same CD at the same time, perhaps?). These devices also have the extended FM band - IE: before 88 MHz - , so would be probably useful for worldwide FM receiving. Just saying.
As we demonstrated in the video, the headphone jack for number two was the antenna connected one. Two people can listen to one device simply by using both supplied headphone amplifiers.
Those CD players are cool. If they had VCD support I would definitely get one. I still make custom VCDs and DVDs for people. You know what would be really cool and an instant buy from me? If a CD player has all the feature of these KLIM models and have a color touch screen to display CD Text information, CD Graphics for lyrics, Photo & picture CD support, display JPG and other image files, and VCD & MP4 playback. For anyone thinking that CD players are too small to have such things, you're wrong. My Android smart watch has a screen that's only 1.54" and can do all of that minus excepting a physical CD (but you can load an ISO of a CD and play it with VLC player on the watch and works better than you would imagine). If my tiny watch can do all that, then a larger CD player should be able to do more. I have a square shaped CD player from Panasonic (the size of a CD jewel case!). A 3.5" screen near the top along with all the buttons right below it would be perfect to do all that I mentioned and then some. I know a color screen would require more power. So maybe have a button that enables/disabled the screen and you can use the physical buttons for play back controls to conserve power. My old HTC One M8 phone that has a 5" touch screen is thinner and smaller than my Panasonic CD player. So a CD player with all the features I mentioned is definitely doable. In fact, I think it should be the norm.
@ThexthSurvivor What is the model of the Panasonic square shaped cd player. I am partial, to that brand. Thank You! Oh, and does it take batteries? I assume these KLIM do not.
These look cool. I may eventually buy 1. Lol the name KLIM made me thunk a bit. We had a brand of powdered milk with that same name (MILK spelled backwards lol). Man h really hate those screen protectors eh? I keep mine asong as they hold on, helps with protecyion against fingerprints, stains & scratches. Also helps in resale
How would you compare the audio quality output of these models (thru headphones, for example) as opposed to the Klim Nomad model that you reviewed earlier this year? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts! Thank you.
In the video you did indeed show that the device records to the SD card at 128kbps. What other file formats does this device support? Does it playback WMA, WAV, FLAC, and 320Kbps MP3? If it does, it would be the perfect hybrid digital media player, CD player combo.
The buttons are large and circular… Very easy to use. The menu is pretty intuitive as well. Some of the buttons have double functions, meaning that they behave differently, depending on a single click versus a long press.
I have had 2 fm transmitters in my car, both of them were poor quality. They played back at a very low sound and with where still an antenna built into the car, would pick up interference because the fm transmitter was very limited.
will they play a dvd of mp3s i have a bunch of old time radio shows on a dvd it would be great if the mp3s on then play on the go instead of on a computer or bluray player
With the ability to be able to pitch the sound slower or faster, if they were released a couple of decades ago, DJ's could have used them two of them, knowing of that ability. 😉
0:22 - I love how you turn around an whisper with the raised finger "compact discs, lets talk about compact discs" like it would be something criminal I thought you should have said "lets talk about drugs🤫" or something on those lines 😂 YEAH, lets better talk about CDs!!!
Quite a lot of people, it's not so much about the box and stickers, but it shows that the company cares about their product. And usually that translates into what's actually inside
Somehow, I forgot to mention that the price point on these is also insane… Either model can be purchased for less than $50!
Nice 👍
Looks like prices of portable CD players have gone up a lot since the last time I browsed through. They were around 30, now up around 60.
Thank you so much! I've been searching for a good new portable cd player.
I'm not familiar with this brand and was ready to write them off because of that but the feature set blows me away! The slow-down feature is handy for me because I'm a bassist and this helps to learn complicated bass parts to songs! I'm soooo glad that I watched your excellent and comprehensive video review!!!! I will definitely get one of these CD players mainly because of your video!!! Thank you!
Awesome!
Thank you! Somebody who knows something about cd players giving an honest review on a CD player I can actually purchase. Not vintage but new.
Thank you for your video… took me back into late 90s and early 2000s. I actually did not know how the antiskip worked - so thank you for mentioning how that feature worked!
I think the holes on the front in a circle configuration are a microphone for the bluetooth phone operations. That would be a good reason for a mic installation.
I have the Journey ; it was cheap, and okay for the price. Not amazing, in fact I wish something better, quality wise, were available. Come on SONY give us another !!
Pick yourself a second hand genuine discman. You could pick one up for like £20 or £30. It'll still be better than a mew one
CD-text support would be nice feature on this NEW players. And direct playback (without buffer) would be nice too.
I bought one of these from Amazon and it's amazing. It made me start buying CDs again. The only thing I can't get it to do is gapless playback. I listen to a lot mix CDs where one track continues straight into the next and this device puts a half second pause between tracks.
There's NO excuse for a modern CD player to not play gapless..... stupidly, if you look on Amazon at some really expensive CD decks, some will actually advertise 'Gapless Playback' as a 'Feature'... I'm sorry, that's just SO wrong! If a CD player can't play a CD without shoving a gap into it after every track, then what good is it? It didn't happen 40 years ago with many of the original first players; there's no excuse for it now... 😠 My late '80s inexpensive Sony doesn't do it.....
@@stevesstuff1450 I LIKE gaps in between tracks ,SO THERE
@@leoneddy1492 not in a live concert setting unless band sits and wastes time between songs.
I used to trade mad live shows back in the day. In most burning software in the 90s and early 2000s you could set the amount of gap between each individual song. Definitely check the settings in your software to see if you can alter this option.
Both those players look nice. I doubt I'll ever be in the market for one again, but just in case. Nice music choice, BTW.
The fact that the buttons light up and the screen light up is superb. We have a special needs child that does not see well. He messes with buttons until he get use to the unit. Hold button on back is a must. He hits that button too much on the ones on the front.
The one thing that I do not like about a lot of these modern portable CD players is that they are bulky when they do not need to be. I'm sure making them less bulky would add to the cost. That said, I would give up the fancy packaging and extra features which most are a novelty at best for a smaller more compact size.
That’s a fair point! The KLIM units are actually not too bulky, though. Others definitely are!
Speeding up and slowing down SSD memory audio would be handy for audio book playback. Mostly it would be to speed it up, as I do for spoken word UA-cam clips at 1.25× speed.
The player's 79.3MHz FM transmit frequency option would only really used in Japan, or the "Student Band" in China. Most FM radios only tune 87-108MHz, like that Studerbaker.
It didn't help that it looked like he was searching for it on the AM band, lol.
No, I'm not poking fun. We've all had cases of brain fade, am I right?
lol you know what - you're right! :)
I had a Kilm wireless keyboard a few years back.. Never knew they made CD players!
Speed up / speed down is very convenient for audio books for example ;)
I got the Discover for free for review and I was really surprised how great it sounded. I didn't use the record feature because I don't like mp3 quality audio.
But it supported the Lossless Flac files I put on the micro sd card.
Once again, I find it amazing that they can fit so many features into a small space.
Agreed
there's lots of things smaller then this that do a lot more. That being said, i reaaaaly want one of these now.
Nah, not really. It's nice to have these features, but it's just adding tiny, cheap, basic commodity electronics to a portable CD player that's thicker than models available in the 1990s(which already had long anti-skip buffers, and often a wired remote & LCD inline with earphones/headphones). Or you could get more extreme with the Sony D-NE20 in 2004, which was half the thickness of this player, supported ATRAC & mp3 playback from a CD, and up to..100 hours of playback on one charge (from a thin battery)
Cool
Thank you for sharing
Thanks for watching!
Thanks for the review. I'm looking at purchasing one of these, but I can't find any information on the DAC or if it uses compression when storing anti-skip data in memory. If I knew that I could plug this into my stereo and have uncompressed playback it would be an easy buy for me, but without that I might just get an old Sony discman that I'm more confident about.
just got mine.. this is *incredible* value. I am still amazed at how good it sounds (I got the Nomad), best value audio product going around I reckon.
This is picky, but the option to turn off the the anti skip RAM playing feature would be nice. FM broadcasting is a blast from the past. That old Crosley Revolution portable sound burger clone also broadcasts on FM. Great video, as usual. Double A batteries would have been nice too.
I really wish these companies would publish the resolution of the RAM.
@@Recordology : Yes, the quality of the RAM is SO very important, and the bitrate it works to as well.... I bought a portable cD player a couple of years back with a transparent lid (I thought it looked cool), and did the Bluetooth/FM thing as well, but the compression from the built-in RAM was terrible; it sounded horrid..compressed and distorted - it had some decent 'reviews' on Amazon, so yeah.....never again!! 😂
These KLIM devices look interesting; it'd be nice to hear some actual direct-feed from at least one of them... 😉
@@stevesstuff1450 Then again, it's possible that the RAM is essential to it sounding good. Years ago I had one of the first portable players with that anti-skip feature and it did have the option of turning it off... but the player sounded BETTER with the RAM enabled. (It decreased battery life, which is probably why you had the option of turning it off.) I think it had less jitter when playing from RAM than if you played directly from CD, which makes sense because it's easy to get timing right if the data is coming out of memory.. It only had a few seconds worth of RAM so the disk was always spinning.
On the first try, you were looking on the AM dial for the frequency, that's why you couldn't get it
whats the resolution of the memory buffer? Is it lossless?
Very helpful review. It nicely supplements the information and reviews on their website. I think the Journey model would be better because sunlight reflecting off the rotating cd through the window of the Discovery could be very distracting in the car. If I hadn't bought another brand of player already your review would have been very persuasive. Thanks.
Hi again Record-ology,
Many thanks again for your continued features,of all those fantastic products,that I continue to enjoy on your channel-But I have one little question that you didn’t mention in your video….
-How is/are these units powered-do they have a built in rechargeable battery ??
-I see in those accessories provided with these CD players,there seems to have been a 3.5mm cable provided with these units-do they have a line output ???
Can these players can read CD Text? I tend to make copies of my CDs and my old Sony players show the CD Text, which I think is neat.
Great vids and recommendations! Maybe you can help. Coolest thing about the older portables were that they could be plugged into a wall with the right whatever volt power output. Are there any that still have that option?? I need to plug one of these into the wall. Not a computer to recharge it. Am i missing something? Haha I keep finding rechargeable ones and looking at the back of these on the ads are nearly impossible. Any input would help greatly. Thank again for all your hard work and comprehensive vids.
I have a cd player I want to show you that I have and can’t find online anymore it’s really cool looking and unique
Thank you for these reviews. One thing I find very annoying about modern CD players is the gaps between tracks, probably related to the buffering an spin up/spin down. Have you come across any moderately priced CD players that offer gapless playback?
That's a great question! So far I think they all have gaps.....come to think of it.
TANK YOU FOR THIS review very well explained and what is that Boom box , with the VU''s and proper radio tuner ??I WANT ONE
That is a Studabaker boombox - we have reviewed a couple of them.
@@Recordology Thank you ,I will have a google
I just put one of these in my Amazon Cart a few hours ago, how did UA-cam know?
a thing i didn't understand is: what's the difference between the two? one has the possibility to listen to the radio and the other one doesn't? or did i miss something?
I would love to find a CD transport or player with digital out in this size package with a power supply to use with my ifi Zen signature can And DAC stack headphone amp.
There are older Sonies that have optical audio output! I will say that even used they are crazy expensive.
Nice looking and sounding, however, I feel I should mention a few things. I'd assume the 'speaker' is actually possibly a microphone, as I'd assume the speed control is (for karaoke) - it might be that you can record yourself singing to the music? I am guessing, however. The FM reception would probably have been improved (and would have picked up more channels if the headphones were plugged in; usually they act as the antenna also. The other thing to mention was a slight faux-pas, on your part. The FM broadcast from the CD wouldn't be picked up under the 88 frequency, due to the fact the radio you were trying to get the broadcast on didn't start until the 88 mark. (You seemed to be looking at the AM band when trying to tune it in). Incidentally it could be possible to transmit the sound from one of these to the other, perhaps; if you wanted to do so (thus meaning two people could listen to the same CD at the same time, perhaps?). These devices also have the extended FM band - IE: before 88 MHz - , so would be probably useful for worldwide FM receiving. Just saying.
As we demonstrated in the video, the headphone jack for number two was the antenna connected one. Two people can listen to one device simply by using both supplied headphone amplifiers.
I would guess the speed control could also be handy if you are listening to spoken word material such as audio books.
@@SkiBumMSP That was my thought to. Does it also work with the CD or just with the SD playback?
Those CD players are cool. If they had VCD support I would definitely get one. I still make custom VCDs and DVDs for people.
You know what would be really cool and an instant buy from me? If a CD player has all the feature of these KLIM models and have a color touch screen to display CD Text information, CD Graphics for lyrics, Photo & picture CD support, display JPG and other image files, and VCD & MP4 playback. For anyone thinking that CD players are too small to have such things, you're wrong. My Android smart watch has a screen that's only 1.54" and can do all of that minus excepting a physical CD (but you can load an ISO of a CD and play it with VLC player on the watch and works better than you would imagine). If my tiny watch can do all that, then a larger CD player should be able to do more.
I have a square shaped CD player from Panasonic (the size of a CD jewel case!). A 3.5" screen near the top along with all the buttons right below it would be perfect to do all that I mentioned and then some. I know a color screen would require more power. So maybe have a button that enables/disabled the screen and you can use the physical buttons for play back controls to conserve power.
My old HTC One M8 phone that has a 5" touch screen is thinner and smaller than my Panasonic CD player. So a CD player with all the features I mentioned is definitely doable. In fact, I think it should be the norm.
@ThexthSurvivor What is the model of the Panasonic square shaped cd player. I am partial, to that brand. Thank You! Oh, and does it take batteries? I assume these KLIM do not.
I love this. I'm using cd player that only cost 12.00$. But these have to be even better yet.
Do you enjoy the bass?
Bass is incredible… Especially with that mode, I demonstrated in the video. It had even more base than the base boost mode.
@@Recordology that's AWESOME news. Thank you
I though both players were great and they look stunning too.
These look cool. I may eventually buy 1. Lol the name KLIM made me thunk a bit. We had a brand of powdered milk with that same name (MILK spelled backwards lol).
Man h really hate those screen protectors eh?
I keep mine asong as they hold on, helps with protecyion against fingerprints, stains & scratches. Also helps in resale
How would you compare the audio quality output of these models (thru headphones, for example) as opposed to the Klim Nomad model that you reviewed earlier this year? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts! Thank you.
VERY similar. Indiscernible.
Awesome! Thanks for replying to my comment. Guess it'll just come down to one's physical aesthetic preference then.
"Not sure why you would want that"......slowing down speech is helpful for language learners to catch what has been said
Are these portable cd players availeble in Europe ?
You had the FM set to 79 mhz, but you were tuning in to the 92 area, or 79 kHz on the am dial
In the video you did indeed show that the device records to the SD card at 128kbps. What other file formats does this device support? Does it playback WMA, WAV, FLAC, and 320Kbps MP3? If it does, it would be the perfect hybrid digital media player, CD player combo.
Speed control helps with language learning.
Good point!
are the buttons and interface easy to work with on these? Also are the units round or some other shape?
The buttons are large and circular… Very easy to use. The menu is pretty intuitive as well. Some of the buttons have double functions, meaning that they behave differently, depending on a single click versus a long press.
Can you link up Bluetooth headphones to these?
The LCD display on the Discover looks to be the same as the Retekess V115
Wonderin in the 'speaker' is actually a mic for noise canceling.
I've tried 3 different Bluetooth headphones with the discovery and none will pair up 😔
I believe it is for fm transmission
Do they have CD-Text capability as well? Peace.
I have had 2 fm transmitters in my car, both of them were poor quality. They played back at a very low sound and with where still an antenna built into the car, would pick up interference because the fm transmitter was very limited.
"Transmit to your car via FM Stereo" BUT the video shows settings on the AM BAND. SO...?
I like ther journey the spinning window gets me dizzy😵💫
what was the sd card storage size?
will they play a dvd of mp3s i have a bunch of old time radio shows on a dvd it would be great if the mp3s on then play on the go instead of on a computer or bluray player
Not DVD but CD with MP3s. I love OTR as well!
With the ability to be able to pitch the sound slower or faster, if they were released a couple of decades ago, DJ's could have used them two of them, knowing of that ability. 😉
So...
This little guy would also be able to play MP3-CD's..?
They look good but better the old school cd players
Does it have a random function?
Do these CD players have "RDS" Function?
Which is better the Klim Discover or the Nomad? In sound quality terms!
Identical as far as I can tell....
@@RecordologyEven though its been a month, when listening with headphones or speakers is there audible white noise when music is/isn't being played?
So say I record music on my phone SD card, will the player play it still?
Depending on the recorded format - it might.
0:22 - I love how you turn around an whisper with the raised finger "compact discs, lets talk about compact discs" like it would be something criminal I thought you should have said "lets talk about drugs🤫" or something on those lines 😂 YEAH, lets better talk about CDs!!!
😂😂😂
Since they are ripping discs, they should go all the way and allow it to be used as a cd rom drive for a computer.
I'm kinda bored with the round CD player. We need more squares.
We have reviewed them!
Those are not the kind of people you want to see at your house when you get home.😂
See I am not a cd player kinda person.. however it’s a pretty supah device lol..
But none of them have a digital output like the sony discmans did, so theyre all useless to me
Who cares about the box & stickers?
Quite a lot of people, it's not so much about the box and stickers, but it shows that the company cares about their product. And usually that translates into what's actually inside
Kids care about stickers. At least I did when I was a kid. These days I just throw that kind of stuff away, but I'm not the only potential customer.