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Introduction

Audiovox MP-1000 Box Shot

It was only a matter of time before companies known traditionally for their audio products began to come to market with portable MP3 players. Audiovox is one of those first such companies to jump on the bandwagon, and does so with a quaint looking device called the MPDj portable MP3 player. The player uses a brushed matt front casing with black backing. The simple interface is arranged around the LCD display and along the top edge – all within easy reach. This player, which came at the same time as the other players in our USB MP3 portable roundup, could not participate in that roundup due to its parallel port interface.

The player is lightweight and compact, with emphasis on a more ergonomic design that deviates from the mundane rectangular style that other players, like the RIO 500, have adopted. The main buttons are found around the 3 line LCD display, and enable access to play, pause, stop, fast forward, and rewind functions. Three more buttons on the top edge of the player serve as mode/selection buttons as well as volume adjustment when the mode feature is not activated. A switch on the back activates the hold function so that you can’t accidentally change your settings.

MP-1000 in carrying case

The player comes with 32MB of integrated memory, and enables up to 32MB of expansion with a MultiMediaCard for a total of 64MB of memory. By today’s standards, this isn’t very good, especially when 32MB really only allows you to store around 6 songs encoded at 128kbps. Even if you expanded the memory to a total of 64MB it would only then match up to what the Nomad II and future generation players will have as a base configuration. Two AAA batteries provide the juice, and Audiovox claims that the player can go for 14 hours of continuous playback on a pair of fresh batteries – which would make the MPDj one of the most power efficient MP3 portables on the market. Audiovox provides your first pair of batteries. Also included in the box are a carrying case and a wrist strap.

The LCD display is capable of showing three lines of text, with two being dedicated to track title and artist name, and the third reserved for track length and track position. The upper portion of the LCD display also displays track number, volume level, and bitrate of the MP3 file being played. The only odd thing about the unit is that the bitrate can only be reported as being 128kbps or 256kbps (because the display uses icons instead of displaying bitrate as text. The display has a slight green backlight that smoothly lights up the entire screen. The nice thing about the backlight is that it doesn’t flood out the screen in normal light conditions, and also manages to make text nicely legible in dark conditions.

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