Carol,
It is definitely MicroSD and I find recording from the radio really good.
What David didn't mention, I don't think, is that we also have a very easily
accessible sleep timer on it.
All the best
Steve
-----Original Message-----
From: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of ;
Carol Pearson (Redacted sender "carol.pearson29" for DMARC)
Sent: 29 June 2016 23:39
To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [access-uk] Re: Early Review on Talking Mp3 Player
David,
As always, this is an excellent review from you. (I know someone who will
benefit from one of these ...)
Have you tried the radio and recording facility any more? I'd be interested in
any limitations and/or the quality of the recording.
Are you definitely talking about a micro SD as, later in your post, you just
refer to the card as SD? I am guessing that you are but clarification would be
useful. Thanks!
Carol P
On 29/06/2016 21:24, David Griffith wrote:
I recently purchased a Sandisk Plus Clip talking Mp3 Player and
thought I would post a quick review.
There are three main reasons for bringing this Review to your attention.
1. The unit is accessible and not horrendously expensive.
2. Just as importantly for those of us with hearing impairments the
unit produces excellent sound and is loud- loud- loud-
3. It falls then, to my mind, as a high priority device for those of
us who are deaf blind.
The unit is small and plays through earphones only. If you research
this unit on google there are a multitude of complaints that the unit
is too quiet. It turns out that this nothing to do with the unit
hardware but artificial volume restriction in the firmware. Happlily
for those of us whose ears are restricted this artificial sound volume
block is erased by the RockVox firmware installed.
I bought the unit because I wanted to step up my exercise routines and
did not fancy having one of my expensive Daisy type player or iPhone
bouncing around as I did sit ups etc. The unit cost £75 but has
accessible training materials and RockVox firmware already pre-installed.
The unit I purchased was from Computer Room Services and the delivery
was fast and prompt. My sister ordered a unit for herself and received
the unit 18 hours after placing the order. Mine took a little longer,
arriving just over 10 hours later. There is an audio CD withh a Quick
Start familiarisation guide which takes you through the tactile
buttons and the Unit operation. This audio recording is a brief
introduction. This introduction is clear and concise and it definatly
does get you started and covers all the important first steps in
using the player.
However I thought this introductory material could nevertheless be
usefully xpanded. For example my unit needed to be soft reset before
my computer recognised it. This is a simple step and I think Computer
Room will be adding anote on that. Also some of the unit's operations
need a little getting used to. For example you press the up button to
pause a track, but in other circumstances pressing up will announce
the previous track name in a playlist. None of this is a show stopper
but could be made easier to grasp. The RockVox manual is provided in
both PDF and HTML format on both the audio disk and the device itself
and you can dive into that but it is very much a tec manual. As
RockVox is open source this is not the responsibility of Computer Room
but I think a slightly expanded set of beginner instructions could be
usefully extracted from all the tech content of the RockVox
documentation.
The unit comes with 4 GB of internal storage but a micro SD slot
easily provides for upto 64GB of SD card storage. This is very cheap
on Amazon at the moment. I bought my sister a 32GB Card for £7.
In operation the unit appears to recognise and open the SD cards
without any reading delay. As I am used to Daisy Players taking time
to read SD cards this was impressive.
Although the unit talks this is not by TTS
. Basically the RockVox firmware relies on creating audio clips to
identify whole names of albums and tracks. Without this step the unit
will only spell the name of tracks and albums.
A small program is provided to create the necessary audio files on
both the device and the SD Card storage. So this device will need
access to a PC or support from someone with a PC for full Talking
Functionality. For example I will be putting the audio filename clips
on my sister's SD Card for her.
The PC Software seems to rely on self voicing with no screen reading
elements I can find. It works quickly but what I personally found was
that if you left it working in the backgound and did something else
your screenreader output would not be interrupted to tell you that the
process has finished. This was not really a problem as I found I could
simply just relaunch the program and eventually it would tell me
almost immediatley it had finished with a note of number of folders
and files provided with identifying audio clips. The software uses the
default Windows TTS
on your PC to create the audio track lables. In my case Ivona Brian
which fits nicely with the Player as Brian is also the default system
voice there.
Once the audio lables are added, a farily speedy process, using the
player for music is generally very smooth.
The unit has bookmarking facilities, can increase both speed of
playback and alter pitch so could be also feasibly used for Audio Books.
In practice because I am used to my Daisy players I missed some of
the navigation elements for book reading, also there seemed to be
something like a 10-15 minute limit on the extent to which you could
fast forward on a file.
Having said that it is perfectly possible to use it for Audio Books
and I would personally with its tactile buttons with instant feedback
find it more convenient to use than say VoiceDream on an iPhone. I
have put an audio book on it for emergencies. I guess it is also
reassuring if all my Daisy Players packed up.
However to my mind it is with Music that it excels with a very high
quality output, as well as a loud output. This sound belies the small
size of the player.
The player is less than the lentgh of my finger and I would normally
be scared to lose something so small. As it name indicates though it
has a strong clip which can attach securely to either an item of
clothing or conceivably a lanyard.
The unit also has voice recording and FM Radio capabilities but I have
used them little, I would say that the radio also plays at good volume
and there is an auto scan when you start the radio for the first time.
Anyway my early first impressions.
David Griffith
** To leave the list, click on the immediately-following link:-
** [mailto:access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe]
** If this link doesn't work then send a message to:
** access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
** and in the Subject line type
** unsubscribe
** For other list commands such as vacation mode, click on the
** immediately-following link:-
** [mailto:access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=faq]
** or send a message, to
** access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the Subject:- faq
