I'd suggest a microphone socket, ecause that's the only thing this boom box is missing. Thanks, Nick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dane Trethowan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <pc-audio@pc-audio.org> Sent: Friday, January 14, 2005 2:34 AM Subject: the panasonic rxd29
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 THE PANASONIC RXD29 CD RADIO CASSETTE RECORDER WITH MP3/WMA CD-R/CD-RW PLAYBACK BY DANE TRETHOWAN We've waited long enough for a boom-box which can play MP3/WMa files so was the wait worth it? Sure! Retail price: $189.00 (Australian) CASSETTE RECORDER FEATURES Nothing fancy, just a good basic single-sided mechanical "piano-key-type" cassette deck with cue/review facilities, complete auto shut-off and pause control, (glad to see Panasonic bringing this type of deck back into a portable unit). Don't think about making high fidelity recordings with the deck as the deck has a magnetic erase head and is only designed for "type I" cassettes however, the recording quality is fine if you're planning to record a radio broadcast, dash off a few songs from your MP3 collection etc. Very little hiss from the deck during playback which means the unit is great if you wish to listen to spoken word recordings such as talking books etc. RADIO This is a 2-band job (FM and Medium-wave) and the radio is completely digital with 32 presets (20 FM and 12 for Medium-wave). Sensitivity of the radio is good (not the best and certainly not the worst I've seen in a digital set) and there is no! noise from the processor of the unit interfering with radio reception. Various methods of tuning are available including the traditional "SEEK" and "SCAN" tuning methods, preset scan and direct entry preset tuning. The presets can be set manually (by holding in the programme button of the remote control and pressing the desired preset number) or by the "AUTO-PRESET" method where the radio scans the band and puts the stations found into the presets for you. Frequency range, FM 87.5-108MHZ Medium-Wave: 522/1620KHZ (Australian model) CD'S AND MORE All the usual CD playing features are available including repeat play, random play, Programme and Direct Play modes. When programming the unit for Programme Play, a maximum of 24-tracks can be programmed into a programming cycle (no excuse for this low number and I really wish that manufacturers would consider dropping the maximum amount of tracks altogether). The cue/review feature of the CD player is only available for standard CD's or standard audio CD'S recorded on CD-R or CD-RW discs, it is not available for MP3 or WMA playback. You can select between tracks on a CD or (if playing MP3/WMA content) you can select between albums on a disc. The display of this set displays all the ID3 information for MP3 files. I tried playing a wide variety of MP3 files from those compressed at 32K quality and sampled at a lower rate than 32K to those sampled at 48K with 320K compression, the unit played them all. For those Mp3 files of lower quality, you can use the "DIGITAL RE-MASTER" facility of this set to obtain better clarity. OTHER STUFF You can set the clock of this unit and set CD player or radio to wake you up at a particular time. Use the sleep timer to have the unit turn off after 30, 60, 90 or 120 minutes. The display is a 4-line LCD backlit type so it can display a fare amount of information at any one time. A remote control is included but it cannot control the cassette deck. (obviously) Battery power can be used as well as standard household current, this set runs on 6 c-size batteries with 4 penlight type for memory backup, if no batteries are in the set and AC power is turned off, memories and clock settings are instantly lost. Use the 4 EQ presets to enhance your listening pleasure, you can turn all EQ presets off, also try the Surround Sound virtualiser, I've found it works a treat with spoken word material. This set has a headphone socket but does not have any line in or auxiliary socket. CONCLUSIONS A must for the bedroom, a great portable music or talking book player. Yep, this set is cheap and doesn't provide allot of power (6 Watts RMS per channel) but for the price you're getting a heap of packaged features to make your audio enjoyable. I hope that Panasonic will consider making a more powerful boom-box which does everything (and perhaps a little more) than this model. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 8.1 Comment: A Member Of The TFT BBS Digital Security Initiative iQA/AwUBQed15ylBPqY64aUBEQK0zQCfTi3YV7wV6BuQErS/szUFDUa1pI4Anjv5 RTqKLXGUyQqM1Hi/yG9e6Inc =TSTb -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Dane Trethowan http://www.tft-bbs.com/grtdane/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.300 / Virus Database: 265.6.11 - Release Date: 1/12/2005 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- _______________________________________________ PC-Audio List Help, Guidelines, Archives and more... http://www.pc-audio.org To unsubscribe from this list, send a blank email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ PC-Audio List Help, Guidelines, Archives and more... http://www.pc-audio.org To unsubscribe from this list, send a blank email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
