Panasonic SL-CT730 - CD / MP3 player
From Panasonic
The SL-CT730 is a little over an inch thick and weighs a mere 4.8 ounces without the battery. You'll hardly notice it during your busy day, but you'll be glad you have it with you.Advanced D.sound technology is comprised of four components that work together to elevate your audio experience to the next level. A Digital Amplifier helps reduce distortion and also helps you achieve crystal-clear sound - even at higher volume levels. The S-XBS and Digital Audio Gain Control help to improve bass response at higher volume levels and MP3 Re-Master technology allows the listener to receive outstanding sound quality from compressed music files, such as MP3 and WMA.Without H.Bass, headphones and compact speakers cannot reproduce some of the bass sound components that are included in music. H.Bass technology reproduces the harmonic series of bass components. This gives the listener the sensation of a fuller bass sound that cannot actually be reproduced with headphones and compact speakers.You can achieve up to 150 hours1 of MP3 and up to 85 hours1 of CD-DA Playback with the supplied battery life expander. It lets you power the SL-CT730 with two Ni-MH rechargeable batteries and two AA alkaline batteries, for some amazing playback times.The SL-CT730 is designed to reduce or eliminate CD skipping during most active uses. It even has a backup memory feature that helps provide further assurance of a skip-free listening experience.MP3 is the most popular and widely used digital audio compression format available today. Since MP3 files are so small, you can burn a library of music onto CD-R/RWs2 from a compatible computer and play them back on your SL-CT730 Portable CD Player. And with ID3 Tagging, you can display the title, artist name and album name on the remote while the MP3 file is playing.
- Amazon Sales Rank: #68268 in Consumer Electronics
- Brand: Panasonic
- Model: CT730
...you might have just about the perfect sound for eighty bucks
Like the other reviewer has mentioned, this might to be the ideal player without the need to go higher in price. The mids, lows, and highs, come through perfrectly, without an equalizer. 4 bass settings to chose from, and you might have just about the perfect sound for eighty bucks. Interestingly, this player powers a pair of Senns 650's headphones beautifully, with not need for an amp.
A Stand Out
This player is a cut above anything else on the market. It is the only one that you don't have to open the case to change batteries. The batteries are rechargeable and remain inbedded in the device. The 2 batteries last a long time and since they are about the size of a piece of gum, Panasonic was able to make the player VERY thin. The controls are easy to access. It comes with an extra battery case that holds two AA batteries. With the case connected to the player, battery power lasts forever (it seems), albeit somewhat cumbersome.
I must have gotten a dud!
I can't seem to reconcile my own experience with these glowing reviews. How do I hate the Panasonic SL-CT730? Let me count the ways:
(1) There is NO display on the player itself--there is only an *attachment* that you plug into the player (then plug your headphones cable into the attachment) that provides a small display. This attachment hangs off the player and is attached by the flimsiest imaginable cord. The attachment's display lights up only once you've pressed a button, and there is no way to keep it permanently lit. The attachment also has it's own control buttons which, unbelievably, do not correspond perfectly in function to the control buttons marked with the same symbols on the player. Essentially, while using this player, you must remember how to use two sets of different--but highly similar--control buttons. Human factors psychologists should use this thing to test the limits of human cognitive load!
(2) The battery life on my unit is bad: insanely, no-way-they-sold-it-intending-it-to-be-this-bad bad. With the rechargeable battery, I got through about one and a half standard CDs (that's CDs that are less than 80 minutes each; not mp3 CDs which can be much longer) before it died. So I tried it with two AA batteries. (AA batteries can only be used on the player with the help of....you guessed it, another attachment! (connected by another flimsy cord, naturally)). I would not contend that the player is usually this way; both common sense and the previous product reviews insist that the battery life of this player must usually be much better. However, I think it's important to report on the fact that I got a complete dud in terms of battery life. If I got a dud, you could too, right?
OK, so that looks like just two complaints, but it was really many more than that, I just lazily lumped them into two broad categories. But I hope you have gotten the idea: I hate this player so far, and I have some good reasons for doing so. Maybe I'll update this review in the near future to let you know about Panasonic's product return/replacement process!
ETA 04/07/07: I've decided to keep the player, simply because the sound quality is so terrific. I dropped $40 on a Sony DNE330BLK CD Walkman, and I couldn't stand to listen to it after comparing with the phenomenal sound quality of of the SL-CT730. I still maintain a couple of my gripes (the player is hard to program, the player itself has no display), but the rechargeable battery, as it turns out, recharges just as fast even if you are listening to a CD while charging. So while the advertised life of each battery charge is still a brazen lie, I find it's not too bad to just listen to 2 CDs with the unit plugged in, and then be able to go completely portable using the battery as the power source for the next 3-4 CDs.
