Philips AZ1856 Soundmachine

Performance
We started off with good old CDs, mainly Jamiroquai for the beats and Iron Maiden for the chunk. The sound of the player was nothing extraordinary; it sounded just like a normal boombox, with a little boomy sound at the lower end, though the higher frequencies came out fine. You need to be seated right in front of it to really get the sweet spot. The overall sound was not too loud; the max power could be 10-12 watts.

Then we checked the USB drive function, for which I used a Philips Go-Gear and a Creative Zen. Both responded and played similarly, with an impressive response time while scrolling and navigating. The sound output was like the CDs, only this time dynamic range and high frequency detail was lost (obviously due to the MP3 format; this had nothing to do with the player).

On to ripping CDs to MP3s, which is what this player is all about. The AZ1856 rips in 128 Kbps, a bitrate that screws up the highs. So if you are into clear sound, even from MP3s, this player might not satisfy your needs. On the other hand, it's a nice unit to back up tunes and listen to them on a portable player, especially if the music is more important to you than the sound.

This operation is done real-time, while the CD is played, so that's cool. But if you just want to back up or rip discs as you may do with software, then it's not happening. Another thing this unit is useful for is recording radio! I used to do that stuff on tapes long ago (but didn't I tell you this player invokes nostalgia?). And yeah, those who still have old tapes can convert them to digital MP3 format. This is useful, as some titles on tape can be really rare and on the verge of extinction.

Conclusion
I would say this player is good at what it does, and at Rs 4999 its functionality is cool. The sound quality is very ordinary, though not bad. It should have been louder; I would have given more points for that. So, if you need inter-conversion among various music formats, including broadcast and recorded formats, you might like this player. If you're picky about sound quality, forget it.