Yet another look at a previously reviewed MP3 player (issue 30 p92),
the E-Sounds is uninspiring in the company kept this month although there are some explanations. As a portable music player the E-Sounds is a performer of the highest calibre across all styles. There was no weakness observed, even in some of the difficult musical passages like some of the synthesised and percussive effects in our techno track, and you could actually hear Jeff Buckley on Eternal Life instead of a garbled wail.

The EQ options only offer four presets consisting of a normal setting, pop, rock and classical, but they work well. However, as noted in the May issue, it was hamstrung by the lack of an encoder which meant that 15 per cent of our overall scoring was denied to the E-Sounds.
We find the concept of packaging an MP3 player without any ripping or encoding application, even a shareware or crippled one, akin to selling a car and then telling the customer they have to fill up with a jerry can to get it out of the yard. What they have provided is the E-Sounds Desk manager and some MP3 sample tracks. File transfers were reasonably quick across the parallel port although not as efficient as the DAP Pro.

E-Sounds Desk has previously been criticised by us for its paucity of features normally associated with these MP3 file managers. On this occasion we found cause to complain about the fickleness of the software which would inexplicably lose the connection to the player, or find the player but not find the memory card. Obviously the E-Sounds was designed with cost considerations but how much extra would have an encoder added to the eventual street price?
E-Sounds has provided a memory card slot for expansion via SmartMedia. It will accommodate a 16 or 32Mb card but not the highest capacity, which at this stage is 64Mb. Most of the 32Mb players will only take a maximum 32Mb card for expansion which is curious. We were told that the issue is one to do with the firmware of the player. The E-Sounds manual simply describes the expansion slot as a SmartMedia slot and anyone could mistake this to include a 64Mb card. This is not to single out the E-Sounds, which is the best dedicated music player of the low-cost models, but to highlight problems that design engineers will need to address in future.