The eXpanium is an MP3 CD player that uses a near-standard CD display, showing only track and album numbers and times, and has six transport control keys scattered over the lid. In addition to the usual functions, these provide 30 track programming, track and disc repeat and shuffle modes. On one side are three switches for Dynamic Bass Boost, electronic shock protection (ESP) and key lock/resume mode. A standard rotary volume control graces the leading edge of the player, while on the left side are 3.5mm stereo sockets, one for the headphones and one for line output. There is also an external power input for the supplied AC adapter.

Philips has implemented CD-ROM play quite flexibly. A 650 megabyte CD-R will, using 128kb/s MP3 files, provide up to 11.5 hours of music. Rather than having to fill all of this at once, or finalise it with unused capacity, the eXpanium allows MP3 playback from unfinalised multi-session CD-Rs and CD-RWs.

CD-ROMs take a while to initialise. A duly finalised test CD-R with 184 tracks over 13 folders and accounting for 600MB took 22 seconds to reach a playable state. Thats because the player initialises a disc by scanning the whole CD and counts the playable files. Unfinalised CD-Rs take a little longer.

With audio CDs the player worked pretty much as usual. The shock protection provided about 40 seconds of buffering. Some ESP systems do audible damage to the music when they compress the digital audio into undersized buffers, but even on music sensitive to these effects (solo harpsichord and piano), this was inaudible. While the ESP is switchable for audio CDs, it is permanently on for CD-ROMs. Philips says that it provides 100 seconds of buffering of 128Kb/s MP3 files.

MP3 playback also worked well but navigation proved to be a problem. Each folder is represented as an Album, with AL00 representing the root directory and then the next level of folders numbered sequentially from AL02. The next level down (that is, sub-sub-folders) resume the numbering sequence and so on. But since you are shown only the ALxx number, and not a name, it takes a bit of guess work to determine where you are.

Within each folder or album I was unable to discern the criteria used by the eXpanium for track order. It certainly was not alphabetical, nor in accordance with the time and date stamp of the file. So with several hundred tracks, expect to remain guessing.

The frequency response is flat, within a 1dB range from 7 to 20,000 Hz on CD Audio playback, through both the headphones and line outputs. The bass boost circuit kicks up the deep bass by around 12dB at 20 Hz. Headphone output power is fairly limited, so youll do best with sensitive headgear.

The EXP 101 overcomes the expensive-media problem well. But given the sheer volume of possible MP3 tracks on a CD, it really needs a text display for ID3 tags or file names.