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(More customer reviews)I have really struggled with this review over the last week. I really like the concept of the Myine Abbee. I think it's innovative and it doesn't try to replace the whole digital quality, buying music and downloading it onto an MP3 player or computer scene. Picture a housewife who listens to her favorite FM radio station in the kitchen for a couple of hours each day. Picture an older person who isn't necessarily computer or MP3 player savvy who likes to listen to the radio.
Here are some of the other Pros I recorded in my notes on the Abbee:
-Unit (Abbee) isn't too large, about the size of a full-size box of Kleenex. This can easily live on your kitchen counter, or on a night stand.
-Has a sort of a simple, appealing modern look to it
-Included "Music Lock" device allows you to take the music with you if you want. The system does a really good job of eliminating background fuzz that is typical of radio listening. I was surprised at how good music sounded on the Music Lock.
-Sound played out of the Abbee base is quite good for its size. It has decent base. Music played via the Aux port on the back (eg. MP3 player) isn't quite as loud, but sounds even clearer.
-When recording songs from stations that pollute the last 5 seconds of the song with song name/artist information, the Abbee handles it by quickly fading the volume out so that you don't hear it, or hear very little of it. Pretty amazing.
-Abbee has a mini-USB port on the back titled "Update", paving the way for future firmware upgrades, etc.
-Abbee can serve as the speakers for your MP3 player via the Aux port on the back.
-Abbee can also output live radio content or recorded content to your stereo system via the white (L) / red (R) RCA Out ports on the back. Concievably you could capture the outputted sound on your PC and burn it to CD's or create MP3s if you have the right hardware.
Now for the Cons, which are the reason for 3 stars instead of either 4 or 5:
-Most buttons serve multiple functions, which can make it confusing to use. For example, the "Favorite" button can be pressed to save a song from being overwritten, but if you press and hold the "Favorite" button it deletes the song. Hmmmmm
-There is no indicator that tells if a song has been saved with the Favorite button or not. If you save a song with the Favorite button but do not sync the song to the "Music Lock" portable device, it will still get overwritten.
-After my initial 30 hour recording session in which I thought 98 songs were recorded, I switched to "Play" mode. Abbee never initiated a Sync with the portable player known as the "Music Lock". I listened to several songs and then changed mode to "clock mode" to set the time. Then I changed back to "Play" mode and it said "EMPTY". All the songs appeared to be gone. I had to pull the "Music Lock" device out, and then the songs reappeared on the Abbee. When I put the "Music Lock" back in its holster, it finally started the sync process. It took about 10 minutes to sync the device. I was able to successfully switch out of the random playback mode, because I wanted to start at song #1 and go all of the way to #98 to see what was recorded. Well I was surprised to find they were numbered #65 to #98, with NO 1-64 available apparently. I pulled the "Music Lock" device out of its holster, and now the Abbee shows "EMPTY" again. This is actually by design...when you sync the Music Lock with the Abbee it actually removes the songs from the Abbee. I don't find this functionality particularly desireable.
-Abbee may be the only device in the world where the portable player has more capacity than the base unit. When the "Music Lock" is unplugged from the Abbee base unit, the Abbee will only play live radio or any songs recorded since the "Music Lock" has been unplugged. If you have 300 songs on the Music Lock, you can't get to them unless the Music Lock is plugged into the Abbee. In this day of cheap memory I don't know why the Abbee base unit can't hold more than 100 songs.
-A couple of the "Songs" recorded by Abbee were entire commercials.
-When Abbee is powered on, it defaults to "Live" music from the radio with volume set to zero, and will not let you switch to "Play" mode until you "WAIT" about 30 seconds. This is true even if you were last listening to recorded content in "Play" mode.
-I executed a Master Reset in order to test the functionality, and then I let Abbee learn for another 24 hours WITHOUT the Music Lock device plugged in, and now it looks like it has 64 songs. Nope, they are numbered 30-64. So I change over to live mode to start recording more songs. After another 5 hours I check on it and now they are numbered 51-85. Songs 51-64 are from my previous list, songs 65-85 are new, and my songs 30-50 are gone. Now I realize the Abbee can only hold roughly 33 or 34 songs and then it starts deleting the oldest songs. The User Guide states "Over 100 Songs", but that's not what I'm seeing.
-When I plug in the Music Lock device it syncs the music, which is now removed off the Abbee base unit. If I pull the Music Lock back out, I expect the Abbee base to record another 33-34 songs so I can sync it later, but it no longer records ANY music without the Music Lock plugged in. It always shows "EMPTY". So now if someone has the Music Lock player with them, the Abbee base unit is literally only a radio.
-The highest song total I have reached now after 4 days is a range of songs between 52-202. No more songs are being added. If I delete a song, then it will add a new one (eg. 203 etc.) I don't know what happened to the 500 song limit...
-The User Guide offers a URL if you need help: [...], but the only help that is available is a PDF version of the User Guide. So what you have is a "User Guide" that refers you to itself if you need additional help. ;-)
-I submitted an email to [...] on 3/1/2010 with some of my experiences and some questions, and have had no response. There is also a support phone support number which I elected not to call. (UPDATE: Email was received on 3/4 but was in my spam folder)
-One time while the Music Lock was syncing I changed the recorded song I was listening to and it got stuck in a 1 second loop for about 10 seconds.
-Another time I switched from Live Mode to Play Mode and the Abbee would allow me to scroll through the recorded songs, but it would NOT show the song number until I powered off and then on the Abbee base.
Some "Nice to Haves" that did not effect my rating of the Abbee:
-Being able to set an alarm and use it as a clock radio would be a nice feature to add.
-A small remote control would be a nice option too.
In summary, this is a really excellent and innovative idea. I applaud its inventor for inventing it, and for naming it after his wife. Behind every good man there is a great woman.
This product is so close to being really amazing. I think the USB plug in the back marked "Update" is key if Myine plans to update the firmware on the Abbee.
UPDATE: You will have a much better experience with Abbee if you initially turn on the Abbee base without the Music Lock plugged in. Set your time. Choose a station and lock it on a preset. After about 5 minutes of listening to Live mode, switch to Play mode (it will show EMPTY) and plug in the Music Lock. This will enable you to record much more than 34 songs and will insure the numbering starts at 1. In fact I now have songs recorded that are numbered 1 thru 200 and growing, so this is looking much better...
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Myine Abbee Commercial Free Music Radio with Music Lock Portable PlayerNo Commercials or DJ Talk. No Computer or Subscriptions. ABBEE - COMMERCIAL FREE MUSIC SYSTEM FOR THE HOME, THE CAR AND ON-THE-GO. The Abbee Home Speaker system has a built-in FM tuner that records songs from your favorite FM stations directly to the Music Lock portable player. Abbee automatically removes commercials and DJ chatter, so all you hear is the music.
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