Digital Trends

Samsung Yepp YP-T5V July 28th, 2004 | by Ian Bell

Setup and Use

Samsung includes a very detailed manual with the YP-T5V so setup is relatively easy and should be uneventful for even the most inexperienced users. We plugged the YP-T5V into our test machine and immediately noticed that Windows XP did not recognize the player as a mass storage device. You are forced to install the driver from the CD-ROM to get this function to work. The YP-T5V also does not support the Macintosh or Linux operating systems so non-Windows users will have to look elsewhere. Once the YP-T5V is connected to your PC, you can simply drag and drop files onto the player for use. When using the YP-T5V, the player will only read compatible music files, so if you have a non-supported audio format on the player; it will just be taking up useless space.

Samsung's Yepp Studio software features a very clean and minimalist interface. Using the software you can convert CD audio over to MP3 or WMA formats, and then transfer the files over to the player. Yepp Studio even supports CDDB and ID3 tags, so you can look up the CD's information on the Web, including artist, album and song and then convert that information over to an ID3 tag so you know details of song you are playing. The Yepp Studio software is not very advanced but it does support the capabilities of the player. If you are looking for a more advanced software program for ripping and converting audio formats, we would recommend, Free RIP, or LAME which can both be found on the Web for free.

We loaded our YP-T5V up with various music genres including techno (Sascha), heavy metal (Anthrax) and rap (JayZ) to test the player's sound quality. There are nine different equalizer settings, so you should be able to find a setting to match the genre of music you are listening to. Three of the EQ settings are somewhat unique. The SRS setting emulates surround sound speakers while listening to the music, the TruBass setting increases the player's bass output to add fullness, and the WOW feature allows you to use the SRS and TruBass settings at the same time.

Audio playback was relatively crisp and concise. Both the treble and bass were not over done, although there could be a bit more bass to make us satisfied. The sound quality is not as good as the more expensive Jens of Sweden MP300 we reviewed earlier in the year, but it also sounds much better than the less expensive MSI Megastick offerings. We feel that for the price you are paying for the YP-T5V, you are getting pretty good sound from it.