The Fusion DMP Reviewed
by Steve Ackerman
posted 2006-10-23

In this day and age, cell phones and portable media players have become a huge part of our lives. The ability to purchase music online and take it on the road with you has fueled a need to flood the marketplace with portable audio gizmos and gadgets, from tiny 32Mb mp3 players all the way up to the gigantic 80Gb models that can display photos and digital video, available in many shapes and sizes. But there are only a few solutions on the market for water sports enthusiasts. We are all aware of damage that sand and water can have on electronics, always finding its way into the tiniest of openings, only to wreak havoc deep inside.

In fact, just a couple of months ago I was listening to my Nano during the tail-end of a long day at the beach. I walked down to the water to rinse off my board. Carefully, I waded into the water just deep enough to roll my board over. As I bent down to roll up my leash... wham! I forgot to pay attention to the swell, and I was soaked... iPod and all. It played for a few minutes as I fumbled with the silicon skin, quickly trying rip it off so I could dry it off before it died. But all of my efforts were in vain. Moments later, the click-wheel completely stopped responding and then the entire unit just shut itself off... never to come back to life.

Interestingly, there are only a few companies that have come up with solutions to address the problem worth looking at... like the H20 Audio and Otterbox waterproof housings that are submersible to 10 feet or the Finis, Swimman and Oregon Scientific mp3 players. Freestyle Audio has set their sights high on providing waveriders, snowboarders, swimmers and anyone else that spends time in and around the water with a rugged, waterproof audio device.

The Fusion DMP is a flash-based, digital mp3 player that not only floats, it weighs less than 35 grams and it is waterproof to 10 feet. They were designed without any moving parts so they are completely shock resistant, providing hours of skip free audio enjoyment. Fusion DMP's are available in 128 Mb ($109.95 MSRP), 256Mb ($139.95 MSRP) and 512Mb ($169.95 MSRP) models.

I saw one of these players in action at the September 2006 ASR show and had to try one out for myself. I received a Fusion DMP 128 shortly after contacting Freestyle and began to open the box. After carefully unpacking the unit, the first thing that I noticed was the Fusion DMP's near tear-drop shape fits perfectly in the palm of your hand. There are 4 buttons, 2 on each side, that control the unit. These buttons provide easy-to-use volume adjustment and song navigation, even through the comfortable neoprene armband that comes with it. The only major feature really missing on this player is the little screen to see what is playing or to find the level of remaining battery life.

A special USB cable is provided with the Fusion DMP for charging and music transfer through the headphone jack. Surprisingly, the unit can be fully charged in less than two hours, giving you nearly 40 hours of playtime before you need to plug it in again. Transferring songs from your Mac or PC is as easy as copying the files from one drive to another, without the need of any additional software. Songs can be added or removed simply by dragging and dropping onto the drive or to the trashcan respectively. The unit plays the music files alphabetically, so you could force the order of the playlist simply by adding a letter or number to the beginning of each filename.

Also, I found that the Fusion DMP only plays mp3s so you will need to convert any of your iTunes, Media Player or other song formats that you have to mp3 before they will work. I added some music to the player that I had sampled at varying bitrates from 128K all the way to 320K, including a few sampled at some variable rates. All of the tunes seemed to play flawlessly just as I thought they would.

A little note... if your music comes from numerous sources, you might find the need to have the audio levels normalized across all of your music. Otherwise, you might be forced to adjust the volume of each song as they play. One song may be loud while the next might be difficult to hear. This is definitely the biggest gripe that I had with the unit. Audio level normalization would be a huge improvement, that way you won't need to be fumbling with the volume constantly.

After all of your music is loaded, the player functions similar to any other. Plugging the headphones securely into the jack will turn the player on and removing them will turn the player off. The top-left button functions as the Stop/Play/Forward control, the lower-left button functions as the reverse control so navigating through your playlist is as simple as hitting the correct directional button and the two buttons on the right side are used only to control the volume.

Once I started listening to the player, I immediately noticed that the waterproof headphones provided with the unit gave off a very "tinny" sound when not in the water, so you might want to find a better, non-sealed pair for when you're not around the water. Since so much of the sound quality is determined by the quality of your headset, a higher quality headset will certainly provide you with a more enjoyable listening experience.

Ultimately, the Fusion DMP's functionality, while limited, will perform for you just about anywhere... I think Freestyle should add the word "Extreme" to the name of this player. However, the ability to handle more audio formats like ogg, a shuffle mode and audio level normalization would add a great deal of value of this already impressive player.

Now drop by www.freestyleaudio.com for more information, check out the testimonials and go try one out for yourself.