Originally, I owned a RioVolt, a CD-based mp3 player that read CD-Rs and CD-RWs. It worked well for use in the car and while walking, but on the bike, it began to skip no matter what at, shall we say, highway speeds. I began looking for a replacement that needed to be solid state so it would never skip. I also wanted capacity similar to that of the RioVolt (CD). I checked out the Rio 800 (a now discontinued solid state player) but wanted something that was a little less proprietary. I decided to get a player that used CompactFlash since my digital camera used the same. I discovered the NEX II from Frontier Labs based in Hong Kong. I would have loved if it had a remote to work with but it wasn't so. It was, however, skipless and had a very good signal to noise ratio.