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There's
a slew of products out this year that attempt to combine
portability with the capacity and organizational ability
of a PC
By
Lou Dolinar
Newsday
SIs this
going to be the big year for MP3 hardware?
Right now, the glass is half full or half empty: Although
there's a slew of sophisticated solid-state players that
are worth a look, pickings are surprisingly slim if you
want a reasonably priced, capacious player that realizes
the promise of MP3 - the ability to store and organize your
CD collection and function with ease as a stereo component
or portable, as the need occurs.
For those of you who just joined us, the MP3 format allows
a computer to turn music into a digital format and compress
it by a factor of 10 or more; in effect, you can put 10
albums on one recordable CD. The usual procedure is to "rip"
a regular CD you own into MP3 format with a program like
MusicMatch Jukebox, then save the stuff to disk. Some people
share these files over the Internet via programs like Napster.
And some musicians record songs in MP3 format to sell or
give away.
A year ago, when MP3 first went mainstream, you had only
two options for storing and playing back this music. You
needed a computer, which if it were a new model had gigabytes
of disk space and could store hundreds of hours of sound.
(Roughly converted, 20 albums can fit in one gigabyte, allowing
for the fact that most albums don't fill a CD.) Despite
its obvious flaws as a stereo component, a computer has
a huge advantage over conventional gear: With a good MP3
player program, it gave its user total control over the
music library - you could categorize songs by group, by
album, by genre, prepare custom playlists of music, even
generate random play sequences based on mood or other criteria.
At the other end of the scale were the newly minted, teeny,
portable units like the Diamond Rio 500, which had room
for just 32 or 64 megabytes in its solid-state memory -
about what a teen-ager would need to store his or her top
20 song picks. With no moving parts and instant access to
each track, these players quickly became popular, even though
they lacked the sophisticated abilities of computers to
categorize and sort music.
There's a slew of products out this year that attempt to
combine portability with the capacity and organizational
ability of a PC. Some use hard drives, some use removable
media, including CDs and Zip disks. Many, alas, aren't ready
for prime time.
Let's start with the solid-state units, which haven't changed
much since Diamond Multimedia introduced its Rio player
more than a year ago. Here you can't go too far wrong shopping
for price and features. The cheapest units use slow serial
connectors. More money buys more features, like voice recording
or FM radio, and better units are able to give you a text
display of song titles. The biggest determinant of price
is memory.
A good example of a low-cost player is the Rio 600, with
a list price of $169 (www.diamondmm.com), 32 megabytes of
memory and a USB connection. At the high end, check out
Creative's Nomad II MG (www.nomadworld.com/products/nomad2mg),
which throws in another 32 megabytes of memory, an FM tuner
with 20 presets, and a display for ID tags for $400. The
only problem with solid-state units is that the type of
memory they use, so-called "flash" RAM, is expensive. Prices
aren't going down, because buyers - particularly digital-camera
users - seem to have an unlimited appetite for the stuff.
Because flash memory is so expensive, there is a huge number
of new systems that use CDs for storage. These assume that
you, like legions of other music fans, have installed a
CD recorder inside your PC. You download or rip music from
existing CDs, and can put about a dozen albums in MP3 format
on a new CD.
On the face of it, CD-based units make sense. There's a
huge market for portables that play regular CDs, so adding
MP3-capability will be a real plus. Early units, unfortunately,
lack important features and users say they tend to skip
more than standard players, and that they frequently are
unable to read some MP3 tracks.
The cheapest units that will play MP3 CDs cost $150 or less
and look like standard portable CD players. The problem
with the low-cost units - and I can hear the screams of
consumers already - is that they don't show the name of
the album or track being played. All you get is a track
number, and you know how many tracks there are on a dozen
albums. So you need to type up and carry a list of the 100
or so songs on the album. Among the models out there now
is the Encino Voyager MP3/CD player ($149, www.bobsgadgets.com),
the Kanguru MP3 Player from Interactive Media Corporation
($129, www.kanguru.com/mp3.html) and a number of models
from www.OKBuyer.com. If no- name manufacturers turn you
off, take a look at the somewhat more expensive ($200) eXpanium
from Philips Magnavox (www.expanium.philips.com/ philips/expanium/product/product.html).
A
step up in convenience are units that display ID tag information
- i.e., the artist, album and song title. The champ here,
at $199, is the Pine D'Music SM-200C CD/MP3 Player (www.pineusa.com/d'music/sm200c-spec.htm).
It
started shipping two weeks ago, and is still in short supply.
Initial feedback on the MP3 newsgroups looks fair to good,
but I'd recommend waiting a couple of weeks to see how this
unit shakes out. On a somewhat more speculative note is
the RCA RP2410 (www.rca.com/product/viewdetail/0,1322,PI45056,00.html)
which might be ready for Christmas. Note that neither of
these units allow for setting up custom playlists, though
they do have randomizing functions.
There are also nonportable CD-based units. Usually these
are bare-bones DVD players that will also handle regular
music CDs as well as MP3s. One of the first was the Raite
AVPhile 715/715K Player DVD/CD/MP3 Player, which was going
for $179 when you could still find it at Fry's Electronics.
A similar unit, the Apex AD-600A, is still available at
Circuit City for a mere $149. Both display ID tags, but
otherwise have no sophisticated controls.
It would be nice to say you can get a sophisticated MP3
CD players for your car. Alas, a full-function receiver
for just $350 has been promised but not shipped by Aiwa.
See www.aiwa.com/Catalog00/Products2.asp?id94.
A couple of players eschew 640-megabyte CDs and instead
opt to use 40-megabyte removable PocketZip (formerly Clik!)
disks from Iomega. These disks cost $10 to $15 each, rather
than $65 or more for comparable solid-state memory. Unlike
CDs, you don't need a special burner: You just download
your MP3s directly to the player.
Iomega's $299 HipZip (www.iomega.com) is being heavily promoted
and is widely available. A similar unit is the Rave MP2300
(www.sensoryscience.com/corporate/Netscape.htm), also for
$299. About the only problem with the PocketZip system is
the small capacity of the disks.
Other models use standard PC hard drives, and are, in effect,
little computers with lots of sophistication. Creative Labs'
Nomad Jukebox ($499, thought I've seen it for $422 at www.buy.com)
is about the same size as a regular portable CD player.
Inside, however, dwells a 6-gigabyte hard drive, enough
to encompass just about anyone's entire music collection.
Sophisticated software lets you sort your collection by
artist, album or track. A very big deal: You can create
multiple playlists on your computer, then save them to the
player, which, incidentally, connects via a zippy USB cable.
This is the sort of device you can plug into your home or
car stereo, or listen to on the move with the provided headset.
About the only thing missing is the remote control. A similar,
slightly lighter unit is the HanGo Personal Jukebox (www.pjbox.com),
though the price is somewhat steeper at $749.
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