From today's WSJ. Also this week's Forbes reports 200,000 Rios have been sold in 10 months. Philips has only sold 200,000 of the Digital Compact Cassette since 1992. And Sony sold 500,000 of their MiniDisc in 1998 mainly to "music fans in Asia, where it's replaced the cassette. Still only a middling success in the U.S."
The Rio 500 is the only MP3 player that can use the faster and more convenient USB port. Finally, after 2 years a use for my USB port.
PERSONAL TECHNOLOGY:
New Portable Players
For MP3 Music Lovers
Are a Bit Off the Beat
----
By Walter S. Mossberg
THE HOTTEST new thing to do on a PC is to play the digital music that's contained in special computer files called MP3 files. But how do you listen to your digital music collection when you're away from the PC? You could lug a laptop around, but that's impractical in many cases. So, a whole new type of portable music player is emerging -- the digital audio player.
These little battery-powered gizmos are pretty impressive, at first glance. They're as small and light as a deck of cards, yet they yield very good sound -- as good as a CD player produces, or nearly so. They have small screens to tell you which song is playing, and they never skip because they have no moving parts.
They're basically little boxes of chips that can store about an hour's worth of CD-quality MP3 files. You plug them into a PC, download the tunes you want to hear, then unplug them, and you're ready to rock.
I've been testing three of the leading players, using them in cars and planes, at home and abroad. I tried a variety of music, but mostly focused on my vast collection of Mary Chapin Carpenter songs.
The players do work as advertised. But the whole concept behind them has some serious drawbacks when compared with portable CD players. And, absent some key improvements, they may not be the best long-term way to make digital music portable.
The three players I tested are the $269 Rio 500, from Diamond Multimedia; the $249 Nomad, from Creative Labs; and the $299 RaveMP, from Sensory Science. All are second-generation players, intended to improve on the first such player, last year's Rio 300 from Diamond. All are either available now, or will be in a few weeks, in stores or via the Web.
MY FAVORITE was the Nomad, which is the smallest and cheapest of the three, yet had the best sound, to my ears, and the clearest, easiest controls. I also preferred the Nomad's companion PC software. But the Nomad has some drawbacks, while the others have some strengths.
The Nomad, an elegant, magnesium-clad device, did a great job with all the music I tried. It sounded as good as my portable CD player. The controls are clear, well-spaced buttons arrayed along the sides. The only exception is the unlabeled "off" button, which doubles as the "stop" button.
In addition, the Nomad can function as a voice recorder and an FM radio, though I found the sound quality far worse in these modes. It has rechargeable batteries, but can also use regular batteries when you're away from the unit's charging cradle, which connects to the PC.
The Nomad has two drawbacks, however. It links to the PC via the printer port, which requires you to both disconnect the printer and perform a tricky, techie maneuver to change a setting that controls the printer port. Creative is working on a version that uses the far simpler USB port, but it isn't ready yet.
Also, the Nomad can hold only 64 megabytes of memory, or about an hour of music. The other two players I tested can expand to 96 megabytes, albeit at an extra cost of nearly $100.
The Rio 500 I tested had a translucent purple case, though other colors will be available when it ships in early September. It has two big advantages: It uses the USB port, avoiding printer hassles and technical setup steps; and it works on the Macintosh. The other two players are for Windows PCs only. It can also play prerecorded digital voice files, like some types of audio books.
But I found the sound quality of the preproduction Rio I tested to be slightly worse than that of the other players. The controls were also clumsier and more confusing than those on the other players, especially a "jog" dial that performs multiple programming and organizing tasks.
What's more, the Rio's software for downloading songs from a PC mysteriously refused to recognize as valid numerous of my MP3 files. The other two players handled them readily. The Rio also doesn't work with Windows 95, only Windows 98.
THE RAVEMP is a gray, hourglass-shaped plastic box with a belt clip on the back. It has several unique features. It sports line in and out jacks, so it can record music directly from a tape player or other external source, and can play back music through a home stereo. It also can store and display text files, although on a tiny screen, and can also store phone numbers and voice recordings.
But the RaveMP is the most expensive of the three, and, like the Nomad, it uses the PC's printer port and requires that the port be reconfigured. Also, while its sound quality was better than the Rio's it wasn't as good as the Nomad's.
Beyond the strengths and weaknesses of these three models, there is a fundamental problem with all digital audio players. They lack cheap, removable storage media -- like tapes or CDs -- which let you easily carry a variety of music. With these new players, when you get tired of your preloaded tunes, you either have to return to the PC to overwrite them with new music, or carry around several $100 32-megabyte memory cards, which store only about 30 minutes of music each.
Of course, if memory cards get roomier and cheaper, that'll help. And it's possible somebody will make a player that can download MP3s from the Internet without a PC. But until those things happen, you should consider an alternative: buying a CD recorder for your PC and using your MP3 files to create custom CDs you can play on any normal CD player.
---
To find my current and past columns online, go to the free Personal Technology Web site, at ptech.wsj.com.
M
|
