Tech Test Drive: Jukebox a
breakthrough for MP3 fans
BY MIKE LANGBERG
Mercury News Personal Technology Editor
Get ready for the next chapter in digital music.
The wildly popular MP3 format for compressing and sharing digital
music files is already remaking the music business, amply
demonstrated by the recent firestorm surrounding the MP3-swapping
Web site called Napster.
What's kept the volume from getting even louder is that MP3 music has largely been imprisoned
inside personal computers, despite two years of new gadgets that tried and failed to offer the right
combination of affordability, ease of use and reliability for moving MP3 into the real world.
Now, there's a product that flattens the PC jailhouse door: the Nomad Jukebox from Creative Labs,
officially launching Monday.
The Jukebox (www.nomadworld.com) resembles a slightly overweight portable CD player, weighing
16 ounces. The secret is inside: A 6-gigabyte hard drive capable of storing 100 hours of high-quality
MP3 music.
Since the average CD contains 40 minutes of music, this means the Jukebox can hold about 150
albums converted to MP3.
The Jukebox costs $499, which will probably limit the initial market to well-heeled gadget freaks and
serious MP3 fanatics. But I'm betting prices will come down rapidly, and wouldn't be surprised if
portable hard-disk players cost half as much in two or three years.
Music lovers will find these players irresistible -- instead of hauling extra CDs or tapes around, they'll
get a huge library of music or spoken-word programming at the touch of a button.
My family music collection, for example, totals 90 CDs. So I could copy every disc I own into the
Jukebox, with considerable room to spare for new acquisitions.
Creative Labs, best known for its Sound Blaster line of computer audio boards, has done a masterful
job in designing the Jukebox. I found almost none of the obvious mistakes that so often cripple
first-generation products.
The Jukebox avoids the biggest potential problem -- skipping or other disruption in playback when
the unit is jostled -- through a generous 8 megabyte ``buffer'' memory chip that stores five minutes of
music. The hard disk spins for only a few seconds every two or three minutes to reload the buffer,
saving power as well as preventing skips.
Nor is the Jukebox difficult to operate.
The player comes with a USB cable that connects to any USB-equipped Windows PC or
Macintosh. A CD-ROM included in the box provides Windows and Mac software for converting, or
``ripping,'' music CDs into MP3 format, and for managing the Jukebox's music library.
Put a music CD in the computer's CD-ROM drive, and, with a few mouse clicks, the software starts
ripping the disc directly into the Jukebox. It's equally simple to transfer music downloaded from the
Internet -- legally obtained or otherwise.
The software code that runs the Jukebox, called ``firmware,'' is upgradable by downloading new
features from Creative's Web site. In the next few weeks, the company is promising an upgrade to
support the Windows Media Audio, or WMA, format from Microsoft Corp. that's beginning to gain
acceptance as an alternative to MP3.
By the end of the year, Creative says it will provide an upgrade to support listening to audio books
and other spoken-word programs, adding a ``bookmark'' feature to go back to the same spot within
a track after turning the player off, and by adding ``fast forward'' and ``rewind'' controls.
Future upgrades could include support for new, supposedly copy-proof formats under consideration
by the record industry. However, there are no guarantees here. Record companies could ultimately
settle on a format that can't be incorporated into the Jukebox.
Music lovers will appreciate the many ways in which the Jukebox can be configured. There are
controls for adjusting treble, bass and mid-range; a range of ``environmental settings'' such as
``auditorium'' and ``club;'' and the ability to create and store numerous ``play lists'' for dishing up a
pre-selected list of tunes.
The primary output for the Jukebox is a headphone jack, but that jack can also accommodate a
patch cable for connecting to a stereo system. Two separate line-out jacks support four-channel
surround-sound systems, and a line-in jack makes it possible to use the Jukebox as a digital tape
recorder storing 10 hours of high-quality input.
I had no trouble setting up the Jukebox and quickly loaded several types of audio -- tracks from one
of my favorite music CDs, an MP3 single from the Web and an audio book, also from the Web. I
also listened to some of the 20 hours of music pre-loaded on the Jukebox. All of it sounded great to
my untrained ear, with the Jukebox's default data rate of 128 kilobits per second rendering music that
sounded comparable to CD.
For those willing to surrender some audio quality, the Jukebox's capacity can be doubled or
quadrupled by storing music at 64K or 32K per second.
My gripes with the Jukebox were minor.
The device is power-hungry, despite the energy-saving buffer, and Creative wisely provides two sets
of four rechargeable AA batteries, so listeners can double the playing time. Creative claims the
Jukebox runs for four hours on each set, but I seemed to get only two to three hours.
The Jukebox is also slow to start up when you turn the unit on, taking about 25 seconds to get itself
ready to play music.
Finally, I found myself occasionally confused as I navigated through the music menu, displayed by a
small LCD screen on the Jukebox face. Creative needs to tweak the Jukebox software to make it
easier to keep track of what you're doing.
And an important note of caution: Hard drives are much more durable than they were a few years
ago, but I don't claim to know how well the Jukebox will hold up when bumped around in a handbag
or backpack for months or years. Creative Labs provides only a 90-day warranty on the Jukebox
hardware.
These concerns, however, wouldn't stop me from recommending the Jukebox to anyone with a
computer full of MP3 music and a big enough wallet to spend $500 for the privilege of carrying that
music anywhere.
MP3 lovers who want music on the go can also find alternatives to the Jukebox.
Creative Labs isn't the pioneer in portable hard-disk players. A small Korean company called HanGo
Electronics introduced the first such product in November 1999, selling it in the United States under
the name Personal JukeBox (www.pjbox.com). But the Personal JukeBox is significantly more
expensive at $749, and isn't upgradable.
A small Taiwanese company called SSI Computer, meanwhile, has just introduced a similar product
called the Neo (www.ssiamerica.com).
These two companies, however, lack the marketing resources of Creative Labs. The Nomad
Jukebox will be heavily advertised and widely available; I'm also confident Creative Labs will stick
around for the next several years and continue to provide upgraded software for the Jukebox.
Solid-state MP3 players, which use memory cards instead of a hard disk to store MP3 files, have
been available for almost two years. But the players, typically selling for $100 to $250, hold just an
hour of music at most. Extra memory cards cost $50 to $100 and only add another 30 to 60 minutes,
making solid-state players impractical for listening to a big selection of music.
A more affordable approach than the Nomad Jukebox is a new generation of portable CD players
that handle MP3 music on CD-R or CD-RW discs, along with conventional music CDs. The Philips
Expanium (www.expanium.philips.com), introduced last month at $199, and the RCA RP2410,
due early next year at $149, are two examples.
CD-R and CD-RW discs are inexpensive, as little as 50 cents each when purchased in bulk, and can
hold nearly 10 hours of MP3 music. But you need a PC with a CD-RW drive, as well as the patience
to first ``rip'' your music CDs onto the computer and then ``burn'' them onto a disc. To match the
Jukebox's capacity, you'd need to lug around 10 CDs full of MP3 music. |
