RB's "cksla" reviews the Sony Vaio Music Clip:
O/T: The Sony MusicClip
(or, "Why SDMI sucks", take your pick)
On January 27th, I received my newly-purchased Sony MusicClip portable digital audio player via Federal Express. I had read about the unit somewhere on the net, visited Sony's information site, and liked what I saw - except for the SDMI support (more about that later) - so I ponied up $299 and ordered it.
A little disclaimer: this is not an in-depth review. I bought this player, played with it for a couple of hours, saw the writing on the wall, and it's going back. I don't own, nor have I used, any other MP3 players, but I do own a Sony MZ-R3 MiniDisc player/recorder. If I were going to keep it, I might care more about things like audio quality, storage, etc, but it's too annoying to work with to worry about things like that.
Go here first if you'd like to see Sony's marketing hype:
ita.sel.sony.com
The Hardware
The unit itself is VERY small and lightweight - it measures about 4 1/2 inches long and has a diameter just larger than the single AA battery that it uses as a power source. Without the battery installed, it almost feels like there's nothing to it at all!
As near as I can tell, all of the circuitry is housed on a single circuit board about 1/3 of an inch wide and 1 1/2 inches long. Considering that this includes 64MB of flash memory, USB interface circuits, the CPU, power and audio interface hardware, this unit is truly a marvel of miniaturization.
There's a price to be paid for this, though - the unit's small LCD display has space for only two numeric digits and a few status indicators. You won't be viewing song titles or timing information on this puppy - the only feedback you get is the track number, what playback mode is selected, what equalization setting is in effect, and the battery status.
As for controls: the top of the unit (where a clicker would be on a pen) has a large recessed Play/Stop button, which seems to be a good place for it. On the side, next to the display, are a Shift button, Volume Up/Down buttons, and forward- and reverse-track buttons. Holding the Shift key while pressing the last two chooses from four equalization settings - none, Jazz, Pop, and Rock. Their effect is about what you'd expect: not much. I think that the best sound is created when equalization is off, but some titles may benefit from the equalization.
The buttons themselves are, as expected, small, and I'd be careful using them since they're doubtless VERY small microswitches. Overall, though, given its size, the unit seems easy enough to control. Switch placement is good.
As far as playback goes, there is no fast-forwarding, no rewinding, not much of anything. You can skip backward and forward by tracks, and if you stop in the middle of a song, it will pick up where it left off later, but that's it. So I don't think this would be a good player for audiobooks or other spoken titles, since there's no bookmarking or anything.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that the MusicClip has a standard 1/8 inch headphone jack. I was ready with my Sony MiniDisc headphone adapter to convert the non-standard minijack that my MZ-R3 has coming out of the remote, but didn't need it.
The headphones supplied with the unit aren't up to Sony's standards, in my opinion, especially considering the price of the unit. They have a very lightweight, cheap feel, although sound reproduction seems passable. Still, if I were going to keep the unit, I'd definitely replace them. The cord on the standard headphones is about 1 1/2 feet long, which drastically limits placement options.
Sony includes a neck strap that attaches to a small metal ring on the unit and allows for easy removal with a Fastex buckle placed close to the player itself. However, I can't imagine using this for anything more active than walking - hopefully Sony will come out with an arm strap of some sort, such as is used with their Sports Walkman line.
Sony claims 6 hours of playback on a single AA battery. I didn't test this claim because I'll be returning the MusicClip shortly, but in a half hours' worth of playback the battery guage didn't change at all, so I'll take their word on that. Judging by specifications in the manual and their stated non-support for running the unit through a USB hub, it seems that the player powers itself via USB when cabled to a PC, which is good.
The player has 64MB of flash memory, and is obviously not expandable. There isn't even room for one of Sony's small Memory Sticks, much less CompactFlash. I was annoyed, however, to see that, in actuality, only 60.8 megabytes of the Flash is free for storing music - the rest contains the system software.
Okay, that's the hardware side - now on to the problem:
The Software
Ouch. Here's where what I consider to be quite a nice hardware platform gets ruined in a big way.
Firstly, the software installation was easy, although, annoyingly, it installed DirectX 6.0 without asking - I hate that! The only reason I can even see for installing it is the little equalizer display on the OpenMG software.
The overall feel of the software is okay, and it's quite easy to use. Sony did apparently use some non-standard software toolkit, probably to make the OpenMG software fit in with the look and feel of the rest of the VAIO software. It lags at times, but not annoyingly so.
Now, as you know, Sony, apart from making some darn good electronics, also has a big music empire to run. Given that, I wasn't surprised to see that a large amount of the manual talks about the unit's SDMI (Secure Digital Music Initiative) compliance and the limitations that entails.
Although Sony bills the player as being capable of playing MP3 files, there are some BIG limitations on that:
The player itself doesn't play MP3s - you must import them into the included "OpenMG" software, which converts them to ATRAC3 compression. This means your MP3 files are uncompressed, then recompressed in ATRAC3. Yikes. So, if you have a big MP3 collection, you have two choices: convert them all to ATRAC3 and store them in OpenMG's encrypted storage for quick accessibility (hope you have a BIG hard drive!), or sit through the conversion process every time you want to load an MP3. That'll get rid of the advantages of having a USB interface REAL quickly. (Note: - I've since been corrected that the player DOES in fact play MP3 files, but they must first be imported into the SDMI secure storage area through OpenMG. Same diff, as far as I'm concerned, but at least the music isn't being re-encoded.)
Variable-bit-rate MP3 files are not supported at all.
MP3 files with ID3v2 tags are not supported, and, according to the manual, may very likely result in the MP3 not being converted.
So, as you can see, this unit is NOT an MP3 player in my opinion. I have a bad feeling that people will get that impression and tend to ignore the ATRAC3 side of the equation, but don't, because that's all this thing plays! (See above) Personally, I don't relish the thought of duplicating my large collection of MP3s that I've painstakingly ripped from my CDs just so I can play them in this player, and that's the big reason I'll be returning it.
Now, aside from the supposedly-supported MP3 format, the system actually works fairly well. I set up the software, inserted my Cherry Poppin' Daddies Zoot Suit Riot CD, and started up the ripper portion of the OpenMG software. It tested out my Sony CDU-928E CD-R drive and worked nicely with it - I'd hope so, since it's a Sony unit, but given that this drive doesn't rip audio reliably at anything greater that 1X speed, it's good that it worked right on the first try.
The ripping process itself was fairly quick - I grabbed two tracks totalling about nine minutes and encoded them at the default 105kbps rate (to ATRAC3 format, of course!). The process went fairly quickly (much faster than real-time) and resulted in audio that seems comparable to MiniDisc quality, though perhaps a tad "mushier". Overall, I have no complaints about the audio quality. By the way, the two tracks took up about 9 megabytes of space, and transferred VERY quickly to the player over the USB interface - much less than a minute, more like 25 seconds or so tops.
Sony claims the following playtimes, given the memory:
About 60 minutes at 132kbps rate
About 80 minutes at 105kbps rate (the default)
About 120 minutes at 66kbps rate - although I didn't test this, I have a feeling that wouldn't be acceptable quality for most people. It might be okay for spoken-word titles, but see above about that.
Aside from the technical aspects, there's the SDMI portion of the equation, and that's another place where things get quite annoying: Sony makes it very clear that THEY are in control of things, and they'll let you do what THEY want to let you do:
The ripped audio is encrypted on the disk and can't be transferred to another machine. There will be NO TRADING ATRAC3 files.
You (obviously) can't load tracks on one machine and unload them onto another one. I'd expect this.
Each song has a "checked out" count, and only allows a song to be checked out three times before requiring it to be checked in (by removing it from the player). I don't get this. It's an SDMI thing, it doesn't have to make sense, I suppose.
The license only allows installation of the software on one machine.
I wouldn't have a problem with that, except that I do have machines at home and at work, and would like to be able to at least LOAD files either place. Sony talks about the fact that deleting an audio file from the player with another machine counts as a check-in when you next hook the player up, so apparently they would at least allow me to delete files at work and load new files from there, but I'll never know, because the license forbids two copies of the software.
Of course, you can pretty much forget open-source versions of the host software, since there's the standard "no reverse engineering" clause and I'm quite sure that Sony would ruthlessly prosecute anyone who figured things out. Ask the Bleem guys how much they've spent on legal fees!
The manual also states that, if you have an audio card with a digital output and play a file on the host software, the digital output won't work. I didn't test that, of course, but it looks like we can forget MiniDisc interoperability...
The manual also talks about things apparently in the SDMI specification that could apply to new titles, like play limits and title expirations. Wanna bet how happy this will be if/when SDMI-compliant CDs start appearing?
And finally, since SDMI is actually still pretty much vaporware, there's a nice ominous clause at the end: "This software was developed in accordance with the current arrangement between Sony and SDMI. If this arrangement is modified in the future, some of the software functions may become unavailable. Sony may offer an upgrade kit in this case at additional user expense." How nice. (Note: - I've since seen quotes from Sony executives confirming that if there comes a time when SDMI is widely enough accepted, they'll "flip the switch" and then *poof*, no more MP3s.)
So, as you can see, you may have paid $300 for this player, and it may be cool, but you definitely are NOT in control of what gets done with it, Sony is - now and in the future. I'm sure this may be the case with other players to a lesser extent, but MAN, am I annoyed by it all.
Conclusion
Overall, I can't recommend that very many people buy this unit. While the hardware is, to me, a technological wonder, the system taken as a whole is better described as "a legal nightmare".
Hardware-wise, I'd give the MusicClip a 9 out of 10, with the point being taken off for the headphones and the lack of realistic placement options created by the short headphone cord and the lack of an armband. If you're a geek with a pocket protector, though, you'll be fine! Of course, like me, you'll be too annoyed to use it...
Software-wise, I'd give it a 3 out of 10, with the 3 points being grudgingly given because the ATRAC3 compression, ripped from a CD, sounds pretty darn nice. It actually "cleaned up" some of the "harshness" from my Cherry Poppin' Daddies CD and made it sound a bit nicer, IMHO, more like a record than a CD.
The only people I can possibly recommend this unit to meet this profile, EXACTLY:
You don't use MP3 files, AT ALL.
You have one computer at home.
You use Windows 98 only, not 95 with USB support, and not 2000.
You've never heard of Linux.
You don't mind paying $300 for a unit, and never really having control over how you'll use it, for eternity. Additionally, you don't mind paying for new software when Sony changes their mind.
I think you'll agree, that's a pretty darn short list. Anyone with the hardware support and the technological open-mindedness to use this player will be highly annoyed by all the crap that goes along with it. In my opinion, this player is doomed from the get-go, which is a shame since, as I've said, it's really a technological wonder and a geek's dream, hardware-wise.
If you DO fit the above category, in my opinion, you'd be better off and money ahead in the long run to buy a MiniDisc recorder/player unit and install a soundcard with a digital output, or buy a CD player with a digital output. MiniDisc units are cheaper, not much bigger at all these days, cheaply expandable, and not as annoying legality-wise. The ATRAC3 compression is the same, though probably better because it's a higher bit-rate.
It must suck to be a Sony hardware engineer and come up with cool stuff like this, only to see it killed at birth in a legal death-grip. |
