Now, what kind of a Tech Channel launch would Daily Radar have without a guide to some of the coolest digital music players on the market? Well, in case you've missed it, we've got a review of the new Creative Labs' NOMAD Jukebox as well as the dirt-cheap MPTrip player but the following is a brief look at some other devices that may help enrich your music-listening experience. This is by no means a comprehensive listing of every MP3 player available -- that list would fill several pages and would most likely bore you and us to tears -- but is instead a quick look at some of the other cool portable music devices out there.
Ready Freddy? Let's roll...
AVPhile 715
Pixie Technologies
$149.00
Despite its puzzling name, the AVPhile 715 is Taiwanese DVD player that also plays VCD movies, audio CDs and most importantly for our purposes here, MP3 CDs. That is, with the latter, PC users who rips their own CDs into MP3s, download MP3 files off the Net or acquire tunes from file-sharing programs like Napster or Scour.Net, can now fit roughly 130 or so five-minute songs on one recordable CD, yielding over eleven hours of music per disc.
The unit also displays the song names on the TV screen so users can easy select which tracks to play using the remote control. Naturally, you'll want a solid stereo receiver rather than hearing the music out of the TV's speakers.
The DVD quality and wealth of options are comparable to other DVD players despite its cheap price, so consider this system if you'd like to hear MP3 music throughout your pad and don't have a lot of cash to throw around. And hey, it's perfect for house parties and get-togethers...
MiniJam
InnoGear
$200.00 (32MB)
Handspring Visor owners finally have the gadget to make all their snooty Palm and PocketPC-owning pals green with envy.
The MiniJam is a small snap-on module that stores and plays MP3 music, with or without the need for the Visor to be turned on. The MiniJam ships with earphones, two batteries, a USB cradle to transfer music over to the player, and a 32MB or 64MB mini SanDisk Flash card (for roughly forty-five minutes to an hour and a half of MP3 music, respectively).
Visor owners can use the Visor's stylus pen to access the on-screen functions such as play/pause, fast forward/reverse, volume, EQ settings and playlist options -- but there's also buttons for each on the MiniJam itself if you're looking to save battery life on the Visor.
Looks like the acronym PDA can also stand for Portable Digital Audio...!
AudioReQuest
ReQuest Multimedia
$800.00
We're now starting to witness the first batch of MP3 players designed as a home stereo component, such as the aforementioned Raite AVPhile unit, but the AudioRequest is arguably the best there is. Here's why...
At the heart of the player is a 17.3 GB hard drive, capable of storing close to 6,500 five-minute songs or approximately 320 hours of digital music when MP3s are encoded at a bit rate of 128 Kbps (near CD quality).
Music can be transferred over to the AudioReQuest, in a number of ways. Firstly, users can pop a regular audio CD into the player and, with the push of a button, convert its tracks to MP3s and store them on the unit's hard drive. Or if you already have CDs burned full of MP3s, you can play them from the CD or copy them to the hard drive, as well. Secondly, with the RCA input jacks, users can also copy their beloved LPs or cassettes to the hard drive. And lastly, it can be hooked up to a PC via a USB or parallel port cable (both included with the player). It's also possible to hook up a Diamond Rio portable player to copy songs to take with you on the go.
The AudioReQuest features an illuminated LCD screen showing all the song data (to organize your playlists by artists, genre of music, alphabetically or by custom compilations) or you can attach the player to a TV with the bundled S-video cable. The remote is also incredible, offering everything you'll ever need at your fingertips.
The player sounds great and is chock-full of features. There's not many beefs with the system other than that it is very expensive, and it takes a good twenty minutes to copy a CD over to the hard drive.
Sony VAIO Music Clip
Sony Electronics
$300.00
Sony's latest portable music player is a pen-sized version of its Memory Stick Walkman, known as the VAIO Music Clip. It features hardwired 64MB of memory for about an hour of music, without the ability to upgrade space.
The Music Clip looks very sleek and stylish but unfortunately, it doesn't hold up to other portable players for a few reasons. For one, the OpenMG Jukebox software needed to copy the songs from a PC to the Music Clip must convert CD audio or MP3 songs into Sony's proprietary format, dubbed ATRAC3. Unfortunately, it takes an incredibly long time to do so. Next, the earphone cord is so short this device must have been designed to wear in a shirt pocket. To make matters worse, if you want to swap earphones (i.e. longer ones!) they probably won't fit into the earphone jack due to its custom design.
Hopefully the next few incarnations of this cool-looking digital music player will iron out these issues...
Marc Saltzman
