WHAT MP3 2001

BootLog.co.uk

MP3 PLAYER ROUNDUP – ISSUE 2

JAZ PIPER MVR64P

The MVR64 is the latest addition to the Jaz Piper range. It’s based on the popular MV32P doubling the on-board memory to 64Mb, adding an FM tuner with 15 station presets and a 6-mode DSP/3D sound processor to an already impressive specification. The feature list also includes a 4-hour voice recorder facility and telephone file manager that can store up to 500 numbers. Externally it is virtually identical to its cheaper and simpler stable mate. The LCD is a fair size, at the right angle and in good light, track and time info is legible but some of the mode indicators are microscopic and it could definitely do with a backlight.

Build quality is pretty good; it’s housed in a neat little metal-faced case with a belt clip on the back. A sliding cover protects the PC port; the slot for an optional SmartMedia card is on the opposite side. The controls are well spaced and easy to identify but figuring out how they work is another matter. The DSP modes are reasonably accessible, they are: normal, pop, club, rock, live, classic and hall, and it possible to customise bass and treble settings, but getting at the adjustments is another matter. The control system is decidedly cranky moreover the instructions and display panel conspire to make it even more difficult to use.

The Jaz Piper Desk file management software is a doddle to use and it comes with MusicMatch Jukebox and an evaluation copy of Zlurp CD ripper. The latter is more trouble than it’s worth; there are plenty of better alternatives to download from the net. MP3 processing is reasonably clean and the in-ear phones are okay for half hour stretches but they can become uncomfy. Bass levels are not too bad but even after a fair amount of fiddling around it still manages to sound a bit thin and trebly. With some decent phones it would be a good all-rounder and the radio is a bonus but it’s quite pricey.

Typical price £230

Media SmartMedia

Memory (int/sup) 64Mb

Memory (max) 128Mb

Formats MP3

PC min sys Pentium 90 or higher/16Mb/40Mb free/Windows 95/98

PC I/O parallel

Software Jaz Piper Desk file management, MusicMatch Jukebox, Zlurp CD ripper

Phones in-ear

Power /life 2 x AAA/9hours

Size 66 x 90 x 18mm

Weight 86g

Features FM tuner with 15 station presets, 5-mode DSP/3D sound, fwd/rev track skip, A-B repeat, repeat 1/repeat all/shuffle, title/artist display, voice recording (240 mins), telephone data recording (500 numbers)

Contact Scan Computers (01204) 474747 http://www.jazpiper.co.uk/

Ease of use 7

Features 9

Performance 8

EISEN DAP 96 PRO

The DAP 96 PRO looks promising, and with a useful 96Mb of on-board memory you’re not going to run out of storage space in a hurry. The case design is eye-catching, black, square and very stylish with those swept chrome buttons. It’s coated in that rubbery plastic stuff and it feels sort of soft to the touch. The LCD panel is gently backlit, the display is a good size and it comes with a good assortment of software and a smart carry pouch, in fact it all sounds wonderful, so what’s the catch? It has a few little foibles. Take the case, it looks great but the battery cover is poorly designed and keeps falling off. You have to take the battery out to get SmartMedia cards in and you need a pair of tweezers to get them out again. Replay options are confined to track skip, repeat one, repeat all and shuffle; there are allegedly forward and reverse search modes as well but it depends on an apparently secret combination of button presses that we never quite managed to fathom. There’s no A-B repeat and no DSP or equaliser modes, thought it does have manual bass and treble controls, which is arguably better. Sound through the in-ear phones is satisfactory with a fairly even treble and midrange and a smattering of bass. A touch basic for the price and watch that battery-cover but overall an agreeable little unit.

Typical price £210

Media SmartMedia

Memory (int/sup) 96Mb

Memory (max) 128Mb

Formats MP3

PC min sys Pentium 75 or higher/16Mb/10Mb free/Windows 95/98

PC I/O parallel

Software DAP Manager, Music Match & Audio Catalyst (demos), NextEncode 30 (shareware player/ripper)

Phones in-ear

Power /life 1 x AA/12-hours

Size 90 x 60 x 17mm

Weight 52g

Features bass & treble control, fwd/rev track skip, repeat 1/repeat all/shuffle, track/time/title/artist display, carry case

Contact Scan Computers (01204) 474747, www.scancomputer.co.uk

Ease of use 8

Features 7

Performance 7

ETRAX ETR-G71

Not a very good start… A piece of shiny plastic trim had detached itself from the in-ear phones on our sample, which rather set the tone for the listening tests, but more on that anon. The player looks quite cute and the big clearly labelled buttons are easy to use, the LCD is a good size too, with large alphanumeric readout but that’s all you get, no track or title info, just track numbers and times a bit rate indicator and memory capacity, which incidentally is a rather ordinary 32Mb on the standard model. It can be expanded with SmartMedia cards though, which fit into a slot on the side. Power comes from a pair of AAA cells, which last around 8 hours and the outfit includes a hard plastic belt clip, a bit like the ones you get with pagers.

The G71 has a 2-stage bass enhancer and the usual array of replay facilities, which includes proper forward and reverse search. The installation CD-ROM contains two programs, MusicPal, which handles MP3 file management and downloading, and MusicMatch Jukebox and CD ripper. MusicPal is dreadful, there’s no sign of a progress indicator, so you’ve no way of knowing from the desktop that a file is actually downloading, and download speed is unusually slow and there’s a great temptation to cancel the operation because it looks as though the application has hung. The only way to tell it is working is observe the PC’s hard disc activity light, which blinks occasionally, and watch the player’s LCD for the word Transfer to disappear. The earphones are really bad, they sound nasal and hollow with no bass content to speak of, quality improved dramatically with a good pair of in-ear phones, though it still sounds a wee bit harsh. Replacing the phones and new software would definitely help but as it stands it only rates as fairly average.

Typical price £130 (currently only available on-line)

Media SmartMedia

Memory (int/sup) 32Mb

Memory (max) 64Mb

Formats MP3

PC min sys P486 or higher/32Mb/20Mb free/Windows 95/98

PC I/O parallel

Software MusicPal file management, MusicMatch jukebox/ripper

Phones in-ear

Power /life 2 x AAA/8 hours

Size 83 x 58 x 17m

Weight 72g

Features 2-mode bass boost, fwd/rev track skip, A-B repeat, repeat 1/repeat all/shuffle, track/time display

Contact Worldwide Innovations 0870 2141910, www.innovate.com

Ease of use 9

Features 7

Performance 6

OUTRAGEOUS SOUNDMASTER

At just £35 this is claimed to be the cheapest MP3 player in the world. Well, yes, it probably is, but it’s a fat lot of good on its own unless you also happen to have a MMC card reader/writer handy. If not you will also have to purchase the companion recorder unit, which will set you back another £55, or you could buy them both together for the still not unreasonable sum of £80. Splitting the main elements of an MP3 player into two components has its advantages; the player in this case is miniscule, but it’s also very basic, providing only the bare minimum of playback functions (stop, play, track skip), a 2-mode equaliser and SRS spatial effect. There’s no display and it has no on-board memory, relying instead on MMC memory cards, it can take two, giving it a theoretical capacity of 128Mb, though the standard bundle comes with just one 16Mb card.

The card reader/writer plugs into the PC’s parallel port and draws power from the keyboard socket. Files are downloaded to the card using Absolute file manager and the installation disc includes MusicMatch ripper, both of which are reasonably easy to use. The player isn’t exactly difficult to use either, which is hardly surprising since there are so few controls. The large volume knob looks quite natty but it’s actually a damn nuisance it’s all too easy to accidentally nudge it when the player is in your pocket. In fact that’s the only place you can put it since it doesn’t come with any sort of holder or belt clip. The headphones look fairly ordinary but they deliver a pleasantly open and uncoloured sound. The SRS effect puffs up the sound and lifts the bass a notch but at the expense of making it sound a bit artificial, though, all in all not a bad effort.

Typical price £35 (player), £55 (recorder) £80 (both)

Media MMC

Memory (int/sup) 16Mb

Memory (max) 128Mb

Formats MP3

PC min sys Pentium 90 or higher/32Mb/20Mb free/Windows 95/98

PC I/O parallel, card read/writer module

Software Absolute Soundmaster file manager, MusicMatch CD ripper

Phones in-ear

Power /life 1 x AA/ hours

Size 62 x 58 x 18mm

Weight 45g

Features 2-mode equaliser, SRS spatial sound, fwd/rev track skip,

Contact Absolute Multimedia (01635) 278587

Ease of use 7

Features 6

Performance 8

DIGITAL DREAM DMS 100

About the best thing we can say about the DMS 100 is that it would suit a computer nerd looking for a challenge. It managed to defeat us, and we’re not exactly virgins with this technology... Four frustrating hours after opening the boxes we still hadn’t managed to get a single peep out of it and in the end we had to give up, life’s too short. The system appears to have been cobbled together from a number of separate devices. The player is a flimsy little box, it has no on-board memory instead it uses a plug-in CompactFlash card, which the box says are sold separately but you do get one with the bundle, albeit with a paltry 8Mb capacity. The other box contains a card reader/writer module that plugs into the PCs parallel port. The player and reader have their own installation software, German in origin, and a tad flaky to boot; it locked up on two of our test bed PCs, including one with a totally clean drive, so it couldn’t be blamed on software conflicts. The player is incredibly basic, no display, just track selection and volume buttons and it comes with some cheapo looking earphones. The download software is almost impenetrable and the accompanying instructions would be no help whatsoever to an MP3 or PC novice! If you’ve got the patience and know-how it might be persuaded to do something but quite honestly there are other players on the market for a similar amount of money – or less -- that do work so we’d have to say give this one a wide berth, until it’s been properly sorted.

Typical price £113

Media CompactFlash

Memory (int/sup) 8Mb (no resident memory)

Memory (max) 128Mb

Formats MP3

PC min sys Pentium 100 or higher/32Mb/10Mb free/Windows 95/98

PC I/O parallel via external card read/write module

Software MP3 Multi-Studio Pro,

Phones in-ear

Power /life 2 x AA/ hours

Size 98 x 58 x 19mm

Weight 66 g

Features fwd/rev track skip

Contact Digital Dream. (01304) 248200

Ease of use 0

Features 0

Performance 0

VIVANCO V-MAX

V-Max is currently the world’s smallest MP3 player, at least until the next one comes along… It really is tiny, smaller than a box of matches in fact; to give you an idea just how diminutive it is, the single AAA cell used to power the device accounts for around a quarter of its overall size. The most obvious drawbacks of being so titchy is that it’s fiddly, the case doesn’t feel very well made, it has very few bells and no whistles, unless you count the three-stage tone control and in-line volume control on the earphones. There’s a set of play and track selection buttons but no display or luxuries like fast search or repeat/shuffle replay modes. MP3 files are stored on postage-stamp sized MMC cards; two 16Mb cards are included with the outfit.

Files are downloaded using a read/write unit that plugs into the PCs USB hub (a parallel port version is also available). It works with both Windows PCs and Macs – driver software for both platforms is supplied. Perversely you only get Windows file management software, in the shape of the rather good eJay MP3 Station, which includes a very efficient CD-Ripper facility. Transferring files is a breeze, the card reader appears as a new disc drive in Windows Explorer and files are simply dragged and dropped or copied and pasted from one location to another. Vivanco have a pretty good reputation for headphones and earphones and we’re pleased to say they haven’t stinted with the V-Max. The earphones are tolerably comfortable with a wide, flat response and better than average bass coverage. It could do with a bit more volume but provided there’s not too much ambient noise it really sounds rather good and will reveal the faults and processing artefacts in recordings made at lower compression/bit rates. It’s a bit twee – really who needs a player that small -- but it sounds great and if you don’t mind missing out on the frills it’s well worth considering.

Typical price £150

Media SmartMedia/CompactFlash/MMC

Memory (int/sup) 32Mb

Memory (max) 128Mb

Formats MP3

PC min sys Pentium 100 or higher/16Mb/10Mb free/Windows 95/98

PC I/O USB/parallel

Software eJay MP3 Station file manager/CD Ripper

Phones in-ear

Power /life 1 x AAA/8- hours

Size 46 x 53 x 16mm

Weight 35g

Features 3-mode equaliser, fwd/rev track skip

Contact Vivanco UK, (01442) 403000, www.vivanco.com

Ease of use 8

Features 7

Performance 9

PONTIS MP3 (Sports Edition)

‘Sports Edition’ refers to the fact that this particular model has a yellow casing and comes with jog-proof earphones… It’s an unusual shape, the bulges at either side are for a pair of AA batteries, and unfortunately the wide flat case has the effect of making the display panel in the middle look a bit lost. Sadly the display doesn’t tell you much, apart from track numbers and times and the control system is a bit clunky; press the on/mode button when a file is playing and a set of legends appear in the display, assigning new functions to each of the five buttons beneath.

Two MMC cards fit into a slot on the bottom, they are protected by a sliding cover, two 16Mb cars are supplied along with a very good assortment of download software, for PCs running Windows, Mac and – this is a first – Linux operating systems. You also get a CD of jogging tunes with this model. Needless to say Windows users come off best and they also get CD ripper and encoder programs. There’s also a soft carry case and belt and a handy MMC card holder. The earphones that come with the player are Philips ‘Ear Gear’ models, with rubbery hooks that are supposed to keep them in place. Unfortunately they don’t come with any instructions and you can have endless hours of fun trying to figure out how to make them stay put. Even when they’re in place the fit isn’t very good, there’s a lot of leakage and unless they’re pressed firmly (and uncomfortably) into the ear canal what little bass content there was is completely lost. Substituting them for our favourite Sony in-ear phones (MDR-EX70s) improved performance significantly, and they won’t fall out either. The Pontis is okay but it’s a bigger than some tape and MD players, which sort of negates one of the main advantages of MP3.

Typical price £167.41 (available on-line/phone order only)

Media MMC

Memory (int/sup) 32Mb

Memory (max) 128Mb

Formats MP3

PC min sys Pentium 100 or higher/32Mb/10Mb free/Windows 95/98/Mac/Linux OS

PC I/O serial

Software Pontis LED MP3 Player & CD Copy ripper, jogging music album

Phones in-ear

Power /life 2 x AA/14 hours

Size 110 x 70 x 20mm

Weight 98g

Features bass & treble control, fwd/rev track skip, repeat 1/repeat all/shuffle, carry case

Contact Abcmp3 Ltd (01442) 261133, www.abcmp3ltd.co.uk

Ease of use 7

Features 7

Performance 7

HANGO PERSONAL JUKEBOX

The iMac-inspired see-through styling is about the only thing that’s familiar about this remarkable device. It does play MP3 files, but that’s not what the Hango Personal Jukebox (HPJ) is about, inside the chunky box there’s a 4.8 gigabyte, notebook PC type hard disc drive that’s capable of storing over 80 hours of music files, or around 1200 tracks at near CD quality. Just pop a CD into the CD-ROM drive on your PC and the Jukebox Manager software re-encodes the tracks and downloads the files to the disc drive via a USB cable link. The file manager program can organise your recordings by genre or ‘sets’, and individual discs. It sounds complicated but the very well thought out control system and the big display makes set, disc and track selection really easy, using just 6 buttons. The display also shows disc and track information (time/title/artist etc.), controls replay and track order and equaliser settings (flat, extra bass and super bass). HPJ is powered by a fat lithium-ion rechargeable battery that lasts for around 8 to 10 hours and it comes with a pair of Koss PortaPro folding headphones. There’s also a carry case and the mains adaptor.

Audio performance is excellent, the quality of CDs is preserved, at least if there are any losses during the encoding process you’d be hard pressed to spot them. The folding headphones look a bit ungainly but they’re actually quite comfortable, they have a wide flat response that includes a healthy bass line. However, it’s the huge storage capacity that sells this machine, there’s enough room to store all of your favourite albums in a box only a little larger than a normal personal tape player. The downside? Well, that’s the price; needless to say this kind of technology doesn’t come cheap.

Typical price £579

Media non-removable notebook PC hard disc drive

Memory (int/sup) 4.8Gb

Memory (max) 4.8Gb

Formats variable bit-rate re-encoding, MP3

PC min sys Pentium 200 or higher/64Mb/50Mb free/Windows 95/98

PC I/O USB

Software Jukebox Manager file management/CD transfer

Phones Koss PortaPro folding headphones

Power /life Li-Ion rechargeable/10-hours

Size 152 x 24 x 80mm

Weight 279g

Features 2-mode equaliser, fwd/rev track skip, track/disc/set/ repeat 1/repeat all/shuffle, set/disc/title/artist display

Contact UAS 01425 481222, www.pjbox.co.uk

Ease of use 8

Features 9

Performance 10

WEB-ROME UP-301

No, we haven’t got the photographs mixed up, Web-Rome does look exactly like a tape cassette, that’s because it can be used like one, but more on that in a moment. It is an MP3 player, with a 32Mb fixed internal memory; it’s powered by a nickel metal hydride rechargeable battery that’s good for around seven hours and it comes with a charger, file management, download and CD ripper software. Now for the clever bit, pop Web-Rome into a cassette deck, personal stereo, hi-fi system or car stereo and you can play back the MP3 tracks stored in the unit. A tape head built into the device beams the audio signal across to the tape player’s playback head, sensors inside detect the deck mode from the movement of the spools, so it replays in play mode, and skips tracks if you select fast forward or rewind.

There’s no display, which is a drawback, the designers have sought to get around the problem with a flashing LED that blinks according to mode and status but we can’t really see users memorising the codes. Plus features include an intro scan, which plays the first few seconds of each file. It has full set of playback modes (A-B, repeat, shuffle etc) and a three mode equaliser, though the buttons are very small and in the case of the equaliser, so close to the earphone jack socket that it’s awkward to get at. The Rome Manager software is reasonably easy to use and despite having several features disabled, the AudioGrabber CD ripper has a good range of options. The earphones are a notch up on the usual tinny items; they’ve got a fair bass reach and a reasonably fluid treble and mid-range. The fixed memory and lack of a display are drawbacks though we understand a new version with an inline-remote/display and upgradeable memory is in the pipeline, even so this one is worth thinking about, especially if you’ve still got tape players all over the place.

Typical price £150

Media fixed internal

Memory (int/sup) 32Mb

Memory (max) 32Mb

Formats MP3

PC min sys Pentium 90 or higher/32Mb/10Mb free/Windows 95/98

PC I/O parallel

Software Rome Manager file management, Digicap MP3 Player, Audio Grabber CD ripper

Phones in-ear

Power /life NiMh rechargeable/7-hours

Size 102 x 63 x 11mm

Weight 65g

Features 3-mode equaliser, fwd/rev track skip, A-B repeat, repeat 1/repeat all/shuffle/intro

Contact Webtronic Warehouse (01753) 741090, www.webtronicwarehouse.com

Ease of use 7

Features 8

Performance 8

SAMSUNG SGH-M100 GSM MOBILE PHONE

You’re strolling down the street, listening to sounds on the MP3 player when your mobile rings, what happens next? You either miss the call because you can’t hear the phone ringing or there’s a frantic scrabble with all of the little boxes dangling from your belt. If you had a Samsung SGH-M100 cellphone that wouldn’t happen because it has a built-in MP3 player that automatically pauses playback when you receive an incoming call. You can check the number in the display and by pressing a single button decide to take the call, divert it or ignore it and go on enjoying the music. Now that’s what we call progress! The phone is a very smart little dual-band GSM jobbie that works just about anywhere. It’s got a built-in organiser, calculator, a zillion annoying ringer tones, silent vibrating alert and 7 games, but you don’t want to know about that.

MP3 playback is through the supplied hands-free kit, there’s an in-line remote and another set of controls on the phone. MP3 track/time/title etc. info is shown in the phone’s gently backlit display panel. It has a fixed 32Mb memory – good for around half a dozen tracks – and a 6-mode equaliser. MP3 files are copied to the phone using a parallel data cable link and managed on the PC by our old friend MP3Man software (also supplied with Samsung’s other MP3 players) with an easy to use Windows Explorer type interface.

The earphones are a cut above the one’s Samsung supply with its regular MP3 players and although bass rendition is nothing to write home about the mid-range and top end are crisp and well defined. The MP3 cellphone had to happen sooner or later and it is no surprise Samsung was the first. It’s a great little phone and a decent enough MP3 player, though it could do with a bigger memory or card slot, even so, if you’re in the market for both devices this very neat one-box solution makes a great deal of sense.

Typical price £249.99 (with network contract)

Media internal

Memory (int/sup) 32Mb fixed

Memory (max) 32Mb

Formats MP3

PC min sys Pentium 100 or higher/32Mb/10Mb free/Windows 95/98

PC I/O parallel

Software MP3Man file management

Phones in-ear

Power /life Lithium ion rechargeable/7-hours MP3, 70 hours phone standby/240 mins talk-time

Size 106 x 44 x 19mm

Weight g

Features MP3 features: 6-mode equaliser, fwd/rev track skip, repeat 1/repeat all/shuffle, title/artist display. Phone features: dual band GSM mini SIM, EFR compatible, one-touch answer/call reject, active flip, 4-line graphical display, hands-free kit/stereo headphones with in-line remote control, 99 number phonebook, SMS, 18 ring tones plus 2 custom and vibra alert, personal organiser (calendar/memo, scheduler, calculator, to-do list), last /total call time counters, call bar/divert, call wait/hold, CLI, custom switch-on greeting, time/date, IrDA interface, 7 games (Casino, Roulette, Black Jack, Sniper, Snake, Mole, Othello)

Contact Samsung 0800 521652

Ease of use 8

Features 8

Performance 8

---end---

Ó R. Maybury 2000, 2605

WHAT MP3 TEXT 2…00

MP3 PLAYER ROUNDUP – ISSUE 2 – ADD COPY

DIAMOND RIO 500

As one of the pioneers of portable MP3 player technology Diamond Multimedia has clearly learned a few tricks along the way and the Rio 500 comes across as a slick, highly refined and very neat looking little player. It comes with 64Mb internal memory that can be easily expanded using SmartMedia cards that fit into a slot on the top of the case. The unit is solidly built with large, easy to use front panel controls. An ingenious clicker thumbwheel control on the side adjusts volume and moves between the various menu items. The backlit display is a sensible size and shows artist title and track info, it also incorporates a useful browser function for quickly selecting tracks. Playback options include the usual array of track selection modes, plus the facility to edit play lists. There’s a 4-mode equaliser (normal, classic, jazz & rock) plus user-set bass and treble controls. Powered is supplied by a single AA battery that lasts for up to 13 hours. File transfer from PC to player uses a fast USB connection that can copy a three-minute track across in less than 30 seconds.

RioPort file manager/CD ripper software is included for both Windows and Mac PCs; it’s intuitive and easy to use and has well integrated web-browsing facilities. The ripper allows for a wide range of bit rate/compression modes, up to and including 256 kbps for near CD quality. The supplied instructions are a tad brief and MP3 novices might find it hard going at first but you can figure most things out quite quickly.

The in-ear phones are reasonably comfortable and sonically impressive with crisp middle and treble coverage; there’s a healthy bass response too and plenty of volume on tap for noisy environments. Build quality is excellent, sound performance is very good indeed and the Rio 500 sets the new benchmark for mid-market players.

Typical price £190

Media SmartMedia

Memory (int/sup) 64Mb