|
MP3
PLAYER/SOFTWARE ROUNDUP – ISSUE 4
COPY
NIKE PSA PLAY-120
The Nike brand
might be one of the world’s leading style icons and all that but the psa[play
120 MP3 player still looks like a miniature toilet seat… Something else that caught our eye was the
price, it costs the thick end of £290, which is a fair whack for any MP3 player
these days, even one with a Nike logo slapped on it. To be fair it has quite a
good pedigree, the software and guts are all sourced from Diamond Multimedia
Systems, the people who make the Rio players, though apart from a few shared
processing chips there are no obvious crossovers with Diamond’s current range.
It’s a
three-part design with a sporty theme. The player electronics and battery
housed in the toilet seat, sorry, main module. Into that plugs a cute little
remote control with LCD display and the third bit is a pair of foldaway in-ear
headphones that plug into the remote. The outfit also comes with a belt clip
and a snazzy ‘sports band’ so you can display it proudly on your arm when you
go jogging or indulge in a few physical jerks.
A useful 64Mb
of memory is supplied as standard; optional MMC cards, which slot into a reader
in the battery compartment, can take this to a maximum of 96Mb. Power comes
from a single AA cell that should last for around 8 to 10 hours replay at
normal listening levels. The main controls are clustered together in what would
be the ‘bowl’ under a bumpy rubber membrane. Control legends are embossed into
the rubber but they’re almost impossible to see and you can only really use it
by feel, once you’ve memorised the positions of the buttons. Playback options
include track skip and search, there’s a five-mode equaliser and that’s about
it, no track/disc repeat or shuffle or any extras like voice or data storage
(though that is something it can do), which is quite unusual.
The LCD on the
remote control module shows track title and artist as well as normal track/time
data, there are also battery and equaliser mode indicators. The display is
unlit and quite small making it hard to read in normal room lighting
conditions. The remote sports a set of transport and volume controls, though
for some reason it doesn’t have an equaliser button. The headphones are a real
disaster area. It’s not obvious which way around they go, until you try them
on, when it becomes abundantly clear that there’s the painful way, and the not
quite so painful way.
Sorry Windows
95 users this player is not for you, file transfer is via USB cable, which only
Windows 98 and 2000 and the recently launched Windows ME supports. There’s good
news for Mac fans though (OS 8.1 and higher), there’s an Apple compatible
version of the file manager program on the installation CD ROM. Talking of
which, installation proceeds at a fairly leisurely pace, in fact it froze
completely on one of our test bed PCs (233MHz laptop); it had to be uninstalled
and it took two attempts to get it up and running.
It only had
problems with one very well used PC, on the others it fired up without any
problems and configuration is fully automatic. The Nike Audio Manager program
is neatly presented. The program searches out all of the music files stored on
your PC and lists them in an Explorer type window on the left side of the
screen. The contents of the player’s memory and MMC card are shown on the
right. Unfortunately this is overlaid with a toilet seat graphic that, even
more unfortunately, appears to be in the process of flushing… Copying tracks
across from the PC to the player is a simple drag and drop process, a bargraph
display clearly shows how much free space remains. The CD Ripper is quite well
appointed with bit-rate options up to 160kbps. File transfer is very quick,
taking on around ten seconds to copy a 4-minute track.
As is so often
the case sound quality is entirely dependent on the ear or headphones supplied
with a player and the ones that come with the psa[play are not very good at
all. The shape of the headband and the bits that poke into your ear-holes are
completely the wrong shape (we’d be most interested to meet the person who
provided the templates for this design…) so they are bound to irritate. As they
burrow into your head they become increasingly muffled, even if you do manage
to find a tolerable position for a few minutes it is apparent that the treble
content is very lightweight and no amount of fiddling with the equaliser
presets can do anything about it. The only good thing we can think of to say
about the sound is that it’s quite loud.
Shoe making is
an old and honourable profession and Nike are doubtless proud to be called a
load of cobblers. It is clearly very successful at making things to put on
people’s feet, but we must question the company’s abilities when it comes to
designing (or paying others to design) personal stereo equipment. The psa[play
certainly isn’t the worst player we’ve tested, in fact in some respects it is
quite good, and if you junk the headphones it can actually sound half decent,
but the price is way too high for what it is, and whilst we’re sure it looked
great in the preliminary sketches, we just can get the image of lavatory seats
out of our mind…
Typical price £289
Media MMC
Memory
(int/sup) 64Mb
Memory (max) 96Mb
Formats MP3,
wma
PC min sys Pentium
or higher/32Mb/35Mb free/Windows 98/ME/2000, Mac, OS8.1 or higher, 32Mb RAM
PC I/O USB
Software Nike
Audio file manager/CD Ripper
Phones in-ear
headphones
Power /life 1 x AA/10 hours
Size 70
x 80 x 28mm (main unit)
Weight 80g
Features 5-mode
equaliser, title/artist/track/time display, fwd/rev search & track skip,
repeat 1/repeat all/shuffle, sport band, belt clip
Contact Nike UK Ltd., 0191 4016453, www.nike.com
Ease of use 7
Features 8
Performance 7
MICROBOSS MP3
MAGIC
So far the all
of the personal CD players we’ve seen, that can also play recordable CDs
containing MP3 files, have tended to look pretty much like regular CD players
but the Microboss MP3 Magic is clearly different since it is based on a PC type
CD-ROM deck mechanism. Although reasonably compact it’s not actually portable
since it relies on an external power supply (mains adaptor and card cord
supplied). The idea is you use it with your home hi-fi system or car stereo (it
comes with a cassette adaptor and Velcro pads), or you can listen to it directly
through small speakers or a set of headphones.
The player
supports the three most common recordable CD formats able to play MP3 files
with bit rates up to 192kbps. The spec list is brief; it has a 63-track memory,
intro/repeat and shuffle play, an on-board volume control and it comes with a
remote control handset. The backlit LCD on the top panel is large and easy to
read and shows track number and player mode but no time information. There’s no
track search facility either, (even though there are fast forward and reverse
buttons on the remote handset) just forward and reverse track skip.
PC CD-ROM
mechanisms are designed for a quiet life so we were interested to find out how
the Microboss would fare in a moving vehicle on a bumpy road. Surprisingly it
did very well and never missed a beat. Actual sound quality is not too bad and
MP3 files sound about as good as they can get, though in the end it all though
it all depends on what you have it connected to. The cassette adaptor is the
least satisfactory option, it clips high frequencies and introduces some
background motor whine into the sound output. It’s much happier hooked up to a
hi-fi system, the line-level output is clean with a wide flat and uncoloured
response, comparable with most mid-market decks. However, since most home
hi-fis already have a CD deck the only reason to buy one is to be able to play
MP3 recordings. Audio quality is less of an issue and in that context Microboss
looks quite pricey; portable MP3 compatible CD players are available for a good
deal less than £170.
Typical price £170
Media n/a
Memory
(int/sup) n/a
Memory (max) n/a
Formats MP3
CD Audio, CD-R/RW (ISO 9660, Joliet & Romeo)
PC min sys Pentium
or higher/XMb/XMb free/Windows 95/98
PC I/O parallel/USB/serial
Software n/a
Phones n/a
Power AC
mains adaptor and DC car power cord supplied
Size 170
x 44 180mm
Weight 760g
Features repeat/shuffle/intro/program
(63 tracks) play, remote control, cassette adaptor and velcro car fixing kit
supplied
Contact SCB Electronics, 0161 723 5442,
www.starman.demon.co.uk/scb/scb/index.htm
Ease of use 8
Features 7
Performance 8
---end---
Ó R. Maybury 2000, 1610
| 
