Omar Shahine's WebLog : Digital Audio

Yahoo Music

omars — Thu, 12 May 2005 07:50:25 GMT

Here is why Yahoo Music is cool. Yes I work for MSN, and sure I wish MSN Music had this same feature, but I'm super excited that Yahoo Music launched their business. Why? THEY ARE BUILT ON OUR PLATFORM! Let me explain.

A few months ago I wrote this post about Technology Camps. Let me point out my favorite paragraph:

"Now contrast this to Microsoft. For the past few years the focus has been on building a world class platform. From the codec's, to the encoding technology, to the protocol for moving bits from the computer to the device, to the encryption technology, policy enforcement of digital rights, and servers to manage those rights it's all been spec'ed and delivered in a manner that any software developer can utilize. You can create your own Music Store and sell content to anyone with a compatible device. You can build a device that can play rich video and audio. You can build software that can manipulate that music, and organize it for users, or even a new shell that can present that media to the user who is sitting on their couch and interacts via a remote control. You can even buy a cell phone that can consume these media files! Talk about a rich eco system. But that's what it is; a platform for anyone with a desire to build on. Microsoft participates in this eco system via the MSN Music Store, and other various properties, but we do not dictate how much you will pay, and what device you will use. We give you choice, and history has shown time and time again, that choice is always more powerful. Choice and flexibility always wins. Consumers want choice."

A bunch of people made some very valid comments about my perspective on how this all relates to Apple regarding Choice. I'm not going to disagree with them. However, this is so utterly cool because Yahoo was able to build and bring to market their own music store that leverages our platform end to end.

Microsoft Technology for encoding and DRM
Microsoft WMA 192 KBps 2-Pass CBR Encoded files (iTunes is STILL 128KBps AAC)
Janus to deliver subscription audio to PlaysForSure Compatible devices
Sync to those devices via Media Transport Protocol

And they offer this all for the cost of 3-4 music CDs a year with access to their entire Music collection. They are far cheaper than Napster-To-Go which I complained as being to expensive and buggy for my tastes.

Now how much do you want to bet that Apple is going to eventually have to offer subscriptions? I bet that the reason they have not yet done so is because Steve doesn't believe it makes sense.

"Steve Jobs, has dismissed the idea of subscription-based services, saying people want to own their music"

I'm not so sure about that. Me thinks that Apple is going down the exact same path with the iPod as they did with a Mac. They have build a phenomenally successful and wonderful CLOSED ecosystem. Just like the Mac. And we all know what happened there.

Yahoo does things that have potential positive revenue impact. They did not have to spend their resources building a platform, delivery mechanism, tools, services and whatnot to make this happen. They had to licence content, create a user experience and launch it. Anyone can do this.

My iPod is an island. My Creative Zen Micro just had a new bridge built to Yahoo that gives me access to a million songs for 5 bucks a month. Apple isn't competing with Microsoft, they are competing with potentially dozens of companies, and now a big internet media powerhouse.

How do you like them Apples?

Digital Audio Tools

omars — Wed, 23 Mar 2005 04:51:00 GMT

Eric Virro has a great site that covers all aspects of ripping digital audio. Highly recommended reading if you are curios about lossless, transcoding, cleaning, converting etc.

Joe Wilcox on PlaysForSure, Napster, WMP10 and Zen Micro

omars — Fri, 18 Mar 2005 08:28:00 GMT

Joe Wilcox did an awesome four part series on his experiences with PlaysForSure, Napster To Go and the new PlaysForSure devices. Awesome read and is very close to my sentiments on the matter.

[via Chris Lanier]

Creative Zen Micro vs iPod

omars — Mon, 07 Mar 2005 05:14:00 GMT

For the past few months I used the Rio Carbon. While it fared well, there were a couple of things I didn't like about the device. There was no hardware hold button, and the audio menu was not sticky and always dropped you back to the audio list, rather than your last selection. So, I decided to give the Creative Zen Micro a shot. I happen to love the device, and in many ways I find it's feature set to be better than the iPod. The build quality and fit and finish aren't as good as the iPod, but this device comes closer to anything else I've tried. I suspect that it will be a matter of months, or a year before Creative and iRiver have matched Apple in every way while providing some features the iPod still doesn't have.

Make sure you read my post iPod Replacement Criteria before reading this review. Remember, I have only one goal, to review this compared to an iPod. I don't care about anything the device offers that does not meet my core criteria.

Lets see how it stacks up.

Omar's Related Posts:

Other Reviews:

Size: The size is much smaller than the iPod and comparable to the mini

	Zen Micro	iPod Mini	iPod 3G
Height	3.3 inches	3.6 inches	4.1 inches
Width	2.0 inches	2.0 inches	2.4 inches
Depth	0.7 inches	0.5 inches	0.57 inches
Weight	3.8 ounces	3.6 ounces	5.6 ounces

Pretty comparable.

User Interface: The User Interface is very similar to the iPod and it works how you would expect. However, it has some nice new feature like a DJ mode where you can pick a random album, or play all random music (I use this the most). You can also customize the menu to add you own top level items. The device builds the catalog after a sync, and boots quickly. It's got all the usual suspects to select music like album, artist etc. The device has this notion of contextual menu, when you can add items to playlist etc. One of my favorite features that the iPod lacks is that if you are currently playing a song, and you decide you want to break out of your current playlist you can use the contextual menu to jump into the current artist album. I like this feature as I have a lot of music and am really lazy. So I play everything on shuffle, and occasionally hear something that I want to hear more of.

The device has an unusual way of navigating, via this vertical touch sensitive slider. It takes a bit of getting used to, but it works fairly well. The device only has one power/lock switch and I love how it works. However, the toggle switch is a bit to close to the headphone jack which can make it hard to get to easily.

Connectivity: The Creative Zen was designed properly from a connectivity standpoint. It has a single USB 2.0 port that supports charging and synching. When you plug the device into Windows it detects it as an MTP device allowing Windows Media Player 10 to AutoSync with it. Beautiful. My sync experience was nothing short of perfect.

Charging: Creative didn't quite do as good a job as Rio here, but they ship a charger with a hard wired USB 2.0 cable to charge it. The RIO allows you to use your computer USB cable plus a USB wall charger to charge.

Additionally, it's great that the device charges during sync (unlike the iRiver H320).

Sync: This device support PlaysForSure fully. This is wonderful, and their implementation is flawless. Creative just shipped a beta firmware that support subscription audio for services such as Napster-To-Go. It's a bummer that you need to install a firmware update to get this functionality and I suspect that a lot of users probably won't know they can do this.

Another bonus feature is that synchronization of playlists is supported, which is a nice bonus.

Accessories: The device comes with the following accessories:

Charger
USB cable
Plastic Case with Stand/Belt clip
Headphones
Pouch

The device has a remote control, but it does not ship in the box. Available for $19.99.

Battery Life: I get about 7-8 hours of battery life. It could be better, but with a removable battery, you can always carry a spare. This is great as I've had limited success with the iPod batteries not lasting very long (on the order of 12 months) before they start to lose their charge very quickly. In fact, my iPod always lost it's charge when it wasn't doing anything, while the Zen Micro always maintains its charge over long periods of time.

Software: The device comes with a CD that I didn't even need to use. Sweet.

Price: I purchased the device for $234 which is great.

Storage: 5 GB. Now offered in 4 and 6 GB. Not sure why no one makes a decent 20 GB device. However, I'm getting kind of used to having a small 5 GB device, I just sync up every few days and grab some new music.

PlaysForSure: The device supports the following PlaysForSure logos.

Full PlaysForSure support including synchronization of your playlists.
Purchased/Subscription Audio.

Support: Creative has been shipping new firmware for this device, and adding more PlaysForSure functionality. They are also shipping new updated devices with different size hard drives and are soon going to release a Photo version. They have a pretty decent forum as well.

Web Site: The Creative Zen Micro web site is pretty usable and doesn't promise features that the device can't deliver. They have their own forum. Unfortunatley, every time you use their site they ask you what country you are in. Hey guys, have you heard of IP to Country Check? Or maybe cookies? You could at least save my selection across sessions.

Optional Features:

Device supports Audio Recording
FM Radio

I LOVE that the device has an FM radio. I use it to listen to NPR every morning.

Final Rating (see my post on my review criteria to understand what this means).

Kick Ass - better than iPod. (this is the first device I have reviewed that has received this rating)

If you are looking for a device to replace your iPod or looking for a new device I would highly recommend this device. My only real complaint with the device is that the backlighting for the silk-screened keys is poorly implemented. It makes the device feel cheap.

my iRiver H320 Post

omars — Mon, 28 Feb 2005 15:13:00 GMT

It's funny. It's been a few months since I wrote about the iRiver H320. If you all recall, I've been reviewing devices as I buy them and seeing how they stack up against the iPod. I reviewed the H320, the Rio Carbon, and this week will publish a review of the Creative Zen Micro (sorry it's taking me so long, but it takes me forever to get to these things).

Anyway, I couple of blogs have recently picked up on the review (Michael Gartenberg, Digital Media Thoughts). For the past few months I've been getting a steady stream of traffic from the MysticRiver forums. I had to shut down comments on the post because I was getting some really nasty comments from folks who really hate the iPod and thought that I was just out to slander the H320. Now I developed some tough skin from working Macworld shows over 5 years where you are facing quite a sensitive and critical group of mostly avid Mac users, but some of the feedback I just don't understand. A lot of the folks in that forum are hard core iPod haters. What is there to hate? It's a great device and it works. I had to delete a bunch of rather tasteless ones as well as shut off comments for that post. The only post I have ever done that for. I even got a rather long but pleasant multi page email from an H320 fan that extolled the virtues of the H320.

Michael sums it up nicely in his post:

"It's amazing that vendors STILL don't realize why the iPod is a success and how to compete against it. Even with a compelling feature set like support for the Janus DRM, if you screw up the basics, there's no way that users will ever even see the advanced stuff."

And that is the crux of it. I DON'T CARE if you device has a million buttons, can be hacked with some non supported firmware so I can plug my digital camera into it, or that it supports photos and video. If the thing can't play music better than an iPod, if it cannot build a catalog of music based on artist/genre/album, if the ONLY user interface to browse the collection of music is a freaking File Browser, then NO SOUP FOR YOU! Back to the store you go. Better luck next time.

Now I hear that the iRiver H10 (Walt Mossberg gave it a great review) is a far better product, has a decent user interface etc. However, I'm staying away from the iRiver products for a while. I think their current customer base is way too far on the techy side, and I'm not sure they "get it" when it comes to building the basics. Meanwhile I think Creative Gets it and love my Zen Micro.

Mike gives Napster the boot

omars — Mon, 28 Feb 2005 14:09:00 GMT

Mike ditched Napster To Go for the same reasons I did. However, I ditched them a few months ago when they were still in beta and I was beta testing the Creative Portable Media Center. I found lots of problems with Napster's implementation and as such figured they would probably not fix them any time soon. Looks like their 1.0 of Napster To Go doesn't fix them.

Lets hope that MSN Music offers the subscription all you can eat service with a software user experience that does not suck.

Etymotic ER6 vs. Bose QuietComfort II

omars — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 15:46:00 GMT

I’m sitting on an Alaska Airlines flight up to Seattle right now and figure it’s a good time to put my two headphones to the test. I’ve owned both the QuietComfort I and II headphones for the past few years. Recently I purchased the Etymotic ER6’s and love them but I have not had a chance to test out Etymotic’s claims that they perform better than active noise canceling headphones (like the Bose). In short, they are right. The ER6’s kicked Bose but.

Even though the ER6’s do not produce any kind of active noise canceling I found them to reduce the airplane noise more than the Bose QuietComfort IIs when no music was playing. However, where they really excelled is when I turned on my tunes. The ER6’s produced a much cleaner sounds that was not distorted, amplified, or distracted from anything else. In fact with the volume set appropriately I completely forgot about the cabin noise. With the Bose I have always felt that there was some sort of background noise that I could hear.

The trick for me was really spending a few extra seconds to make sure that my ER6’s had a good snug fit in my ear. In the Etymotic manual they recommend yawning while inserting the earplugs. This actually works fairly well as it expands the ear canal enough to allow the earplugs to get a good tight fit. Additionally, after a few minutes of being in your ear, the snug fit seems to improve a bit.

The best part about all this? Well the ER6’s weigh 1 oz and fit in my pocket. The Bose headphones are huge, require batteries, and are very difficult to sleep with (which is what I tend to do on long flights).

Ever since I started using noise canceling headphones I’ve found that they SIGNIFICANTLY reduce the amount of stress on the body when flying. This is especially true for flights over 4 hours. When you arrive at your destination you don’t feel the wear from the drone of the engines.

Now, here is the thing. Bose has sold thousands of these headsets to people like myself because they flew on an American Airlines flight where they give out the headsets to Business and First Class passengers on International flights. I purchased my first headset when I returned from a 1999 trip to Japan. I was upgraded to first class and they gave me these headsets. Having used them the entire 9 hour flight, I almost cried when I had to return them. Since then I purchased the QuietComfort IIs and gave my wife the Is. You see a lot of frequent flyers bring on their own pairs of these headsets, and since I only fly American/Alaska I see them everywhere. Furthermore, Bose does a lot of advertising in all the in-seat magazines like Alaska’s and American’s. They even price the $300 headsets in installments of $30 a month with zero interest. I bet that they sell like hotcakes to frequent travelers.

The Etymotics earplugs are a better product. I wish they sold to more folks. The problem is: 1) it’s hard to notice people have them, so they aren’t going to sell themselves, 2) since they are earplugs, you can’t really hand them to a friend to try them out. That makes it rather difficult. I think they could improve their “reach” by:

Partnering with an OEM to include their headsets. Figure out a clever name and brand them as such. Call them noise canceling or whatever.
Give your users lots of extra earplugs. This will allow them to let their friends try them out.
Give you users little information cards to hand to their friends like Bose does. My QuietComfort II case includes 15 pre-printed information cards to hand to people who ask about the headphones. Clever.
Make your headphones look different. Put some bling bling on them or something. Get people to notice that they are not your normal headphones. Sony does a decent job of this. How about making the cable metal? What about a cool case for them? I notice Apple's White headphones, all they did was change the color.

Anyway, if you fly at all, spend the dough and get these puppies. If you were thinking about getting the QuietComfort or other kinds of Active Noise Canceling headphones think twice and try the ER6 or ER6i. However, if you are one of those people that does't like putting things in your ear, then maybe these aren't for you.

Creative Zen Micro Out of Box Experience

omars — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 07:32:00 GMT

I just received my Creative Zen Micro. I am preparing to put together a Zen Micro vs iPod review as I have done for the Rio Carbon and the iRiver H320. For those of you that don't know, I have been evaluating various devices in the pursuit to find something as good as or better than my iPod. I outline this quest in my post on iPod Replacement Criteria. For the past few months I have been fairly happy with my Rio Carbon, however I found the Zen to be appealing because it has an FM Radio and a better User Interface, as well as a removable battery. Recently Creative released MTP firmware, which gives it PlaysForSure audio support. They are currently working on firmware that will give it Subscription support for NapsterToGo and have a beta firmware release.

So far my Out of Box experience was phenomenal when compared to the Rio Carbon. Furthermore, I found that it was almost as good as the iPod. Creative is really paying attention as the Zen Micro comes with a white usb cable, a white charger, a sleeve, white headphones and a stand that doubles as a belt clip. Very slick packaging and it made me very happy when opening my new toy. You can see some of the Out of Box pictures below (more pics).

Technology Camps, iPod, and the End to End Experience

omars — Fri, 04 Feb 2005 11:03:00 GMT

In life there are always at least two camps. When I was a kid it was Nike vs Reebok. For some people it's Audi vs BMW, for others it's iPod vs everything else. I feel that I am in many camps, but when it comes to Apple vs Microsoft, MCE vs TiVo, iPod vs Everything else I feel that I have as an objective point of view as is possible. How? Well I have owned or own both, and love each for what they bring to the table. I worked on Mac software at Microsoft, loved the Mac OS and the products I work on, but I also love the products my company makes.

I've seen a lot of activity over the last few days both in the blogsphere and inside Microsoft in reaction to this Wired Article. First and foremost, this article was silly. There was no story here, and it was sensational at best. For heavens sake I carried a PowerBook around at Microsoft for 4 years and no one ever said jack to me. The notion that people at Microsoft are offended or care that I might use a competitors product is ludicrous. The notion that you can build a better product than your competition without using and loving that product is silly. You cannot build a better product than your competition unless you are intimately familiar with the competition. The only way to do that without fooling yourself is to use it, day in and day out. I wish everyone in the Media Group at Microsoft had an iPod.

What some people fail to understand is that there is a fundamental difference between Apple and Microsoft. Apple creates the hardware for their end users. They start with an end to end scenario. That is, they come up with a compelling idea, and they design the solution. From the Apple Store to the experience at home opening the item, taking it out of its packaging, and installing the software then using the device is a well orchestrated series of events. Apple has spent months if not years thinking about how to perfect this experience. No other company does this in the consumer space, and it's not possible unless you own everything in the scenario. In this case Apple owns the store, the hardware, the music store, the software to connect to the device, the software to download from the store, and the relationship with all the record labels who provide the media. This is incredibly powerful when you are trying to solve specific scenarios, and when it comes to things people have always been incredibly passionate about (music) it matters.

Now contrast this to Microsoft. For the past few years the focus has been on building a world class platform. From the codec's, to the encoding technology, to the protocol for moving bits from the computer to the device, to the encryption technology, policy enforcement of digital rights, and servers to manage those rights it's all been spec'ed and delivered in a manner that any software developer can utilize. You can create your own Music Store and sell content to anyone with a compatible device. You can build a device that can play rich video and audio. You can build software that can manipulate that music, and organize it for users, or even a new shell that can present that media to the user who is sitting on their couch and interacts via a remote control. You can even buy a cell phone that can consume these media files! Talk about a rich eco system. But that's what it is; a platform for anyone with a desire to build on. Microsoft participates in this eco system via the MSN Music Store, and other various properties, but we do not dictate how much you will pay, and what device you will use. We give you choice, and history has shown time and time again, that choice is always more powerful. Choice and flexibility always wins. Consumers want choice.

However, that choice comes at a huge price in this case. The cost of doing this is that until Microsoft starts to make audio devices, or an OEM can produce a product that delivers on a totally solid end to end experience, we'll always be in an us vs them state of affairs. A music device these days is a form of personal expression. Like a phone, or a watch, it's part of your identity and something which brings you joy. I think this is why people are so interested and opinionated in this debate. They feel like they are being attacked personally, and well, most folks don't like that. However, I respect both the iPod and the platform Microsoft provides for their own qualities. I absolutely love the out of box experience you get with the iPod. Everything about it has been designed to work. If you buy a Creative Zen Micro you have to install firmware before you can even take advantage of the technology platform we have built to provide a seamless synchronization experience with Windows Media Player. Where is the value proposition there? When you purchase a Rio Carbon you need to use a sledge hammer to get the packaging opened before you can use your device! Not so with the iPod, as you are greeted by a friendly and happy white box that opens like a well engineered package should. It says "Designed in California" and has a beautiful stainless steel and acrylic build that you don't want to tarnish. My Rio Carbon has a cheap coat of paint on it that is pealing of. How can you compare? How can you convince OEMs to care as much as Apple and spend as much time and money caring?

Well I don't know the answers to all these questions but I do know this. I love the iPod; it's fantastic. However, I don't purchase any music from iTunes because I love my Windows Media Center and I want my music to work everywhere that my ears can listen. That means my from my living room couch where I can control my Media Center, from my portable device on the train where I spend 2 hours a day, from the speakers of my car when I spend time on the weekend, from my office computer and from my laptop. I want full fidelity at home, which means lossless audio, and I want as many songs as will fit on 5 GB w/o a significant loss in audio quality (128 K WMA VBR). I also want to manage all this music from a single music library, and I want to be able to move all my purchased audio around to all these device. This is my end to end scenario, and for me Windows provides the platform to do all this. The iPod is still a better end to end experience for a portable device, I will not deny that. However, the OEMs are getting better at delivering hardware. That takes lot of work and evangelism on our part. We don't make the hardware, that's not what Microsoft is about today (I'm not arguing that we should or shouldn't). However, we are awesome at making a killer end to end technology platform and placing choice in the hands of the consumer. That choice comes at a cost of using our file format, but that file format is public, available, and licensable. FairPlay is not. iTunes is not open, and there are no other choices but the iPod on the Mac. Once upon a time there were third party music players, but Apple has taken away the incentive to stick around. As we continue to improve the platform and work with the OEMs the end to end portable device scenario will get better. If you need examples just look at where the Mobile Devices division has come from and where the Pocket PC and Smartphone are today. Look at the Portable Media Center; there is nothing in it's class that is as good. It will get smaller and the OEMs will create more unique form factors to address user needs. And for something where we aren't following, but leading, look at the Tablet PC. You may not need or want one, but it's an incredible testament to what is possible with time and investment in our part. The rest of the story continues with investment in helping the OEMs build a variety of products, with great experiences that give people more choice in what they can buy. People like choice.

My New Etymotic Headphones

omars — Fri, 28 Jan 2005 06:03:00 GMT

I have owned the Bose Noise QuietComfort I and II for a while now. A few weeks ago (at Macworld) I purchased the Etymotic ER 6 isolator earphones for $99. I seriously love these headphones. I did not get the white ones (ER 6i) because they were designed to compensate for deficiencies in the iPod (from what I understand). These are also deficiencies common in other MP3 players although I don't know which ones.

"6i isolator earphones are designed specifically for use with the Apple iPod and other small portable players, offering 8 dB higher overall sensitivity and slightly more bass than the ER-6 isolator earphones." [link]

I was lucky enough that I could try both the black 6 and the white 6i. The both fit in your ear a bit differently, and I happened to like the black ones better because they use the 2 flange eartip rather than the white 3 flange eartip. Plus they were cheaper. I also tried out the Shure E3c, but liked the ER 6 much better. I also happen to have a great interaction with the people in the Etymotic booth at Macrworld... much better than my experience in the Shure booth. To top things off, the Etymotic people were selling their product in the booth for a nice big discount and they gave me a free Sumajin, which is a genius invention and a must have for all portable music player owners. I like companies that sell their stuff at Macworld... instant gratification + big discount is king

I have yet to get on a plane since purchasing them, but when I do I'll let you know how they fare against the Bose. Scoble says he is going to buy the white ones, but if he doesn't have an iPod I'm not sure why he would. Buzz first pointed to these a few months ago, and of course planted the seed in my head that I must buy them to replace my white Sony Earbud headphones.

Rio Carbon vs iPod

omars — Mon, 01 Nov 2004 01:51:00 GMT

The Rio Carbon was a device I didn't want to like. My main reason for not considering it was that it's only 5GB and I was looking for an iPod replacement. However, as I've used this device it's really grown on me. I was able to transcoded all my WMA lossless audio down to 11 GB so I can get almost half my audio on this device. Not bad.

Lets see how it stacks up.

Other Reviews:

Size: The size is much smaller than the iPod and even comparable to the mini

	Rio Carbon	iPod Mini	iPod 3G
Height	3.3 inches	3.6 inches	4.1 inches
Width	2.5 inches	2.0 inches	2.4 inches
Depth	0.6 inches	0.5 inches	0.57 inches
Weight	3.2 ounces	3.6 ounces	5.6 ounces

So, as you can see it stacks up very nicely.

User Interface: The device has a very usable user interface. After a sync is complete, the device builds a catalog of music (it only does this when content has changed on the device, so power on does not go through this process, much smarter than the iRiver folks). The device allows you to browse using all the usual suspects, artist, genre, album, album year (cool), new music, spoken word etc. One minor annoyance is that you cannot get back to the selection you were in after playing a song, the device always throws you back in "Play Music".

Beyond that you can control the settings on the device, and a variety of other functions like lock, etc. The keys are easy to use and the screen is very readable. Overall, Rio did an excellent job for an OEM designed user interface.

Connectivity: The Rio Carbon was designed properly from a Connectivity standpoint. It has a single USB 2.0 port that supports charging and synching. When you plug the device into Windows it detects it as a removable drive allowing Windows Media Player 10 to AutoSync with it. Beautiful. My sync experience was nothing short of perfect.

Charging: The Rio folks get bonus points for shipping a Wall Mount to USB charging device. This essentially means that you take the supplied USB cable, plug the computer end of it into the wall outlet plug, and plug the mini connection into the Carbon. Not all OEMs are this smart, and they end up shipping an additional brick to charge the device. The beauty of this method is you only need a single cable for the device, and if you have multiple devices that charge over USB (like I do) then you can just use a single wall mounted plug when traveling (or use your laptop) to charge the device.

Additionally, it's great that the device charges during sync (unlike the iRiver H320).

Sync: This device only supports sync with Windows Media Player 10 via USB 2.0. The device does not support PlaysForSure (MTP) yet, but it can support sync with Windows Media Player 10 since it supports sync with any removable media mass storage device. As such, I was able to mount the device, launch WMP10 and select sync "All Music". A few minutes later it was done.

Accessories: The device comes with the following accessories:

Charger (AC to USB wall mount)
USB cable
Carrying Case

Unfortunately, the device does not support a remote control...

Battery Life: Rio claims the device gets 20 HOURS!!! of battery life. I probably average half of that, but 10 hours kicks ass.

Software: The device comes with a CD that I didn't even need to use. Sweet.

Price: I purchased the device for $218 which is great.

Storage: 5 GB

PlaysForSure: The device supports the following PlaysForSure logos.

Basic PlaysForSure support (AutoSync)

Rio has announced that they will support:

Support for Audio Download
Support for Audio Subscription

By the end of the year. Sweet.

Support: Rio seems to do a good job supporting this device. As soon as I received it, I downloaded and installed a firmware update that installed flawlessly w/o any proprietary software or connection required to update. This firmware also fixed a number of issues which is encouraging.

There is an annoying problem where if you use headphones that have a metal base around the connector, you will hear pops and clicks due to some kind of short circut. This doesn't happen with the included headphones (which are crap of course), but does happen with my Bose Noise Cancelling headphones. The “fix“ is to apply some scotch tape around the headphone jack. hmm.

Web Site: The Rio Carbon web site is pretty usable and doesn't promise features that the device can't deliver.

Optional Features:

Device supports Audio Recording

I wish the device had an FM radio (so I can listen to NPR in the morning) like the Creative Zen Micro but I've started using Audible which can deliver NPR morning edition (not in time for my 7:11 am commute) for the afternoon commute home.

Final Rating (see my post on my review criteria to understand what this means).

Good - pretty good in most areas, but missing some critical requirements. Feel free to spend money.

I almost gave this device a Kick Ass rating, but since the definition of that is better than the iPod, I would have to modify it to say "better than the iPod mini". If you are looking to buy a mini, stop and don't hand your money to Apple but get the Carbon. If you are looking for a device to replace your iPod or looking for a new device I would highly recommend this device.

Not only is this device a reasonably priced high quality music player, but it's also a very inexpensive way to get a 5GB compact flash card for your digital camera ;-).

iRiver H320 vs iPod

omars — Mon, 25 Oct 2004 03:20:00 GMT

I was really excited to see a device like the iRiver H320. However, upon opening the device the experience turned out to be an extreme disappointment. I believe that iRiver built the Kitchen sink here. This device tries to be too many things to too many people. A hard disk, a USB Host device (International only), an MTP sync device (US only), Photo Viewer etc.

Lets see how it stacks up.

Other Reviews:

C|Net

Size: The size is very comparable to the 3G iPod.

	iRiver H320	iPod 3G
Height	4.1 inches	4.1 inches
Width	2.4 inches	2.4 inches
Depth	0.9 inches	0.57 inches
Weight	6.6 ounces	5.6 ounces

So, as you can see it stacks up very nicely.

User Interface: The device has a very readable color screen. However, the interface for browsing files is just a file explorer. What you may ask? That's right, there is no way for the device to build a database of audio allowing you to browse by Artist, Genre, Album etc. It makes you wonder what the point of meta data is if the device makes no use of it.

iRiver does ship an application that you can install in Windows that can manually scan the audio on the device and build the data base file, but it only supports MP3 files. Ridiculous if you ask me.

The good news is that there is an open source .NET application that will do this job as well as many others (like sync audio on your hard drive) called Tag Database Tool (TDT). TDT works very well except for the fact that it barfs on files that are DRM protected (purchased and subscription audio. I made some changes to the application to use newer Windows Media APIs that allow it to do this. If there is enough interested I'll post my changes somewhere so folks can download them.

(Warning) After cataloging the 2,000 or so songs on the device, I found that the database increased the device boot time to over a minute. Unbelievable if you ask me. Since the device "shuts off" when it's not in use, that means that if you want to turn it on and use it you are subjected to a greater than one minute penalty.

However, I still find it inexcusable that iRiver ship a device that only has a file explorer interface. In addition the device User Interface is confusing with many of the buttons overloaded for different tasks. For example, to switch to FM radio you must hold down the Record button. I could not figure this out myself and actually had to resort to reading the manual. I never had to read my iPod manual to figure out how to use it.

Connectivity: The device has two USB ports. Now why would a device need two USB ports? Well when iRiver created this device they had two goals in mind. 1) A Music Jukebox, 2) A USB On The Go. USB On The Go allows a device to act as a host device for something like a digital camera or card reader allowing you to offload photos from a camera without a computer.

Now, before you get all excited lets look at how this was implemented. On the International version of the device you get one USB port that is USB 2.0 for connecting to a PC and one that is USB 1.1 for connecting to a camera. The USB 2.0 port can act as a charging port if you are not "connected" but the device is powered down. On the US version of the device you get a USB 2.0 port for connecting to a PC similar to the international device and a USB 1.1 port that supports MTP for synchronizing to Windows Media Player. You are limited to USB 1.1 and this port will not charge the device. I suspect that iRiver made this decision because it was the only way to get PlaysForSure support and they figured that most of these music stores are US only so they essentially took a device that had one set of features and repurposed it for the US market. I think it would have been better for them to forgo PlaysForSure support till they could get it right in the product design.

	International	US
"Data" port	USB 2.0 (charging)	USB 2.0 (charging)
"Media" port	USB 1.1 for USB On The Go	USB 1.1 for MTP

Now, the USB 2.0 port only connects the device as a fixed mountable drive. This essentially means that it is mounted to your PC as a non-removable hard drive. This distinction is important because it PREVENTS Windows Media Player from Synchronization with the device as it's not removable. So, if you purchased this device to be a hard drive you're in luck! If you purchased it as a music player you are stuck with an expensive hard drive.

I emailed iRiver about this limitation and here is what they said:

We have tens of thousands of users who are very happy to manage their music collections independently of an application and prefer to drag and drop files to their player. We completely understand that your needs and desires may not match theirs. If syncing your collection via USB 2 is an important feature for you, then I may suggest that this player is not suited for your needs. We will have a product available later this year will allow for faster transfers through Windows Media Player:
http://www.iriveramerica.com/products/pmc120.aspx

Apparently their user base like to "drag and drop files to their player". Great, I'm not one of them.

Charging: The iRiver comes with a separate DC adapter charger with a proprietary plug for the device. Since you can't really charge the device over USB even though the device supports it (can't charge during sync), you really do need this charger. So, it's another thing to drag around when you are traveling. No thanks.

Sync: This device only supports sync with Windows Media Player 10 using the USB 1.1 port which does not support charging. Syncing 20 GB of audio while transcoding was one of the most pitiful experiences I've had on my PC. I started on Saturday morning and the device finished on Monday evening. Now normally transcoding will take a while as the PC much convert each song from WMA lossless to WMA 128. However, once I reached about 1000 songs, the device would essentially hang or timeout. This required me to unplug the device, plug it back in, and continue synching. I had to do this every 10-20 songs after I got to 1,000. I reported this to iRiver as well and got this response:

Thank for the report. I will pass this to them for further research.

Maybe transfer 1-5 files in the meantime?

Um, yeah. The fact that this device only supports USB 1.1 for MTP sync made this super painful.

Accessories: The device comes with the following accessories:

Charger
USB cable
Line Out cable
Carrying Case

Battery Life: iRiver claims 12 hours. I got about 8 hours.

Software: The device comes with a CD that contains a Mass Storage driver if you are an unfortunate soul still running Windows 98 as well as some software I didn't bother installing for creating the device music database. The device also comes with Windows Media Player which is great, but since you can't realistically sync with that software I'm not sure why they include it.

Price: I purchased the device for $320 which is reasonable.

Storage: 20 GB

PlaysForSure: The device supports the following PlaysForSure logos.

Basic PlaysForSure support
Support for Audio Download
Support for Audio Subscription

Kudos to iRiver for supporting Audio Subscription. This makes it one of the few devices that can play subscription audio content (Janus) from music stores such as Napster. This was my favorite feature of the device. Unfortunately since the device isn't SyncsForSure compliant, it's all very useless.

Support: Unfortunately iRiver doesn't have a proven track record for fixing any problems in firmware updates. If you have a few hours to spare (which I did as I tried to make the sync work) you can read all sorts of stuff on the MisticRiver forums.

Web Site: The Website for the iRiver H320 doesn't tell you that the device will only sync with Windows Media Player 10 using USB 1.1 and that the device will not charge via this mechanism. IMHO it's making false claims (or lack of claims about the real capabilities of the device).

Optional Features:

Device appears as a hard drive in Windows.
Device supports FM Tuning.
Device has a color screen.
Device supports FM Recording
Device supports Audio Recording

Final Rating (see my post on my review criteria to understand what this means).

Lame- fails in some areas. Do not hand over your money for this device.

Seriously, I did not enjoy debugging and trying to fit this device into my lifestyle. I figure the 2 or so hours I spent hacking TDT to support WMA DRM'ed files was well worth it as I learned something new, but if you are looking for a device to replace your iPod or you are on the market for a new device I would wait till iRiver works out the issues above (or some one else ships a comparable device).

iPod Replacement Criteria

omars — Fri, 22 Oct 2004 12:12:00 GMT

In my quest to find a suitable replacement for my iPod I plan on reviewing any device I purchase till I find a device that meets my needs 100%. My needs are defined below, but basically map to what I get today with my iPod plus some things I think I deserve.

In order to help you keep informed of my quest, I've created a category feed you can use (Technology | Digital Audio). For the meantime this category will be focused 100% of iPod replacements and related technology. I will try not to rehash existing reviews out there if I think they accurately reflect my opinions. In those cases I will point to the review and cover some of my thoughts.

As a primer, you may want to read my post about PlaysForSure to get some background.

Criteria

I have the following criteria in getting any new device. I will rate the device using a simple system.

Kick Ass - better than iPod
Good - pretty good in most areas, but missing some critical requirements. Feel free to spend money.
Lame - fails in some areas. Do not hand over your money for this device.

Size: No more than 15% bigger/heavier than the 3G 20 GB iPod. Smaller & lighter is better.

User Interface: It does not suck/was not designed by monkeys. Provides the following (in addition to basic features like play, pause, ffwd, rewind etc):

Browse/Play by Songs
Browse/Play by Artist
Browse/Play by Album
Browse/Play by Genre
Shuffle mode
Now Playing mode that displays current track information
Device can be Locked

Connectivity: Must support USB 2.0 for synchronization.

Charging: Must support charging via USB AND charging during Sync. Extra bonus points if the device has no other way to charge (no DC plug with a proprietary adapter). This is important for those of us that travel with Digital Cameras, Phones, an all sorts of other nonsense. The more devices that can just use a USB Type B to USB Type A plug have a special place in my heart.

Sync: Supports AutoSync with Windows Media Player 10 either via MTP or Mass Storage Device

Accessories:

Remote
USB cable
AC->USB Type A adapter for charging via supplied USB cable.

Battery Life: Must be better than the iPod, but this is easy to beat since my 3G iPod battery sometimes lasts as long as 6 hours.

Software: No installation required with Windows XP SP2 + Windows Media Player 10. If you require me to install software to meet any of the requirements you fail.

Price: Less than $400

Storage: At least 5GB for the mini form factor and 20 GB for the iPod form factor.

PlaysForSure:

Basic PlaysForSure support
Support for Audio Download
Support for Audio Subscription

Support: Manufacturer has a proven track record for supporting this device by shipping firmware updates that fix bugs.

Web Site: Manufacturer does not make false claims about the device's capabilities, or omit critical detail.

Optional Features:

Device appears as a hard drive in Windows.
Device supports FM Tuning.

Next up will be my review of the iRiver H320 and the Rio Carbon.