By Tom
Posted 9/20/00
September 19, flying from Atlanta to Newark - As we circle
Philadelphia for the 65th minute of this holding pattern, it's time to reflect
on my MP3 voyage. As the laptop battery begins to die, the ruminations flow hard and heavy.
This 2-day trip to Atlanta posed an excellent opportunity to
test the road-worthiness of the MP3 format. I took along 2 portable players:
the Diamond Rio 500, which I loaded with 32 megs of SmartMedia memory on top of
its 64 megs of built-in RAM; and a D-Link DMP-100 unit with 32 megs built-in
and a 16 meg SmartMedia card. I also loaded about 2 hours of MP3 files onto my Toshiba laptop, which is an aged
Pentium 133 machine with Winamp MP3 playback software.
On the flight down, I was crushed in a full plane next to
the fattest woman in the house (think The Klumps), so I literally couldn't move
my arms enough to fiddle with either player. And forget about the laptop! I
chose to read a paperback book, which actually required more elbowroom than I
had. There was not an open seat anywhere on the flight, so I had to grin and
bear it for 90 minutes.
In Atlanta, my schedule was open one evening, which I chose
to use to do some writing about the conference I was attending, thus getting a
leg up on what I needed to do when I returned to the office. I plugged my Sony headphones into my laptop
and loaded up a very pleasing 60+ minute playlist from the files on the hard
drive. Needless to say, the work went quickly and pleasantly with the music
playing. Even the old and meek laptop
could play through the tunes with very few skips (caused mainly by opening
documents -- closing seems to have no effect). The fidelity was fine, enhanced
by Winamp's built-in equalizer. I also used Winamp's level-evening plug-in
called Rock Steady. The compression was OK with lower-level tracks and it was
extremely pleasant to not be adjusting volume constantly -- the biggest
drawback to MP3. I was most happy about not having to lug around cassettes or
CD's and yet have hours of music on-hand.
Knowing bad weather was afoot in Newark, I elected to cut my
trip short by 4 hours and headed to the airport. I had no problems getting on
an earlier flight, which turned out to be less-than-full, giving me a nice
window seat with an open middle seat in my section. Ah, finally, I had room to
move and play.
The flight took off late, but not nearly as late as the FAA
would have preferred. The pilot taxied out to a "holding area" and
demanded clearance for take-off (according to what he told us passengers).
Amazingly, it was granted and we were airborne a mere 10 minutes late. About an
hour into the flight, the real delays started. We were put in a holding pattern
around Philadelphia "indefinitely" while thunderstorms passed through
Newark. What should have been a
100-minute flight quickly stretched to 3 hours and then some.
I spent my time reading O'Reilly's excellent book on MP3
audio and listening to tunes on my various players. I first listened to the
approximately 50 minutes of music in the D-Link player. This unit loads slowly via a COM port and
contains primitive but very stable transfer software. It will transfer files
from the player with no apparent "rights management" issues, which is
a major selling point. The software
will transfer files just fine from networked hard drives.
The D-Link firmware allows for 4 equalization curves, none
of which seem ideal for any group of tunes but usually one will work quite well
with an individual tune. The volume
output is a bit wimpy, unable to blast through jet noise at full-tilt. Overall,
the unit puts out good midrange and treble but pretty poor bass response, even
with its "extra bass" EQ setting. Still, this machine is cheap (about
$150 at Staples, even less on sale), able to withstand a severe drop, and
small. It doesn't come with a belt-clip, which is a pain for people who like to
exercise with their MP3 player. It can handle up to 32 megs of SmartMedia, but
not the newer 64-meg cards. The D-Link player also features an interesting
recording setup that writes mid-quality WAV files to any open memory. I've
actually found this very convenient, having used it several times to speak out
ideas or to-do items while driving. My IBM ViaVoice software even does a decent
job of converting the WAV files into text! One caveat -- I've needed to erase
at least one MP3 file to make room for voice under most circumstances. That's
easy enough to do, but an added few steps none the less. The unit uses 2 AAA batteries, which are a
bit non-standard but still readily available. It seems to go about 8 hours on a
pair of batteries.
When I finished with the D-Link, I switched to the Rio 500
player. Right off the bat, I'll say
that this machine is in a different league. It also costs at least $100 more. The Rio machine uses a USB cable and RioPort
software to transfer files to and from a PC. RioPort is not good software, in my opinion. It tries to be an all-in-one MP3 manager, including a desktop
player, CD ripper and library management; it fails at all of those tasks. I use MusicMatch Jukebox's plug-in to
transfer a playlist directly to the Rio. It's much smoother, although it's not
crash-proof.
Another silly thing about the Rio is that each memory unit
is treated separately on playback. While with the D-Link, for instance, you
need to load the on-board memory and SmartMedia cards separately, they play
seamlessly, as one long string of songs with internal memory first and cards
second. With the Rio, each memory
module is a "folder" and the player won't automatically play the next
folder after the first (internal) folder is exhausted. Combine that with an
awkward carrying case and this baby's not all that convenient.
However, the Rio redeems itself considerably with its
superior sound. It sounds as good as a CD player with well-encoded MP3 files.
The larger storage is great also. Rio also recently upgraded the firmware to
allow 64 meg SmartMedia cards, meaning you can cram about 2 hours into this
baby. As clumsy as the pouch is, it includes a very nice belt clip for
exercising. However, it's so difficult to control the player while it's in the
case that I recommend avoiding this on a bike or a crowded running path. The
Rio also uses one AA battery, so it's very convenient to power it up. It gets
about 6 hours out of a battery.
One final plus on the Rio is that it supports the Audible
format for spoken word. You can fit 4-6 full audio-books in Audible Format 1 in
this thing, which will entertain you for hours on end if spoken word is your
thing. Just be prepared for AM-quality sound. Using Audible Format 4 (which is
low-grade MP3), you can fit about 2 full audio-books.
I listened to about 80 minutes of music on the Rio and
enjoyed the hefty volume and high fidelity. When I finished, we were still holding
above Philly. Time for the laptop! My little old laptop with its feeble
processor, 1996-vintage sound chip and old-version Winamp software put out more
volume than any portable player and the fidelity was on-par with the Rio. I
found myself wondering just why I bothered with these portables. Ah, the
convenience thing … right!
Actually, the real reason is battery life. By the time we
started our approach for landing, I was down to 20% battery on the laptop and
rushing through the final paragraphs of this review. I had listened to every
tune I brought along (some on the laptop got two listens over 2 days). The
drive home would have to be an extended radio listening session. That long
voyage would have been a lot longer without the 2 portable players to supplement
the short battery life of a laptop.
My conclusions about traveling with MP3:
- Load more tunes than you think you need onto a laptop,
if possible. This is no problem for me because I have a home Ethernet and can
load dozens of files right from my MP3 server. If I were using LapLink or some
other slower transfer system, this would be an issue. One possible workaround
is to burn CD-ROM's full of MP3 files. 10 hours is plenty of music under almost
any circumstances, and that's how much you can cram on one CDR. However, that
pre-supposes you have a CD burner (very common on new computers) and a CD-ROM
drive in your laptop (relatively common, not present on my little Toshiba). I
recommend loading at least 4-6 hours of MP3 (about 400 megs of files -- which
will fit on most modern laptops).
- Don't expect a portable player to fit the bill for an
entire trip unless you're willing to pay big bucks for several SmartMedia cards
and take them time to painstakingly load them up. The upside of this is that
many portable don't require a bulky dock, so you may need only to carry a cable
to load the portable on the road from your laptop.
- Player fidelity varies greatly. Listen before you buy.
But, recognizing this fact, don't totally discount the cheapo hardware because
it definitely has its place. MP3 is what it is. It'll never be full CD quality,
but it certainly doesn't have to sound bad. If you get serious about MP3, I
can't recommend the O'Reilly book strongly enough.
- Consider decent Walkman headphones. I use Sony Sports
headphones from way back when they were yellow and came with a water-tight
cassette walkman. They aren't ideal for an airplane because they don't insolate
the ear at all. They're great for exercising, though, which is my chosen
tradeoff. If you're not concerned about this, get some headphones that pad the
ear and shut out background noise better. The silly in-ear phones that come
with most MP3 players are especially horrible for any use.
- Of course, remember not to damage your ears with high
volume!
Bottom line, MP3 files are the most convenient way to travel
but the players have some evolving to do. Best scenario is a laptop, but only
if you can keep your travels in sync with its battery capacity and have a good
file-transfer scheme in place. Don't throw out the cassette walkman or portable
CD player just yet!