Sony Cigar-Sized MP3 Player

Aaron Johns writes "The newest MP3 player on the market is from Sony, the VAIO Music Clip. It weighs less than two ounces, is a little over 4.5 inches long, and less than an inch in diameter. Only 64 Megs, but that's still two hours of music in a pen. " It's pretty cute. One thing ya gotta say about Sony, is that the guys designing the VAIO, AIBO, and this new music clip have a cool design sense... Despite how nifty this player looks I have to believe that with the onset of portable MP3 players with several hundred megs of storage, this one is probably too little too late.

Comments

why this thing sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

the musiclip isn't really an mp3 player; it plays atrac3 music files. if you have an mp3 file, it conerts it into an atrac3 file and plays it. not that atrac3 is that bad but that's one more level added on to degrade sound quality. it can change wav files directly to atrac3.. but this is sony, one of those big-wig corporate companies so they put in all this security junk on it to screw you over. read this.

Re:Right on time.

[Dj]

No, the Memory Stick is used in the StickMan player. This is the Vaio Clip.

It has been done

[unruh]

Portable MP3/Audio Player

Sorry, German only. It is basically something like a DiscMan which can read ISO9660 CDs and decode MPEG-I audio layer 3.

Quite expensive, though. I'd rather burn my custom collection on normal audio CDs and use a cheap portable CD player instead.

Cool concept, but...

[Skyshadow]

Pretty darn neat, but I can see two major flaws:

a) It's awfully expensive for a couple of hours worth of music.

b) It looks (God forgive me) like something you'd buy in a shop with a name like "Pure Pleasures" or "Sex World" and use for something other than a couple hours of music.

Seriously, the real problem with all of these sorts of devices, walkmans, personal CD players etc. is that whenever I bother to program out what I think I want to hear, I change my mind a song or two in. The difference between MP3 and the previous generations of personal music devices is that they have the potential to solve my problems (well, at least this specific problem).

What I'm really keen for is the day when I'll be able to stream music from my server at home directly to some sort of personal device -- maybe a Palm descendant of one kind or another. This probably isn't too far out; digital cellular of some sort coupled with your favorite PDA. This will let me decide what I want to hear when I'm out jogging or mowing the lawn or whatever. That would be a real nice paradigm shift.

----

Re:Cool concept, but...

[drix]

Yes exactly ... I can just see it now: "NO MOVING PARTS" emblazoned in big, yellow lettering on the package. And that's a warning, not a feature ;)

--

Re:Oh great...

[kroah]

Im excited about the USB interface...on Linux...
Take a look at the latest kernel, LOTS of USB devices are supported.

Will people STOP saying Linux does not have USB support! For the number of times I keep hearing it, I almost would start believing it, if I wasn't currently typing with my USB keyboard and using my USB HandSpring Visor docking station all the time...

Linux USB homepage

On a related note, some people just got the RIO MP3 player working with the Linux USB stack, take a look at http://rio500.sourceforge.net for more information on it.

The Policeman Inside

[acb]

Non-SDMI players will go the way of the dinosaurs soon; once SDMI is finalised, making players which do not implement strict controls will be just asking to be sued into oblivion.

Buy your Rios now while they still play MP3s.

P.S. If you want a DVD-ROM that ignores zone protection, look around for secondhand ones, because all recently manufactured units are obliged to enforce the CCA's rules.

Linux? Never.

[acb]

There will never be Linux support, on principle.
Everybody knows that Linux is a virtual Mos Eisley of pirates who have no appreciation of intellectual property, and who by supporting efforts such as DeCSS, have declared war on civilised commerce.

Besides, with Linux you can compile your own kernels, which makes hardware level security really difficult (unless such copware runs as root and preferably patches the kernel, which binary-only software cannot legally do). As such, companies aren't exactly hurrying to port their precious players/decryptors onto a platform where they may be easily reverse-engineered.

(Aside: Chances are that in a few years' time, a licence will be required to legally possess ICE debuggers, akin to locksmithing licences. The comments of the judge in the DeCSS case seem to suggest that in the New World Order, "encryption research" is legally only for approved parties.)

Sound degradation?

[acb]

Which burners degrade sound? I want to know so that I may avoid them like the plague.

I compose music, and wish to make CDs. I have an old track-at-once CD-R writer, though would want to buy a disc-at-once unit at some stage. Since I intend to use it for recording music of my own composition (and on which I own the copyright, not the Big 4 or the RIAA, damnit), I will be royally pissed off if I am prevented from doing this by those thieving corporate dogfsckers who purport to own all digitally encoded sound.

Re:Sound degradation?

[Weezul]

I compose music, and wish to make CDs. I have an old track-at-once CD-R writer, though would want to buy a disc-at-once unit at some stage. Since I intend to use it for recording music of my own composition (and on which I own the copyright, not the Big 4 or the RIAA, damnit), I will be royally pissed off if I am prevented from doing this by those thieving corporate dogfsckers who purport to own all digitally encoded sound.

There was an article on Wired about the troubles this guy had getting the burner to work with some Sony 4x burner, but there was a happy ending because the limitations were controled by the software, so he could just pay $50 for a diffrent commercial burning program that lacked these "features." This guy ran windows, so there is a good chance that the burner would work fine under Linux. I would still be careful and check out the burner on the various hardware guides.. and get a burner which you can return if it dose not meat your standards. I suppose a good way to check the quality of a burner is to do a bit-for-bit copy of a normal audio CD, do a bit-for-bit compairison, and give the copy to a friend for $1 to recoup your test media cost.. and complete the irony of being forced to pirate music by the RIAA.. :)

I would hope that there is a web page someplace which trackes the crappy things the RIAA/MPAA get included in various products and gives consumers a good place to track down this stuff. If someone knows of such a page please post a link.

Jeff

BTW> If you are making music and involved with all this stuff then maybe you can answer a couple of questions:

Is anyone currently selling advertising inside mp3s? It would seem to be a good way for musicians to make money, but you need a way to find companies who are willing to buy the space. You also need a way to push the mp3 with the ads on the comunity (maybe there is money in running a company which uploads mp3s to all the pirate sites). (That has got to be the greatest way to aviod piracy.. by make the pirates earn you money)

Are there devices which allow you to burn large numbers of CDs efficently? I noticed that the RIAA pulls some nasty stunts with CDs plants which look like they are inmtended to make it more difficult for independant artists to print CDs (whitness the negitiveland incedent).

Phase 2 triggers

[acb]

Phase 1 SDMI is nothing, and I'm not planning to ever download an SDMI Phase 2 file to trigger Phase 2 protections,

Is anybody planning to download one? I don't think there'll be a nice "download trigger" option (like those "UPLOAD VIRUS" buttons in bad computer movies of yore). Chances are, the trigger will be encoded in commercial sound files you buy over the Net. (Removing it will, of course, not be an option.) If you make your own sound files, chances are the SDMI-compliant encoder software will be obliged to put in the trigger after a certain date.

If you use sound files made after a certain date, chances are you will download the trigger.

Re:Hmm... how good is it

[cpt kangarooski]

Personally what I'm looking for is:

• USB interface
• Open CDROM format for storage
• 16MB RAM (copy the file from CD to RAM)

So maybe the best solution is a player which can operate either entirely on memory or with memory and a CD attached to it in some modular fashion.

Re:Non-Skip Technology?

[RelliK]

they do. if you hit them with a hammer.

I wonder though what exactly the "non-skip technology" is. The damn player has no moving parts.

___

CD+mp3-SDMI

[RelliK]

What I want:
A CD player that can also play mp3s off of a standard ISO CD and without bullshit like SDMI.

___

Re:CD+mp3-SDMI

[inburito]

Just ordered one of these(preorder though). Not the pine one but a MamboX. Supports variable bit rate encoding and data rates up to 320kb/s. Playback for mp3's and audio cd's. Does work with cd-r's AND CD-RW's! Supposed to be shipping sometime February. Head on to their website for more. And it even cost's less than this stick from sony.

mini-disks are really useless

[RelliK]

My roommate had a mini-disk player. As far as I can tell it's nothing more but a toy.

There is no way to copy a mp3 on a mini-disc, or encode a CD on it. You have to record the music on it by playing it through another device. This is *analog* recording, which degrades the quality severely. On the other hand, when you encode mp3s you rip the digital image of the track -- and that makes a huge difference.

Not to mention that mini-discs use Sony's proprietary format for storing music which Sony will not release the specs for.

I am not defending mp3 players though. In my opinion they also suck. In 64MB of memory you can fit about an hour of music. And since it's not stored in a removable media you're stuck until you delete them and copy some new mp3s there.

A portable player *must* have removable media. When oh when will these moronic companies pull their heads out of their asses and release something useful. I've been waiting for 2 years for a CD/mp3 player combo. Apparently some small companies did release it but the availability is scarse to say the least.

___

Re:mini-disks are really useless

[Ryandav]

Not at all. You can record digitally from another device, ripping byte-for-byte exactly what is on the CD, similar to ripping mp3s. You just have to use the optical in and digital cable that comes with the units these days.

Minidiscs use the ATRAC format, which is comparable to MP3. In fact, there is less loss when compared to mp3 at similar bit-rates, although the end product is slightly larger.

There are also, as I said before, home decks that record MD's which rip digitally, in faster than realtime, as well as soundcards you can get that output the cd info directly to the MD. There is _no_ discernable difference introduced, and in fact the sound can be enhanced with effects like additive bass. MD's sound incredible with good headphones or speakers.

Go to www.minidisk.org and get the facts, MD's are too good to pass up anymore.

BTW, the CD players that play mp3 CDs and regulars: expensive ($300 min). Skips, cause it's a cd player and can be jostled. large, comparatively, as are the media. MD is palm sized and smaller every day. Possibly much more fragile than the rugged MD players. They can be found by going to some links off of mp3.com, if you still want one.

Re:mini-disks are really useless

[The Madpostal Worker]

You *can* make digital connections between a MD and a cd player or computer.You can use a TOSLink (plastic filber optic) or AES/BEU(a standard for digital output) on my deck.
There are many different brands of players... sony must be atleast sharing some info.

MD is a great format.
ATRAC has a better sound quality and can be done in realtime by lower powered equipment.
Plus soon youll have MD-Data .. 130mb of data to go

SDMI compliant? No thanks.

[squarooticus]

I think I'll take a pass on any player that reduces my convenience.
--
Kyle R. Rose, MIT LCS

Wrong answer.

[squarooticus]

Seeing as there's no legal reason for those OS's to lack USB support, the proper answer here is to finish USB support for Linux and add it to those other OS's. Honestly, do you expect the entire hardware industry to wait for every OS to get in line? That's not the kind of computer industry I want. (Though, OTOH, I don't want the kind that patents everything, either...)
--
Kyle R. Rose, MIT LCS

Re:Portable MP3 overrated...

[Ryandav]

And not only that, but if you actually get one of the newer MD recording decks out there, they include features like faster than realtime recording, so you can dump a cd to MD in 5 minutes.

Also, (and this is the kicker for me) the time it takes to reload your collection and get a fresh new mix of music: the time it takes to eject a disk and insert another. I just don't get the big push for solid-state only. The tech just ISNT good enough right now, and with SDMI looming in the background, I don't think its going to get better anytime now.

All current devices store something like an hour or two of audio, but why settle, because when you get tired of that list, you have to go back to a computer to reload the collection. That takes time! I just carry 4 or 5 disks (tiny) in my pocket while walking around on campus. Viola, all my moods can be satisfied while in transit, no going back to base. The 10 hour battery life doesn't hurt either...

And btw, you can get a nice unit (slightly larger than state-of-the-art) for about $200 at minidisco.com. Much cheaper.

They are not very tuned in...

[KlomDark]

SDMI? Sony people: I'm sure a few of you read slashdot: SDMI is a bad word. We do not want it. I for one will not buy it.

Repeat after me:
I do not like SDMI.
I think they should stick it
in their eye.
If you want to make
us use SDMI
then you will not get
good demographics in the
MP3 Pie.

(Sorta rhymes. Sorta Suess-like. I tried :) )

MP3 Watch

[FigWig]

I submitted this to /. a while ago but...

Here's a watch from Casio that can play 32MB of MP3s. Not too practical, but pretty neat.

They also have a watch that is a digital camera.
See it here.

and with those big-bass songs...

[griffjon]

it's value as an entertainment 'device' increases. Just wait until www.goodvibes.com cobrands a version. Or maybe the owner of the patent to force-sensitive, sound-pplaying condoms will integrate this technology into his next patent...

Re:slashdot sux

[Mr. Piccolo]

Why is this marked "troll"? It's getting to be the truth these days!

Slashdot does indeed suck!

Re:Portable MP3 overrated...I agree

[acomj]

I agree. They just aren't there yet.

I have a minidic player and its been great. I use it alot, cary about 5 to 10 of those little disc with me when I leave the apartment in the AM. And the discs are cheap enough so I have about 40 or so and don't have to worry about downloading the music I want.

The quality is fantastic (way better than 160 kbps mp3). 9 hours per rechargable battery charge too.

And the coolest thing is the little remote that hangs off the end of the headphone cable. (actually kinda in the middle of the cable with the headphones attached). You can change songs/volume while keeping the unit in your pocket.

Re:Could not agree more :)

[Robert S Gormley]

Will have to look at that...

Assume it's digital?

Hmm... how good is it

[Merk]

The pros:

1. Cool form factor
2. Less than 2 oz weight
3. Good Sony quality electronics
4. USB interface

The cons:

1. "SDMI Compliant"
2. Expensive
3. Not much memory

Sadly, I think the cons outweigh the pros. That "SDMI Compliant" part is the worst. SDMI sounds like a very unworkable solution to something that should be a non-problem. It's sad to see many good MP3 playsers ruined by this "security".

Here's what I want in an MP3 player:

• USB interface
• Upload and download of files (not just MP3s)
• Minimum of 64 MB of RAM, expandable
• no SDMI
• Good mechanical design
• Good playback functions (random, repeat, programmed, bass, treble)

Sadly I haven't found anything that meeds those requirements. USB is one because it's fast, it's much easier than a parallel port device, and it should be "plug 'n play". Upload and download of files is an important thing too. I want to be able to use this thing to move a file from one computer to another as well as to play MP3s. A 64 MB file transfer device sounds really useful. Of course if the thing is SDMI Compliant that would probably be impossible. And finally I want the thing to be at least as good a portable music device as my portable CD player. It should be rugged and still have good music functionality.

I'd love to hear of someone who has found a player that does all that, so if you know of one, speak up. Until I find one I'm going to stick with my CD player.

High Capacity Players?

[dave2112]

Could someone list what players are soon to appear that offer "several hunderd meg of storage"? I agree that 64 megs just isn't enough and have been waiting for something with more capacity.

Thanks

Fair use.

[Matt2000]

I would recommend that this item not be sold to the President, who knows where he'll try to stick it.


Hotnutz.com - Funny

Pipe...

[Josh Guffin]

Now we just need a pipe-shaped mp3 player, so the MPAA can put 'em in it's pipe and smoke it =D

Doh

[jeremy f]

"SDMI Compliant"

...Great. "This unit will self-destruct upon playing a pirated mp3". Hehe, I bet the RIAA wishes :)

Anyway, back on topic, the only thing I really don't like about this is that there doesn't appear to be any way to upgrade the unit. The codec is expandible (mp4 anyone?), but not the memory. 64 megs is okay, but I'm gonna need to order 110 of these things to fit all of my music collection onto (at the mere cost of $33,000). Most of the other memory-based portable mp3 players have flash cards available -- which is great, store 2-3 CD's (or mixes) on one, and have 1 or 2 extra around.

And before anyone argues that I have too many mp3s, about 99% of my mp3s are legal, so don't go into issues about me having too many. I was raised in the CD generation, remember :)


_____________________

Do NOT buy this thing, it is SDMI Compliant

[Weezul]

Hey, CmdrTaco please add an update to the article mentioning the fact that this thing is SDMI compliant. I don't think any of us really want to be giving the SDMI people any money. Dose anyone know if SDMI compliant means it will not play mp3s from a water marked CD?

I think we should try to make an example of this thing by hurting their sales. It would have a very positive influence on future mp3 players. The people who buy protable mp3 players are geeks anyway, so we can spread the word and start an effective boycott.

There is a link at the bottom of the page which helps you find dealer locations. I think we should all find the dealers in our area, print up a bunch of informative stickers about this product (mentioning that it may not play CDs you pay for in the future, the general nastiness of SDMI, etc.), and go stick them on the packages to warn customers about this. I guess I need to come up with a concise list of problems with the product.

Jeff

Nice.

[prodeje]

I'd be more interested if it weren't for the Mambo X P300. In case you've been living in a hole, the P300 is a portable CD player which can play Mp3 CDs (read the specs). They're $200, and now taking pre-orders.

Now lets see:

~4 megs per MP3
650 megs per CD
650/4 = Thats about 162 songs per CD.
Now there's about 15 tracks on the average CD.
162/15 = Thats about 11 albums per CD.

11 albums per CD!

How can this 64 meg device even compete?
Even by recompressing your mp3s at lower bitrates (bleh), you're fitting about 1 album on this device. Do you want to be able to listen to 11 albums or 1?

The only legitimate arguement I can think of for buying Sony's device is it's small size. I personally don't find portable CD players too big. The P300 is even $100 cheaper.

This sony device sounds nice, but I think solid state audio devices are still a while off.

MamboX P300.

[prodeje]

http://www.mambox.com/p300.htm

This device embodies everything that you just outlined. And they're taking pre-orders today!

It's and SDMI device, forget about it!

[Prometheus_NG]

Hey, if you follow the link through and read the description you will notice that one of the "features" is that it is an SDMI device.

Don't buy SDMI devices unless you want to pay the same amount of money for your music, but have less flexibility in how you listen to it.

Re:Oh great...

[LocalYokel]

I suppose all the Linux, BeOS, and NT4 users are especially excited about the USB interface too, eh?

Portable MP3 overrated...

[Mark F. Komarinski]

Yep you heard me. I'm going on my Minidisc rant again. Go buy a minidisc recorder for $279, and 10 discs for $20, and you now have 20 hours of re-recordable music for the same price. The only thing that MP3 has over minidisc is the transfer times (takes an hour to record an hour's worth of music).

And you don't have to worry about that SDMI thing.

Ahh... the Sony product line is complete...

[MrHat]

I can see it now... AIBO + VAIO = Fun for the whole family.

Human: Here AIBO... Come here... Ready?

AIBO: Arf!

Human: (Fling) Go get it! Fetch!

AIBO: (Runs back with MP3-stick in mouth)

Human: Good AIBO! Good Boy!

Oh great...

[paulproteus]

I was reading their web site and I found...

"SDMI Compliant" in the flash presentation. Oh my.

As we all know, the Secure Digital Music Initiative (Their site is at http://www.sdmi.org) can't do anything; anyone heard "bit-by-bit" before? And there's always those nice dummy wave-output audio devices....

<sigh>

Silly RIAA.


I'm guessing though that Sony's player (due **Winter** 2000) won't be restricted to just SDMI; their web site seemed to make that reasonably clear.

There is a MP3 player that will play from CD's!!

[ratsdliw]

CNet had an article about a company called Pine that is comming out with a portable cd player that can play the mp3s from a CD. The CNET article is here:
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200-114511.html?t ag=st.cn.1.

The only problem with the Pine SM-200C is that it's still not out. You can check out the company web site at:
http://www.pineusa.com/mp3-cd.htm

/ drool The best thing of all is that it can even read CDR. / drool >

it is NOT an MP3 player

[porky_pig_jr]

Sony 'MP3 player' cannot play MP3 files in its native format. The only format Sony player understands is their proprietory ATRAC3. Software which comes with Sony player allows conversion from MP3to ATRAC3, however there were some postings claiming that after the conversion the quality of sound noticably degrades. In addition, SDMI is a real pain-in-the-butt feature. I would rather go with a player capable of playing MP3, no SDMI, and may be Liquid Audio (*.lqt) format as an option.

What about Linux?

[HenryC]

The site says that 800x600 is required, as well as Windows 98. This implies that you need their program to send the music to the player. So does that mean that us linux users are again forced to find some kludge to make it work?

Non-Skip Technology?

[aclaudet]

The page says it has non-skip technology. Do other portable mp3 players skip?!?

(I'm assuming that it's just some marketing person's way of saying "hey, mp3s don't skip like CDs")