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Reverse-Engineering The Creative Nomad Jukebox
indole writes "As it enjoys a large, growing, user-base, the Creative JukeBox still suffers from Creative's ugly corporate obstinateness. Despite the pleas of its users, an SDK has not and will not be released to the public. A nice little initiative is growing out of the frustrations of creative.products.nomad to reverse-engineer the Nomad Jukebox USB protocol and hopefully design some more functioning software. The Protocol Refrence v0.1 is up and due for an update very shortly. Hack away boys."
Yeah, I concur, the Archos is a fabulous unit. I own one myself, and despite initial flaws in the operation of the unit, the cheaper price, friendlier customer service (new firmware updates are being released quite frequently), and the fact that you can use the 6 gig Archos unit as a portable USB hard drive! If anyone is interested in purchasing the unit, I strongly suggest they look to the forums on the AJB 6000 on mp3.com and/or http://www.neomp3players.com
Three hour battery time?
IMO pathetic.
It's relatively easy to buy CD players that can run 70+ hours on a pair of AA's. My little MD player can run close to 10 hours on a single good alkaline AA.
Sure it's not as handy as having 6GB of MP3s but it appears they need to work on their power engineering.
Unfortunately the first revision of hardware often has bugs but they shouldn't have released it without a good beta test program.
FWIW, I had similar problems with tracks ending in the middle etc. However, upgrading the firmware (to the version that adds .WMA support) has fixed all the glitches as far as I can tell, and it also adds the ability to seek within a song (which I think was ridiculous to leave out in the first place).
Actually the latest firmware and software let you grab mp3s out of the box and back onto your PC.
--Bob
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
I DON'T drag linux into every thread on slashdot. it's just that it's both relevant to this conversation, and useful information. If you ran windows full time and you had to reboot into linux every time you wanted to change the songs on your mp3 player, wouldn't you start to find it annoying? i sure as hell would get kind of miffed by having to reboot into windows for it.
Linux is my operating system of choice, separate from any "Free the Source!" ranting pseudo-philosophers. i would want to be able to use the player in linux, and i really don't think that should be too much to ask.
as for the oppenness of its communication protocols, i fully acknowledge that it might not be practical for the company to make a linux client. that doesn't mean they need to make it difficult for anybody else to make one on their own. openning their protocols is a sign of support and good faith toward those that wish to use their products in linux, and while i would be willing to use a product with reverse-engineered drivers, i would rather give my money to a company that doesn't shun me, my operating system, and the community around it.
#define F(x) int main(){printf(#x,10,#x);}
F(#define F(x) int main(){printf(#x,10,#x);}%cF(%s))
or even a station wagon full of mag tapes...
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
It might hold _your_ entire music collection, but 6GB comes out to roughly 100 CD's, which is about 1/8th of my collection. I could carry 5 times that in my CD bag.
From my point of view, the CD players are the way to go. I just don't want to be saddled with some crappy transfer utility and I've already got many of my CD's ripped to CD-R's already.
Of course, different products for different customers. It depends on what you want or need.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
No, but using the Case Logic sleeves (jewel cases are for losers), I can carry about 50 CD's of MP3's in a small bag. That's about 30GB of data for about $25. Try that with a hard-disk (at the same price...). Yes, there is some inconvenience when you have to change CD's, but ultimately, you get more flexibility with a CD device at less cost and only sacrifice a little convenience.
Again, it's only a matter of preference, but I'll go with flexibility any day of the week.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
How about the PA-1? Anyone working on supporting that? If not, e-mail me and we can start.
http://kered.org
This unit can't even hold 1/10th of my mp3 music collection. 6GB isn't that big, but it is a nice size for a portable collection. (I don't listen to much classical or jazz when driving the car, for example). The fact that these things look like they can be hacked to hold other laptop HDs makes them more promising in my eyes.
I have 80GB. and increasing as we speak. All my files are encoded at 256k for archival purposes. I use Lame -b 256 -ms -h -p and then I don't need to worry about crappy sounding mp3s. Plus, hard drives are so cheap, you might as well encode as best as you can once and not worry about it.
What I want to know is if any of these portable mp3 players play 256k mp3s, since I don't want to downsample my already-encoded mp3s due to further loss in quality.
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
Huh?!? According to dmusic.com it's the worst one. Have you actually looked into any of the others?
I know they are expensive for now, and thus as a trade-off one might rather go for CD-based MP3 players. But I'm sure that for those that can afford it, and in the future for everyone, HDD based MP3 players are the way to go.
Just FYI.
The nomad is nice, but a tad expensive. You can get a very nice cdrw-mp3 player for 100-200 bucks. The cool thing is, one cd can hold over 15 hours worth of music. CD media is dirt cheap too, at around 30 cents a disc if you buy in bulk. So you get unlimited capacity, you don't have to connect the player to a computer to change media (if you have it all on cd-rw you just put in a new cd with 15 hours worth of data before you leave each day). It skip-resistant and probably even weighs less than the nomad too.
--
Twivel
"I for one am sick and tired of big companies trying to tell me what I can do with X, Y, or Z product after I've already purchased it. "
If you purchased it, do what you want. If you only licensed it however....
I actually have both of these, the DAV 309 and the 310. They both suck ass. I couldn't do anything without it skipping. I could be walking and the player would skip. It also would not find mp3s if the file extension did not end with ".mp3". The player was not very responsive. Navigating through tracks was very difficult because I didn't know where any mp3s were due to the lack of ID3 tag support. I was able to watch VCDs, which was cool. I now have the Nomad Jukebox and it never skipped, I can goto to whatever track I want easily, make playlists, and I don't have to worry about changing CDs. The only big draw back is that batteries don't last very long.
The Diamond Rio 300/500/600/800 came with the shittiest software ever. Now the protocol has been hacked for all of them. I'm the author of Riorio, an alternative software for the Rio 500 in windows. It allows you to upload from the Rio to the computer (fsck the RIAA) and do all sort of stuff you couldn't do with the standard software.
No one is really going to be free until nerd persecution ends.
Creative is a strange company, parts of it want to be open, IE the live and dxr2 drivers for linux. On the other hand, you have the legal killing of Aureal, and now this. Some real split personality problems in that company.
"My head hurts, My feet stink, and I dont love Jesus." -Jimmy Buffett
Now that is very cool and the drivers are GPL. Honestly since I don't want a MP3 player I've not looked at or read anything much about these things. But how can one company that has such a clue when it comes to drivers for the SBLive have it so wrong on this device? In any case this one from Compaq looks pretty sweet.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
And so has the Nomad. See Tom's Hardware
As much as I hate the RIAA, you're incorrect. You purchase the physical media, but not the data. That's copyrighted. (This is the whole point of copyright.)
IANAL, so keep a few grains of salt handy.
-John
The Archos looks good on paper but the sound quality is horrible compared to the NJB. Also, with the latest firmware and Playcenter software the jukebox can store non-audio files.
- Pine D'Music MP3CD Player
- Likko LKM012 SuperMan
- Napa Dav 309
There are others, but heres a selection. Now all we need is a company with an eye for design (like Sonys very sexy cd players) to come up with a good looking one with all the features you come to expect thesedays.--
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Yeah yeah, the moderators will hate me for this, but really it hasn't gone far enough.
I for one am sick and tired of big companies trying to tell me what I can do with X, Y, or Z product after I've already purchased it. Hell, some companies [*cough*MPAA*cough*] want to tell me WHERE I can do things with their products [what? you don't live in region X? well, sorry, all your region X DVD's are useless, you can suck us off now]. I had liked Creative Labs, but this little jukebox issue has made up my mind to never purchase from them again. All companies who willingly support content access restriction must be eliminated, the sooner the better for all of us. I was going to buy more CD's, I was going to get a DVD player [the tech itself is plenty cool], but the lawsuit happy morons can all starve to death for all I care now. If you solve your problems with lawyers, you aren't worthy of my time or money.
-={(Astynax)}=-
-={(Astynax)}=-
"Darkness beyond Twilight"
Does my bum look big in this?
Do you fuckers really have to drag linux into every fucking thread on /.? I mean Jesus H. Christ! If there were a story about limp penises, someone would ask if the limp penis supported kernel 2.4.x, or if Limp Penis 1.0 would be outwardly compatible with sshd. Christ, give it a break.
-
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.
Out of all the mp3 players i've seen on the market (i even fell victum to purchasing the RIO --- i know, shoot me now) the MPTrip is still the best buy i can find. All the other big name mp3 players out there are way too over priced and the mpTrip is less then $100 US. The thing i like about it most is the fact that it plays MP3 CD's, Audio CD's and even compliation discs. Not to mention it actually has anit-shock technology that works. But this is just my opinion, if anyone else knows of any mp3 players that are decently priced and does everything the mpTrip does if not more, please let me know.
They even have a full set of linux drivers on their page! Stop giving money to companies that obviously aren't willing to work for it. Iomega is. Hell, if you look in the credits on the player, the Red Hat logo comes up ;)
PS: Search the Ogg Vorbis mailing lists for 'hipzip'. You'll find that they have a beta version of their player firmware that supports Ogg Vorbis as well!
What did you eat today? http://www.atetoday.com/
So the question is, which portable mp3 players have linux clients? and which are open protocols? those are the first two questions i'd consider before buying one.
#define F(x) int main(){printf(#x,10,#x);}
F(#define F(x) int main(){printf(#x,10,#x);}%cF(%s))
Whoa. I haven't had any of the problems you have mentioned.
My batteries worked fine after a 12 hour charge - they last about 3 hours though. I charged my second set with an external charger that I already had, and they worked fine as well.
As for the no fast-forward or rewind - this bothered me too - however get the latest update from http://www.nomadworld.com and you will get this functionality!
Not to mention the ability to transfer mp3's off of your Nomad to your PC. This bothered me as well - unfortunately you can't transfer "protected files" such as the ones that come pre-installed. Only the mp3's that you put on yourself.
I love my NJB...
It is distributed by the same company, but has completely different origins (i.e. not Compaq research like the PJB). Thus, the Linux SDK for the PJB won't work for the Treoplayer. If one ever appears remains to be seen.
On paper it has the same characteristics as the PJB, but is cheaper. Shorter battery life though.
One of the strong points of the PJB is it's excelent sound quality, even if you connect it to a hifi installation the difference at 128kbps is hardly and at 192kbps is not audible. This cannot be said from any other MP3 player (due to excellent encoding/decoding from Fraunhofer and to good D/A components in the player).
Whether the Treoplayer matches this quality remains to be seen; I think not (it won't be cheaper for nothing, even when sold by the same company). But if you're patient, you might want to wait until it is on the market to see how it really compares to the PJB.
Use the Archos Jukebox 6000 instead. It has a few similarities to the Nomad: it's an MP3 player built onto a ~6 GB laptop hard drive, which interfaces with your PC via USB.
However, there are a number of differences which make it better IMHO. The Archos appears as a FAT32 formatted drive with a drive letter, to which you can drag and drop your MP3 files and directories (yes, that's right: directories, nested as deeply as you like). The Nomad has a proprietary closed means of getting the music to the device, and you need to use their special software to do it. And since the Archos is just a USB hard drive to the computer, you can use it to store more than just MP3s. The display for the Archos is smaller than for the Nomad, but full text of the song title (ID3 tag info) will scroll past, so that's no sticking point.
Windows 2000/98 treats the Archos as a USB storage device, loading the appropriate drivers for that. This is at least a degree closer to being hackable than the way Creative does it. I think most linux hackers would prefer to write a driver for a generic USB storage device than write a driver for a proprietary device with a narrow range of usefulness. Also, Archos, or the people who they license their USB bridge technology from, may be more willing than Creative to open up their interfaces for writing open-sourced drivers.
Here's some links:
Archos website
Review of Archos Jukebox 6000 at Fun MP3 Players
Not knowing USA law, is this against the DMCA or other progressive digital laws the United States has?
...
... Just an inquisitive idiot
Does anybody have a recommendation for a similar product without all those shortcommings?
Check out the Personal MP3 Jukebox, for example on thinkgeek : http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/things/3474.html
1) Umm, the Jukebox isn't that complicated. The manual pretty much covers anything. This is after all a fairly SIMPLE device for playing music.
2) Yeah, I have the same problem. I don't use the jukebox as a battery device. I use it as a portable music station. I have a plug for it in my car, a power plug at work, and a power plug at home.
3) I never even listened to the pre-loaded music, but I have a ton of "concept" albums, where the tracks blend fluidly into each other. In every case, I've never heard a gap between my tracks (since the songs never really end). Winamp always has a slight gap between tracks... and its noticeable... I've never had a problem with the Jukebox.
4) Ummm, there IS a fast forward and rewind. You press the "next track" and hold. This is very similar to most stereo system cd players. And for rewind, you press "previous track" and hold. It'll start to rewind.
5) I've never had a problem with tracks stopping in the middle. My guess is there's something about that encoded file it doesn't like. I would probably consider this a bug, and you should try to create an mp3 that does this and send it along with a bug report to Creative Labs. I've already filed two bug reports with them concerning their lousy software, and have received confirmation that these are bugs that'll be addressed.
6) I agree. The case was lousy. I didn't even know I was getting it when I bought the thing so it wasn't a big loss for me.
I think the product is amazing. Has front and rear line outs. Headphone jack. DOES store 6 gig of mp3s, and if you know what you're doing you can very easily upgrade the laptop hard drive in the thing to a 20 gig IBM drive. Out of the shortcommings you mentioned, I've never experienced the major two (pauses between tracks, fast forward). The other stuff really are just personal gripes based on your usage. My usage is different and I have no problem with how the Jukebox functions in those areas.
Um No...
You said:
In this case, a company has created something.
As creators, they own it, and they can do what they want with it.
Uhm no... They own the design, and own the protocol as their proprietary knowledge. I own the product if I buy it
If they refuse to improve it, that is their prerogative - without them, the thing wouldn't exist, so surely they should be given the freedom to do what they like with it, without fear of hackers undermining them?
Yes If the manufacturer refuses to improve the product or event to support it, that is their perogative. It comes down to a cost/benefit analysis. Creative, in this case has to analyse wether it is worthwhile for them to participate with the part of the user community that wishes to get better use out of the product.
The only time that any third party is undermining the producer is if they decrypt or reverse engineer the thing, and sell that information, or another product that uses the reverse engineerd information. If I decrypt and/or reverse engineer something, and use it to improve how I personally use the product, am I doing harm? I think not. If I share my knowledge (at no cost) with other people who own the same product and have the same interests, am I causing harm or detracting from the companies revenues? Again, the answer is no.
I think people have to be responsible here - these people should see that their actions are damaging things for everyone, and that they should not just rip other people's work off
Thease people are not stealing anybody elses work, they are trying to understand and therefore get better use of a product they bought and paid for. Creative's lack of participation to the user community in divulging the USB protocol, or in participating with users who want to improve things is IMHO just another form of poor customer support.
Companies like Chilton regularly purchase new cars, dissasemble them, and re-assemble them. They then make money off of the sale of the books they write as a result. They have not stolen anybody elses work.
The latest firmware of the NJB allow you to take music off the device and back to your hard drive, but only if it doesn't have any digital rights management set up. Your collection of MP3 files can be shuffled back and forth from the NJB, but some WMA files can't.
The PJB-100 has been hacked to do all sorts of stuff, including upgrading the hard drive inside to 20 gigabytes. You can even talk to the PJB developers on the mailing list.
If you are worried about the price of the PJB-100 then I would wait for the treoplayer which will be out near the end of this month. The Treo includes all of the advantages of the PJB and is only $399 and has a smaller form factor.
I'm the guy that started the effort to reverse enginner the Rio600, A couple of weeks ago I kicked off a project to support multiple mp3 players under linux/whatever:
See here.So far we have info for, or access to:
So join the mailing list if you have a player you want supported!
On the other hand, if I licensed music this would work fine too. In that case I would have the ability to go buy a tape, or pull out some old eight track tapes, and exchange them for the CD's with whatever record label I had to deal with. Licensing could work well for that.
What it boils down to is that the RIAA wants to have their cake, eat it, then take your cake and the cake from the bakers themselves. It's just a scam and should be dealt with by the government just like any other pyramid scheme since the consumers can't do much about it. And "not buying their products" doesn't help because we don't have the support of a large number of people. The RIAA companies would simply forget about our money.
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
1. The manual which comes with this product is very poor and does not go into detail about ANYTHING.. It is a small booklet and leaves you with a billion questions.
2. Battery problems. Just like the manual said, you must charge your batteries for 12 full hours before using them. I charged mine for over 12 hours the first time (did it over night while I was sleeping), and then in the morning I took my jukebox out for a walk with me. The batteries died in a half hour. Lovely. I decided to check out the support newsgroups on this product and apparently I am not the only one who had this problem. It was suggested that I try the 2nd set of batteries that comes with this jukebox. So I did. However, there is no indication on this product as to the status of your batteries charging, you just have to GUESS and ASSUME that they are in fact charging! There is no "meter" which shows you the progress. After 12 hours of charging my 2nd set of batteries, I turned on my jukebox and it read 85% charged... I guess I'll have to accept it. The support group tells me that even though it says 85%, that it really means 100 %. How lovely. How much did this thing cost again? ANd why are so many other people in the support newsgroup experiencing battery/charging problems?
3. Sometimes there are huge pauses between tracks, while the jukebox loads up the track into memory. (very annoying.. it's like a 10 second wait until your next track; mind you not all the tracks experienced this delay, just the pre-loaded music that came with the jukebox)
4. No fast forward or rewind, you can only skip to the next track, or go back to the previous one.
5. Some of my tracks just completely stop playing in the middle, and it moves on to the next track. Yet, the same file will play fine on my pc. And no matter how many times I reboot the jukebox, it will stop playing this file after a minute, as though it got corrupted.
6. The carrying case that comes with it is really not a convenient way to carry it around for walking or listening on the bus, because you cannot access any controls on the jukebox without taking it out of its case - not even the volume! And why I should go out to a store and buy a special case for this jukebox is beyond me, considering how much this thing already costs!
The support group tells me that my 1st set of batteries may be defective, and that I should try charging them in an external charger. Why should I go out and buy one?! My bottom line is that for the money they are asking for this product, it better come with EVERYTHING i need!
In conclusion, the only thing amazing about this product is the fact that it holds 6 GB worth of mp3s. That's all. There is nothing else out of the ordinary, and in fact, everything else about this product is ordinary. Even the EQ settings and spatialization is nothing special.
Does anybody have a recommendation for a similar product without all those shortcommings?
Cui peccare licet peccat minus. -- Ovid, Amores.
Pirating a device designed for pirating.
You hackers have gone too far.
Je t'aime Stéphanie
Try this link for a working version
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.