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Review of the Audiotron Stereo MP3 Component
What it is An MP3 player. But instead of using its own internal storage, it uses Samba shares that you can easily set up on any windows or Linux box for all data storage. This means that you can spread your MP3 collection over your LAN, use an external NAS or file server, but most importantly, not be constrained by the limits of disk space that go with any device that comes with its own storage. IO
The inputs/outputs are simple. Your basic ethernet port (you can assign an IP, or use DHCP). A pair of phone jacks (for HPNA networking which I've never used, nor do I intend to try). Power (you can deduce for yourself what that does). A pair of RCA audio outputs to plug into any stereo system. Best of all is a TosLink optical output so if you have a receiver that can do it, you can have an optical connection.
SetupSetting up the system was relatively easy. It took longer for me to set up Samba then the Audiotron. Just set a name and password, and make sure samba will let that guy in. Then make sure you have a folder named appropriately ("Music" will work. There is an option to search all folders but that is less then desirable). The atron boots up, uses DHCP to get an IP, scans your subnet, and if everything is configured, starts to get an index of MP3s from every server in your subnet set up to share MP3s. It was able to load all 6500 of my MP3s on my home network in just a few minutes. Note that if it loses power, it must reimport which on my lan took 5-6 minutes to import.
Upgrading the system is trivial . Download an image from the official website, and throw it in your music directory. and select the upgrade option. I did this almost immediately since the latest version has the web server interface that I desired to control the Audiotron from around the house.
I did manage to crash it several times after the upgrade. Once the crash was so severe that I had to restore to factory defaults. The only harm in this is that all of my favorites buttons were lost. I can blame this on the fact that I'm using a beta version of the code. I consider the crashes a tolerable short term problem, and worth it considering that the beta also gives me web control which is much easier then navigating using a knob.
Normal UseAfter booting, The front panel LED is mostly used to navigate your collection and select songs. You can do so by artist, title, genre, playlist. Everything is really easy, but somewhat slow. I'm not saying you can do it much better given the restraint of a 2 line LED visual output device and a knob. I'm just saying that you really want to use the web interface to do anything more complicated then selecting an album or artist.
The remote provides a variety of functions that you would expect. And it has a spacious 20 buttons for assigning favorites to. A favorite can be an artist (The Who!) a genre (All my rap mixed up) or just a disc (Daft Punk's Discovery). You can also define playlists, which are actually m3u files stored in your share. You have to make sure that the m3u's have only relative paths, DOS text file cr/lf, and backwards slashes. This is important because creating relatively wacky playlists is kinda a pain through this interface. The remote also lets You can also skip around in your playlist, or even within the MP3.
FidelityThe audio fidelity is really great, if by "Great" you really mean you want to show how bad MP3 encoding butchers audio. This is no criticism of the Audiotron, but you'll definitely here how MP3s just don't sound as good as the source CDs. I'll definitely be ripping CDs at a higher bit-rate.
ShortcomingsIt's just not totally ready yet for a power user although the The recent versions of the system have come much closer. A small feature which would be greatly appreciated is the functionality of the xmms-crossfade plugin. Such technology could presumably be easily integrated into a future version without a hardware upgrade. It's a relatively minor thing but it really adds something to many playlists to simply transition between songs. Sure its not as good as DJ who actually knows the start and end points of songs for proper mixing, but it usually removes those annoying pauses between songs. Somewhat related would be the ability to normalize volume of songs.
I wish the web interface would be reworked by someone who understands html interfaces. The system should offer the ability to create playlists of "Similiar" types. I should be able to add just a few songs, and the box should generate a list of similiar songs based on artist or genre. Right now creating a playlist is fairly tedious. Plus loading a web page often causes skipping in the playback. This is further complicated by the fact that it's output is really slow. I was getting like 8k a second even tho there really isn't any other traffic on the LAN. It wouldn't be so bad if I was getting pages much faster, but if you make your playlist be 'All Songs', you're going to wait awhile for the web page that contains that list. This is bad form.
There are lots of things that just seem messed up: for example I tried to map a few favorites keys to albums but it didn't want to play the CD in order even tho "Random" was off. They are played in order if you select the disc directly with random mode off. I think the favorite might randomize at assignment time. I suspect this is just an artifact of the beta build I was using.
In dream world this box would have TV interace, and 802.11b wireless support instead of regular ethernet. Of course this would double the price. At under $300, it's well within the range of typical consumer electronic gizmos so I doubt we'll see these options.
What it does bestIf you have several MP3 sources on your LAN, this is a great solution. Just set up samba shares on each box, and the audiotron will scan each of them and give you a single interface. Likewise, since it looks like a real stereo component, it means that you can let your PC just be a file server, and let this bad boy handle all MP3 playing chores. It won't stick out visually. And there aren't whirring fans to add more noise to your listening environment.
While the interface has rough edges, it's under three hundred bucks. And you can easily put one anywhere you have an ethernet drop. I doubt it would be worth placing one in a room where you already have a desktop PC to play songs directly on, but any room where you don't want a computer, have a stereo, and want access to your MP3s, this is simply a great way to do it. There are other ways you could do this, but this way is fairly elegant. And as a bonus, you can config the box via a web browser.
In short, I highly recommend this device. It fits right into the price performance functionality curve. And hopefully frequent releases will add more features and make it better. Now if only Turtle Beach would release the code under an open license... I'd love to see an XML/RPC interface so we could write front ends. Or tivo-style thumbs up/down controls for building more intelligent playlists.
So ThinkGeek sells these things if you're interested. I'm very pleased with mine. And I'll be more pleased when I get the 100 gig hard drive in my file server so I can rip the rest of my CDs.
All this is is winamp on some cheap but shiny looking box. You can accomplish the same thing (albeit without as pretty of a box) for 1/3 the cost using the 3com Audrey. $89.99 from tigerdirect, as opposed to $289 for the Audiotron.
After I had it pointed out to me, I realized that my Apex DVD player made an excellent MP3 CD stereo component. The only downside is that the TV has to be turned on to use any of the menus.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
was able to load all 6500 of my MP3s on my home network in just a few minutes.
Since we know that all MP3s are only backup copies of what we have already purchased, I'm sure that Taco actually paid for all that music and the musicians were properly paid for their effort. :)
I know this because Slashdot has always told me that Napster et al actually increases music purchases.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
So basically this is just a remote control for Winamp. What else could this possibly add to any software mp3 player? Who cares if it hooks up between your computer and stereo. You can just use a moderately-priced sound card to do that.
The claim that this can be used with the highest-quality sound equipment is hilarious. What is the compression on mp3s? Do you _really_ think mp3s sound nearly as good as a good CD player? No matter how tweaked out this bad boy is, mp3s will still have hisses and skips that can be dangerous to powerful, quality audio setups.
This is not a flame. This is a reality check.
That's Mr. Eradicator to you.
trance-port
It handles CDDA, DVD, VCD, and MP3 discs.
No, it doesn't run TCP/IP, but it seems like much less hassle to me.
paying over $200 for *anything* like this. What's so bad about using and old P90 box and your existing home audio system (most of us have one) for this sort of thing?
It puts old hardware to a good use, and if you invest in a couple of used 20GB drives, you can store all the MP3s you want *cheap*.
It's a nifty device, no doubt. However, I'm not lacing up my running shoes on this one just yet...
Anybody know what the real advantage of this thing is? Am I just missing something horribly obvious? To be fair, I suppose the best place to advertise something sold on ThinkGeek is
Notice the low price once hard disk or other media is removed from the picture? Some flash RAM would be nice to save settings, though.
How long until the manufacturer is required to put DRM in at the hardware level, since "LAN" storage could be internet storage over broadband. What's to keep several users from forming a community of these devices? How great would the ability to listen to any song by any artist on demand for free? I didn't see any search functionality, though, so thousands of mp3s might get a little unwieldy.
If you fall off a building, go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will be like hey, free dummy
I have 2 of these puppies connected to the LAN at my house, I'll probably buy a third soon. For me they are the perfect solution, I have 13G of mp3 on my server and the audiotron allows me to get that music to any room in my house (I have ethernet wall outlets in every room). The unit itself is small and has an optical outlet as well as analog. In the early days the indexing software had its limitations, however, TB has been very reponsive to feedback and is continually improving the firmware. The lastest Beta release actually supports Internet Radio if you have a broadband gateway.
I would have no hisitation in recommending the Audiotron, I use mine every day.
To my own end of trying to find a decent player, I tried two... After investigating about 4 different ones.
My requirements were:
- Lots of MP3s, no point in a player that can only handle one CD and then needs a computer connection for more
- Long battery life (ie. >7 hours on one charge)
- Flexible, programmable, configurable (everything from the playlist to the kitchen sink)
- Backlit
- Upgradable firmware
- 2 minutes antiskip memory or better
To that end, I checked out the TDK Mojo, a MiSEL player, the Rio Volt, the AVC Soul and offerings from Philips (the father of the CD).
The TDK mojo had pretty much all the features except for buggy firmware - that could not be upgraded. Nice LCD display, good battery life.
The MiSEL is not really available in any quantities in North American yet.
The AVC is the company that makes player for Rio-Sonicblue (Volt) and iRiver. iRiver (Korea) designed the player, and it is built by AVC who also gets to sell some under its own name. The Volt is most similar to the iRiver IMP-100 (not available in North America). The nice thing is that iRiver firmware AND Sonicblue firmware will both work in the player - and it is backwards upgradable.
I settled on the Volt after trying it out for about 3 hours and here is why:
- Nice backlight that is configurable (hello Indiglo), can be set to off, a few seconds or on all the time
- Batteries last and last (7-10 hours typical on a fresh pair)
- Good sound quality
- Lots of firmware of different kinds and features around
- Does CDR, CDRW, 74, 80 minute
- Handles MP3 (CBR, VBR) (22050 - 44100 hz, mono and stereo, bitrates up to 320kBps)
- Handles Windows Media files (non-secure only)
- Tons of configuration - hold down the EQ button and you get a huge menu tree that lets you configure scrolling speeds, directory navigation features, playlists)
- Does M3U playlist files
- ID3 tag or file name selection for display
- Count down or count up on song timer
- Saving playlists for up to 10 CDs and remembers them when different CDs are inserted
- Resume remembers between up to 10 cds which song and how far through the song you were in
- Spins down the CD after reading music for 3 minutes ahead.
Downsides:
- Even with 2 minutes anti-skip you can't take it jogging. Even with walking - if its in your pocket - it will stop after 2 minutes
- Rayovac recharagable alkalines have to be 5 charges or else they don't have the juice to power it (1 hour typical on an old pair)
Conclusion:
- For a player that costs a bit of money (~150US, 300CAN) it has a hell of a lot of features. And its upgradable
how can you endorse something that doesn't support OGG? will upgrades for ogg support be available? can it be hacked?
Don't blame me - I voted for Howard Dean. http://dean2004.blogspot.com
This sounds like there's some usability problems and limitations. First off, your house has to be networked - this does seriously reduce its saleability! :-) Secondly, if it can only be controlled effectively through the web interface then you need a computer next to you to select the track, regardless. And if you've got that, why have a separate piece of kit?
:-) The words "gift horse", "mouth", "don't look a" and "in the" are springing to mind in no particular order... ;-) Anyway, you can hear the limitation of MP3 through _headphones_ on a PC, never mind putting it through a fancy hifi system, so it obviously didn't bother you too much when you ripped them.
I have a better suggestion - and if there's anyone from those hifi companies reading, pick this up. If it needs a graphical menu to browse effectively, why not build one in? OK, most hi-fi stuff doesn't have room for one in the rack-mounting form factor. But suppose you have one mounted flat in a drawer-type thing - you press a button, the drawer ejects, and the screen pops up, kind of like how Psion organisers work. Then the gadget could genuinely be driven from the front panel.
Jitter in the sound while you're browsing web pages is unacceptable. A two-processor system should really be used for this, one dedicated to sound processing and one dedicated to network access. Two cheap processors should work out the same price as one complex one, and it'd give much better quality output. Alternatively, web page serving should be a background task which only happens in the spare cycles between updates of the sound processing.
As for showing up the limitations of MP3 - well, yeah. But then, did you buy all those 650 CDs that you've got the 6500 MP3s off?
Graham.
I plan to put my own review up on my website. Mine is an early hand-soldered model, but they plan to move to mass-production which should bring the price down I would think.
Cheers,
Chris Morgan
I know this discussion is a bit long in the tooth by now, but I have a streaming MP3 player based on Apache::MP3, MySQL and Mason that works pretty well (for me at least.) Check out my project page here:
TVDiNNER Project Page
Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
r3mix
Read it, then come back here with a clue.
Don't trust the web page, do some ABX tests on your reference system, comparing 256kbit MP3 to the original signal.
Oh, did you mean 128kbit MP3, encoded by Musicmatch, has hisses and skips? I whole heartedly agree with you! But if you believe that all MP3 < all CD, I have a $20,000 tube amp I'd like to sell you.
Assuming 256kbit MP3 done with a decent encoder, this component, and a Toslink connection to your badass DAC, I can assure you that the limiting factor there is the quality of your DAC and everything after it.
any computer in the house can get to it (well the macs can't, but I'm working on setting up some sort of mac compatible solution alongside samba).
For what it's worth, I've got all of my mp3s on a central NetBSD server. On the server I'm running Samba, netatalk, and NFS -- so any kind of computer can access the shares. I don't know what OS you're using for your server, but it shouldn't be too difficult to set the same thing up. And the protocols don't step on each other's toes at all.
(netatalk is especially nice; mounts the mp3 directory right on the desktop when I log in with the user who has that set as their home directory.)
--saint
Above average?
Most of my friends have 300-600 CDs. I've got 400 here. Furthermore, where are you getting an average of 8 songs per CD? A sampling of 10 of my CDs (admittedly small sample, but sounds right) gives me an average of 11 songs per disc. Maybe we just like different genres of music?
I don't have mine all to MP3 either (I've scripted up for it and started the process a couple of times, but then LAME comes out with something new that sounds better and I start all over...) but thats an estimated 4,400 MP3's for me, and I don't consider myself a big music junkie...
I just have a collection that I've been building since the late '80s, that's all. Someone who's bought one CD a week for a decade has 520+ CDs now. That's no stretch of the imagination, it sounds very reasonable to me.
The anti-piracy assholes are getting out of control. I don't mind buying software or music, but I'm getting tired of having to defend my 400+ CDs or 200+ games every time the subject comes up. If nobody's going to believe that I bought them anyway, I wish I had just copied them from the beginning, god knows I'd be a lot richer right now.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW