New Generation of MP3 Players, New Features

i4u writes "We got our hands on new Flash MP3 Players from two Korean Manufactures. Both players feature audio functions not seen in MP3 Player before, like SRS, WOW and TruBass. The Muzio JM-200 uses a two color OLED display. The Eratech EMP-100 is betting on small size with measurements of only 30x75x16mm." The larger (and stranger looking) JM-200 also lists ogg playback as a feature.

Comments

The US always the last to get cool stuff

[solarmist]

It's funny how a lot of the "cool" stuff takes forever to get to the states. I mean MP3's players like this have been standard since I got here in Jan and probably long before that. You'll see grandma's on the bus with these guys.

Why is it that when it comes to tech like this, or cell phones or cool laptops that we always have to wait years???

Re:The US always the last to get cool stuff

[John Harrison]

I code in fixed width fonts as well, but I don't post to /. using them unless I am posting code. I think that people the tt tag to make their otherwise unremarkable posts stand out from the crowd visually by making it harder to read.

Re:The US always the last to get cool stuff

[Grimmtooth]

You probably don't realize it, but UL certification isn't a federal requirement. So ask Sony why they want the UL seal if it bothers you.

Re: The US always the last to get cool stuff

[Durandal64]

First of all, it wasn't my comment. Second of all, whoever wrote that comment must, by definition, be capable of changing fonts since the default posting font is a proportional-width font.

And lastly, coding in a proportional-width font makes for ugly code that no one wants to read. Mono-spaced fonts make for much neater-looking, more aesthetically-pleasing code. Code blocks are far easier to define, and outputs are far easier to construct. I prefer Courier (not Courier New) myself.

Re:The US always the last to get cool stuff

[babbage]

I am starting to see signs of Japanese cultural influence in the U. S.

I am starting to see signs of Italian cultural influence in the U. S. "Sopranos" merchandise, pizza, etc.

I am starting to see signs of Mexican cultural influence in the U. S. Latin pop music, tex-mex restaraunts, etc.

Etc.

The problem, of course, is that as a so-called melting pot -- how much things "melt" is debatable, and maybe "tossed salad" is a better metaphor, but whatever -- the U.S. exhibits lots of non-local cultural influences.

The thing is, these influences may or may not have any bearing on how dominant the amalgamated American culture is in other places.

A better indicator would be how American vs. [other] cultural artifacts are being adopted in other parts of the world. For examples, what movies were biggers hits in Jakarta, Nairobi, Lagos, Lima, Buenos Aires, etc: Lord of the Rings & Finding Nemo, or Shaolin Soccer & Spirited Away? What ethnic foods are more popular -- hamburgers or sushi? What languages are more popular in schools?

You'll learn far more about which culture is more popular by looking abroad than you will by looking at what is happening in the USA.

USB speeds?

[thesp]

These seem to be USB 1.1 devices. For all the snazzy features, high-speed data transfer should be a priority.

Re:USB speeds?

[meringuoid]

USB 2.0 probably wouldn't be such a big deal on a Flash player. Hard disk players need it, though.

TruBass not seen before on an MP3 player, though? I'm pretty sure I've got it on my (ogg-playing, DRM-unencumbered, fully Slashdot-politically-correct) iHP-140...

And we should get excited why...?

[gearmonger]

Unless the price of high-density flash RAM drops dramatically sometime really soon, hard drive-based MP3 players will continue to be the de facto standard for large-capacity players.

Besides, these "innovative" new features aren't really all that innovative. So there.

Re:And we should get excited why...?

[stratjakt]

Many people don't want a large-capacity player.

They want an affordable digital alternative to a walkman, that doesn't skip when they're jogging. They don't care if it can store 2 jillion hours of music. They just want their favorite workout tunes on it, or something to listen to riding the bus, etc.

That's an enormous market, and IMO Apple is positively stupid to ignore it. If they released an iPod that was under 100 bucks, that had say 64-256megs of flash, it'd sell like hotcakes and they'd increase the amount of iTunes customers 10 fold.

As a comparison, there is a niche market for those 100 disc DVD jukeboxes. But there's a much larger market for regular $50 DVD players for folks who maybe rent a movie a few times a month.

Re:And we should get excited why...?

[amliebsch]

The thing you described is a minidisc player.

Re:And we should get excited why...?

[ilsie]

Nice troll, but I'll bite.

They want an affordable digital alternative to a walkman, that doesn't skip when they're jogging. They don't care if it can store 2 jillion hours of music. They just want their favorite workout tunes on it, or something to listen to riding the bus, etc.

I have an Ipod Mini- doesen't skip while I'm jogging (and I've taken it on a 50 minute run many times). Even though it has a 4 GB capacity, I only store around 400 MB of music on it, because that's all I care to listen to.

But why would I spend $220 on that 512 MB flash based player when the 4GB ipod mini is only $30 more?

If they released an iPod that was under 100 bucks, that had say 64-256megs of flash, it'd sell like hotcakes and they'd increase the amount of iTunes customers 10 fold.

Nope. The point of iTMS is to get people to buy the iPod, not the other way around.

Re:And we should get excited why...?

[zhiwenchong]

Whoa, let's not be presumptuous here. It's easy for the man on the street to think that Apple should do this or that... but you have to consider the economics.

Apple does not traditionally target the ultra low-end market for a couple of reasons. For one, they're not big enough. I believe this came up in a discussion comparing Dell and Apple, and cheap PCs. Dell has the manufacturing facilities and [vastly superior] distribution channels to handle a high-volume low-margin market. Apple does not. Just look at the problems they're having churning out enough $249 iPod Minis for the U.S. market (btw, because of production problems, us chaps in Canada still can't buy iPod minis; they're only coming out Jul 24 over here).

Second, Apple has a reputation of making innovative products. It charges a premium for it. It just doesn't do assembly like Dell does; it also does industrial design. That's why iPods are well-liked and perceived to be cool. When it comes down to it, it's just a digital music player with really good design. Someone had to pay for the industrial design and marketing (not free, you know).

In short, Apple just doesn't seem like that kind of company that thrives on products that just barely breaking even. It can't survive in that market.

p.s. Steve Jobs has said that they're working to make cheaper iPods. But don't expect any $100 ones any time soon.

Useless features?

[Turn-X Alphonse]

I find it strange that everyone needs all these "amazing new features" etc. etc. but 99% of the time it won't change how the music sounds at all. I don't see the point of buying a new VCR because mine still works, same goes for TV, GBA(not SP) and so on and so forth.

Why waste 300 on some new gadget which will work pretty much identical to the old ones when the global standard isn't changing much (global standard for MP3s will always just be the old MP3 untill replaced for example).

Re:Useless features?

[Durandal64]

I find it strange that everyone needs all these "amazing new features" etc. etc. but 99% of the time it won't change how the music sounds at all.

On the contrary, it will change how the music sounds. It'll sound worse.

Ogg support

[Gordonjcp]

You can't encode MP3s above 56kbps without paying a licence fee to Fraunhofer-IIS. You don't need to pay a licence fee for Ogg.

Re:Ogg support

[OS24Ever]

My iPod costs the same amount whether or not I use MP3 or Vorbis. It's not like there is a 'license fee free' version out there that supports only vorbis...

Re:flash MP3 players?

[kneecarrot]

I completely agree. I can't see a single usage for a flash-based player. They are virtually indistinguishable on price and features (except for the low end) and in almost every case, the HD models have vastly more space.

iPod

[blackmonday]

Look, I'm an unabashed Apple fanboy, but I'd like to know why I should choose this over an iPod. None of these features matter to me. Tru-Bass? the iPod has a huge EQ selection, and you can assign an EQ to each individual song in iTunes and it carries over to the iPod.

If these gadgets aren't half the price of an iPod mini, I have no reason to consider them. There's no mention of disk space on the JM-200, but I want GB's, not MB's.

Re:iPod

[stratjakt]

That's fine for you then.

Myself, I couldn't imagine there's 20gigs of compressed music out there that I'd want to listen to. I'm a creature of habit, when I listen to recorded music, it's the same dozen punk and metal albums. Y'know, the ones with about 10 2 minute songs.

I don't enjoy recorded music, it's merely a distraction while I'm on the plane. In the car, I'd rather listen to the radio. I prefer live music, I'd rather listen to some local band jamming at the bar on friday than stay up late buying songs on iTunes to fill up a big HDD with RIAA horseshit. I'd rather hear some small band doing Rolling Stones covers for free beer, because they enjoy playing, than to own the entire Stones' discography.

To each their own. There's a huge market made up of people just like me. Not everyone has, or aspires to have, a 90000000 CD collection.

So, how about a compromise. You buy what you want to buy, I'll buy what I want to buy.

Re:flash MP3 players?

[blackmonday]

I think there is a niche for a cheaper player than the mini with, say 2 gigs rather than the mini's 4. Sell it for 99 dollars and I'll buy it. Add line-in recording and I'll buy 2.

Re:I just see crappy iPod interfaces

[Unknown Lamer]

I have an 80G portable so I can compress my music however I'd like to...

Some of us use Ogg (note that it is not an acronym) Vorbis for our music collections on our computer and don't want to re-encode everything for our portables (especially when you start getting into the 300+ disc range as I have).

Coolest feature about these MP3 players:

[torpor]

... the fact that, in quantity, these key-chain USB/MP3 players can be had for as little as $10 per item.

Why is this great, "in quantity"? Well, I know plenty of unsigned artists whose mp3's are floating around the internet, promoting them, who can now offer "Albums" on these MP3 devices, custom-like, to their loyal fans.

Mark my words: CD's are dead. Static MP3's are dead.

Long-live the value-added MP3-player-bundled-with-new-tracks website freelance musician upsell!

Audiobook Player

[Anonymous Coward]

I have the Rio Karma, 20GB, which is pretty good all things considered, I really like it.

But the one feature I've never been able to find in an MP3 player that would be perfect for listening to audiobooks is variable speed playback.

Many audiobooks you could speed up the playback by 20% - 50% and still understand it and comprehend it. In many cases you retain more because your mind doesn't have time to drift off.

Very useful, but I haven't been able to find a player (or even software on a PC) that will do it on the fly, so each file has to be transcoded, which is time consuming.

I was really impressed untill...

[TubeSteak]

I saw these two things:

1. powered by a built-in Li-polymer battery
2. Both players still feature only a USB 1.1 interface

I went to the Korean website and peeked at the specs page (it's in Korean, but #s are still #s) and found out the battery is 3.7 Volts. Anyways, even though it's a lithium polymer, it's still only got ~3yrs of lifespan before it's kaput. And USB 1.1! It's not horribly slow, but with all the stuff packed in their you'd think we could get our 400Mbps worth.

The USB 1.1 isn't a deal breaker, but if i can't easily get to that li-polymer battery... It'd be the whole iPod story again. This time with an overseas manufacturer.

Compact Flash Damnit!!!!

[NullStream]

Dear MP3 player manufacturers,

Lots of people have compact flash media why not make a model of your wonder device that supports compact flash? The semi-competant guys at Frontier Labs do (albeit the firmware from there products is less than perfect).

SD/MMC cards are useless because they are too fragile (physically and electromagically) so much so you can't just put one in your wallet and just carry it around for a week without the card dying.

Please support CF in your future products OK PLZ TKS.

--
Null

Re:I think you need to speed up the silences...

[skiflyer]

That's a lovely idea, it's how I watch seasons of shows like 24... cause lets face it, there's no acting genious in any of that stuff, but I still want to know what happens.

I've found I can trim about 7 hours off each season by watching it at a faster bit rate, and really the only thing I ever lose are dramatic pauses.

Would love to see this feature added to my iRiver, slow as they are, it's nice they actually do update firmware on occassion so maybe I'll get lucky.

In the meantime, does anyone know if there's any software solution to the above suggestion? By which I don't mean re-recording my audio stream while playing it back faster, but one which would just re-encode an MP3 or OGG file with time compression?

Here's the real answer

[TubeSteak]

It's because the major tech manufacturing/fabrication centers are in China, Korea, Japan. Usually the parent company is there too, so we've got major corporations, convienent manufacturing capabilities and a market place of over 1 Billion people. That more than anything is why we don't get this stuff for years. What they do is create a flurry of hi-tech gadgets and use their 1 Billion+ peoples as a test market. The best features make it into the U.S. and European markets, but waaaay after they were first introduced overseas.

We ooh and ahh over our camera phones and neato-toys while the asian people I know have these wild phones that do decent videos and have respectably sized LED displays. Wafer thin laptops with split screens you can rotate, last year they were selling cellphones with 3D displays, teeny tiny Sony Viao laptops. They just can't afford to throw expensive toys into large scale production without gauging reliability and purchasability. That and the frequently have to redesign their products for meaty American fingers.

Re:Here's the real answer

[TubeSteak]

No, they market the gadgets in large cities like Soel or Chiba or Singapore or Shanghai or Tokyo or Hong Kong or Yokohama or Bangkok or Beijing... thats 9 cities & covers at least 55+ Million people. I might have under estimated since the numbers I found were a bit old.

Here's a quote from an article dated Oct. 2003.

Samsung can also use South Korea as a test market. Some 70% of the country's homes are wired for broadband. Twenty percent of the population buys a new cell phone every seven months.

Samsung already sells a phone in Korea that allows users to download and view up to 30 minutes of video and watch live tv for a fixed monthly fee. Samsung is selling 100,000 video-on-demand phones a month in Korea at $583 each. Verizon plans to introduce them in three US cities this fall

*Does some quick math*
That's $58.3 million per month. You think 100,000/month in the U.S. will spend almost $600 for one of those? The United States doesn't even have the freakin' infrastructure to send out live video & tv to a cell phone. Their current network gets swamped as it is "Network Busy".

Every company sets up a limited release of their product in various test markets to guage how well it'll be recieved. Pepsi used to have a product called Pepsi Kona. Now guess why we aren't drinking it today? Because it didn't shine in the test market. The End.

Oh, and no it's not because of design faults, its because most of their tech is expensive. If they roll out something new in a city of 10 million people and it doesn't catch on, you think they're going to send it overseas and try again?

The other part is that U.S. consumers want it cheap. New != cheap. Cell phone companies here practically give away the phone so that they can lock you into a service contract. My phone was about $20 after an instant rebate and the store sending in the mfg rebate to knock off another $120 at the register. I haven't seen it anywhere for less than $260 & CompUSA sells it for $350. Ouch.

Re:flash MP3 players?

[Tree131]

I can't see a single usage for a flash-based player. They are virtually indistinguishable on price and features

I disagree with you.

I bought my gf a Soul III (cd-based mp3 player) when it first came out. I owned a Soul II and was pretty happy with it. Little did I foresee that she would completely destroy it only after 6 months of (ab)use. The metallic cover had a slight dent in it, the cd-rotating mechanism would make loud noise, and the audio became very staticky.

My next purchase was a RioCali 256 Sport with rubber coated sides and NO moving parts. I think this one will last a lot longer. I hesitated to buy an iPod or a similar HDD based device because of moving parts. The only drawback to the Rio is that it's still USB 1.1, but based on amazon reviews it's virtually indestructible.

The point I'm trying to make is that people choose depending on their lifestyle and how much (ab)use they're going to give to their MP3 gadget, as well as how much use/life they want out of it.

nobody has come close...

[Run4yourlives]

because right now that would be the size of a laptop. :-)

Re:flash MP3 players?

[anonicon]

"The I recently bought a 512MB flash player that doubles as a usb drive."

Too late now, but FWIW, you might check out the Muvo2 next time - 4GB, $199 flash-based player that also runs forever and doubles as a portable USB 2.0 hard drive. I used to own a NexII with 256mb until I gave it to Mom after ordering the Muvo2.

OLED lifetime issue?

[Cheerio Boy]

uses a two color OLED display

Don't OLEDs still have a shorter lifespan than standard LCDs?

Considering how often an mp3 player is using the display when running, song info - etc., would the shorter lifespan of the OLEDs make a difference?

Loading up music

[truthsearch]

All that said, having to "load up" with music from my PC still annoys me.

Agreed, that is the part I like the least. I use the ifp-driver, so I think the best way, if you want to switch up music often, is to write a simple script to take off every file and upload a random set from a hard disk directory. That way you just plug it in and run one script. Of course having it all on the player would be most convenient, but a script might not be so bad.