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Review of the Audiotron Stereo MP3 Component
from the stuff-to-hear dept.
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.
Setup
Setting 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 Use
After 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.
Fidelity
The 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.
Shortcomings
It'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 best
If 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.
It's too expensive for what it does (Score:4, Informative)
Re:It's too expensive for what it does (Score:2, Interesting)
When the Audrey was new and under production, it was like $499. That doesn't quite compare. I guess if you consider the one time value of the Audrey, then I can definently understand.
Re:It's too expensive for what it does (Score:3, Informative)
Sharing mp3s to mac clients. (Score:3, Informative)
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
Re:It's too expensive for what it does (Score:3, Insightful)
According to me,
What you see as a blatant plug I saw as a nice change of pace. Anyway, I liked his choice topics.
Apex DVD Player (Score:3, Informative)
Apex is OK (Score:2)
I'm mostly happy with it, when we have parties or other gatherings its nice to make a master mix CD that involves no changing of CDs, although setting the playlist order would be a welcome addition.
Re:Apex is OK (Score:2)
If it's like the 600A (the single disk model), the shuffle works (it's accessed via the button on the remote labeled... "shuffle"!), *but* it's touchy. I thought it didn't work for awhile until I figured out that it only works in certain circumstances. Since I use XMMS controlled via X10 for my MP3 player, I haven't played with the Apex in awhile, and can't remember exactly what the conditions are, but I seem to recall that it's: shuffle does not work when playing a song, you must hit shuffle after you load the disk, but before you hit play.
Agreed about playlists, BTW - I have a couple of CDs that are burned with "playlists", i.e., just the songs that I want to play together, though, which works well when CDRs are dirt cheap. --
Evan
Re:Apex DVD Player (Score:3, Interesting)
What about ps2?
Once you get these things on your lan, a whole bunch of new options open up...
Nice music library (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:Nice music library (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nice music library (Score:2)
I'll believe him on this one...but, figuring about fifteen tracks per CD, and about fifteen dollars per CD, we also know that Taco has given the RIAA about $6500 dollars.
Not counting, of course, the CDs he has yet to rip.
And we wonder where they get the money and power to ram through the DMCA and SSSCA....
b&
Re:Nice music library (Score:2, Funny)
Who has time to rip 6500 MP3's !?
I guess all those unemployed
-ajb
Re:Nice music library (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Nice music library (Score:2)
At an average of 8 songs per CD, 6500 MP3s would be over 800 albums (about $10K worth). That's a lot of albums. If you say you have 1875 albums, I'll take your word for it, but that doesn't mean that 800 isn't a lot. I would say that's way above average.
If I had to take a guess, I would say the average person has 50-100 albums.
Re:Nice music library (Score:2)
If I had to take a guess, I would say the average person has 50-100 albums.
In fact, that's probably way high. I bet if you count only the people who have at least 1 album, the average is only 20 albums. If you count people who never buy music, it's probably much lower than that.
Wrong, it's not unusual. Why can't I have 400 CDs? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:Nice music library (Score:3, Informative)
I have a SBLive! sound card, and plug the line out of my stereo amp into the line-in of the sblive. I stay fairly up-to-date on the sblive driver, usually trying to use a recent one from cvs.
My primary tool is gramofile, which records, splits the tracks, and does some filtering to get rid of scratches and pops.
Sometimes gramofile doesn't figure out the splits properly (especially for live albums). For that, I use snd to edit the tracks and split them if necessary. snd can also do some other track editing if necessary.
When I'm done, I have a bunch of
I can't honestly tell you how good the results are with respect to quality of the sound, because my hearing is actually very bad (I wear a hearing aid). The results are acceptable to me.
Waste of Money (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Waste of Money (Score:3, Interesting)
Although I agree that this is a COMPLETE waste of money (if it was $50 I'd consider it), I think that you need to define a few things before I'd agree with that statement. For starters, where did you get the MP3s? If you just grabbed all of the 128kbit mp3s that you could find off the internet and randomly play them, sure possibly. If you have a $5000 stereo system, sure, probably. But I do all of my rips at (at least) 192kbit/s VBR with lame, and I don't get pops and clicks, and I have a $1400 stereo system that they sound wonderful in. If you listen carefully yes, it's obvious that it's an MP3, but for all intensive purposes it's just fine. Especially when I'm driving a house party or anything else that just serves as background music. If I'm going to listen to music, and JUST listen to music (i.e. Beethoven or Mozart) then I'll use the real CD. Otherwise MP3s work just fine with my HiFi system.
And any MP3s that I do get off the internet (I will make no pretense that I don't illegally copy music) I will always listen to them before putting them through the big system.
I dunno, I'm perfectly content with using MP3s just about everywhere.
Re:Waste of Money (Score:3, Interesting)
mp3s will still have hisses and skips that can be dangerous to powerful, quality audio setups
Have you ever actually heard an mp3? Mp3 compression decreases the available frequencies in a sound file, causing an audible reduction in sound quality through decreased *range*, making the recordings sound somewhat flat. Pops are caused by crap ripping software/cd-rom/cd's introducing noises into the original source, not by the encoder. I'm not sure what would cause an mp3 to hiss, aside from poorly-isolated playback equipment (again, not the fault of mp3).
That said, this thing is somewhat overpriced.
Bah (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Waste of Money (Score:3, Funny)
See, if all you chuckleheads had spent gobs of time and money on bassing out your car as a teenager, you could be deaf like me and think a 96kbps MP3 sounds just fine.
It's a superior cultural advantage, because I can fit more stolen music on smaller hard drives than the rest of you.
Re:Waste of Money (Score:3, Interesting)
Better: buy the Apex player at Wal-Mart for $100 (Score:3, Interesting)
It handles CDDA, DVD, VCD, and MP3 discs.
No, it doesn't run TCP/IP, but it seems like much less hassle to me.
I can't see (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:I can't see (Score:2)
A P90 barely has enough power to decode MP3 anyway.
Re:I can't see (Score:2)
Re:I can't see (Score:5, Interesting)
The stove, refrigerator, even the kitchen sink, er dishwasher... Everything will have an IP address. Your dinner will be cooked to exacting specifications and the groceries will be automatically ordered.
Parent
Re:I can't see (Score:5, Funny)
Hopefully the script kiddie who roots my box will be able to cook better than me. Maybe he'll be kind enough to start the dishwasher after dinner too.
Parent
Re:I can't see (Score:2, Informative)
I did a lot of research, and most products wanted to include a hard drive (which I can supply much cheaper in my server) or the ability to rip (which I'd rather do via Lame). Also, I believe that Gateway sells this same unit for $199. Cheap compared to other choices.
It's not w/o its problems. The headphone jack is basically unusable it sounds so bad. RCA outputs are better, but I understand the digital output is best (I don't currently have digital in on my pre-amp). Also nice is that the firmware keeps getting better and better (it didn't even have an internal web server that the submitter complains about at first). Turtle Beach runs a mailing list and has been very responsive to suggestions from the early adopters (a lot of which, like me, are running on Samba!).
All in all its not the perfect convergence appliance, but its worked great in my situation.
Re:I can't see (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:I can't see (Score:2)
Seriously, anyone griping about the Audiotron because of its *price* has got rocks in their head - it's a fair deal for what it does. I'd have designed it differently (and better), but it's by far the best network MP3 player out there now. (Have a look at the Diamond Rio/Dell equivalent for a lesson in how NOT to build such a device - thiers requires Windows and specially modified MusicMatch software, which I'm *sure* they'll still be happy to support in five years, right?)
The Audiotron has some minor flaws, but it's by FAR the best implementation out there of a real network audio component, and the price isn't too bad, although I'd prefer a cheaper version with no local or even web "UI" per se, just some way to pass it the next song or playlist to run with. That way, I could code the UI however I like in any old web server...
Re:I can't see (Score:3, Informative)
Hard-driveless is better (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Audiotron (Score:5, Informative)
I would have no hisitation in recommending the Audiotron, I use mine every day.
MP3 Players (Score:3, Offtopic)
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
Re:MP3 Players (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
no ogg support? (Score:5, Insightful)
how can you endorse something that doesn't support OGG? will upgrades for ogg support be available? can it be hacked?
Re:no ogg support? (Score:5, Insightful)
What consumer audio device does support OGG?? If the only way to endorse OGG is to not get anything -- then sorry. Consumer audio devices that play and record/encode music are pretty much commonplace now days, and it is pretty easy to see what formats are dominating....But then again you could always choose not to watch movies because they don't play in your Beta machine.
Parent
Big but...(or butt... ;-) (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
also consider SliMP3 (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Neato (Score:2)
Still I might get this just 'cause its so damn cool.
Input Device (Score:2)
no video out? (Score:2)
with lcd monitors being small and cheaper each month, it would be great to be able to connect one to a box like this and VIEW more info about what I'm listening to. edit playlists, view album art, navigate with higher detail than a few lines of text could give you, etc.
we really do need a fanless/quiet playback and song selector system. no, a regular pc isn't quiet enough to put in a bedroom or listening room. I'm all for putting disks (the disk farm) in another room and the playback system in the main room, but this unit seems to fall a bit short for the price they're asking.
oh, and to not support wireless ethernet directly is a mistake. who wants to snake ethernet wires across your house when, today, you really don't have to. and no, I don't want to run an outboard access point - that only adds to the expense of the system.
LIMP? (Score:2)
Would it be possible to create a micro-Linux distribution that did nothing more than process
Technology is getting to the point that the old 486's laying around the house gathering dust are now being joined by old lower-end Pentium-class systems. Surely a Linux microkernel system compiled with your necessary soundcard and NIC drivers, along with the vorbis decoder would be small enough to fit on a floppy?
Maybe call it the LInux Music Project?
Streaming MP3... (Score:3, Informative)
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 [dnsalias.com]
Re:Shameless Marketing (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Shameless Marketing (Score:2)
Re:My Favorite MP3 player (Score:2)
Watch out! Someday RIAA may get them to put some sort of DRM crapola in there. Make sure to keep backups of your firmware "upgrades"