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Review of the Audiotron Stereo MP3 Component 379

Posted by CmdrTaco from the stuff-to-hear dept.
My quest for the perfect MP3 player has been ongoing. A few weeks ago I decided to try out Turtle Beach's Audiotron. Unlike most other attempts, this one doesn't have any internal storage: instead it has an ethernet port and mounts a Samba (or I suppose windows) file share. Is it all I'd dreampt about? The short review is that for the price, and for what it sets out to do, this is an awesome box... with some caveats.

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.
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Review of the Audiotron Stereo MP3 Component More

Review of the Audiotron Stereo MP3 Component

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  • It's too expensive for what it does (Score:4, Informative)

    by ilsie ( 227381 ) on Friday October 12, 2001 @12:13PM (#2420245)
    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 [tigerdirect.com], as opposed to $289 for the Audiotron.
    • Its not fair to compare the cost to a 3com Audrey however. Its been discontinued by 3com, and the price of 89.99 reflects that.


      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.

    • I'm not usually one to lash out at Taco & Crew, but this is just a blatant plug for a product that their company is selling (VALinux/ThinkGeek/Slashdot/Whatever). He didn't even mention the connection between the companies, like he usually does!

      I think this thing is a big waste of money. I keep all my mp3s on a samba share, so 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). It's really pretty simple to run a cable from the back of a pc to the back of a receiver, and I don't see what this shiny box is going to give me that my current setup won't (except a $289 hole in my wallet).

      The optical output seems cool, until you realize that your playing mp3s anyway so the fidelity loss is already there.

      It seems like Taco, of all people, would adovcate building your own setup (using linux boxen, naturally) over using a buggy embedded system like this.
      • 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
      • I was just looking at these things the other day. I'm really thinking about buying one. When I saw his review I thought, "Cool, at last some news for nerds."

        According to me, /. has focused too much on privacy and politics. They are important but I need a little more UI debates, geek toys, etc.

        What you see as a blatant plug I saw as a nice change of pace. Anyway, I liked his choice topics.
    • Hopefully soon I'll be able to do the same with my $40 dreamcast ( *cough* plus the ridiculous amount I'll be spending on a BBA ), but I'm willing to spend the money on this because there's other things I can do with it, strangely enough I can also use my dreamcast to play games <grin>. Of course once I get a dreamcast set up and sharing a drive on the network, I'll probably extend my mp3 idea to include ogg and hopefully, vcd and divx. That'd be cool to serve movies off of my file server.


      Man rereading this I'm definitely starting to feel like more of a geek than usual.

    • Re:It's too expensive for what it does (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You want one of these. Really you do. You don't want to pay $300? Fine, don't. Walk yourself into Best Buy and get one. They have them for $150. They don't know how to market/sell them there, so they're a sale/clearance item that keeps getting restocked.

  • Apex DVD Player (Score:3, Informative)

    by Bonker ( 243350 ) on Friday October 12, 2001 @12:14PM (#2420252)
    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.
    • I have the three-CD Apex unit and it does a good job of playing MP3s, with the following gripes:

      • 8.3 on-screen naming only, which makes the whole navigation/menu nearly useless and kind of fubars track ordering.
      • No shuffle mode.
      • No programmability (eg, play this directory only, etc)
      • Mine seems prone to skipping the first second or so of songs once a while. Sometimes hitting the back button and starting over plays it, sometimes it doesn't.


      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.
      • No shuffle mode.

        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

  • 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.

    • There are plenty of musics which are legally distributed via MP3. http://www.mp3.com contains several examples.

    • 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'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&

    • I was thinking more along the lines of:

      Who has time to rip 6500 MP3's !?

      I guess all those unemployed .com'ers have lot's of free time. =)
      -ajb
      • If you get a fast cdrom, a decent CPU, and a good ripper/encoder, like MusicMatch, the entire process takes no more than 5 minutes or so per CD and requires no interaction other than inserting/removing the CD and pressing the record button. I'd argue that it actually saves me time, since I don't have to spend any time now hunting for CDs...
        • a piece of software to automate the insertion and removal of CDs. Wait, or is that hardware?
        • If you get a fast cdrom, a decent CPU, and a good ripper/encoder, like MusicMatch, the entire process takes no more than 5 minutes or so per CD
          How good is "good," though? What ripping and encoding engines does MusicMatch use if it's able to go that fast? EAC and LAME usually take around 20-30 minutes (IIRC) to reduce a CD to 160-kbps VBR MP3s, and that's on a 1.2-GHz Athlon with a 10x DVD-ROM under Win2K. Everything I've read indicates that those are the best ripper and the best encoder you can get right now. Some other encoders (like Xing) are really fast, but they sound like sh*t by comparison.

    • Re:Nice music library (Score:4, Informative)

      by CmdrTaco ( 1 ) <malda@sla[ ]ot.org ['shd' in gap]> on Friday October 12, 2001 @02:32PM (#2421173) Homepage Journal
      Actually my home MP3 collection is totally legal.
    • mp3.com [mp3.com]
      emusic.com [emusic.com]

      Between those two sites you can easily accumulate 6500 legitimate MP3s without ever touching a CD. Well, "easily" if you have a broadband connection, anyway. And that's not counting all the garage band home pages across the net with MP3s they want you to distribute widely so they get name recognition.

      As for buying CDs, I've been doing that on eBay a lot recently. If you don't require the latest releases you can easily stock up on CDs for less than half what you'd pay at a retail store. Again, all perfectly legal, though if your goal is to make sure the artists get their $.002 from the record label for each album sold, it's not so hot.

    • I have about 800 CDs, and no it doesn't cost the thousands of dollars that people are calculating here.

      Most college towns have used CD stores -- I would go in every week and get 10-20 CDs for $20-$50.

      I ripped the entire collection twice! I had a hard drive failure the week after I finished the first time, which was fine because I re-ripped at a much higher quality and am glad I did.

      My initial rip was at 160 CBR, and some songs didn't quite translate so well. My current collection (took about two months to rip, I had two spare boxes just doing ripping) is all encoded at 190-256 VBR and there aren't more than a handful of songs where you can tell it isn't the original CD.

      Its nowhere near as impossible as some think, and a lot cheaper than buying 2 or more of the 500-disc CD jukeboxes. Plus I just the NEX II Mp3 player, which takes IBM microdrives -- 1 gig of my favorite tunes with me on plane trips in the size of a pack of cards!

  • Waste of Money (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Mr. Eradicator ( 470089 ) on Friday October 12, 2001 @12:15PM (#2420260) Homepage
    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.
    • 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.

      If you use it like winamp, it will work like winamp. Try reading the article:

      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.

      Sheesh.

      The claim that this can be used with the highest-quality sound equipment is hilarious

      Higher bitrate and variable-bitrate encodings sound pretty good to me. I've got decent speakers on my desktop, and I find MP3 sounds adequate if you take a little care. I would expect the same quality from this component.

      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.

      Have you forgotten that CDs skip? And tape hisses? And yet, such equipment has been used in stereos for more than a decade, with no systems damaged as a result. How can MP3 be "dangerous"?

    • Re:Waste of Money (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Telek ( 410366 )
      The claim that this can be used with the highest-quality sound equipment is hilarious.

      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)

      by cloudmaster ( 10662 )

      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)

      by CaptainSuperBoy ( 17170 )
      r3mix [r3mix.net]

      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.
    • You: What else could this possibly add to any software mp3 player?

      Taco: "It won't stick out visually. And there aren't whirring fans to add more noise to your listening environment... 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"

      You:Do you _really_ think mp3s sound nearly as good as a good CD player?

      Taco: 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.

      I think your questions, for the most part, were answered already. You might want to check this link [slashdot.org] out before you ask any more. Moderators, too... I'm not sure why this comment was modded "+3, Insightful".

    • Re:Waste of Money (Score:3, Funny)

      by rho ( 6063 )

      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.

    • Nope, you should really read before you post.
      It is the best stand-alone mp3 player available period.

      The Panja box is crap compared to it. and everything else has really poor audio quality.

      It is Awesome, and I am going to buy 2 more. (luckily I got my first 2 from Best Buy when they were stupid and clearanced them at $139.99)

      the only problem I have with the audiotron is the hardware needs a modification right away to keep the LCD from burning out. Adding a variable resistor on the contrast allows you to quit over-driving it and burning out the LCD like 1 out of 5 units suffer from. (I was lucky and got 2 in a row that burned out in 3 hours!!)

      Turtle beach could make it awesome, but the seem to be dropping it due to lack of interest and the fact the the RIAA wants to make their products illegal.

  • Better: buy the Apex player at Wal-Mart for $100 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by emil ( 695 ) on Friday October 12, 2001 @12:17PM (#2420270)

    It handles CDDA, DVD, VCD, and MP3 discs.

    No, it doesn't run TCP/IP, but it seems like much less hassle to me.

    • the ability to play MPEG4, so I don't have to burn wretched VCDs anymore. Oh, and maybe a NIC so it can play movies from the network, like a PC or the TiVo. Then again, my TiVO is closer to this already. Ok, what we need is a fully integrated media device, with DVD, MP3, TiVO, etc. How does that relate to the Apex? It doesn't.

  • I can't see (Score:5, Insightful)

    by trilucid ( 515316 ) <pparadis@havensystems.net> on Friday October 12, 2001 @12:18PM (#2420279) Homepage Journal

    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 /. after all ;-), but I hardly thing this was worth a review of its own...

    • The problem with a P90 and a few hard disks is that you can hear all those fans and platter spinning around. Kinda spoils the listening experience, I think. Well, MP3 ruins the listening experience so maybe it's a wash.

      A P90 barely has enough power to decode MP3 anyway.

      • >A P90 barely has enough power to decode MP3 anyway.

        It has plenty enough power. I had mpg123 playing 256 kbits MP3s on a P60 with only EISA slots, over NFS on an ISA soundcard and 3com Etherlink III card! Not a single skip, unless I started doing anything else on the machine. (The machine was an original Compaq Prosignia or something like that).

        >you can hear all those fans and platter spinning around

        Rip out the HDDs, boot of the network. Rip the fan off the CPU, and use a bigger heatsink (this is fine for virtually all the original pentium series. You can easily build a power supply without fans. Problems solved :-)

        Don't forget to put the server in another room/closet.

        >Well, MP3 ruins the listening experience so maybe it's a wash

        Check out www.r3mix.net [belgacom.net] if you are having trouble with MP3 quality. You simply aren't encoding at a good enough bitrate. If you can tell 256 kbps MP3 from the original then you must be a bat.
        • Great, now you have a netbooting PC that gets music from the network and has no fans. Hrmm, that sounds a lot like the Audiotron unit mentioned in this article.

          Execept, I almost gaurantee that a p90, mainboard, 8MB RAM, network card, ir port, remote control, and soundcard with digital output is going to set you back at least the same amount of money, more even when you factor in the time you spent dicking with it.

          • Execept, I almost gaurantee that a p90, mainboard, 8MB RAM, network card, ir port, remote control, and soundcard with digital output is going to set you back at least the same amount of money

            I think you're missing the point. Most of us have old computers laying around. I have no less than 2 dozen old P166's stacked up in a closet. 32MB with >2 gig hard drives, PCI network cards, some have CD-ROMs... In this case, it's only a matter of spending a little time. Heck, even if you have to build something from scratch, you can pickup old Pentiums with most everything you need already inside for under $100 just about anywhere.

    • Re:I can't see (Score:5, Interesting)

      by dattaway ( 3088 ) on Friday October 12, 2001 @12:30PM (#2420349) Homepage Journal
      But this is an ethernet appliance. Its the future. Listen to the music. Pretty soon, the lights in your room will have an ethernet jack as everything else. Imagine downloading some coordinated mood lighting from your server after dinner.

      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.

      • Re:I can't see (Score:5, Funny)

        by jerrytcow ( 66962 ) on Friday October 12, 2001 @12:34PM (#2420386) Homepage
        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

        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.


        • Hopefully the script kiddie who roots my box will be able to cook better than me.


          They'll h4x0r your toaster with a Denial of Toast attack.
      • "But this is an ethernet appliance. Its the future. Listen to the music. Pretty soon, the lights in your room will have an ethernet jack as everything else. Imagine downloading some coordinated mood lighting from your server after dinner."

        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.


        This beleif caused the dotcom bubble. It has already been proven wrong (by the bursting of the bubble). People ENJOY shopping. The smell of an open market (flea markets), the sound of people, the touch of new fabric, and many other things can NEVER be replaced by technology.


        I sure do hope you were trying to be funny...

    • Re:I can't see (Score:2, Informative)

      by freebeer ( 198401 )
      I bought one of these and I think its pretty damn sweet. I was in the market for something to play mp3s on my stereo. I already have a home network, I don't have a computer near my main stereo system and don't want one, and my wife has to be able to use it.

      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)

      by bricriu ( 184334 ) on Friday October 12, 2001 @12:31PM (#2420365) Homepage
      The real advantage of this is that it blends in. Sure, using an old box is fine, from a purely technical p.o.v., but it's not aesthetically pleasing. Plus, I'm definitely not qualified to set up a remote control for a random linux box. I won't be lining up for one either, but that's only because I have a machine in my living room. My parents, on the other hand, have about 5 computers in their house, on 3 different floors, and already have an excellent stereo system (CD, Phono, tape, radio) in their living room with speakers ranging all around the 1st floor -- this would be a perfect Xmas gift for them, allowing them to utilize existing structure in a very pretty way.
    • Oh, yeah, it's definitely worth it to avoid spending that extra $100. After all, the dozens of hours of your time you'll spend rolling your own and fiddling with the setup isn't worth anything. I'm also sure you don't mind a big, noisy, butt-ugly PC as an audio component, and of course, you won't mind paying for all that power the thing sucks down while just sitting there waiting for you to decide what to play. (Or maybe you just won't mind waiting a couple of minutes for your MP3 player to boot before you can listen to anything...) REally, using a PC for this sort of thing is just plain dumb - if ever a net function *needed* to be embedded in an appliance, this is it.

      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...

  • Hard-driveless is better (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Computer! ( 412422 ) on Friday October 12, 2001 @12:19PM (#2420284) Homepage Journal
    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.

  • Audiotron (Score:5, Informative)

    by Beatlebum ( 213957 ) on Friday October 12, 2001 @12:19PM (#2420287)
    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.

  • MP3 Players (Score:3, Offtopic)

    by mikers ( 137971 ) on Friday October 12, 2001 @12:28PM (#2420343)
    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

  • no ogg support? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by abde ( 136025 ) <apoonawa-blog&yahoo,com> on Friday October 12, 2001 @12:33PM (#2420378) Homepage

    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)

      by SomeOtherGuy ( 179082 ) on Friday October 12, 2001 @12:37PM (#2420401) Journal

      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.

  • Big but...(or butt... ;-) (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Grab ( 126025 ) on Friday October 12, 2001 @12:44PM (#2420439) Homepage
    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?

    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? :-) 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.

    Graham.
    • First off, your house has to be networked - this does seriously reduce its saleability! :-)
      It has HPNA networking [homepna.org] built in, which uses regular home phone lines to network. Yeah, your computer needs a card that can speak HPNA, but that's better than requiring people to run Cat5 everywhere (not that I don't do that already).

      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?

      There's a nice remote control pictured [thinkgeek.com] in the link [thinkgeek.com] at the top of the article.
    • "First off, your house has to be networked - this does seriously reduce its saleability! :-)"

      Why? Assuming that you did a professional job of it rather than just punching holes in the sheetrock and leaving cables hanging out. Isn't this like saying that wiring for telephones or cableTV reduces resale value?

  • also consider SliMP3 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mihalis ( 28146 ) on Friday October 12, 2001 @12:46PM (#2420456) Homepage
    I just took delivery of a slimp3 from slimdevices.com [slimdevices.com]. It's definitely worth a look. I'm still setting mine up, but here are the key points :
    • Vacuum fluorescent display (nice : sharp, legible).
    • Open Source streaming server written in perl runs on Windows, Linux, Mac.
    • Small, low-power, low-noise device, so you can leave it always-on

    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)

      by sulli ( 195030 )
      That seems like a really good one. But I'd really like the reverse: a bigass HD and MP3 server that's accessible via ethernet from my laptop. (I don't have desktops or servers at home - they take up way too much space.) I don't care so much about fan noise.

      Still I might get this just 'cause its so damn cool.

  • And, on the plus side, the remote control/mouse has multiple buttons, so it meets Taco's Number 1 criterion.
  • they missed the boat, then.

    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.

    • I agree - there should be video out, if for nothing more than to bring up the playlist, etc on your TV (which will probably be near your stereo), as well as to add some visualization eye candy for the next party you throw...
  • I'm not up to speed on the plausibility of such a device, so I'll put it out to the /. brain trust.

    Would it be possible to create a micro-Linux distribution that did nothing more than process .mp3 or .ogg streams for playing through your stereo similarly to this hardware product?

    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)

    by don_carnage ( 145494 ) on Friday October 12, 2001 @01:17PM (#2420660) Homepage

    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]

  • Most of the /. readers live in a small house or appartment. I would say the AudioTron is designed for people that have more than one computer in more than one room of a decent sized house and a stereo setup in another room. With a simple network run to the stereo equipment the user doesn't have to crank his computer speakers to listen to his mp3 collection in another room, or even through the whole house.

    Most of my family would dig this device. Most of my friends would dig this device. There are just a few features that need to be added to get it up to snuff. There needs to be an easy software configuration for the PC so the user doesn't have to 'learn' windows networking to get it going, and the web interface needs to be streamlined and fluid.

    I totally dig it, when the current beta reaches a finalized point (and I finish running my home network) I'm definitely buying an AudioTron.

    ~LoudMusic
  • If you're looking for a quick, easy way to efficiently get music to every system in your house, go get Streamsicle [sourceforge.net]. It's a java-based combo web/mp3 server. Point it to your MP3 directory/share and fire up the server, and it works. Here's our setup:

    • A linux box running samba and the streamsicle server. The audio stream runs on TCP port 4711 and the web interface on 8080, but both are changeable to suit your needs. The server's pointed to /mnt/mp3s/ and the mp3 shares on all the machines in the house are smbmounted below that directory by computername (/mnt/mp3s/megatron, /mnt/mp3s/starscream, etc).
    • The clients connect to the web interface (customizable easily by stylesheets) and play the stream. 7 clients play easily on our 100base network with no hiccups. For parties, we put every system in the house in IE kiosk mode for easy song requesting. The interface is sweet - mp3 index is searchable and you can skip/delete tracks from the playlist from anywhere (which makes for interesting arguments at parties :)
    • One laptop has the audio line out going to the RCA in on our stereo system. Beautiful sound.
    • Internet radio? Easy, just hit 8080/4711 on the server you're running from or port forward thru your firewall.

    RC2 of this project is out and very stable. 1.0 is looking really sweet and from the ML it looks like it'll be out pretty soon. I really recommend it, as it's a cheap (free) solution to getting your whole house playing a music collection everywhere you have a PC.
  • This device is outstanding. To counter the "Why not get an apex player for $99", well, that's nice that it holds a CD's worth of mp3s, but most people have much more than that.

    Also, this looks just like a normal stereo component. It fits in quite well with my existing rack. It has optical audio out, which sounds amazing, mostly when piping these mp3s through Dolby Pro Logic II. Couldn't ask for more.

    Being able to pick which songs you want without having to go sit in front of a computer is a nice thing as well. I've programmed in all the functions on the remote to my Pronto, so I can pick songs from the same device I switch television stations with, etc.

    I'd definetly recommend grabbing the beta firmware [ftp], which gives you access to control your device via a web browser, access to shoutcast streams, and much more.

    The developers listen as well. There is a very active mailing list and also a great forum [ezboard.com] to learn more about this stuff.

    Best thing is - Best Buy had these devices on clearance for a few months, and may still be doing this - letting them go for $149. I'm guessing the complexity of a home network was a bit too much for the average Best Buy shopper, dunno.

    I love my Audiotron. I'd love to see a portable jam-box-like device with 802.11b support.. (slobber)

    sigs suck.
  • What I'd really like to see is a cheap hardware card that you could throw into that old P 90 you have laying around that would give you remote control capability. With a good sound card = instant stereo mp3 player that you could hook up with your other equipment ... just a thought..

  • What group would not mind spending 300.00, running cables, and having to download something, to listen to lots of music? Audiophiles
    who is the last people in the world that want to listen to MP3 on an high-fidelity system? Audiophiles.
  • Can it handle live streaming.. that's the one thing I'd really like to see in a component like this. I want to be able to listen to shoutcast from the living room.

  • A small feature which would be greatly appreciated is the functionality of the xmms-crossfade plugin.

    I recon this [newscientist.com] sounds more interestings. More info also here [hp.com] in a good New Scientist article that also conducted an experiment like the Turing test, but with an audience of clubbers listening to the artificial DJ.

    Unfortunately I think the HP has the patents on these algorithms, but I guess it maybe possible to licence...

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