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Why you might want to make that next CD an MP3

LP CDs

 

These days I purchase most of my music from iTunes. I don't like rewarding Apple with 30% of the musician's pay, but... When we here in Canada want to be legit in our music acquisition and reward musicians for their hard work, we have little choice when it comes to downloading tunes.

After downloading a new album, I burn it to a CD. To do this in iTunes, you need to make a playlist of the downloaded music, right-click the playlist name, and then choose Burn to CD.

I burn new albums to CDs because of the visceral interaction missing from files. Music files on computers and our phones are hidden from view. I want to see and hold the musician's handiwork in my hands, insert it into the player, and then sit back in a darkened room to enjoy the aural experience that is the album.

While I adore the 12" magnificence of vinyl records, the 20-minute playing time is annoying. To get around this short duration during the vinyl era, I always recorded newly purchased records to TDK SA C-90 cassette tapes.

Recently, I bought a DVD player from a local thrift store. It was $12. It even included the remote control. (I could've saved 10% had I shopped a day earlier during Senior's Day.) The Onkyo DVD player, around $50 on eBay, looks handsome, but more importantly, plays back regular CDs and CDs burned as data CDs with MP3 files.

DVD players often do not explicitly state that they handle CDs, so I took a semi-gamble here. This particularly thrift store allows returns of electronic goods within two days.

 

(image source elektroonika24)

 

Here's why this is great: a CD burned with MP3 files holds about 10 regular music CDs (which tend to be about an hour long) and about 15 records (which tend to be about 40 minutes long). The exact duration depends on the bitrate of the songs: higher quality, fewer songs.

The problem is this: how to burn a CD of MP3s from songs downloaded from  iTunes. The short answer: you can't, because Apple adds anti-copying code to its music AAC files (which are in M4P format.). iTunes won't let you. 

The good news: there is a workaround. 

TIP   Check the manual that came with your DVD/CD player. You might be surprised at the formats it supports.

In the case of this Onkyo unit, it plays back AAC-format M4A files, which is the format that iTunes uses. I can have iTunes burn long playlists to a CD or a DVD disc, and then play the music without going thru the steps I list below.

Android devices play AAC/M4A files directly.

 

How to MP3-ize iTunes Tunes

1. Use iTunes to burn a playlist of the music to a CD. This action strips away the copy protection, and gives you a CD you can play in any CD player.

2. Use AnyBurn (or another utility) to convert the music on the CD to MP3 files on your computer.

3. Use Microsoft Media Player to burn the MP3 files to a new CD as a data disc.

Enjoy up to ten hours of music with your new long-playing CD or 24 hours with the DVD disc!

Many DVD and CD player support MP3 on data CDs, but not all. My 2009 car CD player does; my more recent Denon mini stereo system does not; my $12 Onkyo DVD player does. You'll just need to test out your music systems, for the cost of a CD.

 

 

 

How USB-C Headphones Differ

Digital clarity

 

In I Come to Praise USB-C I explored how the now-ubiquitous USB-C connector single-handedly handles nearly everything for which computers and phones formerly needed multiple ports -- memory cards, regular USB ports (for printers, external hard drives, camera, etc), ethernet, displays, and so on. Bulky, but doable. See figure below.

All ports for the price of one

The bonus for phone and laptop makers is that USB-C lets them cut costs by providing fewer ports, even as they raise the prices on us. 

The other peripheral that the USB-C port on your phone might handle is a set of headphones. Headphones over USB-C is a different matter from all the other peripherals I mentioned. Those peripherals are either all-digital or they handle some aspect of rasterization internally (such as inside cameras and printers). None of them is analog; you might have noticed that none of these port extenders have 3.5mm headphone jacks.

 

Vibrations are Good

Analog is what our ears need. When we listen to a string quartet or a jazz trio, our ears are interpreting the waves of sound produced by vibrating instruments. The cellist drawing her bow across the strings to vibrate them; striking padded hammers on a grand piano's strings vibrates them; a saxophonist blowing into the mouthpiece vibrates the reed; a trumpet player buzzes his lips against the mouthpiece.

Vibrations being carried through the air, from the instruments to our ears, vibrate our ear drums, then the inner ear bones, which stimulate nerves into sending signals to the brain, which interprets the signals as music, to our listening pleasure.

Analog means that the sound our ears receive is analogous to what the instrument produced. Digital means that the analog sound is digitized up into pieces, commonly 44,100 pieces per second of music. CDs, music streaming, and MP3 files all store music digitally.

(Digital instruments like electric pianos and syndrums convert their digital signals into analog ones, and so generate the vibrations after the fact; the quality of the signal and of the conversion determines the quality of the sound made by these artificial instruments.)

There is no such thing as a digital speaker. All speakers and headphones are analog. All use the same technology that was figured out more than 100 years ago: the analog signal is an electrical voltage that varies, stimulating a magnet to move a diaphragm rapidly in and out, producing sound waves that our ears pick up as vibrations.

(Microphones are the exact reverse of loudspeakers: sound waves stimulate a diaphragm, which moves the magnet, which generates the electrical voltage, which is stored as sound.)

Yup, when a earphone vendor tries to impress customers with that dramatic image of the exploded view of the innards, you are seeing, amongst all the clutter, a magnet and a diaphragm -- no different than from 1915.

Magnet, meet diaphragm

 

About DACs

The reverse occurs inside computers and portable devices. We store entertainment in digital formats, such as MP3 (for most music), AAC (for music purchased from Apple), and MP4 (for movies). For us to hear the music, the computer has to convert the digital signal into analog sound. In every single case, this is done by a small chip called a DAC -- digital-to-analog converter. 

It is the quality of the DAC chip that determines the quality of the music you hear. High-end MP3 players have two or more expensive DACs that do a good job; phones might carry cheap DACs to do a so-so job. If the customer is unconcerned by the quality of music, then the cheap ones are good enough.

When it comes to headphones plugged into the USB-C port, the DAC has to be relocated, because the phone is delivering sound in digital form right up into the port. Now it is the headphones that have to hold the DAC chip to covert the digital signal entering through the USB-C connector into analog sound for the headphones' miniature speakers. 

In a USB-C headphone, the DAC chip is stored in the USB-C connector, the part you push and pull into and out of the phone. See figure below.

Where the DAC chip hides

The same occurs with headphones that connect over Bluetooth. The laptop or phone sends digital music through the wireless Bluetooth connection to the headphones (or speakers), which then have the job of converting the digital signal into analog sound. The drawback to Bluetooth is that music, already compressed into MP3 format, is further compressed to fit the limited capabilities of the Bluetooth data transmission specification.

Those phones without the 3.5mm analog port for headphones get to also eliminate the DAC chip -- a double savings for companies like Apple. For these kinds of limited-function phones, you can get a USB-C to 3.5mm adapter that lets you use traditional headphones. The adapter carries the DAC chip inside; some adapters have both 3.5mm and USB-C at the end, so that you can charge the phone while listening to it. See figure below. It's awkward, doable, and more cost-convenience that's been transferred from the vendor to the consumer. 

Power and sound

 

USB-C Headphones

To see if USB-C headphones are any good, I had bought a couple of cheap $5 ones from eBay last year. They truly were awful. The sound was badly distorted, indicating very low quality DAC chips. I guess that was to be expected.

This year, I tried again. This time I got a moderately-priced set for $40 from Amazon, Dyplay, which had decent reviews. I picked thise ones in part because of the nub; I need such nubs to keep the headphones in my ear; without a nub, they fall out. See figure below. 

Dyplay UCS-C headphones; also available in white

The difference in sound was remarkable. It was excellent.

Now, know that the music player on my Android phone is Neutron, which produces the best sound  through its own 64-bit audio engine. It is aggressively updated, so I was only mildly surprised when Neutron knew I had plugged in a pair of USB-C headphones. This meant it would instruct Android to ignore its own DACs and direct the signal directly to the USB-C port.

These headphones claim to have ANC -- active noise cancellation -- which I found is minimal. I would call it PNS -- passive noise suppression -- which is a design of earphone that plugs into the ear canal so well that outside noise is effectively reduced. I have a couple of pairs of such PNS earphones that my wife and I use on airplanes -- much more compact than those bulkly Bose-style ANC over-the-ear headphones that need batteries!

Anyhow, the point is that USB-C headphones don't need batteries to power ANC, because the USB-C port provides the power. 

I am fortunate that my smartphone, the Asus Zenfone 6, handles all forms of music output:

• 3.5mm jack
• USB-C port
• Bluetooth
• Loudspeaker

 

 

From Cassette to MP3

Limitations galore

For my daughter's upcoming major birthday, her husband wanted to make a playlist of the music she used in her figure skating routines. It was my job to hunt them down.

One song was on a CD, so that was easy to convert to MP3. There is lots of free software that does that, even iTunes will do it once you jump through the correct hurdles.

Another song was on a cassette tape. There was a time when I had hundreds of tapes, which I listened to, to spare wear and tear on the roughly 400 vinyl records I had bought. There were also many tapes I made from radio stations around the world, from the mid-70s to the mid-90s, and so there was a time a couple of decades ago when I converted all those records and all the tapes to MP3 files.

In the case of my daughter's figure skating piece, this meant remembering two decades later how to covert music from a cassette tape to an MP3 file. It takes the correct hardware and the right software.

 

The Correct Hardware

I dug out my Pioneer cassette deck from storage, and was pleased to find that it still had attached the RCA-3.5mm cord that I needed.

RCA-3.5mm cable

The RCA ends plug into the back of the cassette deck, into the LINE OUTPUT ports, one each for the left and right channels. 

RCA plugs attached to a cassette deck's Line Output (Play) ports

At the other end is the 3.5mm plug, which goes into the computer. Not just any computer nor any port. It needs to be a computer that has a Line In port. Most today lack it, as most have a combo plug that handles microphones and headphones in a single 3.5mm port. An older laptop of mine had two ports, one for headphones and the other one for a microphone.

3.5mm plug attached to a computer's pink Line In port

You cannot use any of these with a cassette deck, as the output volume from the deck is too loud, and you will record mere noise -- distortion, actually. Microphones have a much quieter output than the Line output from a stereo component, and so the computer boosts the volume for what it thinks is microphone-level sound coming in.

Fortunately, my decade-old desktop computer has all three 3.5mm ports -- line in (pink), microphone (blue), and speakers/headphones (green). Hurrah for old hardware.

 

The Right Software

You need software that reads the sound coming into the Line In port, and then converts it to an MP3 file.

In the past, I used Quintessential Music Player, aka QMP. It has all kinds of wonderful tricks built into it, but is no longer supported. For instance, it can read a stream from an online radio station, separate each song out of the stream, and then give each song a filename made from the musician-album-title.

I fired up QMP, and set it up to read from the Line In port:

Accessing the Rip & Encode window

1. Click the small red dot in the main window of QMP.
2. In the Rip & Encode window, click the Encoding Source button, and then choose Record from Line-In.

Selecting the input from which to record

Make sure that the recording will be saved in MP3 format:

1. From the File menu, choose Preferences, and then choose Ripping and Encoding. 
2. Under the Select Encoding Format, choose MP3 Audio. 
3. Check that the Lame encoder file is available at Using Lame Encoding Engine.
4. Click Save and Close. 

Settings in QMP to record in MP3 format

But it complained that the MP3 encoder, called Lame, was invalid. Huh.

I searched around the Internet for Lame, but had a hard time tracking it down. (Lame is an open source MP3 encoder, whose name is an acronym for "Lame Aint an MP3 Encoder," a self-referential acronym typical among ironic Unix programmers.) I knew I had QMP installed on an older laptop, but when I fired it up, QMP complained of the same problem. Huh.

By chance, I found I had another MP3 converter program on the laptop, and it had the Lame DLL (dynamic link library) that I needed. I used Gmail to send the file to myself. Google, in the infinite wisdom of its A.I., said, "Nope." Huh.

I encountered this blockage before. For me, the easiest way to copy a file from one computer to another is to simply email it to myself. Lately, however, Google has been blocking me from sending myself files it considers dangerous, such as DLLs and APKs. Google, after all, knows better than me what is good for me. If level of censorship represents the future of computing, I want no part of it.

So I used my non-Google email account, and it said the same thing: Google would not let me send a safe file to myself. Then I recalled that my non-Google email provider had recently switched to using Gmail as its email engine. Sigh.

The workaround, of course, is to use something like Dropbox, or PCloud, in my case. The Lame file transferred between computers successfully. (Thank you PCLoud for not censoring me.) Through the Ripping and Encoding preferences dialog box, I told QMP where to find the Lame file, and it was happy.

 

The Two Steps

There is no automation for the actual recording activity. It takes two steps:

1. Press the Play button on the cassette deck, and then click Encoding Start on QMP.
2. When the music is over, click Encoding Stop on QMP.

Clicking "record" on QMP

Converting the two-minute song took about me about two hours.

 

  

I Bought a $275 Lossless Music Player, then Returned It

F.AUDIO FA1

I've looked for years for a huge capacity music player, one that could hold my entire music collection, which is about 122GB. I got a 64GB iTouch (which one of my daughters took over), and then a 120GB iPod, but Apple's big, big failing is it doesn't allow playback by folders. I suspect the failing is due to how it sets up its protection system.

(So create playlists, Apple-hugging friends tell me. Why, I ask, when I already have all my music sorted into folders. No need to take the extra step of creating dozens of playlists.)

My fav music player brand is Sony, especially after I bough a high-end player in Tokyo some years back with built-in electronic noise reduction and fab sound through its Apple-shaming headphones. But it holds only 16GB. None of Sony's reasonably-priced players go beyond 16GB; I think they reuse their OS and chips from long ago in all their non-expensive players, limiting them to 16GB or less. For big capacities, you're into their high-end line that costs $1,000.

So I perused eBay's collection of lossless music players that are around $200-$300. I was looking for something to reward myself for the hard work I put in each Winter in my business. I settled on one that was elsewhere reviewed positively as "smaller than I expected, heavier than I expected" -- the F.AUDIO FA1 lossless music player. (Image source player.ru.) I liked the sound of that. I wanted small and hefty.

It handled lossless file formats, as well as the usual compressed ones like MP3, came with 32GB RAM but accepted up to 256GB in a microSD card. It was $275 but one site had it on sale for $210, with free shipping that took nearly three months to arrive. While waiting, I bought the 256GB memory card.

When it arrived, I found it was bigger than I expected and lighter than I expected. Solid aluminum case but plastic back. It came with a USB cord and a remote controller. No headphones, no instructions, and a Chinese interface. After being spoiled by touch screens, it was hard for me to use the click-wheel to navigate. I perused the settings until I finally could click the English interface language.

I loaded up my 122GB of music on the 256GB card, and settled in to enjoy the sound. Ugh. Constant hissing noise. Otherwise, the sound was good, and I am picky about sound. But then a bigger problem incurred. I actually timed it: it took the unit nine seconds to start a song. I don't know what it is doing during those nine seconds, but that long a wait is intolerable. I wonder if the software and/or CPU are too weak to handle processing my 18,592 files.

Then a light came on.

I have a few spare smartphones laying around, and so I wondered if any of them would take the 256GB memory card AND could handle 122GB of music files. (Some phones are limited to 128GB and many take no microSD card at all.) One did. Coupled with Neutron's idiosyncratic (see figure below) but fab music player (http://www.neutronmp.com/), the sound is wonderful. There is no hiss, it has the touch interface ('natch), and songs start immediately.

After a couple of weeks, I decided to return the F.AUDIO lossless music player. It was bigger than I wanted, had a clunky interface, hissed, and was slow. That's not worth $210 to me. The vendor accepted the return, but would not pay for return postage. Fortunately, the same week, PayPal instituted the new policy of refunding up to $30 towards return postage.

My cost in the end: $40 for the memory card. The phone, I had got free, due to circumstances. Its 2GHz CPU handles the 18,000 files effortlessly, and Neutron makes the music a pleasure to my ears.

 

Fixing old hardware: iPod Mini battery replacement

My daughter uses an iPod Nano that I received as a gift from SolidWorks a number of years ago. It suffered from the battery overheating problem, and my daughter was loaned an unused iPod Mini (in bright green!) from a friend. In the meantime, I learned of Apple's replacement program to handle out-of-warranty battery-damaged units, and got my daughter's Nano replaced at no-charge. Which she still uses to this day.

In the meantime, she added the bright green Mini to my mini museum of old cameras and computer hardware, for the Mini's battery barely held a charge. 

After I discovered the replacement touch screens for the Palm TX, I looked around eBay for replacement batteries and was stunned to learn they were just $5 (or so), complete with tools and printed instructions. I ordered the battery with the largest capacity I could find.

While I waited for it to arrive, I found a video online that described how to take apart the iPod Mini, which looks like it was made with new screws. Basically, you attempt to insert a small flatbladed screwdriver between the metal case and the white plastic end caps, pop off the endcaps, and then remove a few more items -- metal spring clip, electrical connector -- and then slide out the guts of the unit.

I was surprised to see the many capacitors on the mother and daughterboards. The large number of components overwhelmed the sparse number on the Palm TX's motherboard.

The battery arrived, I swapped them out, and reassembled the Mini. It works again. 

My daughter and I are wondering what to do with it and its 4GB capacity. One idea I have is to bump up the capacity using a replacement 30GB hard drive (about $50 on eBay) or 32GB CompactFlash memory card. 

MP3 Player Stand for $1

I needed a stand to hold up my PlamPilot, so that I could see the screen as it plays tunes over the Internet from Radio Paradise. I found a wiremesh business card holder at the local dollar store. (Well, for $1.25; after recent across-the-board price increases, the Dollar Giant store needs to rename itself the Dollar-and-a-Quarter Giant.) 

Here's an image of what I mean, except mine is cooler 'cause it's in black: 

Hip Street's MP3 Playing FM Transmitter

I check out Wal-Mart's electronic dept every so often, for they carry stuff I never see anywhere else. The most recent find was the FM Transmitter from Hip Street.

This one works like others, where you connect your MP3 player, and then it transmits the music through your car's radio. 

But this one has added features:

• An SD memory card slot and a USB connector. 
• A remote control.

That's because it is also an MP3 player. And I love it. Finally, and FM transmitter that is also an MP3 player -- one that makes sense. Stick in a memory card, and instant music. It turns on when the car turns on; it connects immediately with the radio (some FM transmitters take a while to connect, subjecting you to static). 

The unit has four buttons: 

• Change channel (FM frequency). I find that 103.9 is the best.
• Play/pause
• Previous track
• Next track (max of 999 tracks).

The included remote control does the above, plus:

• Change equalization setting 
• Change volume

Unfortunately, the unit comes with zero technical specs, so it took me a while to figure out its limitations. Here is what I found:

• The memory card or USB stick must be formatted with FAT file structure. 
• The FAT system is limited to 119 files in the root folder.
• But that's okay, because you can create a folder, and then stick in hundreds of MP3 files; this unit finds the MP3s in folders.
• The maximum size of memory card is 2GB, because that is the maximum capacity supported by the SD standard. This device does not support SDHC (too bad, since I have a spare 4GB card laying around).
• The maximum size of USB stick is at least 16GB (the largest size I have here). 

Curious: This MP3-playing FM transmitter is not shown on the Hip Street Web site. $40 at Wal-mart.

MP3 Players Overpriced in Europe

I'm just back from Spain and Germany, and I am astounded at how MP3 players are overpriced. Basically, our $ prices over here in North America are equal to the Euro prices over there, and higher.

For example, the 1GB iPod Shuffle is $49 in Canada and e49 in Europe -- about 50% more. Before my last trip overseas, I bought an 8GB Sony Walkman MP3 player for $139. The 4GB models tend to be priced at e139 in Europe -- about double to 4GB price back home.

Perhaps that's why iPod knockoffs are popular in Europe. I saw models that looked just like iPod Shuffles and Nanos in Barcelona and Andorra. I think the brand name was Yippe. 

Standing in front of a glass case of MP3 players at Frankfurt airport, I got into conversation with a woman from Calgary. I commented that the prices were expensive. She said that she is forever losing her MP3 players, and ideally would like several 1GB Shuffles: one with music for jogging, and so on.

I pointed to the Sony Walkwan in the case that was similar to the one I just bought. She laughed and said something along the lines of not being that advanced. "I still like the old fashioned iPods," she said.

Interesting potential problem for Apple: iPods have been dominant for "so long" that they are seen as old fashioned, compared to the "new" names in the industry, like Sony Walkman, SanDisk, and Zune.

(I suspect many today have no idea that the Walkman brand is the really old one. It is the original compact music device, a radio-cassette that Sony made portable by leaving out the speakers -- 29 years ago. Ironically, the one Sony Walkman cassette-radio I owned featured stereo mini speakers.)

Job Well Done: Apple

Several years ago I was given a 2GB iPod Nano, which my youngest daughter promptly adopted. It was her pride and joy until last Spring, when it became extremely hot while recharging. It no longer operated, and the LCD display looked as if ink had spilled inside it.

When I read last week that Apple was replacing units whose batteries had overheated, I called Apple Canada's toll-free number. It took 40 minutes and answering lots of questions, but finally a product specialist decided my iPod met the requirements for free replacement.

I was told a box would be shipped to me in which to return the faulty iPod, and to expect it in two days. That was Thursday. Friday afternoon, the UPS driver dropped off the shipping box.

Monday, he returned to pick it up.

Wednesday morning, an email from Apple Canada told me that the replacement unit was on its way via DHL, once again stating it would take 2 business days.

Imagine my shock when the big yellow DHL truck backed into our driveway that same day -- Wednesday, before noon! -- and the driver handed me the replacement iPod (with 90-day warranty).

I was impressed by Apple Canada's service, as well as the speed at which UPS and DHL performed their deliveries. My daughter was thrilled at having her status symbol back. 

Grandad's First MP3 Player

As my dad watched my daughter washing his car last sunny Saturday, he notice she was listening to music. Those white earbud headphones dangled their thin cord to a pocket in her shorts.

He asked me what she was listening to, so we showed him the iPod. "This 4GB model," I explained, "holds about 60 CDs worth of music."

My dad didn't think he had that much music to listen to, but the idea intrigued him. "I could use something like that when I drive my tractor [up north on his small farm]."

I knew exactly which one to get him. I'd been eyeing Sony's relatively new NWZ-S615F digital media player, because I liked its diminutive size and -- most important -- tactile controls.

While I wish that Japanese companies would learn from Apple's naming scheme, I am glad Sony ignored Apple's drive to reduce the hardware parts count by eliminating buttons that you can feel before you press. (My Zen Micro MP3 player suffers from that, too: just feeling for a control causes it to be activated.)

The Sony has distinct buttons for volume, play/pause, back, and options. A four-way controller surrounds the mildly protruding play/pause button.

I went comparison shopping on the Web, and found that most places charged the same price for the 2GB model -- $100 at London Drugs, Sears, Staples, and so on. FutureShop doesn't carry it, but BestBuy.ca had it for $10 cheaper than the rest.

I bought it for him, and set up the options. Likes and dislikes:

Likes

-- nice size (thin and not too small), with rubberized backing.
-- controllers work blind.
-- screen is small but very clear, bright, and colorful!
-- 33 hours playback of music; charges through the computer's USB port.
-- plays back MP4 videos, which can be downloaded from Google Video and others.
-- drag and drop to load it with any kind of file.
-- user interface has a beautiful design.

Dislikes

-- manual does not explain everything.
-- includes a plastic base that doesn't keep the player upright.
-- the Skip-to-next-track function is vague to me.
-- doesn't have an accelerometer for automatically rotating pictures and videos between portrait and landscape.
-- lacks the ability to erase files.

If I didn't already have a suitable MP3 player (ie, my three year old Zen Micro), then I'd get this one for myself, but I'd get the 8GB model. (2GB is sufficient for my dad.)

Downloaders are the Record Company's Friends

The Government of Canada commissioned a study by two professors on the effects of music downloading on the Canadian music industry.

(Recall that downloading is legal in Canada, but the record companies want the Canadian government to make it illegal. Only uploading is currently illegal.)

The study found that downloaders are more likely to buy CDs than non-downloaders. I am guessing there are a couple of reasons for this:

-- downloaders are more into music than are non-downloaders.
-- downloaders treat the Internet like I used to treat radio: a way of figuring out which albums are worth buying.

I used to tape the radio. The most significant tape I made in Dec 1974: of the about 24 songs recorded from the radio, I ended up buying the albums for about 20 of them. (I would have bought the other four, but I couldn't figure out who the artist was.)

In the end, there is no difference between listening to a song for free on radio and listening for free after downloading. In both cases, the musician gets noticed and he gets paid: by the radio station, or else by the royalty tax we Canadians pay on recording devices and media.

Phillips Noise-reducing Headphones

On a flight to Europe earlier this month, I took along several mini-size noise-reducing headphones, including a new set from Phillips. Model SHE592 is down to $25 at BestBuy in Canada.

These look like so many other in-ear headphones, which already lower airplane noise, because (1) they act like ear plugs; and (2) the sound is very close to the ear drum.

But these new ones from Phillips have a small box near the plug-end that contains a AAA battery, noise-reducing circuitry, and the on-off switch.

I found they worked very well, although I was sitting in a quieter location away from the engines. It was important to jam the headphones well into my ears, to block out the most sound. These headphone don't block 100% of the plane noise, but more than any other I've tried. (I haven't tried the heavily-advertised Bose headphones, but at $300 I'm not going to try.)

The only drawback to these is that small box with the circuitry. It makes it hard to bundle up the headphones compactly. (Over-the-ear headphones are large enough to contain the circuitry inside the ear pads, but then they are overall much larger than these in-ear ones.)

Downloading ECM Albums from Amazon MP3

Kevin C. Tofel of jkOnTheRun asks, Amazon opens beta of DRM-free music store. Are you buying?

Yup.

Where else am I going to get MP3-pure jazz records by ECM (the name of Manfred Eicher's famous record label, his initials spelled backwards) for $5.99?

At Amazon.com's MP3 Downloads section, I searched for "ECM," then sorted the list from cheapest to most expensive. I picked out likely candidates, and then narrowed them down by listening to clips. This is what I got:

-- Gary Peacock: Tales of Another
-- Jan Garbarek Group: Photo with Blue Sky, White Cloud, Windows, and a Red Roof
-- John Ambercrombie: Current Events

Downloading was a bit of pain, and at times I was not sure if it was happening. First I had to download and install a special MP3 download applet. Another pain: I had to pay for each album individually. Then, after I paid for each album, Amazon queued one track a time for downloading, even when buying entire albums.

Amazingly, the purchase and download process worked with the Opera Web browser I use.

Eventually, all 19 tracks downloaded, but not to the folder I want; the Amazon MP3 downloader app creates its own folder, \(loginname)\Music\Amazon MP3.

Other annoyance: Amazon tries to be helpful and automatically add the track info to Apple's iTunes or Microsoft's MediaPlayer. I want neither, since I use the Quintessence Music Player, and so I don't even have MediaPlayer set up on my new HP TX1200 convertible notebook computer. But that didn't matter: each time a track was downloaded, the Media Player setup program appeared, and I had to cancel it. 19 times in a row.

So now I am listening to them at the best time to listen to jazz: in the late evening.

Which brings up another matter: Vista is cruddy for playing back music and movies. Frequently, there are audible "blips," the equivalent of a record player's clicks and pops. (Happens during DVDs, too.) "Cruddy" is the correct term. Shame on you, Microsoft, for creating the un-Wow.

Belkin Overpriced by 2.6x

In an earlier post, I wrote about the $20 mini-fm transmitter I got from Wal-mart, for playing back music from my MP3 player over the car stereo.

Today I was surprised to see the same-looking item at Staples, but priced at $52 -- and with the Belkin logo. The only difference was the style of power connector (round, instead of rectangular).

I am guessing that Belkin sourced it from an OEM in China, and had them apply the logo. And then they and/or Staples Canada marked up the price by 2.6x.

Review: Morph MP3 to Air

When we got a new car with a CD player, we had a problem: how to playback music without the cassette adapter we'd been using for eight years. A local car stereo shop offered to sell a mini-FM transmitter for $100.

Too much! I told my son, going on a band trip to California, to be on the lookout for something cheaper. He returned with a $30 unit, one of the first on the market. It worked well for 3 years, but then the audio connector began to fail, with one channel cutting out intermittently. Time for a new one.

In an earlier post, I noted that Best Buy sells these for $60 or more, while Wal-Mart sells 'em starting at $20. I decided on the $20 model to see if there was a tangible difference. It's the Morph brand Mp3 To Air.

One drawback to the old one was that it was limited to broadcasting on four frequencies. Today's models cover all FM frequencies, as does the one I bought.

In the plastic packaging, it came with:

- tuner unit
- USB cord
- car charger

The USB cord connects to your computer (for home use) or to the car charger. Or, it can use two AAA batteries.

The unit works well enough, but has some problems:

- the power and tuner buttons are outdented (stick out), so they sometimes get hit accidentally, and then the unit turns off or changes stations
- it is supposed to turn on automatically when the MP3 player is turned on, but this function doesn't work
- to save batteries, it turns itself off after a minute of no signal. Problem is that it's not running on batteries and turning off just means I have to turn it on again.
- it comes with a built-in digital thermometer (why?) that's wildly inaccurate.

Despite these drawbacks, it was worth saving $50 for a rather basic function.

Photo here.

Review: Roku SoundBridge Radio R1000

So I bought the Roku Internet radio that I discovered at BestBuy in Langley (BC Canada) for about $100 cheaper than the equivalent some 20 minutes away across the border in the USA. Usually, the pricing is the other way around.

I love it, and I hate it.

What's to Hate

With its integrated subwoofer, the Roku SoundBridge Radio R1000 is too large for a modest bedside table. It towers, and it just barely fits mine.

The bass from the subwoofer can be unpleasant when listening to news radio. The unit has no tone controls. It does sound good for music, so all that would be needed is a way to reduce the bass for talk radio.

It is difficult to set up. If you needed your nephew to set up your home wireless network, you won't be able to listen to Internet radio stations. In that case, you can listen to AM, FM, and music from the integrated SD card reader.

What's that? Don't know how to place music onto SD cards? Then it's just AM/FM for you.

Oh, and the AM doesn't work on my unit. Roku product support hasn't responded yet to my request to get the AM working.

Neither does FM work, because it didn't come with an FM antenna and we tend not to listen to FM anymore and I can't be bothered digging out an FM antenna and the required adapter unit.

If you cannot figure out how to configure the unit for Internet stations, then you certainly aren't going to be streaming music from your downstairs computer, because that setup is even more complex. Roku did a good job in simplifying accessing the Internet with a household appliance, but there are some complex issues that cannot be simplified, like entering your wifi network's password. (The R1000 won't work in most hotel rooms, because most hotels require you to go through a browser-based screen to agree to their conditions and payment schemes, and this radio cannot handle that.)

(I'll describe the setup process in another posting.)

The problem with making complexity simple is that it results in simple complexity. For example, did you know that pressing the Pause button on the remote control snoozes the unit? Would you guess that pressing Play turns off the alarm? Assuming you can find the remote early in the morning.

Internet radio is fickle. Too many listeners and the station can't be listened to. Local ISP problems, and the broadcast is intermittent; it's very frustrating to listen to talk radio when there are 10-to-20-second gaps every minute or two, due to the radio reconnecting to the station. And yesterday evening, it lost its connection with my in-home wifi, so I needed to reboot the radio.

The extra software is not included on a CD with the radio. You need to download it.

It lacks an AUX port, so you cannot connect other devices to its speakers, such as an iPod or CD player.

The final problem on my list: choice. On our old clock-radio, my wife and I listen to a single AM station for falling asleep to and waking up to (AM980 CKNW). TV's 500-channel universe is a pittance. Now, there are some five thousand radio stations to listen to. Oh dear, which to choose? (There's Whispering, the all-solo-piano station.) Listening to one station a day would take 14 years to get through them all.

Our current list is short:

- Deutsche Welle (German Public Radio) English broadcast
- BBC news
- Radio Paradise (the most popular station for Roku listeners).

Give me good old AM radio, even if it crackles.

What's To Love

Once the R1000 is set up, it is simple to use. That is, as simple as it can be, given that the unit is the equivalent of a computer armed with a clock-radio interface. There are six preset buttons: press a button to listen to a radio station. The unit is loaded with the URLs of least 100 Internet stations. (More can be added, but not easily.)

Come across a station you like? Hold down one of the preset buttons until you hear the beep, and the station (no matter what its URL is) is assigned. An A-B-C button makes each preset button handle three station, for a total of 18 presets.

There are two alarms, and they are easier to set our than old clock-radio for one reason: I can move time backwards. No more moving the alarm time ahead 23.5 hours just to wake up a half-hour earlier! You can wake up to one of three alarm sounds, or to a preset station.

The time display is deadly accurate, because it is updated from the Internet. I like knowing accurate time.

The unit autodims at night; I can set the level of dimming. It took me a while to figure out how to dim the time display when the unit is off: press the <- button on the remote; it remembers this setting. Can also turn off the display completely when the unit is off.

Roku isn't leaving users in the dust. They update the firmware with new features every so often. For example, v3 added many more stations and genres. But firmware updates might be another technological hurdle for the non-technical person.

For the geek, however, the R1000 is a delight. The unit can be controlled from your computer, and there are APIs for extending its functions. For example, there is software that lets you control it from your handheld PC (Windows CE only, so far, but a Palm version is under development).

The company just launched rokuradio.com, a "social" site for instantly updating the most popular stations, searching for stations, currently-heard tracks, etc.

Although the R1000's built-in speakers sound great, you can hook it up to your stereo through its headphone jack. Roku has a cheaper SoundBridge unit that provides just the Internet and music streaming features to your stereo.

The R1000 works with wireless Internet only; it lacks the ethernet connector for wired connections. However, we have the unit in the exact opposite corner from my wifi base station, and it has few connection problems going through the 50 feet of walls, floor, and furnishings.

Summary

The R1000 is an all-in-one music station (US$299):

+ AM.
+ FM.
+ Music in several formats from SD cards.
+ Music streamed from Internet radio stations.
+ Music streamed from subscription services, like Napster.
+ Music streamed from your computer's hard disk using the free Firefly server or iTunes.

As my daughter said, we need one in every room of the house! The recent $100 price drop makes it more affordable.

(The company's URL is not roku.com but www.rokulabs.com.)

iPhone Compatible Headphones -- I Got 'Em

I don't have an iPhone, but I understand the problem users have with existing headphones. The iPhone has a silly design error, where the headphone connector is recessed. Many headphone have connectors are too thick to plug in.

The problem doesn't affect just headphones, but also cables for connecting external speakers, stereo sets, and mini FM transmitters (for car use).

The Palm TX has the same silly design error. I have found two solutions:

1. In some cases, I have been able to carve off (with a knife) some of the plastic surrounding the cable's plug. That gives sufficient clearance that the connector now fits.

2. Or, use the problem as an excuse to buy new headphones whose connector clears the obstruction.

A4Tech MK-650-B Headphones

I am always on the search for low-cost, but good sounding headphones. My favorite has been a set by Phillips, which, I noticed this week, now cost half-as-much (around $20) as when I bought them. They do a better job in blocking out noise on airplanes than do "noise reducing" headphones that cost much more -- and they take up much less room in the carry-on luggage.

These sorts of headphones block external noise by being shoved into the ear canal, so are sometimes called canalphones.

Anyhow, last week in Wal-mart, I saw a pair that looked pretty nice and were just $18, so I splurged. Made by A4Tech (image here, mine are black and silver), these sound amazing, along with a bass that's so strong I need to use the music player's equalizer to cut the bass by 6dB. Take that, Bose!

They feel nice, because parts are made of metal. Real steel!

Finally, the connector plug is narrow enough that it fits my Palm TX, and will probably work with the iPhone.

It is, however, possible to buy ones that are too cheap. London Drugs had a set of canalphones from Maxell for $10. Dreadful sound: no low end whatsoever! It did come with a nice little travel pouch. I gave it to my wife for listening to movies on airplanes.

Zune

While in BestBuy in Bellingham (WA USA) yesterday, I finally got to see the Zune (not available in Canada, thankfully). Boy, they sure are ugly. I now see why the brown color was especially panned. Ugly and big looking. In an era where slim defines all things electronic, the Zune is a design disaster.

The reason we were in the USA for a little cross-border shopping was to pick up a wireless network adapter for my son's Xbox 360. "Should have been built-in," my 20-year-old son grumbled. I agree. But then Microsoft couldn't even figure out how to make the power supply tiny and the Xbox unit quiet. This is supposed to be in the family room, but is as noisy as an out-of-warranty dishwasher? "That's innovation," Microsoft would say as explanation.

Anyhow, the wifi adapter is US$100 in the USA, $130 in Canada.

With taxes, the wifi adapter is US$107 in the USA, CDN$147 in Canada.

It felt good saving $40. Especially when the Canada Customs officer decided to split the $107 in "returning goods" between the two of us, and ignored the Canadian taxes owing.

Using a Camera for Music Playback

A reader asks,

I haven't used the NV3, but I do know several people with Samsung cameras, and they've been pretty pleased with them. I do have to ask about the MP3 player function, though. I haven't had a camera with that, but I'm very interested in buying a camera/MP3 combo. I'm concerned about running out of memory, though. Should I buy two memory cards, one for pictures and one for music? Or can I fit a nice number of songs on the card and still have room for pics? Does the NV3 offer features comparable to most MP3 players, and how is the playback quality of the music?

Q: I'm concerned about running out of memory, though.

A: This is no longer a problem these days, what with 2GB memory cards going for $40.

Q: Should I buy two memory cards, one for pictures and one for music?

A: You can, but then you would have to switch cards each time you want to take a picture, and I am cautious about how the card slot mechanism holds up to repeated use.

Q: Or can I fit a nice number of songs on the card and still have room for pics?

A: Yes. A typical CD takes up about 64MB as MP3 files, so a 2GB card holds the equivalent of 32CDs. As for photos, the 2GB card holds around 1000 photographs, depending on resolution and quality settings. So you can easily have both types of files on a single memory card. You can erase music files as the card fills up.

Q: Does the NV3 offer features comparable to most MP3 players, and how is the playback quality of the music?

A: Given all that I've written, I prefer individual devices: a Zen Micro for MP3s, a camera for taking pictures, and a Palm TX for organization -- each is small enough to take all three on trips. That's because each is optimized for its function.

Disky "Borrows" My Idea

Some months ago, I got the idea of selling dedicated MP3 players. With prices plummeting, you could sell a CD on a 64MB music player for less than the store price of the CD.

Today on Mobile Magazine, I read that Disky has taken my idea and commercialized it: a two-hour (128MB) MP3 player for US$26 that comes with Disky's selection of music. The playlist is "static," meaning it can't be changed.

Time to start sending me the quarterly royalty cheques.

Camnext Auto-Transfer Cable

I like poking around big stores, because they sometimes carry electronic goodies at unreasonably low prices. Like the Shark brand Webcam I picked up for $25 from Winners.

Yesterday I came across a $5 item at Wal-mart: Auto-Transfer Cable CA101. It promised to convert CD music into MP3 format and stick it onto your MP3 player. Hmmm, I wondered, how does that work? For $5, I took it home.

The cable has a 3.5mm audio plug at one end (and miniUSB converter), and a fat USB connector at the other. The fat end holds 380KB flashRAM, which holds the encoding software. Plug it into a computer, and it is recognized as a USB storage device. Here's how it works:

1. Plug USB end into computer.
2. Wait for Windows 2000/XP computer to recognize it. It appears in Explorer as two drives: one with the conversion software, and the second (apparently) to access the MP3 device. This second drive is listed as G: in the figure below.
3. Stick music CD into computer's CD drive (has to be drive D: -- this device can't find CD players assigned to other drive letters).
4. Software from this cable pops up, and then accesses the Internet to get the artist and track info.

A dialog box asking you to chose the destination of the MP3 files.

5. Chose the computer's hard drive, or else plug in an MP3 player.
6. Click Convert. There are no options; music is converted at the 128 rate.

Problem is that this cable works only when the music player accepts MP3 files in file transfer mode. My Zen Micro, for instance, requires use of specialized software, and so this cable doesn't work with it.

I had hoped this device might offload MP3 processing from my notebook computer, just like the V-Mate does for converting video tapes into MP4 movie files. But no such luck: the software in the cable is run by the computer sufficiently hard to make the notebook's fan come on.

The benefit is the software is simple (no options, other than where to save the .mp3 files) though not fast: speed is about 8x (it converted a 70 minute CD is just under 9 minutes), compared with my regular ripping software (CDex, free) speed of 14x (same CD converted in just over 5 minutes).

The danger of this sort of device, with its autoloading software and flashRAM, is that it could easily autoload a virus.

No, Mr Jobs, I Won't Pay $1.29 Per Song

Apple has increased the price of downloadable songs to US$1.29 each -- for those that are DRM-free and of higher compression quality.

As noted in an earlier entry, I don't like downloading songs, and the new pricing benchmark won't encourage me in that regard. In contrast, take the new Nora Jones CD set I mention below:

31 tracks for US$9.99.

That works out to 32 cents for each DRM-free, uncompressed track from a brand-new release. With 2 "backup" CDs (the originals, heh), beautiful CD holder (the box with slipcover), and nice cover art thrown in at no extra charge. In less time than it takes to download 31 tracks, I'll have ripped the two CDs for my non-Apple MP3 player.

No, Mr Jobs, I won't pay 4x as much for my music.

Great New Nora Jones CD!

I love jazz, but I haven't cared for the jazz singing of Nora Jones, even if she was born in the same Canadian provice as me. Now comes a different project for her, one where she ventures into blues and R&B and hiphop and EuroPop -- and I love it!

The Peter Malick Group Featuring Nora Jones: The Deluxe Collection (Koch Records KOC-CD-4206) has Ms Jones singing a set of songs with different mixes. Fer instance:

"Deceptively Yours" is first sung as blues, but then in a later track, it is sung with a Seedy Hotel Remix by DJ Strobe. On yet another track, it is resung with a Land Shark vocal remix, and on it goes.

Ultimately, this 2-disc, 31-song set has just 6 unique songs; all the other tracks are remixes. US$9.99 at Wal-mart.

The CommSec iPod index Is Wrong

The CommSec iPod index compares the cost of buying a 2GB iPod Nano in numerous countries. The index finds that the most expensive iPods are in Brazil, costing 2.1x more than in the iPod's home country of USA.

The cheapest, claims the index, is in Canada: US$144.20. Which made me blink my eyes. Canada? Shurley not!

The base price, in Canadian dollars, is $169.95. The Canada-US exchange rate has been roughly 1.14 this month. Thus:

Canadian price in US dollars = $149.08.

But that price is only part of the equation. Taxes play a factor. In Canada, the sales tax ranges from 7% (Alberta) to something approaching 20% in the Maritimes. Let's take my home province as an average, 13%.

In the US, sales taxes tend to range from 0% (Oregon) to something approaching 10%. Let's take 5%, the tax in Mass. as the average.

Customer's cost in Canada: US$168.45
Customer's cost in USA: US$157.45

So, the price in Canada is not the cheapest!

Boombox Ripper

I notice Phillips selling a boombox that rips CDs for under CDN$50 at our local Wal-Mart. It has a USB connector.

Insert a CD, press the appropriate button, and I presume the boombox converts the tracks to MP3 and copies them to the attached MP3 player. I presume further that no CDDB info is available, however.

Genre-Specific MP3 Players

As we decorated our Christmas tree and put another Christmas music CD on to listen, it occurred to me that MP3 players are getting so cheap that they could become task-specific.

For instance, pick up a 1GB model for $50, fill it up with Christmas music, plug it into the home stereo, and then press Play. When Christmas is over, pack the player away with the rest of the decorations for next year. No need to switch the CD every 35 minutes.

One gigabyte holds about 16 hours of music -- roughly 20 CDs (Christmas CDs tend to be shorter than regular music).

Take it a step further: ultra-cheap MP3 players could become like the CD shuttle devices. (About 15 years ago, Pioneer pioneered cartridges for CDs. Each cartridge held 6 CDs. The idea was that each cartridge would hold a group of music, like all Mozart piano concertos or New Age music. The flaw was that you could never tell which CDs were in the cartridge, because they had to be loaded upside down.)

Retailers could sell MP3 players pre-loaded with a variety of music genres -- kind of like greeting cards that now contain tinny music selections. The RIAA would pop an artery, but it could mesh in well with their master plan to pay artists less and less.

eBooks

Book publishers have read books onto cassette tapes and CD. They could now put them onto read-only MP3 players. They could have color decals that identify the book, but would need an effective bookmarking system for chapters.

At home, we would have libraries of R/O MP3 players. Car stereos now have USB plugs, into which R/O MP3 devices could be plugged.

Genre-specific, pre-loaded MP3 players. My idea. I had it first. Contact me for royalty details before you launch them.

Udpate

Canadian Tire has the first under-$50 (CDN) 1GB MP3 player advertised for its Boxing Week sale.

Price/Capacity Ratios for MP3 Players

$3.20 for an 8MB iPod Nano? Not if Steve Jobs can help it.

Yet that's what it would cost if the pricing matched that of hard drives. FutureShop this week is advertising a 500GB external drive for CDN$230 -- about US$200. That's 40 cents a gigabyte.

Over at A&B Sound, they have a 30GB Phillips MP3 player for the equivalent of US$175. It works out to $5.80 per gigabyte.

As cheap as the Phillips price is, it's still a 14x premium over that 500GB external hard drive that could play back MP3 music unrepeated for an entire year (after it's hooked up to a $400 computer).

My kids grimmice when they see that sort of pricing, having bought their MP3 players when capacities were still under 1GB and pricing was over $200.

The *New* Travel Charger

When I travel, I no longer take along the myriad power supplies for my Zen Micro MP3 player, Palm T|X, etc etc. Instead, I charge these battery operated devices through my notebook computer's USB ports. A couple of short USB cables take up far less room than the power transformers and their long cables. Plus I don't need to worry about voltage or having sufficient wall outlet converters internationally.

Last week I was thinking: how could I recharge these pocket-size devices if I didn't take along my notebook computer? (I had seen the new USB travel chargers in the xmas fliers, a transformer that plugs into the wall outlet and has a single USB port -- why not four USB ports?.)

Then I thought of the miniature powered USB hub that I never use. (They seem like useful devices and electronics stores sell all kinds of them; but I never use it.) I wondered I could use it to recharge my portable devices, because the USB hub is powered by a small power supply.

Sure 'nough: it worked. It recharged my Zen Micro like it was hooked up to the computer.

So now when I travel w/o notebook computer, I can take along this USB hub and its wall outlet, and it can recharge up to four devices overnight. In some ways, it's better than my notebook computer, because the computer has to stay on overnight to perform its recharging work.

Indeed, I'm now using it at home, because the one powered hub eliminates numerous transformer blocks clogging up the power outlets in my office.

Update

When charging through the USB port, the Palm T|X doesn't show its lightning bolt icon to indicate charging. But over time, the battery meter gets closer and closer to 100%.

My Sony Clie won't charge through USB. This means you may have to check which of your devices actually can be charged through USB, and which can't.

Origami'ing the Zune

Mobilemag.com reports: "Amazon.com, the giant online purveyor of just about everything on earth, says that iPod chargers sell better than Zune."

There has been much written about the Zune music player from --- . (I'd've written "Microsoft," but the company didn't put its name on the player, it's that embarrassed by the relabeled Toshiba product.)

When the convicted monopolist can't impose its poorly-written software on the masses, it is unable to compete. This year's examples include:

- the failure of its search engine, whose market share continues on a steady decline -- an amazing feat, considering it is the default search engine on 96% of all computers. The reason? When people think of searching the Internet, they think "Google," which has become the kleenex and xerox of search.

- the failure of the Origami, a mini-PC that manages to be too large and too small at the same time.

- the impending failure of Zune, a music player that's so identical to the iPod in pricing and so similar features that there is no reason to consider it.

These failures result from "We Can Do That, Too" thinking, instead of "What Would Make My Life Better?" thinking. That's not surprising from a company whose primary output is corrupting the definition of "innovation."

"We're #2! We're #2!"

Microsoft PR provided me with a brief smile this week in its desperate "The are no Americans in Bagdad" moment in attempting to shore up against the negative perception of Zune. Articles were planted claiming it was the #2 seller. (At the same time, other articles were issued that proclaimed the unreliability of the iPod: Most break down after the one-year warranty expires, according to the Canadian Press.)

The fine print noted, however, that it was #2 for just the first four days of sales, when you naturally expect an initial sales spike from pent-up demand, as little as it might be. There were these breathes of relief:

- Todd Bishop of Seattle PI newspaper: "Zune debuts at No. 2 — After a bunch of negative reviews..."

- David Hunter of Microsoft News Tracker: "Zune edges SanDisk in 1st week sales."

- Nathan Weinberg of InsideMicrosoft: "Zune A Success, Amazingly!"

I acknowledge that Bishop notes at the end of his article that "Zune sales were still less than the combined sales of PlaysForSure devices." I trust that Microsoft's abandoning of its PlaysForSure clients will come back to haunt it as firms finally learn -- above all other things -- to distrust the monopolist.

Record Companies Want Songs to Cost $15

If the music industry had its way, songs would cost $15 a track. You can get a sense of that from the pricing of ringtones -- the first few seconds of a song for which Those With Too Much Cash pay $3 or $4 each. Extrapolate the pricing and you get about $15 for the whole song.

The Register notes: The ringtone business, for example, grossed $75bn for operators last year -- double the global revenue of the music industry.

I get a further sense of greed from some of the new prices. I'm not paying $23 for the new Pat Metheny CD or $55 for the Dire Straits musicDVD of greatest hits. Reminds me of college textbook overpricing.

Contrast that greed with the reasonableness I discovered at HMV Canada's local music store yesterday. They're having some sort of super sale, and many current titles are CDN$9.99 -- about US$9 each. I immediately bought three CDs.

(I'd include a link to HMV Canada, but the Web page keeps displaying the head office site in Britain.)

It's been said often that there would be less pirating if CDs were priced reasonably, such as $10 or less. I wonder if HMV is testing the theory. It works for me, because I'd rather have the physical CD instead of paying for ethereal downloads -- even though here in Canada music downloads are not illegal and we pay an added tax on CDs, etc, to compensate musicians for free downloads.

Microsoft Can't Make Money

Apple makes huge profits selling iPods at $249.00, but Microsoft claims it will incur losses selling a similarly-spec'ed product priced at 99 cents more.

There must be a socialist running the Zune division. Must be.

Unless, of course, "taking a loss" is Microsoft PR's spin to cover up something else. Like maybe to give the impression that this is a really expensive piece of equipment (really expensive = better than iPod) but we are being generous to the consumer by choosing to price-match.

It occurs to me that Microsoft would be bankrupt, dead, and out of our memories like a latter-day Ashton-Tate, if the convicted monopolist couldn't rely on that guaranteed flow of royalty income from hardware vendors pre-installing the increasingly uninteresting Windows and Office software.

Update

End of Sept: Microsoft's PR firm is starting to have success at planting pro-Zune articles in publications, such as the poorly-argued Why Microsoft's Zune scares Apple to the core by Mike Elgan in ComputerWorld.

I'm thinking, how is the Zune better than my Palm T|X, other than with the 30GB hard drive? As a music player, the T|X has:

- storage for 2GB of music (about 32 CDs worth).
- removable storage in further increments of 2GB.
- built-in speaker.
- can share MP3 files by infrared, Bluetooth, and WiFi without 3-day limits.
- can run a variety of playback interfaces (I have two loaded).
- accesses MP3 and other files via WiFi networks from desktop computers.
- streams Internet radio stations.

(That last item, Internet streaming, has become popular in my house. I plug the T|X into our living room stereo system, and my wife and I listen to Radio Paradise while reading in the evenings in front of the fireplace.)

In addition to music playback, the T|X:

- also plays back photographs, movies, et al.
- directly shows photos and AVI movies from digital cameras (SD cards).
- 480x320 3.9" color screen.
- can act as a universal remote (with the addition of extra cost software).
- also functions as a PDA, GPS (with hardware addon), eBook reader, Web browser, email reader, world clock, etc.

All for about the same price as a Zune + its overpriced accessories. The base price for the T|X is higher (US$299), but the one I got included USB cable, keyboard, and international power supply (with adapters for all countries).

Palm needs to market their PDA as an all-purpose entertainment device!

iPod Suffers the Palm Effect

The Guardian's Observer newspaper has a distressing article about the decline in the iPod's popularity. Brave analysts dared speak of the decline in sales earlier this year, and now David Smith puts it together in Why the iPod is losing its cool.

His theory is that the iPod is a victim of fashion: so many have sold that it's not longer fashionable to have white earphones dangling from the sides of one's head.

I disagree.

It's the Palm effect: eventually, everyone who's going to buy one will have bought one (or a second or a third). The market is limited, and gets saturated.

In this day of unending technology gadgets, there is too much choice, leading to smaller than expected markets. Creative, who at one time planned to outsell iPods, has slipped to third place -- 5% marketshare! I have MP3 players on all my computers, on two portable CD players, in my Sony Clie, my Palm T|X, my PhotoTainer digital photograph storage device -- oh, and on my Zen Micro MP3 player. There was even an MP3 player on that GPS unit I bought (and returned) last month.

There is a secondary effect: the popularity of the all-in-one gadget -- the cell phone that includes the high-rez camera with zoom lens, video recorder, sound recorder, Internet access, MP3 player, games, and Palm-type functions. When my son got his new cell phone with 512MB memory for music (expandable to 1GB), he wondered what he would do with his existing 512MB player. In this area, iPods are particularly at risk, because they are underfeatured (no FM radio, no mic, etc).

A tertiary effect is that technology companies are dreadful at selling consumer products. (Exhibit A: Windows. Exhibit B: the PC.) Here is a conversation I overheard at BestBuy over the weekend, a conversation I should not have heard:

Teenage girl: "Dad, how much music can I fit on this?" She holds up a 512MB MP3 player encased in a large hard plastic bubble pack that doesn't let her touch it.

Father: "I don't know. Probably not enough."

Stepping in, I told them: "A CD fits on to about 64MB, so 512MB will hold about 8 CDs."

A technology company thinks in terms of MB and GB; a consumer-oriented company would think in terms of real-world measurements, such as CDs.

(My son adds: many people think that only iPods are MP3 players; when he shows his Creative unit, people wonder what model of iPod he has there.)

So, the iPod isn't dying. It's just reverting to its natural sales level, kind of like houses or Internet stocks or tulips revert to a natural sales and prices after an unnatural period of overheated sales.

Review: Nextar P7 GPS

I own three GPS units. All of them are annoying.

The first was Delorme's Earthmate designed for use with PalmPilots. I thought the concept was brilliant; the execution was so flawed as to be fatal. When I first installed the GPS software on my Palm, Delorme also installed a huge map file that locked up the Palm and it took me three days to get it working again. The second fatal flaw was the connector: it did not lock onto the Palm, and so easily broke free; that meant losing all the collected data and restarting the GPS.

The second I acquired as the result of a corporate gift. The primary flaw of the Garmin eTrex is that it does not display maps. So, it can show where you've gone but not tell you where you are. I did buy the cable to hook it up to my notebook computer, but running that in a car is just too cumbersome.

The third I bought yesterday is the Nextar MN2707. (Or maybe P7. The sticker says MN2707, the firmware states P7; both models are displayed at the Nextar Web site. I'll call it the P7, since that's fewer characters to type.)

It has these benefits:

+ Large, 7-inch color LCD touchscreen with nighttime mode (dimmer reversed colors).
+ 40GB drive that acts as an external computer drive (20GB available for you).
+ Two USB2 connectors, mini and regular size.
+ MP3 playback that works at the same time as the navigation system.
+ Locking power plug (ie, it's hard to unplug the power from the unit, which is a good thing).
+ Hardware on/off switch, so it turns on when the car is turned on.
+ Zoom the map using on-screen soft buttons or the control wheel; pan the map by dragging your finger across the screen or pressing the arrow buttons.
+ The interface is easy enough that you can figure out most of it without the instruction booklet.
+ Includes detailed mapping for Canada and simple mapping for USA (on units sold in Canada).
+ Includes power supply, car adapter, USB cables, audio cable, and suction cup attachment.
+ Cheap at CDN$400 (currently on sale at Canadian Tire; regular CDN$500) -- equivalent to about US$350; list price is US$600.

Other tech specs: runs Linux on a Samsung 200 MHz CPU with 64MB SDRAM.

After some mulling, I decided to get it. For these reasons: it's my birthday; it's an external hard drive + MP3 player + okay navigation system + big touch screen.

Drawbacks

But it has plenty of drawbacks that might give you pause:

- The P7 is heavy and has no battery, so you cannot use it for walking about. A battery would be nice for keeping the unit alive when the car is off; keeping it on when moving between house and car; and using it as a portable MP3 player (along with external speakers).
- It takes about a minute to start up. This means you need to keep the car idling for that amount of time if you need to know your current position. It takes another minute or so to lock into a 3D signal. In contrast, the Garmin eTrex starts in under 10 seconds, and is locked into a 3D signal in another 20 seconds.
- Once started, a woman's voice keeps repeating "Acquiring GPS Signal" even though lots of satellites are already being tracked.
- It forgets the volume setting. I set it to mute, tap Save Setting, but the next time the P7 is turned on, the volume is up again.
- You have to pay US$50 for the CD with detailed USA maps. Maps of other countries not available.
- It does 3D satellite tracking, but does not report the altitude.
- it comes with the printed manual for another product, although the feature set seems similar.
- The 7-inch screen is a touch screen with soft buttons (buttons displayed on the screen). Problem is that the soft buttons disappear after a while; touching the screen brings them back, but also pans the map out of position.

Map

The map displays only streets and their names. Major roads are shown by another color. NOTHING ELSE. The map fails to display landmarks that would be useful while driving, such as:
- No rivers, shorelines, or railroad tracks.
- No tunnels, bridges, or over/under-passes.
- No major points of interest, such as hospitals and airports.
- No borders; no names of cities or states/provinces.

The unit claims to have two million points of interest, such as gas stations and hotels. However, they are listed in alphabetical order, instead of distance order -- I'd want to know where the nearest gas station is, not that there is an Arco station on Aberdeen Avenue.

Testing the Routing Software

I ran a test that mapping software usually fails. I ask it to map the route from my current residence to the town of my birth (in northern Canada). All mapping software usually makes the mistake of telling me to take the ferry along the coast, because distance-wise that is the shortest.

But cost-wise, it is the most expensive route, and time-wise takes the longest. Mapping software fails on this test because they usually assign a time of 0 hours and 0 minutes for the ferry trip, even though the trip takes about 12 hours and requires additional time for getting on and off the ferry (allow an extra 2 hours for that).

The Nextar P7 fails this test. Worse yet, it does not allow me to adjust the route to force it to use just roads.

Another failing is that the P7 does not allow me to peruse the proposed route. When I try to pan along the route, the P7 forces the screen to jump back to the current position.

The second test is from my residence to the international airport. There is no good route in real-life, so I am interested in technology that can tell me the shortest route, time-wise. I know it takes 1hr 15min (or so). In the P7, you would take these steps:

1. Press Find button.
2. Tap "Search POI [point of interest] by Name".
3. Tap "Transporation" or "All POI".
4. Use the on-screen keyboard to type the city. As you enter characters, the P7 anticipates which city it might be, a good feature that reduces the amount of typing.
5. Tap OK
6. Type in "AIRPORT." After mulling its database, the P7 says none exists.
I tried the airport code, such as YVR, and that worked.

You can then tap Drive To (calculates route), Zoom To (displays location on screen) or Save To (save to a named list of destinations). The result depends on the option selected:

Shortest [route by distance] - 46.9 miles and 2hr 5 min.
Mostly Highways - 52.0 miles and 2hrs 19 min.
Least Amount of Turns - 47.0 miles and 2 hr 6 min.

Since I cannot peruse the route (without the screen always jumping back to where I am now), I don't know which route the P7 plans to take me along. The workaround is to zoom out far enough to see the entire route on the screen, but then the P7 doesn't display sufficient detail for me to figure out the exact route out of the myriad of possibilities.

I suspect it does not adjust for highway speeds, because it seems to use 36km/hr (22 mph) for all roads, including 70mph (120kph) freeways. That means that its time estimates are useless.

GPS Data

Related to lack of altitude reporting (3D data), the unit provides only some of the data that can be gleaned from GPS data, just this:
- current time.
- speed.
- North direction (top of screen).
- The GPS Status screen shows latitude, longitude, satellite positions, and signal strengths.

It does not report:
- margin of error
- maximum speed
- average speed
- trip odometer
- duration of trip
- sunset and sunrise
- bearing and heading angles.

Of these, I'd really like to know the error, usually around 15-50 feet for most GPS units.

MP3

The MP3 player uses simple folder management, which is the system I prefer. You segregate songs in folders, and then play the entire folder or a single song file. The unit makes reference to "playlists" but that's just its term for folders.

The unit has a built-in speaker and audio out plug. The speaker is tinny, okay for spoken instructions, but no good for music, so you'll want to plug it into a FM broadcast module to play over your car's audio system. You can also hook it up to headphones or to your home music system to playback MP3 music.

There are no other music controls, other than volume. No tone controls, no random play, skip to next track. One workaround is to tap the touch screen and select the next song to play from the list displayed (it shows 7 tracks at a time).

Hard Drive

When connected to your computer with a USB cable, the P7 cannot act as a GPS device nor playback music; it becomes an external drive that can be accessed through Windows Explorer and all Windows software programs. I am guessing it would work with Linux and Mac, but haven't tested that.

Of the 40GB hard drive, 20GB is available for your own files. The other 20GB would be used for the Linux operating system and map files. Because the P7 acts as an external hard drive, you can store any files on there for backup purposes.

With such a large screen, it would be a natural for showing slideshows and movies, but no such luck.

Update

After a few days, I returned the unit for these reasons: the size and weight, the low level of GIS data, and the difficulty of controlling/previewing the route.

iPod Charger

My 15-year-old daughter's off to South Korea -- the first Grabowski to have visited four continents (North America, Europe, Anza, and now Asia.)

You may recall the crisis over how to recharge her iPod Nano. CDN$57 for Apple's charger was too much. A visit to a local electronics store found third-party brands for nearly half the price. So I bought one for her. The charger's slim, works with 110-220V, and has a folding plug -- good for travelling.

Now that she's in Korea, she may not need it after all. At her first destination, the home had _two_ computers (from which she could do USB charging) -- as well as a giant tv and...

p.s. the toliet scars me!!! theres all these buttens and stuff... and the seat is heated!!!!! o dear...

Defending Steve

Some commentators are denigrating Apple's new products. But I think I see the logic to the "poor designs."

Let's take the leather case. US$99 for something with just one hole for slipping the iPod in and out. The complaint is that you have to take out the iPod to (1) see the display, such as videos and (2) use the controls.

Then there's the boombox. $350 (or something like that) for a set of speakers into which the iPod is plugged. The complaints are that it's ugly (true), it's overpriced (true), and that it's under-featured (also true). I particularly don't understand the part about it needing six D-cell batteries for portable use: who can afford that???

Here is what I think Apple might have been thinking...

With these two products, they are stepping on the toes of third-party developers. I wonder if Apple made them underwhelming to keep the peace. If you want a better product for a lower price, then get the third-party stuff. If you want the stuff with the real Apple logo, then pay up for your haughtiness.

Downloads? No Thanks

I've decided I don't like downloading music. I get all kinds of offers for free downloads, ranging from a single download free with the purchase of a box of granola bars, to an entire month of free downloads with the purchase of a Zen Micro MP3 player. In each case I have to provide credit card data, go through the time and sometimes confusing effort of entering registration data -- all for a single download? No thanks.

... especially for those wierdo sites where you don't get to keep the download. About as satisfying as eating a granola bar: what d'you got to show for it? Another hassle: lack of content. Download sites are starting to remind me of those Record of the Month Club, where either the CDs are too expensive or consist soley of greatest hits. Yuck!

Here's a deal: last week I found a Tom Petty CD at Wal-Mart. "Anthology: Through the Years" has 34 tracks, 2 CDs, and cost me just CDN$15. That works out to 44 cents a track. Try'n beat that, Steve Jobs!

Cassettes -> MP3s

Last year, I converted all my cassette tapes to MP3 format. Before I had a chance to back up the multi-gigagbyte collection, the Maxtor external hard drive crashed. I am back to recording the tapes in MP3 format, remembering to make copies to a second hard drive every so often.

Here's how it's done:

1. Hook up a cassette deck to an amplifier's Tape In connectors using RCA cables. I happen to use my 30-year-old Marantz 2225 receiver, but you can also get low-cost amps from computer and electronic stores.

2. Hook up the amp's Tape Out connectors to the computer's Line In connectors. You will need a cable with RCA connectors at the amp end, and an 1/8" inline connector at the computer end.

3. Get software that records to MP3 format. I use AutoRecord Wizard from NowSmart. I like this software because it is simple, doing only what is required: listen to the Line In (or other audio inputs of your computer) and then save in MP3 or WAV format. I think it was $25.

(You would only use WAV format if you plan to make music CDs from the cassettes.)

4. Install the software, and then run it. Click the Options button, and select these options:
- Recording Device = Line In
- Recoridng Volumn = Max

Click the MP3 Parameters button, and select these options:
- Bitrate = 128Kbps (you can use a higher rate, which takes up more disk space, but do not use a lower rate.)
- Recording mode = Direct to MP3.

5. Insert the casstte tape in the cassette deck. Press Play on the deck, and then click Record on the software.

iPod Blues

My 15-year-old summed up her iPod Nano experience like this: "I'm only using it 'cause it's free." (Recall I had been given the Nano as a corporate gift; I continue to prefer the Creative Zen Micro I bought a year ago.)

+ She likes the capacity. At 2GB, the Nano holds 16x more music than her first MP3 player.
+ She likes the kewl factor. The iPod is a requirement for being cool among friends.

But

- She doesn't like that it lacks replaceable batteries. She'll be travelling to Korea next month and doesn't think the Nano will last the plane trip, and wonders where she'll recharge it (it needs to be hooked up to a computer to recharge through the USB cable.) I've suggested that she could take my Zen Micro, which has replaceable batteries _and_ a wall charger.

- She doesn't like that a wall charger is $57 (here in Canada, incl. tax).

- She doesn't like that it lacks an FM tuner, as does her previous MP3 player.

- She doesn't like that the front plastic scratches to easily, and that the back's chrome-like metal smudges to easily.

- She doesn't like that it has locked up twice already in just one month.

- She finds that the battery doesn't last very long; her two-year-old Samsung 128MB MP3 player lasts longer on a single AAA battery.

Free iPod? No Thx

I was at a conference last week where members of the media were given free 2GB iPod Nanos. White. A wonderful gift, but I already have been using a 5GB Zen Micro for near a year. Black.

By default, my youngest daughter inhereted the Nano, since the two older siblings weren't interested in it. I found her a trial copy of Anapod Explorer so that she wouldn't have to install iMusic on her PC.

Over the last few years, I've received some very nice gifts from corporations. The drawback is that the free object results in an expense for me. The GPS unit? I bought some data and power cables for its proprietary connector. But I find I never use the GPS. The wireless iPac? I bought a larger battery and SD memory card. But I found I didn't like the Windows OS, prefering my PalmOS device. Same for the Nano: I prefer my Creative Zen Micro, which has larger capacity, replaceable batteries (I have 3), and built-in FM radio and microphone.

The Nano is sexy. Mobilemag reports that Apple has sold 14 million iPods during the last three months of last year. By comparison, Creative sold "just" 2.6 million of its MP3 players.

Inside-studio.mpg

The new Delirious CD, Mission Bell, has a bonus movie track. When you stick the CD into your computer, autorun launches InsidePC.exe, which displays the movie in a tiny window -- 3"x2" on my computer.

It's far better to watch the movie fullscreen. Here's how:

1. In Explorer, go to the CD drive.
2. Double-click Inside-studio.mpg.
3. Press Ctrl+Enter (or whatever) to run the movie fullscreen.

Enjoy!

The Source Has Itchy Ears

"The Source" is the new name for the chain of Canadian electronic parts stores formerly known as Radio Shack. (There was some dispute between Circuit City and Tandy that required the name change.)

I was in The Source in Semiamho Mall (South Surrey) making time while my wife checked out Boxing Week clothing sales. I overheard a female customer buying a bright pink MP3 player, asking if she could return it. The sales clerk replied, "Yes," but then added this bizzare provisio: "You would only have to pay for a new pair of headphones for sanitary reasons."

I know that electronics stores are deperate for added revenue, and do stunts like charge a restocking fee for returned items. But this is the the most bizzarre "hidden" fee I've heard of -- to date. I am sure there will be other creative methods by stores to extract extra revenue from our pockets.

I wonder how much The Source would charge for the replacement set of headphones. I wonder what they would do if you provided a set you purchased from a dollar store, still sealed in its pkg.

Well, at least you now know to not buy MP3 players at The Source.

I related this story to the returns clerk at FutureShop. He noted that they get back 30-50 MP3 players a day! I asked why; he didn't know. I wonder if people find it too difficult to get music onto the players, and if they find the user interface of the tiny machines too mystifying.

Indie: The Anti-DRM Solution

Two days ago, I wrote about how record companies are looking to DRM to increase their profits through customer lock-in. Their theory is that if customers are prevented from making copies -- indeed, be forced to buy a copy of the same music for every playback device -- this will lead to higher profits (higher bonuses, higher share value).

The tactic described in my earlier blog entry is to guard your music collection and playback devices against infiltration of DRM techniques by Microsoft, Apple, music device manufacturers, and software companies whose anti-copying technology creates unintended harm.

Music comes from musicians. And a group of musicians doesn't like record companies. As an author of 80 books, I relate to their frustration. In the search for higher profits, book publishers squeeze authors to give up more money. Royalties on books are already pittiful (typically 5% of a book's cover price), with contracts stipulating all sorts of situations where that $1.50 (for a typical $30 book) is reduced by half or even to zero.

(Musicians have it worse than authors: record companies typically pay them the full price of the CD, minus expenses -- resulting in negative balances in too many cases. You are more likely to make money writing a book than recording a CD.)

Just as I don't sometimes like how a publisher packages and markets my books, musicians are not also not keen on record company tactics -- like paying radio stations to play songs of competing musicians more often.

Enter the Indie

The solution to DRM in music is similar to the solution against Microsoft's monoply: independently-made music. Just as I now have a catalog of 30 independenly-plublished e-books, musicians can by-pass the record industry, using the Internet to promote and sell their works. Like many self-published authors, there are dreadful examples of self-produced albumns. But we don't need millions of new muscians -- just a few handfuls of really good ones that raise to the top.

Record companies take heed: My kids prefer indie music over the pap that you promote. They and their friends take pride in not listening to the heavily-promoted muscians. Fifity years after the counter-culture of rock-n-roll, it has re-emerged -- much to the dismay of the record companies, because indies are not interested in copy protection.

For further reading: Jeff Leeds writes about The Net Is a Boon for Indie Labels at the New York Times.

Now is the Time to Guard Against DRM

With record companies (how quaint that they are still named after technology no longer used) increasingly desparate for increated profits that they feel naturally belong to them, they are working to make it more and more difficult for customers to use their product. We already have millions of customers willingly let Apple and its iPod restrict use of the music they've purchased.

Here are examples of what corporations are doing now, and what you can expect in the coming years:

- CDs with software that monitors your listening patterns and copying behavior.
- Rental music that limits you to listening to your music collection as long as you pay the monthly fee, which will increase over time.
- Lobbying governments to eliminate the "fair use" and "copies for personal use" aspects of the Copyright Act.
- Attempts to plug the analog hole.
- Music distributed with usage licenses as restrictive as today's software, which will include a clause allowing record companies (or their designated agents) to invade your home looking for copies.
- With ads infecting DVDs, I fully expect ads to invade music CDs soon; ads that you cannot fastforward past.
- Record companies will conspire to eliminate CDs (as they did with LPs) to force technology with greater restrictions.

All of these tactics fall under the acronym of DRM -- digital rights management. This technical term means that record companies get to decide how you listen to the music you purchased.

The time to guard against DRM is now. Here are some tips:

* Maintain a DRM-free computer. Download DRM-free software -- such as older versions of Qunitessential Player (converts between MP3, WMA, and WAV for CDs), AR Wizard (records any input, such as from LP records and cassette tapes, direct to MP3), and CDex (semi-automatically converts music CDs to MP3 collections).

* Given a choice, do not use any Apple (AAC) or Microsoft (WMA) formats. Convert and store all music in MP3.

* Do not use digital music players in proprietary modes, such as Microsoft's PlayForSure or Apple's iTunes. Do not purchase music players that lack an MP3-only mode.

* Before buying a music CD, look on the back for logos or statements that indicate the CD restricts copying. Making backup copies is your legal right.

* Turn off autoplay on all your computers, so that CDs and DVDs cannot automatically install DRM software -- secretly or with your naive permission.

* Convert you aging record, cassette, and 8-track collections to MP3 format. Make more than one backup, and store one set off-site.

Seeing the look in the eyes of customers buying up the sexy Apple Nano and video iPods, it reminds me of characters eyeing the golden ring in Lord of the Rings -- the ring of evil that that rules them all. The characters didn't care what the ring did to them; they coveted it.

Universal Chargers -- Don't Need 'Em

Reading the inflight magazine of the overcramped and underfed United Airlines last month, I noticed an ad from Kingston (I think) for a universal charger, costing around US$130. Universal chargers consist of an adjustable-voltage battery charger with a multitude of tips.

Problem is, universal chargers aren't. For example, no universal charger is going to include the unique data/power connector found on my Sony Clie PDA. Just ain't gonna happen. They should be renamed "semi-universal chargers."

There is, however, a new standard in universal charging emerging around the USB connector, which outputs 5 volts. Many new devices can be charged from your notebook computer's USB ports. In my collection of gadgets, for example, my Zen Micro MP3 player and a wireless mouse can recharge their batteries through USB. It can also work for cell phones and PDAs, if they are designed correctly.

(Tip for Zen Micro owners: it is better to recharge your unit through USB than via the wall charger.)

Another advantage of USB recharging is that you don't need to worry about outlets in international locations -- you need neither the right adapter for the wall outlet, nor the correct voltage and Hz converter. Also, you don't need to take along the power supply for each device; just a couple of short USB cables. I have a six-inch cable that fits the bill. Plus, you save $130.

The drawback: you need to carry your notebook computer with you. Or at least have access to someone else's computer. I recall an editor friend from England skulking aroound computers in the press room, looking for a free USB port to recharge his cell phone.

Rechair Refuses Re-install

I use the Notmad software from Redchair to manage the songs on my Zen Micro MP3 player. The software is well worth $25, being far superior to Creative's software that's included free.

Last week, I bought a new notebook computer and wanted to install the Notmad softare. Imagine my shock when it refused to install. The reason: it claimed to be out of date, and I was supposed to download a newer version from the redchair.com Web site. Further frustration when I spent time fruitlessly trying to figure out where on the site to start the download.

I tried the trick of changing the computer's clock to an earlier month, but the overly-clever installer noticed the tactic, and demanded that I correct the clock's date.

When software works well, I don't upgrade it, because too many times I've been burned when newer releases (1) are buggier or slower and (2) remove useful features. Rechair is preventing me from chosing to not upgrade.

I wrote an email of complaint to Redchair, but they haven't responded. I guess I'm too angry for them.

Olympus Descales the M(p3)ountain

In came up with one of the most dramatic looking MP3 players every designed -- and oddest name (m:robe) -- but good looks didn't work. Olympus is quitting making MP3 after just a few months.

The'yre also abondoning the low-end digital camera business, and concentrating on the now-croweded DSLR market.

Just because you name your company after the home of Greek gods doesn't mean they'll smile kindly on you.

Microsoft: Still Playing that Monopoly Game

Microsoft Watch reports that Microsoft continues to force hardware manufacturers into respecting its Natural Monopoly:

It turns out that [Microsoft] was attempting to force media-player makers to agree to contracts that would prevent them from supporting iTunes, RealPlayer and Napster to Go.

Microsoft's excuse? It was just a draft contract sent out for commenting by hardware vendors. Uh huh. Still trying to get away with it, and hoping to not get caught.

Having met with Microsofties, it seems to me that they consider their software solutions superior and that allowing access to competitors just messes up the user. This hubris is the result of working at a company that thinks it hires the smartest people in the world. If we're all really smart, we can't possibly be wrong.

Compact Flash Prices Flatten

After my 1GB Microdrive broke down (see next item), I checked over prices of CompactFlash memory cards at futureshop.ca. (I'm off to Europe next month.)

I found it interesting that the price of CompactFlash memory has flattened -- in terms of price per GB (gigabyte). It used to be that large capacity cards were priced at a premium, but now high-end, high-capacity cards have per-GB prices similar to low-end, low-capacity cards.

The table shows the Canadian prices as of today. "Low" means low-end cards; "high" means high-end, such as SanDsik Ultra II.

Capacity - Low - High
--------------------------------
256MB - 120 - 160 CDN$/GB
512MB - 130 - 170
1 GB - - 130 - 170
2 GB - - 125 - 125

4 GB - - - - - 125
8 GB - - - - - 75

Notice that the best deal, in terms of $/GB, is the 8GB card, which currently costs CDN$600. Be careful, however: most digital camera cannot use 8GB cards (2GB is the max in most today).

The sweet spot is now at 2GB ($250 in Canada) -- high capacity, fast, high-end, and accepted by most of today's cameras that take CompactFlash memory cards -- all for a per-GB price that cheaper than lower capacity, lower-speed cards.

Nano: The Form Factor is Correct

What I like about the Apple Nano MP3 player is its form factor. Not smaller, but thinner.

While it is possible to design and build very small devices, they still need to be navigated with our relatively stubby fingers. Making buttons and displays tiny is wrong. Apple got it right by keeping the Nano's width and height relatively large, but very thin.

Too Plain to Sell

Betanews.com notes that Apple's iPod is selling poorly in South Korea. Why? Its design is too minimalist. " Consumers in Asian countries have traditionally opted for tech gadgets with more bells and whistles, and MP3 players are apparently no exception."

Market shares in South Korea are:
iRiver = 35%
Samsung = 14%
Cowon = 13%
...
Apple = 1.8%

Another reason might be nationalism: the Top 3 sellers are all Korean products.

Creative Losses

Meanwhile, the company that hoped to unseat Apple is not doing so well. Creative says that disappointing sales of its MP3 players caused a quarterly loss that was larger than expected.The company is also suffering from (wait for it:) the downward pressure on prices and the declining value of its inventory. This sounds very similar to the problems being experienced by some digital camera makers.

Creative has two new multimedia MP3 players planned for the fall.

10th Anniversary of .mp3

The Register reports:

On 14 July 1995 Germany's Fraunhofer Institute chose to use the .mp3 extension for files holding audio data encoded using the MPEG standard's Audio Layer 3 specification.

The MPEG Audio Layer 3 codec was standardised in 1992.

In the last few years, .mp3 has become MP3, with few people realizing it is short for MPEG Layer 3, with MPEG an abbreviation for "motion picture experts group."

The first portable MP3 player was Diamond Multimedia's Rio PMP300, in Sept 1998